Top 16, do us proud, give us some great monsters. Know you have my support and envy, in that order. Congratulations!
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First, my thanks to all who've taken time to digest my entry. I greatly appreciate all this feedback. You can't buy this kind of coaching. So, to clear the veil of fog and smoke from these Artisans, and their Variations. Variations are the best lies possible in Golarion. An Artisan would tell you a Variation is like any other work of art, a lie trying to make its audience believe. A Variation incorporates mundane manipulation in the vein of con men with illusion and compulsion magic effects. In terms of effect, Variations are efforts and strategies designed to make a specific audience believe something different, possibly contrary to what they previously believed. A really great lie. Patrons set the objective of a Variation, and the Artisan decides the strategy. For example, a patron wants a noble eliminated, the Artisan convinces the king he is a cuckold by the same noble and he is executed. The Artisan is deeply moved by the artistic tragedy. Variations, like lies, are at their best when they are simple, efficient endeavors neatly executed. Artisans favor the least overt methods possible. Magic use is allowed, but does not impress their peers in their internal competition for recognition. Artisans will use as little magical compulsion as possible. Some of the 24 currently practicing Artisans don't even have spellcasting abilities.
Thank you for your support and please vote for my item! If you have questions, I'll be happy to answer them once voting for this round is closed.
I know we all still have a week but I think the hardest part of not advancing won't even be the fact that there's no potential published gaming credit but that all the energy (and emotion) I'm suddenly putting into the contest will suddenly be sapped out. Obviously I'll still be gaming and following along with everyone's items, but it's going to feel like I've suddenly been dumped, I think... Well, if your ARE getting dumped, then you'll be in some great company. When I entered last year, I was crushed when I didn't crack the Top 32. My item was flawed, I made mistakes, and frankly, there were lots of items better than mine. I didn't feel dumped, I felt turned down for the first date. It hurt, yeah, but after I had some time for perspective, I realized this actually the very best thing to happen. Look, comedians get booed off stage when they start out, artists starve before they're famous, this is the sacrifice we make for art. Every designer has put a piece of themselves into their designs, and we take very personally how they are received. But they are not us, and we are not being accepted or rejected as people. We're just designers. We're submitting designs. And while I'm pretty confident that everyone in this thread takes their designs seriously, the response isn't personal. Here's three things to remember. 1. Rejection is a part of the career of any writer or designer. You WILL be rejected at some point, and learning to deal with it is a sign of a professional. B. You made it to the Top 32! You got a ISWG pdf (if you didn't already have one)! Thousands of people are reading your work! You got Paizo's attention! And most important, obviously, you get a (RPG Superstar 2012....) title after your name on the boards. Wealth, success, love, these things come and go. Thread cred is forever! III. You've made more friends. Life keeps on showing me that friends are a consistently undervalued commodity. And seriously, isn't sharing the experience of tabletop with friends what makes gaming fun?
Initiative
EDIT Hah. As though I haven't been doing this for week already.
Yeah, good luck my fellow 32. I feel a real fellowship vibe here, and I'm so pleased to compete alongside you all. I keep waiting on one of you to be a total tool, so I can feel justified in trying to beat them. Instead, I'm just constantly impressed with the caliber of people you all are. I just want to hang out, toss ideas around, and listen to stories with you all. It's like being in a group of your favorite gamers, but not being allowed to roll any dice. May your diety (or philosophy) be with you! 
I'm gonna skip invoking the Blue Ones, as being called Smurphy is a family burden I bear. GM v player? I like both a lot, though outside of Society play, I haven't run in years. However, my group is running Kingmaker now, then we're taking turns in the GM chair, doing Serpent's Skull, Carrion Crown, then I get to run Jade Regent. We estimate I will be GM in less than three years. When I read that, it sounds like a long time. But three years of gaming is a lovely fate to contemplate. EDIT: I still got blue-faced!
I completely agree on two points here. The first, +10 is huge. Especially in the case of Gloves, Charlatan. Giving that bonus to Sleight of Hand auto succeeds, and while that's cool, its not really fun. Checks with static DCs are already failing to keep up with ever more powerful characters. This is what circumstance modifiers are for, but trying to defend a design by saying others (GMs) need to accommodate it is a sure sign that the designer needs to rethink, not his audience. Second, the challenge within a challenge idea, I feel its crucial in this competition, for what that's worth. Perhaps it makes sense to think of it as seeing entries in all dimensions: execution, imagination, application, appeal. In fact, it was precisely that epiphany which led me to completely abandon my organization concept 13 hours before deadline. The thought punched me in the face while wrestling this boondoggle of an idea into something submittable, and it dawned (heh, just before dawn) on me it wasn't going to win anyone over. Was I nervous about that choice? To this very moment.
No, it wasn't much fun scrambling to create, research, and write the new idea in such short time, but such mistakes make for a stronger person, and perhaps a stronger designer.
Submitted and it feels great. I still look at my clock every 30 seconds and have hysterical micro-panics that its after deadline. Unfortunately, the submission idea I worked on for the bulk of our three days struck me as utter crap at 3:00 am in the middle of the tenth? fifteenth? draft. I'm glad I was able to see it was diminishing returns, but the timing could have been better. I want to win pretty bad, but now I can sit back and enjoy 2012 Top 32-hood. And dang, I'm so glad this challenge made me dive into ISWG. It is just delicious juicy bite after delicious juicy bite. The crunch was hard, glad Kingmaker game is tonight. To all pursuits dorkish! Huzzah!
Delighted and dazed being here. I'm very happy to be in such company as you lot, and I am really excited for all of us. Some mutual entrants and I were at our 2nd Annual RPG Superstar Bitterness party when the results were announced. We went from 0 to *squee* in seconds flat. I do have a bit of luck in that my boss is in my game group, and also entered the contest, though he didn't move on.
See everybody the next time I look up from the Inner Sea World Guide.
Thanks so much to the judges and commenters for this feedback. I am enraged with glee at making the 32. I've read and seen I have some stiff competition, so I'll be brief here before I get back to working on Round 2. On seeing the responses, I agree it needs to be tighter. As was noted immediately, +10 on SoH is too high, and the design is off-balance for it. I appreciate all the critique on this design, and I welcome more. I hope to respond more substantially soon. And congratulations to all my fellow 2012 32!
Pixie Bead
Thanks for taking the time. |