I don't think I really understood the difference between "flavorful item" and "item with needless backstory" until voting in this contest.
I get why players want items that give them the special abilities of classes that aren't their own, but I think that's exactly why designers shouldn't be giving it to them.
I guess I'll just drown my misgivings in scotch.
And there's my item!
what did I just read
You know what, item? You're insane, and I'm not sure anyone else is going to like you, but I love you.
I have a real soft spot for items whose primary (or entire) use isn't combat, and I've seen a few great ones so far.
Yes, I too have often bristled under the tyrannical yoke of the law of gravity.
More of my posts in the snarky thread have been "I love this!" than not, I think. I have 23 items in my list of things I really like/would use in a game so far, with a handful of those being things I think will probably make the top 32.
Alright, I think that's it for me. Night everyone, I had lots of fun on my first Day of Superstar Voting Ever. Still didn't see my item but I'm satisfied just knowing other people have seen it. Hopefully it doesn't have any of the same kind of formatting errors I've been occasionally downvoting people for or I'm going to feel like such a jerk.
Wow, there really ARE a lot of marriage based items. Yep. It's the weirdest of the trends to me. I can totally see a bunch of people independently hitting on wind-based items, or leaf-based items, but marriage? That said, I actually liked most of them.
Yeah, I should be sleeping instead of voting and probably not drinking scotch either, but hey.
What... that doesn't... what?
I definitely prefer "ambitious and weird but doesn't quite work" to "works perfectly fine, but not that interesting".
Think I found my favourite ring. ETA: Might be top 32 material, even.
Looking like my biggest pet peeve is items whose description suggests that there's only one of them, crafted by a specific person, for a specific purpose, which is of course undermined by the fact that crafting requirements are listed directly after that.
That costs how much???!! I'll take a dozen!!!
I admit it, I'm a sucker for Weird Ideas.
Okay, marriage-themed items are officially a trend.
Yeah preeeeeetty sure if I rolled into town with that I'd be strung from a tree real quick
Whoa, awesome staff.Any staffs I have seen are either amazing or terrible. I've seen some boring ones, but no terrible ones. That said, I haven't really seen a lot of terrible anything. I'm more likely to think something is just kind of dull than really bad.
Whoa, awesome staff.
I'm definitely seeing the less-is-more wisdom regarding word count now that I'm 100+ items in. I'm trying not to be unduly unfair to high word count items though, just because I think part of it is just the fatigue of so much reading.
It appears I have a soft spot for non-combat items, especially social items. Which I guess makes sense since I'm usually the party spokesman.
I've yet to see a really good shield. I think shields were the real hard mode.
Even if I don't win (which I won't), I already feel like I've gotten so much better just by voting and paying attention to this thread.
So my overall impression so far is that doing something fairly simple and useful in a flavorful way is the best use of this design space.
Hey, that's pretty clever.
Daaang! I thought it would at least take a few days to get updated, or not be updated until after the competition. Wonder how long it'll take me to have something showing... If I keep putting off apartment-cleaning, maybe I'll make dedicated by the end of the night!
Oh no, this is an artifact! That's too bad, I was going to vote for you .
Whoever made this item is clearly insane, but that's okay because it's amazing.That's the kind of mojo I wanna hear about! I don't think I actually completely understood what this elusive "mojo" was until I saw that one.
Whoever made this item is clearly insane, but that's okay because it's amazing.
Yeah, I like Spider-Man too.
Oh man, if I came to my GM with that item he would slap me.
I'm realizing I'm pretty much a sucker for flavour over rules.
I'm kind of charmed by the ones that address me, the voter, personally.
I submitted a thing this year, though it's probably not Superstar material. It's definitely tough to come up with items that are interesting and strong enough to be a good alternative to flat bonuses, but not overpowered. Definitely, although in some ways I think I would have had a harder time of things if this were still the wondrous items round. Maybe it's just me, but trying to make an item that shines despite some pretty clear design boundaries seems easier to me than "Design basically anything that can pretty much interact with the rules and the game in a limitless number of ways".
Another first-timer here, to the boards (obviously, since this is my first post :P) as well as to the contest. My gaming group convinced me to enter something. It was my first time designing anything other than an adventure for the group (and to call my adventure-making process "designing" is a lot more credit than I deserve). I don't expect to win, but finding out how much I enjoyed the process is something of a win in itself, for me. Good luck everyone! Looking forward to seeing what you all came up with. |
