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...huh? Did Jason say how many of the submissions were rejected in this way? I can't tell if you're being facetious or not, but we have no way of knowing if 4.166% of the total submission pool is 1 or 100.
Unless there's some serious "outside-the-box" math here that I'm not keen to.
I am making the assumption that the % is 4.166666666......
If that is true, then I should be right on (or at least some multiple of 888 -- and I really hope not simply for my own chances). Not sure how big of an assumption that is however.
As far as "outside-the-box" the other assumption that I made is that Jason is dealing with a positive integer number of submissions. If he got fractional submissions and is counting those, then I have no idea.
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Fortunately.. this was a very small percentage of the queries.... 4.166% to be precise.. or as precise as I fell like being right now.Ok ... so carry the one...
Best guess is that would put the total count of submissions around 888.
The Paizo staff really have their work cut out for them.
Good luck everyone that submitted.
Actually, I put this through my head and came up with a 1 in 24 auto-rejection ratio. Let's say about 5 were rejected, that comes to 120 submissions if I was having a stabbity stab at the submission total. Perhaps we should have a guessing competition? Winner gets...
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
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Actually, I put this through my head and came up with a 1 in 24 auto-rejection ratio. Let's say about 5 were rejected, that comes to 120 submissions if I was having a stabbity stab at the submission total. Perhaps we should have a guessing competition? Winner gets...
Yeah -- that's a little more accurate than what I came up with. And that makes the range quite a bit more varied.
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Oh man, disqualifying offenses are populating my mind now.
1. I sent both a Word and an RTF file in case Paizo hasn't upgraded to the very latest version of Word (yes, I'm anal like that).
2. I also forgot to mention the Red Raven in my proposal (though I hope it is obvious where I intended it to be (on the banner, for those of the selection committee reading this)) (yes, I'm air-headed like that).
I know I'm being overly paranoid, though, so I'm sure it's no big deal (yes, I'm overly paranoid like that).
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When I take my calculator and divide 1 by 24, I come up with 0.041666666 so all we can really say is that about 1 in 24 submissions was rejected due to being over 800 words. If there were 888, that would mean 37 were rejected, but it works equally well if 24 were submitted and 1 was rejected.
EDIT: beaten to the punch by several posts
Oh man, disqualifying offenses are populating my mind now.
1. I sent both a Word and an RTF file in case Paizo hasn't upgraded to the very latest version of Word (yes, I'm anal like that).
I did likewise with the .doc and .rtf files. I'm working on a Mac at home, and every once in a while when I'm sending .doc files to my PC at work, the formatting gets screwed up slightly when the Mac .doc gets opened by the Windows Word program, or vice versa.
I did give a disclaimer as the reason why both files were included, and both were exactly the same except for format.
Fortunately.. this was a very small percentage of the queries.... 4.166% to be precise.. or as precise as I fell like being right now.Ok ... so carry the one...
Best guess is that would put the total count of submissions around 888.
The Paizo staff really have their work cut out for them.
Good luck everyone that submitted.
Actually, I put this through my head and came up with a 1 in 24 auto-rejection ratio. Let's say about 5 were rejected, that comes to 120 submissions if I was having a stabbity stab at the submission total. Perhaps we should have a guessing competition? Winner gets...
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
I'm still going with my ~100 entries that I mentioned above... or 120 rather since we were given the 4.166% figure.
That would be around double the number of people that have posted on the various Open Call threads, which would account for lurkers, etc.
And I'm guessing that the tight deadlines and rather imposing 32 000 word end product scared off a lot of potential authors. (I know in my real life D&D group, there were a couple of people who had submitted queries to Dungeon/Dragon before, but were put off by the 32K figure and having to write it quickly during the holiday season)
Chuck Norris' tears can cure cancer.
Too bad he's never cried.
If you only knew how many of these I've read while stationed in a latrine...
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When I take my calculator and divide 1 by 24, I come up with 0.041666666 so all we can really say is that about 1 in 24 submissions was rejected due to being over 800 words. If there were 888, that would mean 37 were rejected, but it works equally well if 24 were submitted and 1 was rejected.
EDIT: beaten to the punch by several posts
Wait, everyone--we need...
...
...
...
(wait for it)
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...
YELLOWDINGO!!!
Shhhh! If you say it three times you'll summon him...
It's probably a good idea that you fought the urge. I will reject anything with an OotS reference in it that I catch.
oops I think I must have failed this will save. I guess the illegitimate child of Cruella DeVill and Sauron as my new monster is out then. Too bad, it was a total evilgasm and I liked the lich with only one finger (guess which one).
Yes OotS has overtaken MP'sHG for quotability around our gaming table.
GameMastery Open Call: Closed
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
The first round of the GameMastery Module Open Call closed yesterday at noon, and let me tell you, there was quite a rush there at the end. Can an email program smoke? I think mine did a little yesterday.
All told, we received 168 entries over the course of nine days, with most of them coming within the final 48 hours. Following the closing of the contest, I have gone through and stripped the names from files, assigning them all a number. After printing them and sorting them into three even stacks, Mike McArtor, Jeremy Walker, and I have dug in, reading all about wondrous dragon eggs, stolen town icons, missing children, and a veritable swarm of red ravens.
Of interest to me (and perhaps only to me), the shortest entry clocked in at just 245 words while the longest came in at 1,405. The word count limit only caught 7 proposals, but other problems (such as incorrect format or lack of name) nabbed another 11, bringing the final total down to an even 150.
Mike, Jeremy, and I are all feverishly looking through our stacks of 50, picking out what we feel are the best to bring to a contest meeting later this week, where we will narrow down the search to ten finalists. For those of you who are anxiously waiting, expect word late this week or early next. Feel free to send bribes, but since this is a blind review, I am not sure it will help you much.
Jason Bulmahn
GameMastery Brand Manager
So 150...
And "wondrous dragon eggs, stolen town icons, missing children, and a veritable swarm of red ravens" ... none of which were elements of my query, so hopefully I standout... which may not be a good thing. I of course had a Red Raven, but put a bit of different twist on it than most takes I've seen on the boards.
*And of course, hopefully standing out in a good way ;-)
And "wondrous dragon eggs, stolen town icons, missing children, and a veritable swarm of red ravens" ... none of which were elements of my query, so hopefully I standout... which may not be a good thing. I of course had a Red Raven, but put a bit of different twist on it than most takes I've seen on the boards.
*And of course, hopefully standing out in a good way ;-)
I had a "stolen town icon", but that's probably an obvious solution to what was stolen from the town...
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Perhaps in the future a webform would be best? One with built in word-count, so format is never likely to be an issue (*still worried about his lack of attaching it as a file*)
I can understand that request, and think it would be helpful, but -
I think part of this exercise is how well people follow directions. They don't know you from Adam, and they have very specific requirements and timetables to produce things by.
So, if in an open call submission - someone badly blows the word count, has horrible grammar, or fails some other requirement, they might see it as indicative of larger problems. Basically, if you can't give them 800 words of what they want, they probably don't think you can give them 22,000 words of what they want. They're overworked as it is, and they don't have the time to correct an error-laden manuscript.
Especially when you get so many submissions (168!), you need at least some means of preliminarily sorting them.
Perhaps in the future a webform would be best? One with built in word-count, so format is never likely to be an issue (*still worried about his lack of attaching it as a file*)I can understand that request, and think it would be helpful, but -
I think part of this exercise is how well people follow directions. They don't know you from Adam, and they have very specific requirements and timetables to produce things by.
So, if in an open call submission - someone badly blows the word count, has horrible grammar, or fails some other requirement, they might see it as indicative of larger problems. Basically, if you can't give them 800 words of what they want, they probably don't think you can give them 22,000 words of what they want. They're overworked as it is, and they don't have the time to correct an error-laden manuscript.
Especially when you get so many submissions (168!), you need at least some means of preliminarily sorting them.
Yep, I agree.
While I surely hope I wasn't rejected out of hand, using the instructions as the criteria for the first cut is perfectly valid. (IMHO anyways, obviously Paizo can do whatever they want, its their contest and GameMastery line)
If the completed manuscript needs to be in by Jan 1st, and this module is hitting stores in April, then the Paizo staff don't have time to send it back for major re-writes, or rebuild it from the ground up if you couldn't follow the style guide, etc.
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I think part of this exercise is how well people follow directions. They don't know you from Adam, and they have very specific requirements and timetables to produce things by.
Yup. Following instructions is part of the deal.
While I surely hope I wasn't rejected out of hand, using the instructions as the criteria for the first cut is perfectly valid.
Yup. That's common practice in the publishing industry.
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I think part of this exercise is how well people follow directions. They don't know you from Adam, and they have very specific requirements and timetables to produce things by.
Dude, no one is going to confuse me with Adam; he's the only one who sent in an open call pitch with a trans am, and asked Gary Gygax to sign his...
Nevermind.
Sorry, friend. You're too late.
The rules were posted in the Paizo blog, but the open call submission deadline was two days ago. Is closed now.
*antici...
...pates*
Palpable, isn't it? I try to be flippant about it, like, well, I "did" just whip something together in 45 minutes, it probably sucks anyway, you have nothing to lose, BUT, I've already begun to second guess myself for silly things like:
Not using eponymous in place of "named after."
Word autocorrecting gaol into "goal," and my subsequent non-catching.
Sigh.
I think I caught all typos before it went out. Did multiple drafts and had my wife proofread each time.
But I too am second guessing myself, and conceiving all kinds of ways I could have written it better.
Pins and needles.
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I've deliberately not looked at the document I submitted since I sent it, to avoid just that sort of second guessing. I even resisted the urge to email the guys to confirm that they recieved it ... if I did something really dumb like sent it to the wrong email address, forgot to attach the file, attached an earlier draft rather than the final one, made gross grammatical or formatting errors ... well, I probably don't deserve to be considered in this anyway!
Ditto. It's natural to start nitpicking at this stage though.
Spare me your platitudes; I refuse to be placated!
Goes back to chugging "Fast Lane" tea and thinking about taking up chain smoking "just for a few days."
Must....drive...Seattle....pace...around....office.
Must....drive...Seattle....pace...around....office.That is the guaranteed #1 way to not make it to round 2.
;D
If anyone is interested I can set up a tour bus to Seattle. Act now there are only 149 seats left... :) :) :)
No worries, you all received a reprieve (not that I really would anyhow, have you seen the price of gas? I'd have run there). Turns out I'm allergic to Fast Lane tea, rofl! Sigh. Hives again....joy.
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Must....drive...Seattle....pace...around....office.That is the guaranteed #1 way to not make it to round 2.
;D
Wow, it finally is rock star cool to be in RPG industry.
Paizo got his first(?) stalker. Next step is screaming fanboys whenever you are in public.
And then there are the groupies (though you won't get undies thrown at you but the girls' favorite dice and instead of love letters you get PC sheets)
Then you do MTV cribs.
And after a while you can not handle the fame and public pressure. You are seen in a tattoo palor where you get a "WoC sucks" tattoo and then you are in a barber where they shave your head. Then you are seen with Paris Hilton. You loose your creativity and start taking drugs.
And from then on you are on a real downward spiral.
But hey, this is rockn' roll!
My first girlfriend was a Lemure.