Yours were labeled fine. James' were a touch more confusing due to the label "Things I Don't Like About This Proposal" and "Things I Like About This Proposal."
He's the EIC, he-who-must-be-obeyed. Was that not clear? :)
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This isn't four independent pitches, it's a competition. I think most people would look at the judge feedback and say "lots more didn't likes on this one; he likes it less." If that wasn't your intention, it'll still be the effect on people that read judges' comments before voting.Vic's right. My list of "Didn't Likes" for the four proposals shouldn't be taken as me not liking the adventure proposal. If I like a proposal, it's going to have a big list of "Didn't Like" elements that I'll want the author to address or defend or change, as the case may be.
If I don't like a proposal, I don't list things I don't like. I just send a form rejection letter, usually. None of these four adventure proposals would have received a rejection letter. They would have received a letter pretty much identical to the initial review post I made.
i think you have it a bit wrong
this is a competition to write an adventurethey asked adventures pitches made with profesionalism
so they receive the threat of serius, profesional pitches...
that is the whole purpose of the superstar contest... to publish
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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It shouldn't matter to folks who don't care about cannon whether or not a product follows canon, but it does to those who do care, so making sure products follow canon is the best way to produce products that everyone can enjoy.And that would be a concise definition of why canon matters to publishers and authors: it's a tiny subset of people, but meeting their needs doesn't cost you any sales. And if you don't, you not only lose that sale, they might go to the internet....
Comic Book Guy: "I will be on the internet within minutes registering my disgust."
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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What I don't get is how either set one or three suffers if extra attention is paid to the second. Since they aren't looking at canon at all, they won't be upset if it's all perfect.They don't get upset. DMs 1 & 3 stop buying, however, when the canon gets so specific and complicated that canon starts:
a) putting a straight-jacket on authors, making it hard for them to realize cool ideas and thus creating staid products;
b) feeling so complicated that it's off-putting and hard to integrate into their world (that's why I've never bothered with FR products, at least);
and/or c) reading like an installment of a novel or a guide handbook rather than an adventure.
I know that I'm worried about Paizo succumbing to option C after the last AP, where there was so... much... back story.... (Stupid elves with their millennia of history!) Rumblings are good for the first installment of the next path, however, so hopefully it was just an aberration. (Of course, the first installment on all four of these paths have been good. The real test of an AP's quality seems to be whether the third and fourth adventures are as good as the first.)
I can guarantee you without reservation that the fourth installment of the LoF adventure path, in the immortal words of Tordek from the PHB PSAs, will "RULE ASS"!!!
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Comic Book Guy: "I will be on the internet within minutes registering my disgust."It shouldn't matter to folks who don't care about cannon whether or not a product follows canon, but it does to those who do care, so making sure products follow canon is the best way to produce products that everyone can enjoy.And that would be a concise definition of why canon matters to publishers and authors: it's a tiny subset of people, but meeting their needs doesn't cost you any sales. And if you don't, you not only lose that sale, they might go to the internet....
And when he gets there: "There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling!"
I've spent a while trying to find the best way to say this without rankling someone, because I certainly don't intend it that way. I actively dislike canon in "vanilla" fantasy RPGs. It's not that I don't care about it. It actually bothers me to the point that I avoid products relating to it and avoid lines that are canon heavy.
Every time I play or run in a new campaign setting, I feel like I have to relearn my fantasy template all over again but with different names. I've been to Greyhawk, to the Forgotten Realms, to two or three different homebrews, and as a player I've learned to create characters that avoid making me try to carry a whole other pantheon of gods, regions (with optional feats) and nations, rulers, and histories in my head for a psuedo-Western-European-mash-together polytheistic world where most of the details just seem renamed and/or subtly changed from the last.
That said, I like Golarion because there are enough regions in it that feel significantly different from the baseline that I'm learning something new. Osiron is my first D&D take on an psuedo-Egyptian region, and I'm looking forward to immersing myself in the Golarion Arabian Nights land in the upcoming path. And man, oh man, would I love to see a Chronicles book for the heavy metal barbarians of Numeria (please let there be cyborg barbarians, please oh please!)
So it's not that I don't want to use my brain to remember things in Fantasy... I just want to learn new things!* n.n;
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*From my admittedly, sometimes, slightly burnt-out perspective.
Director of Brand Strategy
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I can guarantee you without reservation that the fourth installment of the LoF adventure path, in the immortal words of Tordek from the PHB PSAs, will "RULE ASS"!!!
Yeah, but how much canon did you have to toss out, since RULE ASS adventures and staying true to canon are mutually exclusive?
I completely believe Jason Nelson. Besides, there's a completely objective, pre-release review that totally supports his claims of bad assery.
And if Golarion is "too much," then too much me more, please.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I can guarantee you without reservation that the fourth installment of the LoF adventure path, in the immortal words of Tordek from the PHB PSAs, will "RULE ASS"!!!Yeah, but how much canon did you have to toss out, since RULE ASS adventures and staying true to canon are mutually exclusive?
Ah, for that, you see, I got the biggest cheat of all (one of the advantages of having ended up getting the first pick of LoF 3-6 to write) - my adventure happens pretty much entirely in a self-contained pocket dimension. For which there is about 1% canon (a bit about the archwizard Nex) and 99% RULE-ASSERY!!!
I had to toss out nothing, because I had a cool blank map and 2 paragraphs of "here are some things that should be in here somewhere" for starters and from there it was sandbox city.
You should go check out the objective, unbiased, and authoritative review on this item. It won't steer you wrong! :)
On a related topic, I'm trying to get a fix on whether the RPG Superstar contest is meant to appeal exclusively to Pathfinder players, or to any RPG gamer who's willing to delve into Pathfinder.
My first impression of the contest (when I first heard about it, around Round 3) was that while the content is meant to be Pathfinder-oriented, it's also entirely open to those new to the world and the system. Most of the entries didn't seem to be tied particularly tightly to the Pathfinder setting - they seemed situated in any generic fantasy adventure game. In the last round, though, ties to Golarion suddenly became extremely important. I can easily imagine a situation where someone new to Pathfinder enters the contest, reaches the last round, and then finds himself trying to write a proposal for a setting he doesn't know anything about... And setting information isn't freely available like the system rules are.
Now, this does have me confused, but I think I've understood some bits and pieces:
1. First of all, this structure makes sense. The winning proposal is going to be published as a Pathfinder adventure, and so that's what the last round is, even if the previous rounds aren't required to be nearly as tied-in.
2. I also saw links (I think in this thread) to the Pathfinder Wiki, which sounds like it could help to some degree, even if it would take some time to navigate through.
3. In point of fact, it looks like many of the contestents were unfamiliar with the Pathfinder setting - I think all but Neil's entry were dinged for some level or other of incompatibility with the Pathfinder setting. So maybe this is something expected, which can be addressed in editing.
Still, this doesn't answer my question entirely, because I think we are still in a position where happily the contest attracts many new players, or casual players who are unfamiliar with most of the setting, and yet the goal is a product which is very firmly rooted in the setting. There's a clash here that seems like a bit of a shame. Thoughts?
I think that while it may be drawing people unfamiliar with the setting and that the contest would be open to them as well, but it is a contest to find a RPG Superstar and I would think that an important quality is a desire to learn about who and what they are writing for.
I don't limit this to just the Pathfinder setting. No matter what company or world you are writing for I believe that it is important to learn what sort of things the company writes about and study the features of their setting.
This may in fact give an advantage to people already familiar with Pathfinder, but I believe that given the submissions for each round that each contestant would be able to focus their attention on specific part of the setting that they will be using and still be quite successful.
What he's getting at is whether it's becoming required to buy 100+ bucks worth of books and APs just to be able to win at this contest now, as opposed to last year, where there wasn't an implicit competitive disadvantage.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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What he's getting at is whether it's becoming required to buy 100+ bucks worth of books and APs just to be able to win at this contest now, as opposed to last year, where there wasn't an implicit competitive disadvantage.
Now that the Community Use Policy has been released and anyone who operates under it has the ability to use Pathfinder names, locations, etc. in free products, people don't have to spend a cent. As long as the community provides a variety of high-quality resources under this policy, it should be easy for someone to get a general sense of the world without having to invest in it themselves.
What he's getting at is whether it's becoming required to buy 100+ bucks worth of books and APs just to be able to win at this contest now, as opposed to last year, where there wasn't an implicit competitive disadvantage.
Yes, that's definitely a lot of it. The contest started me thinking, "Well, what would I want to write for a cool contest like this?", which I think reflects very well on the contest, and is a lot of what it's trying to do, and then I start browsing through products, and thinking "Oy! Just getting the general setting resource + one tiny specific corner that catches my attention would cost me upwards of $50!", which I don't think was quite the effect Paizo's aiming for.
The other part of the problem is just finding oneself within the setting - even if I walked into the Paizo National Library right now, I don't know if I'd know where to begin. In this sense, the thread has been encouraging, since it sounds like the different books are fairly self-contained, and I don't need to cross-reference between dozens of sourcebooks to get the full picture on any subject (as per Forgotten Realms, et al). There is a certain daunting quality to that much information, though - the slight downside of Paizo's regular and expansive pace of publishing...
Now that the Community Use Policy has been released and anyone who operates under it has the ability to use Pathfinder names, locations, etc. in free products, people don't have to spend a cent. As long as the community provides a variety of high-quality resources under this policy, it should be easy for someone to get a general sense of the world without having to invest in it themselves.
Is there free Pathfinder content up somewhere? I wouldn't know where to begin looking... I'm very curious to see a bit of the setting, and if anything like what you describe exists, that'd be very helpful.
I have to admit though, I'm a bit dubious that such content would solve this problem. I think I'd have trouble finding these products, and particularly in finding the ones that are both good and reiterate a significant chunk of information that exists in the canon sourcebooks. What it might well do, though, is give enough references and glimpses as to give contestants a little taste, which they can build upon from there, or at least know exactly which products they want.
You should have the Player's Guides for the first two adventure paths available in "My Downloads." Have you downloaded and read those?
If you don't want to plunk down the dough for the Campaign Setting right now, how about the Gazetteer instead?
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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What he's getting at is whether it's becoming required to buy 100+ bucks worth of books and APs just to be able to win at this contest now, as opposed to last year, where there wasn't an implicit competitive disadvantage.
I would tend to say no, and the winner of the contest is a clear example. There is nothing uniquely Golarion-ish about Neil's adventure, except for the concept of gnomes and "the bleaching," which are described in the 2-page gnomes article Christine wrote for the PF Campaign Setting book.
Bellis - made-up town, placed nowhere in particular
First World - mentioned as a concept but never detailed anywhere other than rather vaguely as a "fey realm" kind of place
I will agree that the Boiling Beast and Mammoth Ride ran into trouble, because they tried to be TOO specific to a certain place (Magnimar and dinos in the far north) and evidently got things wrong, stuff that isn't in the campaign setting.
I think any person trying to win this contest should be pretty familiar with that one book, which is what, 40 bucks?
Other kinds of continuity errors, things that are happen in APs or other adventures - for things that are peripheral details to your pitch, those are the editor/developer's job to catch. If you're going to make it a core piece of your proposal, though, you as the author need to do some research. You absolutely DON'T need to know everything about everything, but a quick browse of the PF wiki should be able to tell you "has this been covered already?"
Would it help you win the contest to have all of the Paizo stuff on hand and in mind, to be a continuity savant? Sure. It's an advantage to have gamed a long time, it's an advantage to have a lot of free time, to be a fast typist, to be a native English speaker... there are lots of things that can help, and no contest can really control for advantage and disadvantage. And yet, we had a non-native-English speaker win the first Superstar. Disadvantages can be overcome.
I don't dismiss the idea completely, but the contest is a funny thing. I think mojo and skill and being a Golarion expert can help get you TO the final, but part of advancing is also coming up with an idea that people like. Not something that you THINK people will like, but one that, in the end, they actually DO like. They can love your execution, your cleverness with stats and rules, argue about whether you could pull it off in the space allowed or not, and all the rest, but if the core idea resonates, or doesn't, I think that's the biggest part of winning (or advancing). All the rest supports it, but if the idea at the core isn't big enough, it doesn't matter.
Like in diving or figure skating or gymnastic, routines and maneuvers have degrees of difficulty. If you do a perfect routine A and someone does an imperfect but much harder routine B, they may beat you anyway, even though you did what you did perfectly. Of course, if your routine A isn't perfect, you're toast anyway, or if their routine B IS perfect then they are gonna win and you tip your cap. What's the saying, "Our problem isn't that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed."
The thing that's different is that you don't know the "degree of difficulty" ahead of time. It's not a matter of trying to aim low - everybody thinks their idea is good; that's why they chose it! But there is a good bit of luck involved.
Picking your subject is so important, and there is skill involved in knowing how to "read an audience," so to say, and there is creativity involved in taking an old idea that people THOUGHT they were tired of and making it fresh and new and cool, but that's an uphill battle (though I think Neil did well this year with the 'dark fey' theme, one that usually doesn't do much for me). Still, you take your shot with an idea you like and hope that it catches people.
Maybe it will.
Maybe it won't.
Maybe you find you chose well. Maybe, like Walter Donovan in the Last Crusade, some aged knight will say: "He chose... poorly."
Enough rambling for now. Congrats to all of the Final 4. Contestants next year - read the threads from this year (and last year), see things that worked, and see things that didn't. Sometimes Golarion flavor worked as a bonus for people, sometimes it was a stumbling block. Use it if you can, take your shot, and take the ride, sometimes up, sometimes down, but always exciting.
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Is there free Pathfinder content up somewhere? I wouldn't know where to begin looking... I'm very curious to see a bit of the setting
try The Wiki
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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You should have the Player's Guides for the first two adventure paths available in "My Downloads." Have you downloaded and read those?
If you don't want to plunk down the dough for the Campaign Setting right now, how about the Gazetteer instead?
It's true; much cheaper version, but gives you the overview of the setting.
Still, I think the OP is probably overstating his case, for two reasons:
1. Even at the highest point wherein Golarion-related questions came to the fore, the final round, comments about Golarion continuity and campaign setting details were still only a small slice of the editorial comments, and mostly only from James, the EIC and the person most responsible for continuity. Wolf and Clark don't even work for Paizo and, while passingly familiar with the setting, made no pretense of critiquing based on continuity, and Sean didn't put in much in that realm either. I think James' comments should have been taken more in the sense of "these are things we would probably change between proposal and final turnover" as opposed to "these things are bad."
2. The entire contest, you know from the very beginning, is to write an adventure set in Golarion. This is not a surprise. You know it's coming the whole contest. The contest is sort of like a job tryout. You can choose to prepare for that interview by learning about the company you want to work for. Or you can not. If you do prepare, you'll probably do better than if you don't. The more you prepare, the better, but the difference between "not" and "prepared" is VASTLY larger than the gap between "prepared" and "super-prepared."
Not prepared for Superstar is not buying or reading any Golarion stuff.
Prepared is reading the gazetteer or, better, the Campaign Setting.
Super-prepared is being a subscriber to this, that, and the other and keeping up with all of it.
The contest doesn't even REQUIRE you to be prepared, but it helps. I think it would be reasonable for Paizo to expect, if you wanna work for them, that you be willing to at least do a modicum of preparation, but they don't, so call it easy! They certainly don't require anyone to be breaking the bank on Paizo swag just to keep up.
3. Also, think about it this way. You're making a bet by buying the Campaign Setting, which is all that you realistically need to be able to write credible adventures in Golarion. If you win Superstar and get a contract to write a 32-page adventure, that's something that will earn you around $1600 or so, which you facilitated by buying a $40 book; you just paid off your ticket at 40-to-1. That's a pretty good payoff! You might not win but still get noticed, and get tapped to write other freelance products. If you even get one monster in a PF Bestiary, your lottery ticket just paid itself off about 2-to-1. Or, you might develop the self-confidence to submit articles or open calls and make yourself some money that way.
Don't sit and grouse that there's a cost of admission. If you wanna play the game, you need to be willing to put something in the hat. Some guys at the table might have a pocket full of lottery tickets (other Paizo books), but all you REALLY need is the price of admission. It's your buy-in to the WSoP (World Series of Paizo). You might go home empty, or you might go home a big winner!
Good points, Jason. I'll also point out that several rounds' instructions say (in effect) "name-dropping Golarion names is nice but not required, nor does it automatically improve your chances, as two of the judges aren't Paizo employees and aren't as familiar with the campaign setting as Paizo staffers...."
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Star Voter Season 6
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Good points, Jason. I'll also point out that several rounds' instructions say (in effect) "name-dropping Golarion names is nice but not required, nor does it automatically improve your chances, as two of the judges aren't Paizo employees and aren't as familiar with the campaign setting as Paizo staffers...."
If I may add my two c-bills. One of the (several) flaws with my round 2 entry was an overreliance on the setting, so, no I don't think future versions will be dependant on Golarion fluff.
Very good points, guys. Also, I think (unless I'm being overly sensitive) that's there's a possible undercurrent here that I don't like, and feel free to tell me if I'm wrong. "RPG Superstar is an evil conspiracy for Paizo to sell us more books!"
Of course it's a conspiracy. It's just neither very secret nor (at all) evil. It works both on the end of promoting the material and producing the material. And Dickensianly, I say, "Go' bless 'em!" Is that a reason to complain: that a company is trying to succeed by improving the production of and the sales of its product? (Dammit, they're making me buy more stuff!) Of course, if you like to dramatically faux complain for fun (I do), but it's just not a legitimate complaint to make against a company unless there's a "rip-off" or bad faith element involved. None here; it's what I came for; play on! says I.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
aka Tarren Dei
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I think that the final round required you to know how much you knew about the setting. You could design an adventure that referenced the setting a little bit, a lot, or not at all. If you choose 'not at all', then you may be somewhat restricted in your approach. If you chose to reference the setting quite a bit, then you needed to know your stuff.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I think that the final round required you to know how much you knew about the setting. You could design an adventure that referenced the setting a little bit, a lot, or not at all. If you choose 'not at all', then you may be somewhat restricted in your approach. If you chose to reference the setting quite a bit, then you needed to know your stuff.
Well said. Know what you know, and what you don't.
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Creative Director
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RPG Superstar is not a charity. It's a marketing tool we use to find new authors, but one that's designed also to be entertainment for visitors to paizo.com.
Since we lost the D&D magazine licenses, Paizo had to restructure what it does and how it works. One of those changes is that we suddenly no longer had a constant flow of new author—we no longer had the Dragon and Dungeon slush piles. And as a result, we needed to figure out how to find new authors in a way that didn't consume as much time and as many resources as maintaining what was essentially a non-stop open call—we're doing about 250% the amount of pages of content now than we were during the magazine days, so we just don't have as much time anymore to manage things like slush piles.
The Pathfinder Society scenario open calls are one way we've created to find new authors. RPG Superstar is another. Although only Christine actually "won" RPG Superstar 2008, we've assigned work to about half a dozen of the participants of that contest so far, several of which were Pathfinder Adventure Path installments. I fully expect to repeat this pattern in the coming year with RPG Superstar's 2009 finalists.
That said... since the majority of what we publish is material set in Golarion, we prefer writers who are able to write within that world. A successful Paizo author is someone who is creative, is able to write with correct spelling and grammar, and is familiar with the world in which we'll be requiring him to write in.
For RPG Superstar, that more or less DOES mean you'll have to get a copy of the Gazetteer or the hardcover. I don't see that as any different than the cost of buying writing materials or a computer with a word processor, honestly; it's just one of the tools you, as a writer, needs to secure to do your job. (That DOES mean that, if you make money as a freelancer, those game books are a tax writeoff.)
When we DO have a writer working for us, and if he DOES need access to specific books or products in our line, what I generally do is get that writer a copy of the PDFs for all of the relevant books he'll need to write what we want him to write, if he doesn't have them already. The trick is, though, getting our attention in the first place (via something like RPG Superstar or the PFS scenarios), and that DOES mean that you'll need to do some research on what we produce.
A writer who ignores a publisher's established offerings will always have a disadvantage when put up against a writer who does his research and studies up on the publisher's established offerings. That's kind of how being a freelancer works.
Wait a minute...there's a way to tell the wife that I need these books for work!?!?!?
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
aka Tarren Dei
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For RPG Superstar, that more or less DOES mean you'll have to get a copy of the Gazetteer or the hardcover. I don't see that as any different than the cost of buying writing materials or a computer with a word processor, honestly; it's just one of the tools you, as a writer, needs to secure to do your job. (That DOES mean that, if you make money as a freelancer, those game books are a tax writeoff.)
Still, I think a person could make it a couple rounds into this contest without knowing a lot of Golarion specific stuff. The magic item round required one to have a sense of what's been done very generally in D&D. Google the item name. (I had an item I liked better than Horn of the Dark Hunt that I held back because I kept feeling like I'd seen it somewhere before.) The 1st villain round didn't really require your villain to fit within Golarion. We still don't know where Gulga Cench lives, do we? The 2nd villain round required knowledge of the Beta but that was available free online. By the lair round the expectations were getting higher but so was the level of competition. Still, there was room for fudging it. Kevin Carter put sewers in Katapesh. Does Katapesh have sewers? If they don't, nobody seemed to care.* People realized that these villains were not necessarily becoming published as is.
In the final round of the contest, however, you are submitting an adventure proposal for publication. The expectation that you known Golarion should be very high there and you've had a couple of months to come to terms with that.
*EDIT: By 'nobody seemed to care', I mean they judged his brilliant entry on its merits and didn't worry about whether Katapesh had sewers or not.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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*EDIT: By 'nobody seemed to care', I mean they judged his brilliant entry on its merits and didn't worry about whether Katapesh had sewers or not.
A quick search through all my Pathfinder material does not mention sewers specifically *not* being in Katapesh. I also don't believe it says that trees in Sargava never have leaves on the north side, so there's a lot of room to make things interesting and original without contradicting established canon. Come up with wild enough stuff, and there's no way the CS or another source could have refuted it preemptively.
If I can add my two-cents, I absolutely agree with the progression of "need to know Golarion" that Trevor laid out round-by-round. I didn't focus so much on looking for established Golarion canon to work with...although I'll admit, I know exactly where Gulga lives in my own mind.
But, by the final round, I looked to spin an adventure proposal that 1) could stand on its own with a compelling story no matter what campaign setting you used, and 2) borrowed enough established Golarion elements to make it work even better with Paizo's flagship setting. Those two design goals aren't mutually exclusive.
And, finally, as James and others have pointed out...you enter this contest knowing what the final reward entails, i.e., you'll be writing an adventure set in Golarion. So you'd better know enough to be prepared for that should you make it that far.
Just my two-cents,
--Neil
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Contributor
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Star Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
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Some more coppers from me:
I can't speak for Paizo, obviously, but it seems to me that they try to make their adventures portable to any setting. Of course, since I buy Paizo products, I like seeing references to the Campaign Setting, Player's Guide, etc., that I've bought. I also can imagine someone wanting an adventure they can "take off the shelf" and run without having to worry about deep knowledge of the setting--just change some names and insert it into their setting. So, there is a challenge in providing both, which Neil attempted to do, as he mentions above. I happen to think he succeeded in doing so, IMHO.
Firstly, thanks for the many responses. I think the discussion here has helped me see what I was missing - that RPG Superstar is largely a contest aimed at aspiring game designers. I was a bit stuck in the "compete at coming up with great ideas and writing" mentality, which is what I came in expecting, but I see that description is overlooking the prize and goal of the contest - breaking into writing a product - and a crucial skillset that the contest centers around and tests for - professional game design. In this context, attracting newcomers to the game but expecting them to learn (a bit) about the game setting on their own makes a lot more sense to me. Yeah, I probably should have figured this out from the prize.
And the other responses in this thread have persuaded me that adherence to canon and interconnectedness with the established setting were not major factors in the contest. There was a particular point or two that did bother me, criticism that seemed unfair in the context of contestants who weren't expected to be very familiar with most of the setting - but in retrospect, those one or two points were fairly minor, and more editorial concerns than actual criticism of the entries. Trevor's point was very well-taken:
I think that the final round required you to know how much you knew about the setting.
Yes. When you put it like that, I think that levels the playing field, even for someone who knows very little about the setting.
I'd also just like to respond to Mairkurion:
Also, I think (unless I'm being overly sensitive) that's there's a possible undercurrent here that I don't like, and feel free to tell me if I'm wrong. "RPG Superstar is an evil conspiracy for Paizo to sell us more books!"
I just wanted to say I can understand why you might read my posts that way, but that really wasn't my intention. I hadn't heard of Paizo until a month ago, and I'm very impressed by what I've seen so far. The RPG Superstar contest is a wonderful idea, which generates excitement, interest, and very cool ideas (and eventually, actual products too!). And, like you, I'm more than happy to see Paizo successfully and creatively getting people excited about their products. If you'll reread my first post, I think I was fairly clear: my main concern was that newcomers might enter the contest expecting a "generic fantasy" design assignment, and suddenly find themselves being criticized for not being familiar with the Pathfinder setting. That issue has now been addressed from several different directions... In any case, I had no ill will nor complaint towards Paizo or the contest; I hope I didn't annoy anybody too much with my post.
Cheers,
Ziv
Ziv,
Didn't want to pin that "vibe" on any one person...it may have been as much a field generated by multiple posts interacting in my mind as much as anything, and I just wanted to get that out there in case it wasn't my imagination. So please don't take me as ascribing a particular intention to you (generally a big mistake in my mind based on virtual interactions only.) No annoyance on my end at all.
M.
Oh, and Ziv, now that I have overcome my complete failure to spot a new person -- welcome to Paizoland!
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Oh, and Ziv, now that I have overcome my complete failure to spot a new person -- welcome to Paizoland!
It took 4 spot checks to look through all those leaves in front of his eyes
No worries, Cap'n. I am impervious behind the mask of the greenman.
What really has been messin with my spot checks lately (from your previous experience) is trying to put the finishing touches on another chapter of my diss every 1-2 days. Probably going to slow down a little bit after next week or two for sanity as well as new material reasons.
Thanks for the warm welcome :)