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I do not know the rules nearly as well as I thought I did. But I did learn a lot while researching my wondrous item. And even more when working on archetypes.
Areas improved on:
1) environment rules
2) universal monster rules
3) conditionsThanks to Paizo for the competition motivating me to delve deeper into the rules!
We all thought we were awesome or we wouldn't have submitted items.
Just put on your favorite "getting work done" music and have a montage man. We'll come back at it next year and see what work we can get this year.
Personally, I am just thinking about how, when things gain momentum, how many strong entries are going to be submitted as this thing continues to snowball. Makes me wish I would have jumped on this thing when nobody knew about it. :)
That's the thing with your mention of rules too. There are a lot and, to quote from Farscape, "Baby's gonna get bigger." It's only going to grow from here as more releases like Ultimate Magic come out to give us new feats, spells, mechanics, and so on to chew on. Then it's Ultimate Combat or one of the companion products. Then its new Bestiaries... and so on. It can be a bit much as you imagine the snowball at the bottom of the hill, but that's also cool too in that there will be a wealth of material to draw our inspiration from.
I have to get sappy for a second... this hobby is outstanding. I am so thankful that such a great team took up the torch of a game I have enjoyed since I was a kid and not only ran with it but are starting to outpace the original torch bearer! Thank you to the folks at Paizo and all contributors (among who's ranks I aspire to join) for your excellent work!
What I learned from RPG Superstar...Hmmm, interesting question. Looking over the winning entries and reading some of the judges comments, it seems as if functionality wasn't on the top of their list for discarding an object. It seems like a more emotional response was given for keeping an item. Many items were kept for further consideration because they were cool and had interesting flavor or concept. I think the judges were more willing to forgive technical errors, whether it be in grammar, formatting or mechancs if the item was exciting. I'm sure there were some very good items that people submitted that were functionally strong entries that were passed on because judges just didn't "connect" with them.
It would be intersting to survey the judges and get their take on their criteria for a winning item. Here are some criteria that I came up with: functionality(usefulness of an item), flavor(interesting concept), proper formatting(followed the template), grammar(can you spell and punctuate) and mechanics(does it follow the rules of Pathfinder).
Once again, thanks to the Paizo and the judges for an exciting contest. Thanks for all the time and effort to make us a part of your creation.
Short answer: It is far easier to train someone to get the technical aspects right than it is to get the creative aspects right.
I don't want to settle for a technically competent but merely adequately creative writer. I want a writer who has the creative mojo to create something cool, even if it's rough around the edges in terms of template or mechanics. Rough edges are easy to fix; a dull design means I'm going to have to do a rewrite, which means I shouldn't be paying someone else to do the first draft.
That said, a writer who is consistently cool and consistently poor at the format or the mechanics eventually stops getting work from me.
Thanks Sean, It's amazing how easy it is in the process of creating, refining and submitting an item how your mind can get all twisted up. It seems obvious when you say that fixing technical errors is a lot easier than fixing someone's creativity. When I started the process I made three different items and used my friends as sounding boards. In the end I went with the item that was the most technically sound but not the most creative. I was trying to hedge my bets a little. But to go "all in" I guess.
I hope next year Paizo goes with a different opening contest though, maybe a spell contest or feat contest. I hated trying to calculate the magic item cost. Talk about goofy.
Once again, thanks for your effort. You are one of my favorite designers and I still cherish my signed copies of The Scarlet Brotherhood and The Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad both are well used and well loved.
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I think I learned the first lesson, which is that the first thing you put out there is probably not going to get picked up.
I had a very rare opportunity at Neoncon 2010 to sit down with Jason Bulmahn and Owen Stephens for about an hour (I was the only person to sign up for a Pathfinder workshop that everyone thought wasn't going to happen, so I walked into the room for a workshop and happened upon Jason and Owen chatting and was invited to ask what I wanted). I think that I was completely floored by the amount of info given to me in such a short amount of time, I left the convention because my brain was exploding with info overload. I went to eat some pizza, and then went home and slept for a day or two.
Over time, the info began to sink in; a lot of it was not very optimistic.
To be more specific, when I showed up for the canceled workshop, Jason asked me if there was anything that I wanted to know about, and I told him:
"My goal is to one day make a living by writing for and designing RPGs, that's what I want my job to be."
My thanks to both Jason and Owen as they did not hold back, were very frank and realistic, and gave me some great advice, most of which I will never post on here. If you want to know, go to a con and ask them yourself.
I will share one thing that Owen Stephens told me, because I did ask about RPG Superstar and this is what he said:
"When you are rejected, not if, when, because your chances in that contest are very slim, read everything that the judges have to say about why you were rejected and try to learn from it."
I'm paraphrasing here as I didn't have a tape recorder recording the conversation verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Some of the things I was told are remembered verbatim, and actually probably burned into the surface of my brain in case one day scientists decide to take a look at it (doubtful).
Other advice that I was given is that it would probably be easier to start out for a company other than Paizo and work my way up to them if I ever wanted to work for them, so I think I will shop around a bit and see what else there is to do.
I really doubt that RPG Superstar is going to have anything other than a wondrous item for the first round of the contest, because it is really easy to design a cool monster or a cool feat, but a really nice, solid, superstar-quality wondrous item is tough, and it is a great litmus test to weed out most of the competition to the Top 32 and get the talent base that will be most likely to complete and be competitive for the remainder of the contest.
I am grateful for the chance to at least possibly catch the notice of the RPG community, and very grateful to Paizo in particular for all that they do for the hobby and this awesome contest. Often we learn from our failures more than we learn from our successes, and although it took me a while to post in the Judges, Please Critique My Item thread I am hoping to get some useful feedback, and just because I failed at this doesn't mean I am going to give up, it just makes me want it more, and that means I need to do more and possibly fail more so that I can want this more until I want it enough to actually get it and do it.
I ramble, I'll stop now.
See you all around.