General Advice?

[Matthew Morris]

I didn't see a 'general advice for submissions' so I thought I'd start one. :P

My tips.

Use the HTML tags correctly. All the time. If you're posting in threads currently get in the practice of itaicizing spell names and making sure they're in lower case.

Hermit needs editor, badly. Every year the bar is raised, and what slips by in the past won't work going forward. My bracelet of shields is a good example. It would never make it as written now. (and almost didn't make it then)

Be polite. If you make it to the top 32, you're not just selling your work, you're selling you. There are always people who will chose to avoid a product because of who's selling it, or vice versa. The only Roman Polanski movie I'll see is "Roman Polanski goes to jail." While I don't think anyone on these boards (with the possible excpetion of me) is hated as much, if you're constantly rude, abrasive and a general Richard, people *will* hold that against you.

Shut up. This is MUCH harder than it sounds. Don't talk about your entry(ies). Not even obliquely. I know I had fun posting "Wait until you see my <redacted>! It uses <redacted> and <redacted> to make <redacted>!" But every year the stakes get higher. If you give your <redacted> to a buddy to proofread, make sure your buddy knows not to go into (say) the Paizochat and say "Dude! Bill's <redacted> kicks so much butt!" Again, the bar is raised every year, and I'd hate to see some new talent tossed out because he couldn't keep his <redacted> shut.

[John Bennett]

Now is a good time to not only brush up on auto reject advice threads but also the Judges, please critique my item thread. I linked last year's, but I believe other years have them as well. The one I linked is very good as it has a nice range of items from flat out rejections to some that almost made the top 32.

[Matthew Morris]

Good Idea! So I'm stealing it.

Sean's Reject advice master list

2011 critique my item

Reflections from the 2011 (and Neil of course) ;-)

A thread on the evils of Passive voice started by Seabyrn. ;-)

2010 critique my item

2009 critique my item

While I'm not self centred enough to link to my own items/entries past, I'd also advise people to browse through past entries for 'designer's notes' Might be something there you can learn from.

[Curaigh]

Matthew Morris wrote:

Good Idea! So I'm stealing it.

2011 critique my item

There are 25 pages on this. If you read one a day you will finish right about the time the contest opens. :) (or four since there are now four years :)

Do not forget to look at those that won. Top 32 is now over a hundred 'winning' items. :)
2008 (keep in mind this is 3.5)
2009 (keep in mind this is kindof 3.5 :)
2010
2011

Also I think the Paizocon panel from Jeremiziah's podcast on how to build a SS item is invaluable. :)

And because I can shamelessy promote something which is only a bit of fun, step on over for some practice.

[John Bennett]

I just want to touch briefly on an aspect of design when you are writing up your item. Matthew's 2010 item, "Tankard of the Cheerful Duelist" remains one of my favorite superstar items. It's fairly simple mechanically, a +2 luck bonus to armor class and 3 times per day can turn beer or wine into a healing potion. Clever, but it was the visual description of the powers of the item that set it apart- you had to hold it to use it as a healing potion and that it never spilled a drop. Not only did we know what it did mechanically, we could see visually what it looked like while it was being used. I'll use my own item from last year, "Cocoon Cloak," as another example. Mechanically, pretty simple- it casts enlarge person, darkvision, and fly on a person. But the visual description that it encased you in a cocoon while doing so and the fact that the spells affected you visually, turning you into some giant bug person, turned a rather boring item into something that made the top 32.

So my advice is this- if your item is granting spells or different enhancement bonuses, think about the visual description of the item, not just what it looks like, but what its effect(s) looks like.

[Azmahel]

last year I started compiling a LIST of all the wonderful and often buried pieces ofadvice that might help us all become better designers. (or simply improve our chances in the contest)

I linked it above and just to be sure nobody misses out on it its here again:

Great Pieces Of Advice For Rpg Superstar

I've also added this thread to the list, which means it's kind of recursive now.

If I've missed something be sure to point it out and I'll add it to the list asap

edit: seems like some of the entries are broken. I'll try and fix them

EDIT2: readding them to the list doesn't semm to work. but you can use them by cicking on the portraits next to the entries.

[Ziv Wities]

Azmahel, you might want to include the thread on use of passive voice; that's an issue that comes up a lot and the thread discusses the issue thoroughly.

By which I mean, the thread which passive voice is covered in might be considered by you for addition to your list, as many discussions have taken place due to this topic which is well-covered by the thread which I previously aforementioned.

[Azmahel]

Ah, great, thats a good one.

LISTED

I'm going to check if there were other useful threads and posts like this in the same timeframe,

[Charles Evans 25]

This will (hopefully) be my first and last serious post in this thread.
Prepare any essential posts in some other program such as MS Word and copy and paste them into messageboard posts.
Besides having the advantage of allowing access to a spellchecker (make sure it's set to the US version of English if necessary) this minimises the risks of floods of tears and temper tantrums that might otherwise result because the boards are so overloaded that the post you were writing gets eaten by the messageboards bug.
Oh yes, and backup copies of entries you're working on on separate media, so if your home PC gets scrambled by a virus or melts down, you still have a floppy disk copy you can work on or submit using a friend's computer, etc.
Okay. Good luck.

[terraleon]

Do you have a pit crew? A trusted group of people to review and hammer at your work, give your text the evil eye, give your mechanics the smell test? To playtest monsters or give you straight feedback on encounters?

No? Why not? You *need* a pit crew.

-Ben.

[John Bennett]

Well, the RPG superstar button is blacked out and unclickable, and with tomorrow being December 1st, in my humble and wild speculation, I wouldn't be surprised if Superstar 2012 doesn't open tonight or tomorrow.

Last piece of advice. Last year, I was very new to the boards and didn't realize what the tags were in the provided templates, so I deleted them all and then had to put them all back in before I submitted. Don't play with the formatting of the template. On my computer, it will cause your word count to be higher. Make sure you paste it into the submission tool and check the word count and formatting first before you click submit.

[Joel Flank]

As for working with the board tags and checking word count. I found it easiest to write my entries as normal in word, edit, check word count, repeat, and when it was all ready, copy and paste it into a blank template, and use that to paste into the boards.

[Vic Wertz]

John Bennett wrote:

Well, the RPG superstar button is blacked out and unclickable...

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you point me to a URL?

[Gary Teter]

The RPG Superstar link in the navigation sidebar is currently borked. It should be fixed soon, but for now use this link instead: RPG Superstar

[John Bennett]

Gary Teter wrote:

The RPG Superstar link in the navigation sidebar is currently borked. It should be fixed soon, but for now use this link instead: RPG Superstar

The Paizocon one below it is the same way (but then again you have a giant banner you can click anyway). Part of my wild speculation was that it was disabled so you can set up the new RPG Superstar site.