Ravening...
Congratulations on submitting.
Unfortunately, you get one shot per year at this. You can't go back and correct it by any means.
Follow along and vote this year, and try again next.
Bottom! ;(
Its the first time I had heard of this RPG Supestar. I've only learned about Paizo because of the Pathfinder Online.
...And if you PM'd it to a judge as well, you probably just disqualified yourself via breaking anonymity. :(
Its certainly a steep learning curve for people who're new to this competition. It would be nice if they posted these tidbits on the FAQ. Nowhere could I find a mention of how to contact someone to re-post, or the fact that you only get one shot at this.
I realize contests are exciting, but you should always read the rules before entering anything. After all, it's the best way to avoid not being eligible to enter because, well, you'll know the rules before you enter.
The internet's TL;DR generation seems to be shooting itself in the collective foot.
Too true. I did follow the instructions on the front page and used the standard 3.5 format for my item, and I did make sure it was less than 300 words including the title. So it is almost in the correct format, things just need to be moved about.
Also if I had checked the FAQ I wouldn't have read you only get one shot, I guess I was overcome with excitment at the prospect of submitting in the contribution. But you're right I can only blame myself!
As for behind the scenes screening, the judges are going to address that in all likelihood. I'd expect we would weed out the bad ones. In fact, I wish my reject button was live already. I'd have nuked about 90% of the ones submitted yesterday. Today's batch is much much better.
Perhaps all is not lost though, as it sounds like some hasty posters (like myself) are still getting thru into the mix. I'll guess I'll have to cross my fingers and wait and see.
*begins to pray fervently*
Let's be honest here. There's a certain sadistic glee involved in separated the chaff from the grain, so to speak. Isn't there Clark? Isn't there!?
Let's be honest here. There's a certain sadistic glee involved in separated the chaff from the grain, so to speak. Isn't there Clark? Isn't there!?
Wow. Thats a truly wonderful way to welcome and encourage new blood into the Paizo messageboards and into the RPG Superstar competition.
To quote myself
...you're right I can only blame myself!
I'm hardly moaning and complaining about the mistake I made.
Since Chris made a post that 90% are getting disqualified for incorrect formatting, that means that 10% of people who've made formating mistakes and didn't use the correct template, are being accepted. This naturally encouraged me to put my hand up and say yes I've made a mistake, what can I do to fix it.
If my submission is disqualified because I made this mistake, then yes I will be terribly disappointed. But mostly at myself, and if I'm honest a tiny wee bit at the judges. However, I'm an adult, so I'm not going to storm off in a tantrum, of try and have a flame war on this messageboard. I'll swallow my pride and disappointment and vote on my fav submissions, and then enter this competition next year.
I'm merely pointing at this is a steep learning curve especially from the view point of a newb like me who has only just discovered this competition. Hindsight, as they say, has 20/20 vision.
Oh, Ravening. I'm sorry, that post wasn't directed at you. I was just making a joke about Clark's initial post. I hadn't even read what you wrote. My fault for not reading the whole thread.
No offense meant in the slightest. I apologize.
I actually do welcome you to the boards and to the competition! I sincerely hope your entry does get through and that we get to see what you're made of!
Oh, Ravening. I'm sorry, that post wasn't directed at you. I was just making a joke about Clark's initial post. I hadn't even read what you wrote. My fault for not reading the whole thread.
No offense meant in the slightest. I apologize.
Dude. Now I feel like the rear end of an horse. Sorry about the post, since it was right after mine I assumed it was aimed at me. Now I totally understand what happens when you assume.
I tender my most humble and abject apologies. Oh the joys of the written language. ;)
No worries! It was an honest misunderstanding. :)
Five days to go before we know for sure. Good luck!
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Oi, you two, don't you know where you are? This is the internet, darn it all to heck, and here you two go being all adult and resolving issues with conversation, understanding, and mutual genuine apologies. Unacceptable!
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I tender my most humble and abject apologies. Oh the joys of the written language. ;)
Ravening, big props to you for owning up and coming here on the boards and admitting you may have not done all your homework, gotten excited and submitted. That is great. Sorry that means this year is likely a loss, but learn and come back next year. Join in the discussion, have fun, be a part of the process. That's what I like to see and I LOVE your attitude. Good work. Hey, we all mess up, its how you recover not how you fall. Thanks for coming in.
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Ravening, big props to you for owning up and coming here on the boards and admitting you may have not done all your homework, gotten excited and submitted. That is great. Sorry that means this year is likely a loss, but learn and come back next year. Join in the discussion, have fun, be a part of the process. That's what I like to see and I LOVE your attitude. Good work. Hey, we all mess up, its how you recover not how you fall. Thanks for coming in.
I tender my most humble and abject apologies. Oh the joys of the written language. ;)
If nothing else I have a whole year to work on some superstar creations. I'll be carefully analysing this years success stories, and making my own submissions (as a trail run) for the various categories. Hopefully this will put me in a better position next year to make a submission without making any mistakes.
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Make sure to stay involved with the community here and be an active participant. I was really impressed by how you handled this.
A similar thing happened to me my second time around. Yes second. The first time I recall that the contest was using the 3.5 SRD as Pathfinder did not exist as a game yet. The second time around I assumed the same format and was automatically disqualified.
Always read the instructions.
Ravening, it's a pity you had made a mistake, but look at it this way:
The judges have made comments suggesting well over a dozen people have submitted items that don't qualify to be in the contest for one reason or another.
So far, you're the only one who is likely in that category who has owned up to it and posted about it here. Props to you for that alone. And more for entering. You're the sort of guy we love to have here on the boards, and in the industry.
I look forward to, once the round is closed, seeing what you actually submitted so we can talk about it in the review my item thread. :)
Ravening, it's a pity you had made a mistake, but look at it this way:
The judges have made comments suggesting well over a dozen people have submitted items that don't qualify to be in the contest for one reason or another.
So far, you're the only one who is likely in that category who has owned up to it and posted about it here. Props to you for that alone. And more for entering. You're the sort of guy we love to have here on the boards, and in the industry.
I look forward to, once the round is closed, seeing what you actually submitted so we can talk about it in the review my item thread. :)
Our items get revealed despite making formatting mistakes. Wow, you certainly learn something everyday. It will be interesting to read comments not only on my item but on others and particularly those who successfully make it thru to round 2.
From my point of view it's better to put my hand up. This I can manage my expectations better, and gain a deeper understanding of our these things actually work. As humans we tend to learn from our mistakes, so I'm happy to chalk this up as a learning experience. Also I've mostly stopped crying like a 2 year old, so that's progress I guess.
Ravening,
To quote Micky Mantle, "you miss 100% of the pitches you don't swing at."
To paraphrase the judges, submitting an item and takign the risk is winning.
Sucks that you made a mistake that'll DQ you, but seems like you're learning from it and reading this thread you impressed at least 1 judge. Might be more than allot of us can say.
Good luck next year, kind of looking forward to seeing what everyone has cooked up and where I measure. My 1st year submitting as well, looking at past years thread this community basically turns into a writing workshop for game designers which is in my opinion worth the cost of entry and wicked cool.
Chief Technical Officer
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No need to rush. There is a long voting period and I dont think rushing an item in increases the voting period. In fact, the deadline for submissions comes before voting even opens. So there is literally no rush. Getting it in early doesnt give you the chance for more votes. It doesnt work that way.
As for behind the scenes screening, the judges are going to address that in all likelihood. I'd expect we would weed out the bad ones. In fact, I wish my reject button was live already. I'd have nuked about 90% of the ones submitted yesterday. Today's batch is much much better.
Just as a point of clarification, judging is working a bit differently this year. The only entries that are being rejected prior to the public vote are the ones that actually break the contest rules—for the most part, that means being over word count, failing to include required game mechanics, being offensive, etc. I estimate that the public will see more than 90% of the items that were submitted.
Once the public votes, then the judges will go down the ranked list of items until they find 32 entries (plus a number of alternates) worthy of advancing to the next round.
So much as Clark would have *liked* to reject a bunch of those first day's items for being crappy, the only ones that the judges can actually reject at this point are the ones that broke the rules.
I'm in about the same boat, Ravening. If I get DQ'ed due to a formatting error I made, then I have no one but myself to blame, and if it gets picked up anyhow (as per the entry last year that made it through despite being ALL CAPS), then I'm going to count my lucky stars and do everything I can not to make the same mistake twice. Either way, I like that this year is opening up with a vote, because it gives me a wider audience to receive feedback from before I leave the contest, whether that be definitively the first round or not.
If I get DQ'ed due to a formatting error I made....Nobody gets DQd for poor formatting, unless that goes so far that you left out required mechanical elements.
Thanks for the info, Vic! I made a much smaller error than that. It's reassuring to know that, while my behavior was frowned upon, I won't be disqualified just for a text issue.
If I get DQ'ed due to a formatting error I made....Nobody gets DQd for poor formatting, unless that goes so far that you left out required mechanical elements.
Good to know.
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Welcome Ravening!
Welcome TwoDee!
Welcome GM SolSpiral!
Kudos to the first timers. :)
Welcome Ravening!
Welcome TwoDee!
Welcome GM SolSpiral!Kudos to the first timers. :)
Thanks!
I honestly wish I KNEW about RPG Superstar when it was first happening; my group's been playing Pathfinder since the 3.5 products, but I guess I never bothered to really troll over paizo.com at all. I love the storytelling aspect of games and sharing aspects of my games with friends or online, and part of the reason I'm beating myself up so much about this is that I feel like (perhaps selfishly) I might be denying myself an audience!
Our items get revealed despite making formatting mistakes. Wow, you certainly learn something everyday. It will be interesting to read comments not only on my item but on others and particularly those who successfully make it thru to round 2.
It's actually an optional step. After the results are revealed, there's typically a "review my item" thread where people ask for feedback. *Thats* what I'm talking about.
Some of us tend to hang out on these boards all year, too. Practicing. Refining. Discussing.
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Welcome Ravening!
Welcome TwoDee!
Welcome GM SolSpiral!Kudos to the first timers. :)
Indeed! Kudos to the first timers! Of which I happen to be one of.
....tasty, tasty self kudos....
What!? Those kudos aren't going to eat themselves! ;)
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9
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Should the construction requirements line be broken into 2 lines as listed here or be one line like those in ultimate equipment?
Did you even read the rules? The bottom one specifically cover this.
No. You must use the format from the Core Rulebook, not the graphical magic item format used in Ultimate Equipment. A formatted magic item template is provided for you in the Round 1 Rules.
And on the provided template, they are listed as two seperate lines.
Darn it, Thomas, you ninja.
Yeah - Read the rules. All of them. Both the official rules, the FAQ and the round 1 rules. Pretty important stuff.
And when in doubt, follow the official template.
Thank you all I needed to know no reason to get snippy.
Did you ever notice, when you were a kid, that when your parents had to tell you the same things over and over and over again, they'd eventually get a little aggravated?
It's like that. People have posted over and over again about reading the rules thoroughly, yet there are still posts with questions about things that are clearly spelled out in the rules. That's why they're snippy. You just have to live with it.
Thank you all I needed to know no reason to get snippy.Did you ever notice, when you were a kid, that when your parents had to tell you the same things over and over and over again, they'd eventually get a little aggravated?
It's like that. People have posted over and over again about reading the rules thoroughly, yet there are still posts with questions about things that are clearly spelled out in the rules. That's why they're snippy. You just have to live with it.
This. We're trying to help each and every one of you be better, to make better items. And if you think Thomas is snippy, it is because you have never seen what Sean K. Reynolds or Ryan Dancey think about what you just wrote. If you want to advance in this contest, there are two things that will be of great benefit to you - 1) tough skin and 2) the ability to use even harsh criticism to improve your work.
I'd add a third to what Jacob said... the willingness and ability to read the instructions for the round (all of them, and the general Contest Rules as well).
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This. We're trying to help each and every one of you be better, to make better items. And if you think Thomas is snippy, it is because you have never seen what Sean K. Reynolds or Ryan Dancey think about what you just wrote. If you want to advance in this contest, there are two things that will be of great benefit to you - 1) tough skin and 2) the ability to use even harsh criticism to improve your work.Thank you all I needed to know no reason to get snippy.Did you ever notice, when you were a kid, that when your parents had to tell you the same things over and over and over again, they'd eventually get a little aggravated?
It's like that. People have posted over and over again about reading the rules thoroughly, yet there are still posts with questions about things that are clearly spelled out in the rules. That's why they're snippy. You just have to live with it.
Yes but the ability to give harsh criticism and whether it is needed to get your point across are two different things. I understand that it's probably something that others could have asked a lot but seeing as how I hadn't seen the instruction write up when I last checked submissions page and knowing that I can usually count on the people here on the boards to know the answer and quickly respond I went with the tools I knew. That being said thank you for pointing out that sidebar I didn't see it when I checked the first time and will make sure to keep an eye on it in the future ^-^.
Requirements ZZfeats, ZZspells, ZZotherrequirements;Feats should be capitalized - Craft Wondrous Item,
Spells should be italicized - inflict moderate wounds,
If a skill is part of 'other requirements,' the skill name should be capitalized, but not any parenthetical sub-category of that skill - creator must have 5 ranks in Knowledge (engineering);
Following the formatting in the Core rulebook is literally the easiest part of this contest. Don't mess this up!
OK I followed the formatting almost perfectly but did not italicize spell. Am I doomed?
OK I followed the formatting almost perfectly but did not italicize spell. Am I doomed?
No, by no means. Creativity and awesome ideas trumps formating. But you are behind on points against anyone who has BOTH creativity and proper formatting.
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It won't get you auto-rejected to not use italics.
But this isn't a small detail. This is, basically, a job interview to be a freelancer for Paizo. They expect their freelancers to italicize spell names and item names. If you don't you are just saying "I may not be ready to be a superstar."
In the core rulebook, which the rules state to follow, the spell requirements are italicized. But on the round one rules page, the example format does not show italicizing the spell name. Since one of the core goals of the contest is to show the capacity to follow instructions, I had to pick which was accurate (I won't say what I ultimately chose, I am merely stating that I was initially unsure of which guideline to follow: the suggested cut and paste format or the core rulebook).
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9
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Thank you all I needed to know no reason to get snippy.
That wasn't being snippy.
[snippy] Which further shows you did not read the Round 1 Rules, since the formatting I used almost exactly matches that found therein. Except I was not able to use big red letters and had to settle for big black letters. If you want to be a professional, you need to be able to understand simple guidelines given to you. [/snippy]
And now I'm paranoid as to what I missed on my item. I swear I followed the template... but... did I? Great, being paranoid is not helping this year.
Join the club!
I only noticed the word count after I submitted. I had to do a count after the fact and luckily fell (quite far) underneath it. I'm now more worried about my entry being auto rejected than I was when writing the item in the first place!
In the core rulebook, which the rules state to follow, the spell requirements are italicized. But on the round one rules page, the example format does not show italicizing the spell name. Since one of the core goals of the contest is to show the capacity to follow instructions, I had to pick which was accurate (I won't say what I ultimately chose, I am merely stating that I was initially unsure of which guideline to follow: the suggested cut and paste format or the core rulebook).
They also didn't capitalize ZZfeats, or put a comma in the thousands digit of ZZprice, either. Or spell out that you should italicize your item's name when you refer to it in it's own body text, but only when you use the full item name.
What they provided you was a template, they can't do all the work for you. They're trying to make it easy, but it can't be foolproof.
Besides, if they had said zzspells[i], people would put [i]spell1, spell2 (which is incorrect, because the comma is italicized where it shouldn't be), and if they said zzspell1, zzspell2, people would ask questions about "what if my item uses only one spell?" which should be an obvious question.
And besides, if you aren't able to make simple judgement calls about whether or not to italicize a spell name, what can that be said about your overall ability to work on a module, or other project?
... And yes, I probably sound snippy too. It's a tit-for-tat thing, where one person is snippy because they're tired of people not reading all the instructions, and then people get snippy back, and it progressively gets more and more irate until someone changes the subject. I'm not doing it to be rude, I'm doing it to be blunt. It takes a lot less effort than being gentle about the whole thing. Most of the time, it's the only way to get through to someone who's upset on the internet anyways. :p
This is my first year submitting also, and I keep going back and forth between days I honestly don't think of my item and days when I freak out worrying about my formatting, mojo, concept, mechanics, etc. I had pretty much finished my item by the time round 1 opened so I was one of those "submitted-way-too-early-for-my-own-good" people. (vague time stamp is vague) I did spend some time to look it over again, reworked it quite for the better, and so on, but I've had a lot of time to either freak out or completely ignore. When I freak out, I know I messed something up.
But then I completely ignore myself the next day, and I'm happily excited again.
Interestingly, all this talk of the spells and no one has mentioned putting them in alphabetical sort order when more than one is used in construction.
I think I will eat well this year unless my Master makes Top 32...
Pah! No chance of that, so I will eat well indeed!
it is unfortunate that a lot of people did seem to follow the instructions outlined in the first post here :(
Yeah, I saw a "ZZslot" as well.
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They also didn't capitalize ZZfeats, or put a comma in the thousands digit of ZZprice, either. Or spell out that you should italicize your item's name when you refer to it in it's own body text, but only when you use the full item name.
What they provided you was a template, they can't do all the work for you. They're trying to make it easy, but it can't be foolproof.
Besides, if they had said zzspells[i], people would put [i]spell1, spell2 (which is incorrect, because the comma is italicized where it shouldn't be), and if they said zzspell1, zzspell2, people would ask questions about "what if my item uses only one spell?" which should be an obvious question.
And besides, if you aren't able to make simple judgement calls about whether or not to italicize a spell name, what can that be said about your overall ability to work on a module, or other project?
... And yes, I probably sound snippy too. It's a tit-for-tat thing, where one person is snippy because they're tired of people not reading all the instructions, and then people get snippy back, and it progressively gets more and more irate until someone changes the subject. I'm not doing it to be rude, I'm doing it to be blunt. It takes a lot less effort than being gentle about the whole thing. Most of the time, it's the only way to get through to someone who's upset on the internet anyways. :p
I'm not upset, merely showing how the given instructions, which can be seen as clear by one, might be seen as contradictory by another.
The proper answer in that situation, is to not make presumptions, point out the confusion and ask. Given that I have been out of touch and almost missed the contest entirely, I was left with gut feeling and just short enough on time to begin second-guessing myself into paralysis. The intense desire to not screw it up can quickly lead to overthinking the issue. This is not the fault of the contest organizers and not their responsibility.
Ultimately, had I chosen poorly, the test is in whether the lesson is learned and the mistake avoided in the future. Anyone getting horribly upset over the issue fails to realize that they can enter the contest again next year. If they have the skills to win once, they have the skills to do it again. If they don't, it would have been a very very short career anyways.
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FWIW, I just voted for an item with serious template issues simply because it was clearly the better item. Take heart, folks. Poor formatting isn't fatal.