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probably the item that "does nothing other than potentially kill its user". :P
Crap- cat jumped on my keyboard and voted for me. Not sure what she picked.
Note to self: avoid crap-cats.
Just read an item that I thought was bad and was going to vote against it by default, only to have the other entry turn out so rife with run-on sentences and misspellings that I ended up voting for the first one after all. :p
Yeah, I've done that a few times myself. "This is terrible, I can't vote for this!" "Oh, wow, this is even worse."
Crap- cat jumped on my keyboard and voted for me. Not sure what she picked.Note to self: avoid crap-cats.
Jumping Crap Cats to boot :)
...The odds of a mid-range item not getting paired to anything better are vanishingly small.Could be, we don't know. But the ELO system is used for a reason, it provides a good ranking in far less tries than the compare-method.
If we say that about 2000 items have made it, then there are 199900 possible pairings.
If pairings would be fully random then the item at "rank" 31 would have a chance of 30/199900 of being paired against an item that it needs to be paired against (multiple times!) to really see if it is better.
I would say, that is a problem, because I guess that there won't be hundreds of million of votes that would be needed to assure that the top items are voted against each other very very often.
I agree with this entirely - I don't think the precise ranking of the top 30/50/100 between themselves will be very meaningful. Getting ranked #1 isn't necessarily better than being ranked #12, or even #35.
However, I'm inclined to think this won't actually be a problem. Because that's not a resolution of ranking that the judges need. If the Strong Keeps are distinct from the Weak Keeps (and they should be), then that's good enough - and there usually aren't more than 32 items so phenomenal they're mutually-agreed Strong Keeps. The voting will form strong "leagues", not a precise ranking. That's fine. That's awesome. That's actually precisely what the judges need. So I'm good with it :)
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Jumping Crap Cats to boot :)
It's a gas, gas, gas.
Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7
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I'm a little bummed by a few items I've encountered which are decent but really are not wondrous items. Most have been either artifacts or, strangely, alchemical items. Even if they are decent I can't bring myself to vote for them because they simply do not conform to the contest parameters.
I have a new favorite item! Unfortunately, it was a bit poorly written, and the formatting was off, so it is unlikely Superstar material, but the idea was both genius and obvious, the sort of thing that once you see it you wonder such a thing never existed before.
Yeah, I'm starting to fear that this is my item, which also turns out to be an SIAC, so while "good" is probably not Top 32 material...
I have also voted down just about every item referencing Tian Xia, Minkai, or any other part of the Dragon Empires - partly out of raw spite, and partly out of a disregard for laziness. Oriental items need to be phenomenally good to get my vote, and thus far what I see is designers namedropping location-based flavor onto an otherwise-unremarkable design. If you can make the same thing Taldan or Korvosan without substantially changing the mechanics, it's not a novel idea. This might not be a fair assessment on my part, but I'm also not required to be fair - I'm required to vote for the item I think is better if at all possible, and that item is almost never Oriental-flavored, in my estimation.
Well then, good thing I am here counteracting that by preferring Tian themed items and being spiteful to Andoran and especially Varesian flavor which I think are way overused and not that interesting to begin with.
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I am finding myself more and more in this situation
Item a appeals to my player munchkiness
Item b is better designed and has considered game balance
Item b is getting my votes because we are looking for the next game designer but oh how I want to go munchkin sometimes.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Dedicated Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
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I often find myself in a (somewhat) similar situation:
Item A is balanced, a safe design.
Item B shows that the designer has taken risks.
I usually vote for item B even if it has minor flaws, mojo rules all. :)
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Change of plans! I'm now voting against telephones and free scroll items!
Just wait until you get two cell phone items paired against each other.
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Not fond of camping items, phones, things that make instant dinner, variations on divination and scrying, manufacturing of potions and potions, and most of all healing. Healing is essential to the game, but I have yet to see an item that does so in an innovative and necessary way. Still, I occasionally vote for a thing that I'm not fond of. Especially if the opposite item requires a body part be chopped off/gouged out for it to be used.
There have been a few items that really stand out to me. Things that do things no other item does or do so in a way I've not seen before. There is even an information gathering item (like, divination, scrying or knowledge skill bonus) that I love.
I'm tending to vote against cameras, video cameras, and audio recorders. There are a lot of them.
I'm tending to vote against cameras, video cameras, and audio recorders. There are a lot of them.
And copying machines - quills, gloves, books...
Star Voter Season 6
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I do always vote for one entry over another but sometimes the choice is tough: non-magical wondrous item or completely undisguised SIAC? Thankfully, many of these items now seem to be gone. I've noticed the surviving entries have much better formatting as well, although I give a pass to missed italics, or complete capitalization of "Description".
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And copying machines - quills, gloves, books...
I'm actually surprised that not a one of the several items that fall into this category are dedicated to the great God of Illuminating Scribes, Xerox.
Star Voter Season 6
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I'm entirely sick of the number of blood/severed body part/corpse themed items. At this point such items are at such an initial disadvantage for me that they have to be superstar quality items, regardless of the other item, for me to vote on them.
There also seem to be entirely too many infinite gold machines. They may be flavored to do something else, but in the end their true ability is to produce infinite gold or save the user from spending vast amounts of gold in the future. Such items are at a similar disadvantage as the previous group of items for me.
The last large group of items I can't stand to see anymore are what I'll call "2.0 items". They mechanically do the same or more than an existing resource in a cheaper, easier, and obviously better way. Things like the decanter of endless water (being better than just a waterskin with water) don't fall into this group, as the price of those items validates them. This group contains items along the lines of "instead of a ring of feather falling, you could buy my item, which is a slotless item which reduces all falling damage to 0, and also costs 10% less".
After that (which an unreasonably large number of items fit into), gut instinct "this is cool while remaining balanced" judges the rest. If two items seem equally bad (or rarely, good), formatting, grammar, and other technicalities decide the vote for me.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8
aka Jiggy
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Rant on including backstory:
Remember, wondrous items stock the shelves of markets in Absalom and other places. By the crate. So if your bauble of badassery was forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in the fires of Mount Doom, then what about the identical one right next to it on the shelf? And the one next to that? Did Sauron make those too? If not, then why did you say he did? Or if he did, then apparently "Dark Lord" means "guy who sits around crafting identical items all day", so why do I care what his name is?
And how do you reconcile it with the fact that you just provided me with a list of what I need in order to craft the item myself? My character sheet doesn't say "Dark Lord Sauron" on it. So you've just provided me the means to, again, completely discredit/disprove part of your submission.
If you include the kind of flavor text that is incompatible with the fact that wondrous items can be mass-produced by anyone with the right feats and spells and sold by the dozen in any sufficiently affluent marketplace, then you've submitted an artifact rather than a wondrous item.
/rant
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Cant I join in Jacob? <grin>
Rant on
Grrr. Items. Grrr.
Rant off.
:P
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Some items seem to be magical fruits and flowers that just grow out in the wild and can be found- yet they have construction requirements...
Star Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
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The point is to have a wonderous item and cursed items are a different catagory...Between those two, only cursed items are an actual category...as there's no such thing as a wonderous item category. ;-)
Dis is y i kar-fully hav a nother sit of i's luuk ad mi spilling and puktuation b-fore eye sumit.
Dis is y i kar-fully hav a nother sit of i's luuk ad mi spilling and puktuation b-fore eye sumit.The point is to have a wonderous item and cursed items are a different catagory...Between those two, only cursed items are an actual category...as there's no such thing as a wonderous item category. ;-)
AM BARBARIAN????
Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7
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*rant stuff* So if your bauble of badassery was forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in the fires of Mount Doom, then what about the identical one right next to it on the shelf?
*rant stuff*/rant
Does this have any relationship to the Everful Ladle of Awesomesauce mentioned a while ago? Because I want both items...
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Aside from the known guidelines, I also use the following criteria.
Game Balance:
If Paizo published this, would I house-rule it out of games that I run?
Price:
If I saw one for sale, and was an ideal character build for its purpose, would I buy it at market price? If I looted one, would I still just sell it?
Clarity:
When I see the name again do I remember what it does, or will I have to read it again? (I'm looking at you, Ioun Stone)
Am I going to have to talk to my DM/Player about it to make sure we both think it does the same thing?
Aside from the known guidelines, I also use the following criteria.
Game Balance:
If Paizo published this, would I house-rule it out of games that I run?Price:
If I saw one for sale, and was an ideal character build for its purpose, would I buy it at market price? If I looted one, would I still just sell it?Clarity:
When I see the name again do I remember what it does, or will I have to read it again? (I'm looking at you, Ioun Stone)Am I going to have to talk to my DM/Player about it to make sure we both think it does the same thing?
Very good points.
I just read some that were inspired but allowed casters to grow in power exponentially by doing things like ingoring spell components or swap memorized spells for any in their spellbook. All I could think was "Is this really a power you want introduced into your game. Its obvious you didn't think this through because I can break it before finishing reading your entry"Price for me is a later, lower, factor, and I grade it on exactly the criteria you mention. So far I have not seen a pair where it would matter, but it has affected my voting in previous contests.
Also to Clarity I would add: If I have to re-read it to understand it you probably did it wrong.
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I also consider what this item would look like after some professional feedback.
If the core idea is original and cool, and the problems can be easily fixed, I tend to be much more lenient. We're looking for an inventor, not a lawyer. By the time the judges get to it, they can look for both cool and perfect.
I figure I'm just here to vote down things that are unsalvageable, in order to save their sanity.
Wow, I just had two solid items, both of which I've seen a few times, both of which I've probably voted for a couple times. Both seemed to be priced reasonably, used the template correctly, etc. etc. I ended up having to decide based on one item having a simple typo (likely due to a late change in the item based on what the typo was) to decide which one to vote for.
So nice not having to choose between the lesser of two evils.
I've added breakfast, lunch, dinner, picnic, and second breakfast items to the list of things I am voting against.
Brunch is still okay, though.
Wow, I just had two solid items, both of which I've seen a few times, both of which I've probably voted for a couple times. Both seemed to be priced reasonably, used the template correctly, etc. etc. I ended up having to decide based on one item having a simple typo (likely due to a late change in the item based on what the typo was) to decide which one to vote for.
So nice not having to choose between the lesser of two evils.
In a case like this I would either: (A) go with a gut instinct of "whichever captures my fancy more", if I have one, even if I can't back it up with an insightful, well-reasoned justification; absent that, (B) actually use the "equally good/bad" button - because this is the case it's actually designed for.