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AAAAAAAAARGH! Why would you ever submit an item that is a thinly veiled reskin of an item from an extemely popular show or series of novels? I've seen at least three, so far! The judges, I guarantee, will see through such a blatant ruse.
I don't think that's against the rules, and really not in itself a bad thing. I personally enjoy new creations, but PF/D&D has lightsabers (briliant energy), star gates (cubic gate), submarines and spaceships. The alchemist (a fairly popular class) is a straight thinly vieled rip off of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and a few other things thrown in. I'm not sure what specifically your refering to, but the idea of building and bringing something from another setting into PF isn't bad in and of itself. Heck, not a few of the entries I viewed where basically trying to create real world thing in the game, tablets, cellphones, cams, etc. . .
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An item with a name like, "Dargon's Needle" or whatever isn't necessarily going to make reject it, but it just feels wrong. Like the submitter really wants to put his or her home campaign out there. All other things being equal I would vote against that item.
I have seen a lot of Sic items, items with someones name in the title and a fair amount of some other spell references. Those I honestly skip.
The [sic] items I see are the ones where spellcheck would have made all the difference.
Sorry for the pun, but I'm up til sunrise for the Solstice.
For some of the [sic] ones I've seen, a spellchecker wouldn't have helped, because the mistake was a real word (just a wrong one - sometimes very wrong). Proofreading with a Mark I eyeball would help though.
An item with a name like, "Dargon's Needle" or whatever isn't necessarily going to make reject it, but it just feels wrong. Like the submitter really wants to put his or her home campaign out there. All other things being equal I would vote against that item.
I agree, but with a caveat. It may be referring to a campaign aspect that I'm not aware of. There was one item that had a name I didn't recognize only for me to find that name last night while looking through a Golarion setting book. (Don't want to be any more specific than that.) I've had I think at least three items where I ended up searching for the proper noun only to discover it was in fact from the game/setting.
Granted, I've also seen a few that do just seem to be someone's N/PC. I think I had two of those up against each other once, actually.
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That doesn't bother me at all, really, as long as the flavor is about the item and not a wankfest. I mean that sort of things goes all the way back to the begining of D&D, where most of the named Items/Spells/Feats are actually people's NPC's/PC's, and I have no doubt that Paizo did the same exact thing with Golarion. I know of a few for sure. With that in mind, I would even say it's a good thing, and kind of reminds me of old school magic items that are much less generic. Like I said, though, it depends on if the entry is about the item or the NPC/PC flavor.
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RPG Superstar 2015
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka mamaursula
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What really gets me worried is that the fate of my item is largely tied to the opinions of the people who produced all these things I'm seeing.
That is, I followed Sean's advice and didn't include any backstory. But now my item is being judged by the (apparently quite large) population of people who think backstory should be given 150 words.
I followed Sean's advice and didn't make a swiss-army-knife, but now my item is being judged by the swarms of people who thought that a list of unrelated abilities would be the coolest thing EVAR.
And so forth.
*gulp*
It's okay Jacob, after last year, I have been watching a lot more closely and I hope that others will also see the error of their ways. Magic items are not unique, they should not have "backstories", per se. I posted my process elsewhere, I do not vote for things that have a story about a unique item that is being passed off as a magic item. Just because someone wrote up something they shouldn't have doesn't mean the rest of us will vote for it. Don't jump off the bridge Jacob, and don't lose heart!
I am starting to vote against paired items out of principle, unless they stand out. There are a ton of them.
Names are hard. The vast majority are neutral, they don't make much impact on how I vote. Some have been intriguing, a handful have been so awful I voted against them on name alone.
I don't know how many items I've seen now. Hundreds, certainly. Maybe 3 or 4 have been innovative in any meaningful sense. Which is maybe on par. Pretty much ever year there's less than 10 of the 32 that seem really cool to me, then a bunch of stuff I can appreciate but that doesn't knock me over.
I doubt my own would knock me over. :-)
Remember, in previous years the Top 32 were less than 5% of the total submitted items. That means your votes are acting to push down the lower 95% of the submissions so the upper 5% can rise to the top. That means you're going to see a LOT of average items and a LOT of bad items.
Keep on truckin'!
My sympathies to the judges in previous years. This is actually very difficult to get through this stack of entries and keep focused and interested - even when the items are interesting.
AAAAAAAAARGH! Why would you ever submit an item that is a thinly veiled reskin of an item from an extemely popular show or series of novels? I've seen at least three, so far! The judges, I guarantee, will see through such a blatant ruse.I don't think that's against the rules, and really not in itself a bad thing. I personally enjoy new creations, but PF/D&D has lightsabers (briliant energy), star gates (cubic gate), submarines and spaceships. The alchemist (a fairly popular class) is a straight thinly vieled rip off of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and a few other things thrown in. I'm not sure what specifically your refering to, but the idea of building and bringing something from another setting into PF isn't bad in and of itself. Heck, not a few of the entries I viewed where basically trying to create real world thing in the game, tablets, cellphones, cams, etc. . .
You make an excellent point...and yet, there's a difference between what I would consider an adaptation, such as the alchemist, and plagiarism. The latter is of which I speak.
AAAAAAAAARGH! Why would you ever submit an item that is a thinly veiled reskin of an item from an extemely popular show or series of novels? I've seen at least three, so far! The judges, I guarantee, will see through such a blatant ruse.I don't think that's against the rules, and really not in itself a bad thing. I personally enjoy new creations, but PF/D&D has lightsabers (briliant energy), star gates (cubic gate), submarines and spaceships. The alchemist (a fairly popular class) is a straight thinly vieled rip off of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and a few other things thrown in. I'm not sure what specifically your refering to, but the idea of building and bringing something from another setting into PF isn't bad in and of itself. Heck, not a few of the entries I viewed where basically trying to create real world thing in the game, tablets, cellphones, cams, etc. . .
It is not against the rules, but it is also not very creative, and IMO not very "Superstar".
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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I wish I could still flag things, because I just encountered an item that narrowly dodged the word count limit through hyphenation and by abbreviating its own name every time it referred to itself. :/
Contributor
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Star Voter Season 6
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Names are hard. The vast majority are neutral, they don't make much impact on how I vote. Some have been intriguing, a handful have been so awful I voted against them on name alone.
I've been doing that, too -- voting against items that are not shockingly awful but that just have ludicrous, joke-y names (or names blatantly ripped off of another IP). However, I just broke my own rule by voting for an item with probably the most unfortunate name ever because its concept was pretty cool and the mechanics worked.
This whole voting process is just so arbitrary. I'm glad there seem to be lots and lots of voters, which should help build a good consensus of the strongest items.
I wish I could still flag things, because I just encountered an item that narrowly dodged the word count limit through hyphenation and by abbreviating its own name every time it referred to itself. :/
Was it good enough to make the top 64, do you think? Otherwise, it's not going to matter.
Paizo's word counter already counts hyphenated words as two separate words.
i just saw my own item! that was a huge relief, but i immediately realized that one of the sentences really should have been two... it was a run-on and i could have stated its point much better in two sentences (and had plenty of word count). so, now i'm worried for a whole new reason :(
i love this contest but it a little bit emotionally exhausting, lol.
When I saw mine i realized the way the text looked was much nicer in the preview window by itself than sitting scrunched up side by side with another item.
It also appears the message boards will not let me hit my prior status during the contest :P.
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Sweet Sarenrae...by now, every time I see another +5 competence bonus to X skill, I die a little bit inside.
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i've gotten a lot of garbage... part of the problem is that people are hitting "neither" when they get two crappy items- that doesn't vote down both items though, it just kicks them back into the queue for someone else (creating the illusion of even more bad items).
This is a bit problematic... I've actually had certain items appear three times. Not a problem if I could vote right away, but as we know that's not possible. I have to say I liked the "old" system better; this takes way too much time and most of the time I don't want either of the pair to advance (and I feel guilty because of the "Choosing one or the other helps us more than declaring a tie." message).
I think it'd be best if clicking 'Both items are equally good/bad' button would actually mean something. Why not have two separate buttons for equally good and bad? That way you could actually vote for both (+0.5 votes for each) or neither (-0.5 votes for each). Or something like that.
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It doesn't seem like voting for an item is actually in any way indicating "this item is good."
Voting for an item is only saying "this is better than that thing over there," even if what you're really saying is "this is better than THAT, but I'd vote for a broom handle before I'd vote for that thing."
The system is ranking items, not just calculating who has the most votes. The idea being, once everything's done with and math has done its magic, the best items will be followed by great items followed by good items, then mediocre, then bad, then worse, then WTH? items.
I think it'd be best if clicking 'Both items are equally good/bad' button would actually mean something. Why not have two separate buttons for equally good and bad? That way you could actually vote for both (+0.5 votes for each) or neither (-0.5 votes for each). Or something like that.
because that is not how the voting works... items do not get pluses for being voted for, nor do they get minus for not being voted for, all that the voting does is rank which item the voter like better between those two paired items. later a bunch of math is used to make all of these separate votes into a unified whole.
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Sweet Sarenrae...by now, every time I see another +5 competence bonus to X skill, I die a little bit inside.
Hah! My thoughts exactly! Lots of items granting skill and attack bonuses, or spells and feats (occasionally both).
My biggest beef with many items is that they're clearly campaign-related and/or unbalanced. All those +X items aside, surprisingly many can be abused in creative ways, and quite a few are clearly written for the participant's own group (most often the PCs).
I don't pay that much attention to item names, because those are easy to change. But by the Hallowed Asmodeus, half of these items have pretty elaborate and complicated descriptions (not in a good way), and take many liberties with presenting the game mechanics.
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Voting for an item is only saying "this is better than that thing over there," even if what you're really saying is "this is better than THAT, but I'd vote for a broom handle before I'd vote for that thing."
FWIW, I really want that second quote to be on a button now.
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I just wish we had an extra option on either side stating our sentiments that "X is considerably better than Y". That way I wouldn't feel so dirty when I vote for an item that is only marginally less horrible than another. I'm struggling to maintain my faith that the math will ensure that the cream rises to the top when all this is said and done. :\
I'm struggling to maintain my faith that the math will ensure that the cream rises to the top when all this is said and done. :\
Oh, it will. The math is awesome.
All you need to remember is that when you're comparing two awful items, then sure, you might pick one over the other, while somebody else might vote the other way.
But whenever you're comparing two items and one is way better than the other, clearly and painfully, then you can rest assured that 90% of voters will vote the same way as you.
The system is guaranteed to work at least at the level of rough winnowing, simply because in all the cases where a pair has items in two different leagues, almost everybody will vote accordingly.
I have actually read some entries that where so bad that I was tempted to vote for the other one BEFORE I read it.
Regretfully there are such items.
Sweet Sarenrae...by now, every time I see another +5 competence bonus to X skill, I die a little bit inside.
Um.....
<.<>.>
....oops!
Sorry?
Want a kitten??
I don't know if this helps anyone but I sometimes use the Adam Sandler voice when comparing shampoo and conditioner while I'm waiting for the timer to expire.
Shampoo is better....
NOOOOOOO.... Conditioner is better....
What really gets me worried is that the fate of my item is largely tied to the opinions of the people who produced all these things I'm seeing.
That is, I followed Sean's advice and didn't include any backstory. But now my item is being judged by the (apparently quite large) population of people who think backstory should be given 150 words.
I followed Sean's advice and didn't make a swiss-army-knife, but now my item is being judged by the swarms of people who thought that a list of unrelated abilities would be the coolest thing EVAR.
And so forth.
*gulp*
Be encouraged! I'm not sure it actually works that way. Your item is being judged by messageboard denizens with the time and inclination to read stuff that they don't need to -- heck, I didn't even submit an item myself. Those items were written by people who apparently couldn't be bothered to read what they *did* need to. So, two different groups of people! (Probably.)
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Commenting on the submissions, I have to say that after looking through about 1000 entries, I have 40 saved and three that I am very sure will be in the top 32 due to how excellent they are.
I have nothing but praise for anyone who entered and even attempted to submit an entry with any effort.
For those who submitted entries either as a joke or who did not try at all, and in this I mean there are several entries that in my mind appear worse than Mr. Reynolds example of how not to do things, all I have to say is this.
"Try! Do Better. Take yourself seriously, and have some respect for yourself and your work. Do your best, and if you fail be proud, for there are those who do not even try.
Be ashamed only if you mock others or do not try for in that you mock yourself."
So, Honestly I do not know what to say to the judges except,
"Thank you for holding this contest. Thank you for wading for hours through less than stellar entries to find some of the true gems.
I apologize for the fact that it seems that some people could not even bother to read the rules or put in any effort for this contest.
Thank you for this opportunity."
That feel when you're unsure of whether an item qualifies as a "joke item" or not because it's not entertaining or funny.
(That said, there are one or two joke items that I did vote forward by pure virtue of actually being interesting)
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I don't know if this helps anyone but I sometimes use the Adam Sandler voice when comparing shampoo and conditioner while I'm waiting for the timer to expire.
Shampoo is better....
NOOOOOOO.... Conditioner is better....
He he, for my age range, it's a Jedi modeled after Jerry Lewis trying to convert Darth Vader :D
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I think most of the items I have seen so far are highly creative and would be fun to use in a game. I'll have to start a list somewhere of ideas I could rip off for my campaign.
Thanks judges and Paizo crew for putting on this contest!
Oh, I know that feeling of thinking my decision were clear before reading the second one, because the first one didn't catch me (poorly written explanation, confusing, poor formatting, you get it). And then I read the second one--and vote for the first one without hesitation since the second one is utterly game-breaking.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka CalebTGordan
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I only read the name of an item and voted against it without reading anything else, including everything about the item I voted for. I obviously can't say the name or too much about it, but just with the name I knew the item was a modern one that wasn't original in any way.
one thing I have noticed is lots of people don't seem to know how certain spells really work (misunderstandings of timestop in particular has come up on several items I have reviewed in the last couple of hours).
Immunity?
There were multiple misunderstandings across different objects... I don't want to get into any specific misunderstanding of the spell, because I don't want to single out a specific object.
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Sick and tired of class-specific items.
Stay cool 8)
I'm struggling to maintain my faith that the math will ensure that the cream rises to the top when all this is said and done. :\Oh, it will. The math is awesome.
All you need to remember is that when you're comparing two awful items, then sure, you might pick one over the other, while somebody else might vote the other way.
But whenever you're comparing two items and one is way better than the other, clearly and painfully, then you can rest assured that 90% of voters will vote the same way as you.
The system is guaranteed to work at least at the level of rough winnowing, simply because in all the cases where a pair has items in two different leagues, almost everybody will vote accordingly.
How does it affect the awesome math if someone votes (accidentally or not) the following way:
A>B, B>C, C>A
How does it affect the awesome math if someone votes (accidentally or not) the following way:
A>B, B>C, C>A
In this particular system, all three votes get discarded as being obviously irrational. It might even DQ the entire ballot, but I don't remember for sure.
this link will explain!
Found my first "That's not bad" not bad indead.
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At first, the items were really bad, and it made me confident about my chances. Then the items were really great for a little while and made me a little worried. Now it seems like we're voting for items #33-64. They're ok but not spectacular.
I think the competition is better this year compared to prior years. The top items I've seen are better than the top 32 items in prior years.
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My primary criterion when voting is the clarity of the item in terms of its description and its mechanical benefits. If I can't figure out what it is and what it's supposed to do from the first reading then it fails to get my vote.
I'm doing my best to avoid the "both" button at all costs -- sometimes it is very tough. I follow my "gut" mostly since in this exercise I do not have the time to cross reference whether everything is "kosher" or not rules-wise.
^ Likewise. I get done reading one item and think, "Okay... this looks terrible." Then I read the other and can't figure out which one to go with, because it's quite bad as well.
For the most part, I've found too many pairings that are difficult to rate against each other. They just both end up being too messed up in their own way to give a clear idea of what's better.
When that happens, I've been going with the suggestions in the Rules FAQ. If they're both bad, pick the one that's less bad, and if they're both awesome, pick the one that's more awesome.
In that case, my opinion on what sways me on the vote can vary. In a lot of cases, I go for the idea. If it's a unique and/or neat concept, it tends to be more favorable to me. It might also depend on how the mechanics are laid out though. If I can't make heads or tails of how the thing works, it's pretty unlikely to get my vote (unless the other item has the same problem anyway). If it's ridiculously broken for some reason, I'm likely to avoid it. And if it is insanely generic (+5 Competence bonus to a skill for 2500 G for example...), I'll probably avoid it.
Griping aside though, there have been some neat entries in here too. Some of the ideas really are pretty cool.