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CONGRATS TO Saffron by Captain_Indigo as the winner of this contest! CONGRATS TO Dungeons, Inc. by DirkGently for Best D&D! UnCO3 posted:Ad Blurbs and Outlines Hello TG! Not too long ago a conversation began in the D&D Next Thread Winson_Paine posted:This thread is hitting the bumpy slopes down to becoming Grogs.txt Jr. again or at least sort of a brain damaged version of the design thread where no one talks about what D&D is or has been and instead hares off on what they would want it to be in some place that never existed. I am going to suggest a constructive thing for the next contest, I will need someone to run/judge it to take some of the pressure off and maybe make this thread a little less shite. and then this was said Ulta posted:Maybe something along the lines of getting to a true basic core. Design something that is D&D, but you only have 2 pages, single space, times new roman, 12 point font. and thus The February Design Contest was decided  But fear not fans of games other than D&D! Entries for any system, condensed version of other games or entirely original will be accepted and judged. D&D entries will not gain any special advantage in the main competition! Dungeons and Dragons inspired entries will be, however, eligible for an additional prize! Objective At the end of the month, you must have a fully playable game system that fits the textual format described below. Format Ulta posted:There seems to be some confusion on this, my ambiguous wording, so I'm adding this to the OP. Officially, all of the text of your final product must fit on two pages, single spaced, times new roman, 12 point font. I will be using Google Drive to judge this, so if you are unsure, put your stuff in there. "Ah ha!" says the clever goon "I will use pictures and take as many pages as I want." Sorry, I do not have time to look at your RPG in comic book form. In addition to the above stipulation You final product must fit on 4 sides of 8.5 by 11 inches pieces of paper (aka A4, or basic printer paper). This means if you were to print your final product on both sides of the paper, it would take two pieces of paper. You can also get creative if you wish, as long as you stick to the prescribed area. A single sided poster 17 by 22 inches would also be acceptable for example. Also formatting, presentation and fluff will be a significant part of scoring this time around Rules 1. Discussion abut your game and how to condense D&D into a sweet nugget of playing in your parents basement when you were twelve is certainly allowed and encouraged, but edition warring, D&D Next bashing, and general unpleasantness will get you kicked from the contest faster than a monk with barbarian levels. 2. Lateness! Strictly bad and unacceptable. February is the shortest month, so I do not have time to deal with late things. I am a busy man with many important papers and important appointments and these video games will not play themselves. 3. One game per entrant. Up to two authors per game! 4. The overall winner and the D&D winner may be the same person. 5. A play test is a prerequisite for even being considered eligible for prizes! 6. The format of the contest should be familiar to you all now. Outlines will be due Feb. 3 at Midnight GMT. Part 1 will be done Feb 10th Midnight GMT, Part 2 will be due the 17th Midnight GMT, and the final play test must be in by Feb 28th Midnight GMT The outlines, parts 1 and 2 will be judged on a 10 point scale, with bonus objectives. Any score of 8 or above will net you a bonus, which will be used in the case of a tie. A score of 0 will disqualify you from the contest. The final contest will be judged slightly differently. Up to 5 points will be awarded for Presentation, Up to 5 points will be awarded for Fluff, Up to 10 points for how the actual play test goes. Once again the most important part of this contest is how your play test goes. A great presentation will not save clunky mechanics. Carrying over from last contest, you may play test your own game, but incentives will be offered to play test others games. Prizes Lets get to the good stuff There are two tiers of prizes for this contest! For the overall winner, they will have the following choices! $50 for a charity of your choice, donated in your name!* or $30 Gift Certificate for DrivethruRPG! or a forum upgrade! Like heroes in all great stories, a moral choice must be made! RPGs, internet cred, or helping the townsfolk! Second place gets to watch in envy. On the D&D side of things, conveniently DrivethruRPG has started stocking Dungeons and Dragons pdfs. The winner of the D&D contest will get a package of these pdfs based on their preferences, approximately a 30 dollar value. *said charity must be a registered US 501(c) organization  Inspiration  Look at this game. This is what I am holding up as something that would win.  Humor is also a valid way to go! Outline and Ad blurb Your Project Outline must contain no less than half a page of text and no more than five pages. If you write 5 pages, this does not bode well for your final product, and you will have to do trimming for the next part. Your ad blurb (a short pitch of the game, as if going on the back of the book) must be no more than 250 words. Yes, like all the other times, we’re demanding an ad blurb. If your organization involves wiki or Google docs, I will copy the whole thing into Word in size 12 Times New Roman single column and line spacing and check for myself. More detailed and complete project outlines will be regarded more highly. The outline and blurb may be presented separately or together: however, they must be clearly marked as such (title and mark not included in the total word count) and the actual outline must still fill half a page on its own. Your blurb is not an outline. Scoring for Outline Ad blurb I am stealing Mors Rattus's judging rubric for this outline. 1. How complete and detailed your outline is and how clear your goals for the game is. A good project outline is a strong step towards completion. You will be rated from 0 to 5, with points awarded for Clarity (how easy your outline is to understand for someone not privy to your thoughts), Completeness (How many of the required rules modules and their component elements you plan ahead) and Concept (not just how interesting it is, but also how interesting you make it seem). Completeness is worth up to three points, the other two up to one each. I will be posting no further guidelines as to what Completeness entails. 2. How engaging your ad blurb is. A bad blurb is one that starts on "I guess it's like a game of romance or something" and will rate low. A good blurb is like a tiny textual orgasm that starts off slow and builds to a climax. You will be rated from 0 to 5 based on the construction of your blurb. Your goal is to sell me on what your game is about, its concepts and on wanting to try it for myself. If you want to know more, there is plenty of information on what a good blurb entails available online and I will be posting no further guidelines on it in this thread. Bonus Objectives 1. Call the shot - Declare what prize you will be taking and why. If you chose the charity, name the charity and why its good. If you take the gift card, provide a link to what you will be buying. The forum upgrade doesn't count for this one 2. I like dinosaurs - Somehow incorporate dinosaurs into your outline or ad blurb. Basically pander to me. 3. Gary's Ghost - Have a quote from Gygax or some other "founder" incorporated in your outline. Yes it must be an actual quote and should make sense in context. NO OUTLINE MAY BE POSTED BEFORE THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY. TO DO SO IS DISQUALIFICATION. Feel free to bandy about ideas however.
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Jan 27, 2013 17:12
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Does the final 2 page product count as including our ad blurb? Also are we allowed to include excel documentation provided it fits on the two pages? I've been thinking about this concept since it got posted Winson. I got my charts all fired up.
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Jan 27, 2013 17:26
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Barudak posted:Does the final 2 page product count as including our ad blurb? Also are we allowed to include excel documentation provided it fits on the two pages? As long as the text can be contained within the two typed pages, and the charts themselves fit within the presentation area. Charts are a good way to say a lot with a small amount of words and space and are therefore encouraged. The ad blurb does not have to appear in your final product, but it may if you want it to. So no.
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Jan 27, 2013 17:31
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One word: BattleTech. 
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Jan 27, 2013 18:39
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This looks like it might be just the right thing for what I've been thinking about recently. Sort of a d&d that takes a lot of cues from narrative games. Only question is fitting it into the space requirements. That's why it's a challenge, right?
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Jan 28, 2013 07:00
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Holy poo poo, I have a half-assed heartbreaker system idea that would be perfect for this! Count me in tentatively. Question: what counts for the D&D bonus objective? Like if I'm doing a fantasy game that is evocative of D&D fluff, but diverges wildly from it mechanically, is that ok? Finally, I am probably gonna shoot for the D&D bonus, and I'll donate my (possible) victory to Child's Play.
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Jan 28, 2013 07:11
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Dungeons and Dragons is like art, I know it when I see it. I don't want to put down explicit guidelines for what constitutes Dungeons and Dragons because D&D means different things different people, and there's 4+ different versions out there. When it comes down to it, I'll read the thing and decide, but when I do I'll keep in mind authorial intent. To be more vague, is the fluff what makes D&D? is it the mechanical structure? is it spells and d20s? Is it cutting a ladder in half to get two poles and selling the poles for a profit? is it chokeslaming an orc? Is it just being in a dungeon and fighting a dragon? These are things you have to decide for yourself and communicate in the space allowed.
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Jan 28, 2013 13:03
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Does the final "four sides" limit include a character sheet? I'm not asking out of some clever subterfuge to get around the text restriction. Edit: I would like to make a nice character sheet to go with the idea I have, but if it counts toward the limit then gently caress it, players can make their own.
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Jan 28, 2013 13:06
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I have some minimalist, grim fantasy that just might scratch this itch. I don't think it'll necessarily be D&D, but there will be dungeons and dragons in.
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Jan 28, 2013 13:17
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Etherwind posted:Does the final "four sides" limit include a character sheet? I'm not asking out of some clever subterfuge to get around the text restriction. This is a contest where one of the challenges is economy. Also, a lot of rules can be conveyed in a character sheet. Therefore, any formal character sheet will count towards the text/space limit.
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Jan 28, 2013 13:34
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I think that might be throwing the baby out with the bath water. I'll abide by the final decision, but here's a suggestion: a character sheet need not count toward the limit so long as all text and any rules that appear on it are already covered by the main rules document. So you can have a character sheet, so long as you're not using it to introduce new information or otherwise gently caress with the spirit of the contest.
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Jan 28, 2013 13:57
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Ulta posted:This is a contest where one of the challenges is economy. Also, a lot of rules can be conveyed in a character sheet. Therefore, any formal character sheet will count towards the text/space limit. Any situation where half the rules end up on the character sheet can be dealt with via the fine tradition of "Stop taking the piss".
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Jan 28, 2013 14:24
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If someone wants to get in on this with me, I've got a strong mechanical outline in place for a quick and straightforward fantasy adventure game that follows some of the D&D hallmarks while keeping it light and narrative-driven. It's fit for play testing as of ten minutes ago. I'm specifically looking for someone who can deliver an evocative setting with few words, has an eye for presentation (illustration and layout skills are a positive: I have Photoshop skills and a eye for typography, but it's not my forte) and who has a knack for condensing information. Basically, I need an ideas guy with aesthetic skills. Anyone up for it?
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Jan 28, 2013 15:12
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This one's going to be tricky. I like it.
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Jan 28, 2013 16:21
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A question: How true to the original game do your rules need to be if you're "shortening" an already existing property? I had some possibilities I was considering that involved adapting drastically different mechanics for the game. It's fine if that's not alright too. I really don't have any trouble doing a homebrew and will probably end up doing that anyway, but basically one of the ideas I was tossing around was Rifts and figured that if I did, I might as well fix the game while I'm at it. The advantage to Rifts is that the concept is actually super easy to explain. The world blew up, and now there are portals to everything you thought was cool when you were 14. That leaves me 1.9 pages left for mechanics. Edit: I also think the concept is pretty sweet, so good idea!
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Jan 28, 2013 16:39
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Character sheets Character sheets absolutely count towards the space limit. I may be convinced that individual character sheets count as "pictures" if they contain no "new" rules content AND wording is very sparse. Sparse is a subjective term, but if a sentence appears, that's definitely not sparse. No garuntees here, and remember the spirit of the challenge is condensing. More points will definitely be awarded to those that integrate the character sheet into actual rules explanation. Rifts Like the D&D explaination above, Rifts means different things to different people. It's up to you to make that call. As someone who like the utter battshit crazy setting but hates the ruleset, this is a good thing to try.
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Jan 28, 2013 17:05
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Time to storygame all up in here. Ether, I could probably help you with your writing/editing. If I do that, Ulta, am I disqualified from submitting a personal game?
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Jan 29, 2013 06:39
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I'm assuming the "All text must fit on two pieces of A4, Times New Roman Size 12" excludes any formatting considerations like lists etc? For example, this list:
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Jan 29, 2013 07:19
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The way I read the OP was that if you stripped the text of all formatting it would fit on two A4 pages, single spaced, times new roman, 12 point font. With formatting and pictures and stuff it must fit on 4 sides of 8.5 by 11 inches pieces of A4 paper.
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Jan 29, 2013 10:36
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MadRhetoric posted:Time to storygame all up in here. Helping is fine. I am not the helping police. Helping does not disqualify you from submitting your own game. Splicer posted:The way I read the OP was that if you stripped the text of all formatting it would fit on two A4 pages, single spaced, times new roman, 12 point font. With formatting and pictures and stuff it must fit on 4 sides of 8.5 by 11 inches pieces of A4 paper. This is correct on the text side. Without formatted, you have the two pages. In terms of space, you have 374 inches squared to work with, which is 4 sides of 8.5 by 11 inches pieces of A4 paper, or a single side of a poster 17 by 22 inches, or eight 2.125 by 2.75 inches notecards with stuff on each side .
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Jan 29, 2013 12:54
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Ulta posted:6. The format of the contest should be familiar to you all now. Outlines will be due Feb. 3 at Midnight GMT. Part 1 will be done Feb 10th Midnight GMT, Part 2 will be due the 17th Midnight GMT, and the final play test must be in by Feb 28th Midnight GMT I checked the last thread, but I figured I'd ask here just to clarify:
Lastly, we can use original content, but it has to be a roleplaying system, right? Or can this be condensed rules for any style of game? I don't really have much experience making games, but I've always been interested in rules-lite systems, so this sounds fun!
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Jan 29, 2013 15:47
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xezton posted:I checked the last thread, but I figured I'd ask here just to clarify: The scedual you defined is about right. The Feb 17th deadline must have a game ready for playtest, but revisions and formatting things are allowed till the actual end of the contest. If your asking if you can do a boardgame, the answer is no. The same compression of ideas just doesn't translate. Two pages of rules, a board and a page of cutouts actually sounds pretty standard and uncompressed to me. I'd be ok with a tactics "miniatures" game, since the compression seems comparable. What style were you thinking of?
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Jan 29, 2013 19:31
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I was just curious how broad of a scope we were looking at. Specifically, I was wondering about skirmish wargames (with or  without miniatures), but it sounds like that would be OK!
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Jan 29, 2013 19:58
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Well, I've already got some ambitious ideas about this. We'll just have to see what I can come up with. Does a chart count for the total word spacing requirement or no? Or do we take just the actual words stripped of formatting for that?
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Jan 29, 2013 21:03
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ZeeToo posted:Well, I've already got some ambitious ideas about this. We'll just have to see what I can come up with. Technically, yes. If ten or so words is going to break you, be careful, but you might slip in under the "character sheet" ruling. Don't try and break the spirit of the contest.
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Jan 30, 2013 00:15
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Oh boy, I think I get to figure out how to distill the very essence of D&D 3.5 into two single-spaced, double-sided pages of 12-point text! This one isn't going to involve a lot of writing, so I think I'll be able to get through it this time instead of getting two modules in and losing interest! fake edit: the Fighter will have 1/4 of a page, the Wizard will have 1/4 of the total pages.
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Jan 30, 2013 03:38
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Oh man, I can't wait for this to start! One other question though: how important will setting fluff be in this contest? My idea, so far, is more centered around the players and GM creating the world as they play. I'm totally going to add a default setting, but it's very much secondary to the free form aspects of play.
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Jan 30, 2013 12:22
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Error 404 posted:Oh man, I can't wait for this to start! Fluff will be 5 points out of a possible 20 in the final score. 5 for presentation, 10 for how well/fun the playtest went. Fluff does not exclusively mean metaplot. D&D in all editions has a lot of implied fluff in how you build a character.
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Jan 30, 2013 23:42
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I have an Urban Fantasy take that might work. Can I post the logo without fear of being disqualified?
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Jan 31, 2013 00:32
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This contest... It pleases me.
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Jan 31, 2013 02:19
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Paladins go on quests. Everyone is a paladin.
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Jan 31, 2013 02:31
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I have an Urban Fantasy take that might work. Let's save all that till the contest officially starts.
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Jan 31, 2013 02:40
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Would two PocketMod books count as "two pages"?
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Jan 31, 2013 05:50
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Evil Mastermind posted:Would two PocketMod books count as "two pages"? If you put all the text in a Google Doc, single spaced, times new roman, 12 point font. Looking at this http://www.pocketmod.com/, two Pocketmod books made with A4 paper would meet the maximum space requirement.
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Jan 31, 2013 12:48
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I'm a little shaky on how copyright works with elfgames, but I presume writing shortened versions of things would be frowned upon if you were planning on making a profit from them, but probably okay if not. Is the same true of artwork? I'm basically asking do we have to produce all the artwork ourselves, or can we steal stuff from GIS or deviantart or whatever?
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Jan 31, 2013 13:05
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Captain_Indigo posted:I'm a little shaky on how copyright works with elfgames, but I presume writing shortened versions of things would be frowned upon if you were planning on making a profit from them, but probably okay if not. Is the same true of artwork? I'm basically asking do we have to produce all the artwork ourselves, or can we steal stuff from GIS or deviantart or whatever? I've seen entries in previous contests have artwork with a credit to the artist (edit: or link to the source) under the picture in question. I'm pretty sure an amateur contest on a comedy forum counts as fair use as long as you're not a being a douchebag with someone else's art.
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Jan 31, 2013 13:27
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Captain_Indigo posted:I'm a little shaky on how copyright works with elfgames, but I presume writing shortened versions of things would be frowned upon if you were planning on making a profit from them, but probably okay if not. Is the same true of artwork? I'm basically asking do we have to produce all the artwork ourselves, or can we steal stuff from GIS or deviantart or whatever? Profit is more or less irrelevant. Rules are not copyrightable (though theoretically patentable), "artistic elements" and "presentation" are. (E.g. every retroclone ever, Monopoly) Using art assets from other people without their permission is hypothetically grounds for damages (after all, they could have licensed the picture to you!), but in practice, people use things from GIS and DeviantArt for PBP games without major consequences. Actual rulebooks might be pushing it, though, so I'd highly recommend getting your own art assets. edit: Also, using other people's assets without paying for them gives a distinctly unfair advantage presentation-wise compared to those acting entirely within the bounds of the law.
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Jan 31, 2013 13:38
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Captain_Indigo posted:I'm a little shaky on how copyright works with elfgames, but I presume writing shortened versions of things would be frowned upon if you were planning on making a profit from them, but probably okay if not. Is the same true of artwork? I'm basically asking do we have to produce all the artwork ourselves, or can we steal stuff from GIS or deviantart or whatever? Copywrite in games is very weird. Mechanics, such as rolling a d20, flipping a card, dice pools, at-will/encounter/daily etc, are not protected by copywrite. This is one of the reason why you can have the whole OSR movement and you can find generic "stacking blocks" next to Jenga. Specific words like "beholder" and "Paladin of Corym", and "Dungeons and Dragons" are protected, which is why you don't see beholders in the SRD. I could, for example, a sell 4th ed compatible class, but I can't say "This is for use with 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons" (without first signing the GSL). Someone correct me if I'm wrong here. Pictures are copywrited as soon as they are drawn by the creator, so selling something with someone else's artwork is very bad. If you are going to use someone else's artwork for this contest, at a minimum, you need to credit them under the artwork, link to somewhere relevant, and make a good faith effort to get permission. That said, I can't score artwork that you get from elsewhere in any other aspect other than its placement. It might look cool and badass, but an appropriately placed stick figure might net you more points.
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Jan 31, 2013 13:48
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Cardinal Ximenez posted:edit: Also, using other people's assets without paying for them gives a distinctly unfair advantage presentation-wise compared to those acting entirely within the bounds of the law. On the other hand, having the money to be able to afford commissioned art is a distinctly unfair advantage in a contest that's meant to be about game design.
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Jan 31, 2013 13:57
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Etherwind posted:On the other hand, having the money to be able to afford commissioned art is a distinctly unfair advantage in a contest that's meant to be about game design. What do I look like, a communist? That's the way of the world, go play some Monopoly kid. Nah, I can't afford commissioned artwork and that's fine, stick figures will work out just swell for me!
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Jan 31, 2013 14:07
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