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| Valhalla Calling commentary |
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| terraleon |
 Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 12:28 am Post subject: Valhalla Calling commentary |
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Feel free to post your comments regarding the current Valhalla Calling contestants here!
Judges will be noting their commentary here, too.
-Ben.
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progressio sine timore aut praejudica - Spectemur agendo |
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| ronarscorruption |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 3:46 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 31 Dec 2012
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| Of all the finalists, I think the crown of charon feels the most fantastic. And isn't that what this contest is about? |
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| Yaztromo |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 3:51 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 20 Nov 2012
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I feel specially good about a fact: there were 90 submissions and Wolfgang stated that they had at least 9 submissions that were in contest for last 5 places until the very last moment.
This means that at least 10% of the submissions were of good quality.
Not a bad result at all, I'd say! |
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| Brandon Hodge |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:16 am Post subject: Judge Commentary from Brandon |
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Good morning, folks! I hope all of our finalists went to sleep with dreams of sugarplums dancing in there heads over the prospect of their submissions being selected for our very first Valhalla Calling contest!
This task was at once fairly simple and exceeding trying. The wheat initially separated from the chaff easily enough, but once the judges settled on our final 11 or so (some of us submitted an alternate backup pitch from our batches), it became a very trying endeavor as we battled for the redeeming qualities of our favorites and tried to lay low others that we felt too flawed to proceed. In other words, this final list doesn't look a whole lot like our initial and tentative finalist musings.
Pitching is a difficult art, particularly for adventures where you have to assume and describe the actions of groups of stranger gamers who will eventually run your published adventure. I had wanted to post a sort of "how-to" guide earlier in the contest, but I felt it wasn't a judge's place to do so, and I figured if it made me slightly uncomfortable, then it might step on some contestant toes, so I kept a low profile. With the finalists, though, I intend for my feedback to be helpful not only to them, but to others, to help demonstrate what it is that helped them avoid fatal flaws...not that all of them are missing one or another, but their flaws were just...well...less flawed than the rest.
The most important criteria for ANY adventure pitch is whether it paints a compelling picture of PLAYER ACTION. And pitches heavy on history and void of PC exposition get canned pretty quick. There just isn't enough coll setting or history details that can save them. And it was also the last thing considered, as judges parsed who did the best job of invoking evocative this exposition. So, with that first, and last consideration, let me turn to the individual pitches for my commentary. I hope the finalists won't mind a little brutality at their own expense...if they hope to get published, it is a trial by fire they'll have to endure. Bwahahahaha.
EDIT: I see the length of my first feedback to Sersa. Did I just become the Neil Spicer of Valhalla Calling?
Last edited by Brandon Hodge on Mon Dec 31, 2012 7:15 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| Brandon Hodge |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 7:13 am Post subject: Brandon's Commentary: The Crown of Charon |
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Brandon's Commentary: The Crown of Charon
Really, Sersa? We have a contestant with the last name "Victory?" Reminds me of Austin's former mayor, Will Wynn. Did anyone else really have a chance running against that guy?
The Crown of Charon is here with good reason. It is simply evocative. So, we have a clear outline of PC action, and a fantastic premise: professionally controlled PC deaths to plunder Charon's riches, a wrench in the works that threatens to make them permanent residents, deadly guardians AND vast riches galore? Yes please. I mean, this IS why we adventure, isn't it, and it strikes a 1E nostalgic tone with me from back in the days when adventures that took these sorts of chances reigned.
There are some flaws. A lot of folks--some of our judges here included--don't like to see submissions gussied-up with opening quotations, but at least yours is embedded
I wasn't thrilled with the bullet point format. And some of those bullet points contain issues. Of course, good pitches MUST contain mention of evocative encounters like this, even if they aren't entirely explained, and this one doesn't disappoint. But the game designer in me also spots some of the problems, and, in keeping with this pitches reliance on bullet points, I'll list them as such, all in good spirit:
*The balor demiliches. Not only can demons not become undead, but if demiliches are just dusty skulls, how are their bodies conjoined? Or are the skulls conjoined? I dunno. Professional pitchers: you DO NOT want judges or editors musing these sorts of questions. Simply conjoined balors are quite enough, thank you, and would have been a better stopping point.
*The half-couatl half-angel spirit. *HEADACHE!!!* OK, so we've got another outsider/undead, if I'm to believe this is a ghost, and even if you mean spirit in the more nebulous sense as the unlikely (and wholly unnecessary) spiritual creature offspring of a winged cherub and a magic snake, this brings up a larger point:
*Where do you think you're putting all of these unique statblocks? And THIS is where your publisher starts getting twitchy, Sersa. You've proposed a high-level adventure, which are notoriously difficult to write effectively. Inexperienced writers often don't know how to conserve space, and writing challenges for 13th-level characters gobbles it up because of the high-CR math and encounters involved. Statblocks for conjoined balor demiliches and half-couatl half-angel spirits are going to take upward of 800 words each to pull off at this CR. IF you are conservative. And that's just the stats, not the rest of the encounter or the creature's story or whatever.
And you get 20,000 words to write a 32-pager. That's it. If you have unique, high-level statblocks for each of these bulleted unique guardians, you're already down about 3,000 words, nearly 1/7th of your adventure and you haven't written a single word of adventure yet. AND you promise many more! The FIRST thing that'll happen should you win, is your editor is going to give you a stern lecture on what you're getting into, and how "the Timekeeper" needs to become a standard Bestiary II thanadaemon to conserve space, how you've got space for maybe 4-5 full statblocks TOTAL, if that (From Shore to Sea's turnover had ONE unique full statblock, for example), etc.
*The good news is that the display of guardians exposes your vivid imagination, and though it will likely have to be pared down to be viably published, it is damn evocative, from stem to stern. We had a lot of back-and-forth over problems with the initial hook--I know PCs are unlikely to let a stranger death-priest poison them just on the mere promise of riches, and while it IS a problem you'll have to fine tune in early development, the rest of your pitch made up for it in the eyes of the judges, and captured our imagination enough that it was a forgivable overstep of premise.
So, there you go. This long passage and feedback is mainly for you, Sersa, but I hope other aspiring pitchers will learn from it as well. This is a solid pitch presenting a great, concise, evocative adventure for lower high-level play. It will be a chore to pull off effectively, but if the enthusiasm you pitched with holds true, I think you could do it. Good luck.
Last edited by Brandon Hodge on Mon Dec 31, 2012 2:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| terraleon |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 7:51 am Post subject: |
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I have seen a lot of pitches this year, with six rounds of Midgard Tales, each having 12 or more pitches. One round had nearly 20, if I remember right. With that said, I thought I'd pass along these thoughts...
Writing an adventure pitch has a very important focus-- Sell the audience the adventure. Show them why this is the session, the arc they absolutely must play. You need to walk me through the progression of the action, and incorporate the hook, the background, the quirks, the twist, all of it, into the action. The pitch needs to show what happens over the course of the adventure, and not focus on what created the situation leading to the adventure. Ideally, you incorporate the expository details into the action, so we see how the consequences of the group's actions reveal the story.
There is also something very important to avoid-- telling the audience too much background. If you're more than a sentence or two into the pitch and still giving me background, you're telling me too much. You have 400 words, spending a third to half to three quarters (in some cases, almost all of it!) of it explaining the origins of the adventure wastes all of that precious text which you could have used explaining some exciting encounters. We want to know more about where the adventure is going, less about where it's been.
Don't shoehorn the adventure hook into very precise conditions like "this adventure begins after the party defeats the clockwork Sea Monster of Triolo and requires a cleric of Treebranch Leafy, nature god." You want this pitch to work in most settings and potentially convert without too much effort. Certainly, if you're using the setting to aid the adventure or it somehow drives the tension, then it should be discussed.
Remember who your audience is-- in this case, it's the publisher (judges) and the voters. So it needs to consider the things those people want to hear about in the adventure, like the rough number of encounters, the level, scope of the adventure in the world. Those kinds of things are going to help give the feel of the adventure, but they're also going to help give a publisher an idea of the amount of cartography, artwork, and pagecount involved, which helps make the decision.
Be sure you take a long hard look at your title. Put it through what I call "The 14-year-old Filter." We've all had that player at the table who finds a riff off an NPC's name or a location and suddenly it's no longer cool or menacing, but a joke. Make sure you pass the 14-year-old Filter. Names and titles are especially important, they can invoke fantasy or horror, adventure or adversity, grim noir or fun comedy-- and they can be a tiebreaker between two well-crafted pitches.
Finally, write your text in the active, not passive voice-- not just because this is usually more engaging, but because active voice generally uses less words. You could write "the Lord will task the adventurers to continue the investigation they have been unofficially conducting," or you could write "the Lord officially tasks the adventurers to continue investigating." That's 15 words reduced down to 9, and if you do that for four sentences, you'd have enough words for an extra two sentences.
I'll dig into individual pitches later today, but I wanted to pass this back to contestants and hopefuls and supplement Brandon's post.
-Ben.
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progressio sine timore aut praejudica - Spectemur agendo |
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| ronarscorruption |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:12 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 31 Dec 2012
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I love seeing the feedback on these entries, and I'm already starting to see where my own fell short.
I think it's time to go pick up the kobold guide to game design.  |
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| HeineStick |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:23 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 06 Feb 2010
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| ronarscorruption wrote: |
| I think it's time to go pick up the kobold guide to game design. |
It's an invaluable resource. I didn't get to read it until after I'd sent my pitch but it contains a ton of useful advice for this sort of endeavor. |
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| Matthew Stinson |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:30 am Post subject: |
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Good morning, I would like give my congrats to all the finalist and give my first impression reviews of the pitches.
17 Steps of the Dancing Master by Jeffrey Erwin
My main problem with this pitch is that is does not tell me what type of adventure it is. Yes, there are 17 rooms in an island palace full of loot… but that is really all I took away from it. I got the feeling of undead and haunts, but it never really says. Now if that was the back cover of the adventure that would be fine, I’m sure the cover art would also give me a hint as well, but as this is a pitch to a publisher and voters I think there should be more detail in exactly what I’m voting for. The only encounters mentioned was “deadly automata” and “illusions” which tell me little. It seems also that writer intends for there to be 17 encounters. That seems a bit much for a 32 page adventure. It does seem a fun, straight forward adventure but I need more information before I can vote for it.
I did not vote for this pitch.
Poisoned Winter by Michael Lane
How can there be options for Mythic play? Wolfgang said that the winner would have 3 months to write the adventure and the Mythic rules will not be out until August.
Besides that I really like this pitch and its winter theme. Five or six sandbox encounters with role-playing opportunities. This will also line up well the Paizo’s Reign of Winter adventure path, being 10th level is should come out around the write time to be a nice side adventure with the same theme, adding to its sells I would think.
Though is pitch has my favorite idea and theme, I did not vote if it. I would like to run this adventure, but another pitch gave me more information and a better layout of events. This is my 2nd place adventure.
The Cursed Collection of the Archmage Moor by John ‘Ross” Rossomangno
This was not a bad pitch, but it failed to grab my attention. In the synopsis when describing encounters I would have liked more information than “some of the more dangerous exhibits”. For a GM and voter that does not tell me anything really. Later referring to them as magical creatures only helps a little. Saving the animated dinosaur skeleton comment until the end I believe was a major mistake for this pitch. It brought forth thoughts of Night at the Museum and images from Jurassic Park, both sailing points that made me want to send out for an art order right away. But with it being at the end I already had given up on the pitch and no longer cared. I did like the twist of using a “Nether Realm” for the boss fight though.
I did not vote for this pitch.
Hangman’s Hill by Heine Stick
This seems a solid pitch to me. A chase adventure meets a horrible movie, I like that. I would have liked more information on the encounters though. Using terms like “vicious beasts”, “restless spirit “, and “ghoulish henchmen” don’t tell me what I want to know as a GM or voter. I feel like I’m being left in the dark on something or the writer hasn’t made up their mind, neither a good feeling. The only encounter that is clear to me is the PCs will be fighting three witches at the end… or two witches and a hag for that matter.
Though I liked this pitch, I did not vote for it. This was my 3rd place adventure.
The Crown of Charon by Sersa Victory
This pitch by far gives the most information of the adventure intended; of all of them it’s the only one that reads more as a pitch than a back cover and gives a detailed account of the major encounters. I am worried about it all fitting into the adventure though, as this is a 13th level module and all the monsters named in the encounters are unique creatures needing their own massive stat block. Those will eat up much of the adventures word count.
Though I’m worried about the word count and a feel of “over reaching” this was the best presented pitch, even if it was not my favorite adventure idea. I did vote for this pitch.
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| PW_Shea |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:53 am Post subject: |
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I would be really interested in reading the four runner-ups, too. These were all really, really strong.
I'm going to offer my thoughts on things I didn't like as I don't have enough time to talk about all the things I did like. (after writing this I see that I couldn't help talk about some of the things I liked - likely because they were all such awesome pitches).
1. First of all, the core premise and the title is really great. I got a very "Lies of Locke Lamora" feel from this. What I didn't like: quotes at the beginning and the amount of time spent on the dancer guy. They weren't particularly compelling to me and they put distance between the title and the core part of the pitch: an Italian-seeming, half-ruined, puzzle/deathtrap dungeon. Sounds awesome, more please.
2. This is a great pitch, my only comments being: 1. that it seems like a lot of plot to cram into a sandbox game (in 32 pages!) and, 2. that it seemed super-niche and would lose a lot of what made it great if it was imported outside of Midgard, which wasn't true with Tales or Streets. Not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes you just need to dig deep in a setting.
3. The only comment I have is that while very strong, this pitch just didn't grab me. It reminded me of an old Vance Dying Earth story, which I liked, and the basic concept reminded me a lot of the zoo adventure in Vornheim, which is also cool but I just couldn't get excited about the core idea. Maybe I'm just burnt out on heroic rescue missions these days. Also, structurally, this pitch was the strongest.
4. I really liked this. It reminded me, in the best possible way, of stuff from James Raggi and of, like Vampire Hunter D. Feel like it has really strong potential. I think it might have been improved by having the PCs more involved in the capture and trial of the witches (and thereby making them curse as well, making sure they're present for the most vividly depicted part of the pitch - the trial and curse), but maybe that's asking too much from 32 pages.
5. I really, really liked this one, but I've got a large, soft spot for the stuff Sersa V has done in the past. My one complaint is that, to my mind, it suffers from the same issue as the first pitch: too much lead-in flavor text. Very interested to see a PF take on fourthcore-style dungeons (as this seems to be). |
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| Brandon Hodge |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 9:58 am Post subject: Brandon's Commentary: Hangman's Hill |
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Brandon's Commentary: Hangman's Hill
I'll admit that I worked fervently against Hangman's Hill as a finalist, though it has grown on me since my initial hesitations. Each judge brought their own totally irrational bias against one pitch or another to the table, and while I recognized from the outset that Heine has skills as a writer (and a premise that echoes my own writing topics and interests), my bias was based solely on the experience that mysteries and follow-the-clues adventures are more notorious to pull off effectively than high-level adventures. It takes experience to learn the tricks of the trade to pull this sort of thing off properly and keep PCs appropriately disarmed long enough to not just jump right to the end. If these actions, hooks, and premises were in Pett's hands, I wouldn't have hesitated for a split second. But trusting this to an (at the time) anonymous writer where the public's votes dictate what Wolfgang ultimately publishes? Well, it was worrisome. But I've put it aside to concentrate on the premise, pacing of action, and writing style, and Heine may not only win, but very well may knock it out of the park, so we'll see what fate has in store.
So, with all those worries behind me, this IS my type of pitch. These are the sorts of games I run at home, so color me intrigued. I know all of the judges kept a careful eye on which pitches would realistically be published in 32 pages, and this one doesn't present any cause for concern. Its presented adventure is concise and tight, and at just the right level range that the whole damn thing won't come crashing down with one carefully-selected spell ruining the whole plot, though it is at the upper end of that cap.
In a message to other aspiring pitchers for their future endeavors, I think one quality to bolster this pitch's premise would have been to center the initial hook and action on the PCs. Any time you can place PCs right in the middle of the action in a pitch, DO IT, and this one missed the opportunity to have PCs involved in the exposition from the first sentence to the last. In fact, were I developing this one, I'd maybe even try to restructure it to have PCs involved in the initial arrest, but ultimately Heine probably made the right choice, because the last thing you want is to railroad villain survival, and the chance of a PC 'going rogue' and gutting the witches that are supposed to survive to be hanged is probably just too much, so good choice, Heine. But the initial action still should have been written from the perspective of potential PC experience, and is THE hallmark of a fantastic pitch.
This premise may suffer from a bit of railroad, so the writer is going to have to carefully balance the presentation of clues, and use the deceptive tactics adventure writers learn with experience to draw down the false facade of free will in an adventure, so that even if the adventure has PCs on the rails, their decisions seem their own. It is exceedingly difficult to pull off, and that brings us back full circle to my initial hesitations. If Heine can keep the explorations open and the pacing of clues consistent, this adventure could be a hit.
I would like to have seen more evocative encounter descriptions, more like Sersa's bullet point items that just make GMs lick their lips in anticipation. I mean, you've got a creepy village and witches, so why not throw a few morsels out there? How about the slit-throat spirits of the witches' sacrificial victims? Or the undead corpses of boiled babies slithering from an abandoned cauldron, or a gray ooze made up from their rendered fat (because that's how witches historically made flying potions)? Even 2-3 brief encounter descriptions in place of the more generic "ghoulish minions" would have gone a long way toward that.
Overall, I'm glad I overcame my initial hesitancy to give this pitch my stamp of approval, and, properly guided by the kobold minions, I think this would make a fine addition to the stable of KP publications. |
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| Brandon Hodge |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 10:04 am Post subject: |
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Let me also add a line to Ben's guidelines:
DON'T PLAY COY WITH EVENTS!!!!
SO MANY submissions in this contest got the boot because they didn't give up the goods. Voters and judges are not rolling up characters getting ready for you to run them through your top-secret adventure premise. They need to know what your adventure is going to contain, and so many pitchers guarded the secrets and plot twists of their adventures as if they didn't want to spoil the surprise or reveal the pivotal plot turn to potential players. It is a FATAL flaw, and some good, promising writers had their pitches trashed, because despite their obvious skills, they played coy with the plot and the action, and it doomed them.
Last edited by Brandon Hodge on Mon Dec 31, 2012 10:47 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| terraleon |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 10:14 am Post subject: |
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| Brandon Hodge wrote: |
Let me also add a line to Ben's guidelines:
DON'T PLAY COY WITH EVENTS!!!!
SO MANY submissions in this contest got the boot because they didn't give up the goods. |
A thousand times, this. This right here.
-Ben.
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progressio sine timore aut praejudica - Spectemur agendo |
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| ronarscorruption |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:02 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 31 Dec 2012
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| Brandon Hodge wrote: |
| ...so many pitchers guarded the secrets and plot twists of their adventures as if they didn't want to spoil the surprise or reveal the pivotal plot turn to potential players... |
Re-reading my submission, I suspect this is exactly where I fell down. The concept was defined, the events and the creatures within were not.
It's little things like this that make reading these feedback threads so essential - even if it wasn't directed at me. Perhaps it wasn't - perhaps my entry failed for another reason entirely. But that's why I read these threads, because I know I need to improve. |
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| Brandon Hodge |
| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:22 am Post subject: |
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| And that's why I don't mind lengthy replies--from myself or others--in this forum. School's in, and class is in session, and this is the best way and place to learn, so I hope the walls of text are worth it for the lessons learned. |
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