Spreading the Word: "One Page Encounter Contest"

+Stuart Keating (he of the Three Days to Retirement RPG / Kickstarter) has decided to run a "One Page Encounter Contest". This is one of those things that someone like me goes: "Shit! I coulda had a V8!" or at least some similar inspiration.

I mean, really, it's a cool idea, even if he did get the seed of the idea from "he that shall remain nameless, as he long ago blocked me on G+, and besides, body piercings are so yesterday."

So, without further ado, her is +Stuart Keating 's "elevator pitch":

We’re talking epic setpiece battles that require every mini you own PLUS a couple of your niece’s action figures and also the hood of a pickup truck. 

We’re talking strategic fights featuring intelligent enemy tactics in unique and variable environments. 

We’re talking combat that requires resourcefulness, lateral thinking and a crazy/elegant/gonzo/etc aesthetic that your gaming group will talk about for months. 

We’re talking fun.

I've volunteered to be a judge. If accepted, I promise to do my job to the best of my abilities, while drinking heavily. Because drinking heavily while judging just makes it even more fun!

Entries will be judged by a panel of volunteers on the following criteria:  design, innovation, fun, concision and clarity.  Good entries would make excellent one-page additions to one-page dungeons as the showdown in the final room. Excellent entries would make players break out their minis and fight the battle without any narrative context.

I may also have something to add to the prize pool. I'll need to dig into the prize closet and see what's there.

Seriously, give it a good look and make sure you enter. Tell Stuart "The Tavern sent you" ;)

Top Five Entries Get Prizes, But ALL Entries Become the Property of Kobold Press

I feel like I was just part of a conversation about giving up rights to your work for the opportunity to enter a contest. That's right, its not just the winners that give up the rights to their entries, but the losers too!

What are we referring to? Why, Monarch of the Monsters 4: Enter the Arena! of course!

Listen, I enjoyed Kobold Quarterly when it was published. I personally like Kobold Press, even if they don't put out anything that I would currently use. Still the idea of giving up the rights to you work for the opportunity to enter a contest seems... lame, especially in the RPG publishing world.

The main prize is like "mega-awesome" for the winner - "The winning designer will receive a freelance design commission from Kobold Press, and he or she may be interviewed for the Kobold Press website."  All five finalists get a bunch of PDFs. Every entrant loses the rights to their work.

Maybe it's common contest mumbo jumbo, but if they put out a product based upon these entries and you weren't one of the top five, you just worked for free on (what I'm sure would be) a for profit product.

The prizes are PDFs put out by the awarder of the prizes, so they have no real cost to Kobold Press, so in truth, there is little cost to KP for the opportunity to get a large selection of predesigned monsters for their publishing stable.

Maybe I'm just getting grumpy in my old age. Maybe this is what all of the young folks are doing.

Damn, I may just be an old crotchety fuck these days...

ENWorld Removes the Major Catch from the "Design an RPG" Contest Win a $1000 Prize

Thanks to Callin to pointing this out and props to Morrus for making the changes:

The catch? I (as in EN World) get to own and [try to] sell your game if you win (if I don't publish it, I'll simply return it to you). That's how I - hopefully - make my $1000 back... I may well also approach some of those who didn't win with an eye to publishing their game, but no promises!

So, you only give up the rights to your work of you win the thousand bucks, not just by entering (win or lose, you were giving up the rights to your entry before). That's not half bad at all. Contest runs through May 5th, British odd time ;)

Original post on this by me is here.

Link to the article on ENWorld is here.

ENWorld is Giving Away a $1000 "Design an RPG" Contest Prize With a Major Catch

Lets be honest. Even some fairly good game designers would be hard pressed to get a thousand bucks for their game idea up front in the economics of our hobby. The chance for the hobby designer to get 1k for their idea before it's even published is pretty awesome, but there is a major catch - just by entering you give up all rights to your entry, win or lose. (link to article on ENWorld)

You enter your game - preferably as a PDF, but you can use any file format you like; it's being voted on, so the more inaccesible your file format, the fewer votes you'll get - and the RPG community spends a week voting on them. The winner gets $1000, which I will send by Paypal immediately the week's up.  

The catch? I (as in EN World) get to own and [try to] sell your game, whether you win or not. That's how I - hopefully - make my $1000 back. Yes, I might try to sell all of them, if they're any good (and I may have to spend a bunch of money on them to make them pretty for sale). Please, please - if your work is precious to you, has sentimental value, is the product of years of development, is a mark of your genius and is worth much more, or is too good for a competition like this, don't enter it. Same goes if you have any reservations, compunctions, disagreements and general dislikes about this competition. It's utterly, utterly, utterly voluntary. But if you feel like writing an RPG over the next 7 days (or have one you've written that you'd like folks to see), this is a fun way to do that. Plus, hey, maybe $1000!

What Morrus has done here is pretty much pure genius, as that $1000 prize could potentially return him the rights to a dozen or more RPGs.

I wouldn't want to give up my rights to my creations for the chance to win a thousand bucks, but I'm fairly certain Morrus will get a sufficient number of entries to make this potentially profitable. I say potentially, as little is ever certain in this hobby.

This will certainly be interesting to follow if nothing else.

There's a Contest to Win the AD&D Core 3 Reprints - And I'm NOT the One Running It ;)

Yep, there's a contest out there in RPG blogland that isn't being run on the Tavern. Well, actually, there's a handful of contest off and on running around at there, and I probably should send my readers to them, because the chance to win free shit is awesome :)

Anyhow, the Roll For Initiative podcast / The Evil DM Blog are giving away a set of the recent AD&D 1e reprints - The Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and The Monster Manual.
There is some creative work required on your end:


Rules:
- First Edition Core Rules style only.
- A Halloween theme'd adventure.
- Minimum of 25 rooms with boxed text.
- Pictures optional.
- Full text of monsters.
- At least a hand drawn map, keyed with numbers.
- In word or PDF format

Due date: 
Nov 1st, 2012 -- 11:59PM EST*

*Note: Contest subject to cancellation due to lack of entries. All entries become properity of RFI and WGP, LLC.

Note: Vince sent me the following update - Let everyone know that the entries will not be published. Only the winner will be as a free pdf stand alone, and then later on we'll do a free PDF download of all of them so the community can enjoy.

So, if you have something in mind to write, and would like the chance to win an excellent set of AD&D reprints (I have them, and they are very well done), and are okay with donating your entry to the community of gamers, give it a shot. The rest of the details can be found here.