2009-06-05 Judging 1PDC 2009

What I really want to do is make the One Page Dungeon Contest a yearly thing: 1PDC 2009, 2010, etc. We’ve had more than a hundred entries! I’d love to collect them all and make them available for download. Integrate them with a wiki and provide some commentary, too. Like the yearly Interactive Fiction Competition. One page dungeons are simple adventures, and adventures support play.

Essentially I like a healthy mix of adventures I think of myself and professionally produced adventures. But when it comes to my own stuff, I’m never quite sure with what to compare it to. Should I aspire to write as the pros? I don’t think that would be time well spent. The One Page Dungeon Contest gives me the opportunity to compare my work with ordinary DMs from all over the world. I can learn from the successes and failures from others. That’s why I hope that the contest submissions will remain a crazy mix of things. I don’t want a contest dominated by Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Eric Mona, Nicolas Logue and other people in their league. I want to compare my entry with authors in my league.

Wolfgang Baur

Monte Cook

Eric Mona

Nicolas Logue

Anyway, I got pulled into the circle of contest judges, and therefore my 2009-05-15 Water Temple is no longer a competing entry. 😢

2009-05-15 Water Temple

I’ll try and report on the things I like and the things I don’t like about entries I see. And to keep track of my progress. Yesterday, I looked at eight entries. It takes me about ten minutes per entry.

Stuff I like myself (the other judges will have different elements, I’m sure):

A usable map. If the adventure doesn’t require a map, or the encounters don’t refer to the map, then there’s no need for a map.
Multiple entries and exists. I love extra tunnels, shafts, chimneys, and crawlways.
A short background. I don’t like the long backgrounds. There’s a German saying: “In der Kürze liegt die Würze.” It says more or less that making it short is making it hot.
I like there not to be too many numbers. The exact height and width in feet, the diameters and dimensions – I finde them hard to read and easy to improvise.
I like the use of *bold* to highlight the important parts in a dungeon key. It makes it really easy to scan. I hate it when I blab about the dimensions of the room, the chasm, the bridge, the sound of drums, the stray arrows, and … the balrog!

More as I dig into the submissions!

#RPG #1PDC

Comments

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Oh, darn. I’m pretty sure I specifically went out of my way to do something similar with the last one on my entry. Oops! Good luck judging the entries!

– Aaron 2009-06-05 12:57 UTC

Aaron

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Well, if you’re talking about the scene itself, I don’t mind at all. What I mind is sitting behind the screen, quickly looking up a map key, summarizing the description for my players, and wasting time with details until we get to the part the players *really* care about, such as monster or other obvious threats or treats.

– Alex Schroeder 2009-06-05 22:40 UTC

Alex Schroeder