When the deadline approached, we had 60 entries. #61 arrived five minutes late. #62 arrived fifteen minutes late. #63 arrived one hour and ten minutes late. By then it was about 2:30 in the morning and I decided to go call it a night. I closed the submission, sent a mail to my fellow judges and went to bed. Over night there was a last entry that arrived. A fellow judge proposed we still take them in but no major prize for any entry arriving after #63.
So, 63 entries? Strange. Last year we had 114 entries. What happened? Here’s what I can think of:
1. the novelty has worn off
2. the quality of last year’s winners scared away the competition
3. we lacked a high visibility blog like Phil’s Musings of the ChattyDM
4. we posted a lot of announcements on forums; many of those are old school forums; perhaps we missed the new school?
5. we were too close the Design A Dungeon Room Contest 2010
Design A Dungeon Room Contest 2010
I started a wiki page to collect some ideas for next year's contest. Feel free to head over there and leave a comment or add to the page itself.
a wiki page to collect some ideas for next year's contest
But what about the short term?
First, judges need to read the entries. 😄
I’ve also created a wiki page to host my checklist of things to do. Feel free to check it out. 😄
a wiki page to host my checklist of things to do
One of the things on my list is finding a person or two to write an op-ed piece about the One Page Dungeon idea. Remember how last year’s “Codex” featured an essay about the origin of the One Page Dungeon Templates, an article about writing a One Page Dungeon, an article about using Gimp to create a map, an article on how to use the templates, and the One Page Dungeon Manifesto. I don’t think we need as much material this time around. The idea isn’t new anymore. But maybe some thoughts about Stonehell or a different viewpoint from the The Castle of the Mad Archmage?
The Castle of the Mad Archmage
I also want finish the One Page Dungeon Contest 2010 page, and that means hosting all the PDF files for the curious to download. Since the submission sizes vary between 32K and 16.5M (crazy!) that means trying to find a way of compressing some of these. Last year I used my computer’s print-to-pdf ability with a file-size-reducing filter. I’ll give that a try for the larger entries.
Yes, I still want to host all the files myself. I remember how last year one of the ad and membership supported hosting services changed their terms and stuff started to disappear. Some people cared about their files, found a different solution and fixed their links, but abandoned stuff going to remain lost. I don’t want that to happen.
I also want to encourage authors to blog about their entries. If possible, I want to point traffic their way so that people know where to leave their feedback. This is very important to me personally. Thus, if you write about your submission, either send me an email with the link or edit the contest page yourself to add the link.
Anyway, those are my next steps.
I’ll be using the **1PDC tag** for anything related to the One Page Dungeon Contest. I’ve also tagged any related posts I found on the net – check out the 1PDC tag in my Delicious bookmark collection.
1PDC tag in my Delicious bookmark collection
#RPG #1PDC
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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I think one of the bigger obstacles was intimidation. This contest has generated some really cool things, and when you submit a file you open yourself up to critique. That’s the trap I almost fell into.
– Verhaden 2010-03-01 19:55 UTC
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Yeah, I can understand that. It’s unfortunate, because I remember in 2009 I was really excited to see people “just like me” with some quick scribbles as a map, some text, and ready to roll. But I understand people being awed by beautiful maps. I love beautiful maps myself. As a judge, I’ll try to make sure that a beautiful map is just one of the criteria.
I got a similar reply on #rpmn:
22:45 **AaronB**
– Alex Schroeder 2010-03-01 21:12 UTC
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As someone who wrote an entry last year but not this, it was just bad timing in my case. I had just finished working on a huge dungeon campaign and when it came time to write a one pager my brain shut down. 63 is still a very solid number. I look forward to seeing the results.
– mthomas768 2010-03-01 21:20 UTC
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Woo, I am quote-worthy!
What happened with me is I got a seed of an idea and just waited for it to grow inside my head until it burst forth from the soil of my skull and onto paper and that metaphor kinda got away from me. But anyway, I wanted mine to match the quality of some of those from last year (particularly with my artistic ability, this is something that’ll never happen) and since I never got around to matching that quality, I never got around to entering. Though, to be fair, I was working on it when I asked you if it was too late (and it was).
– Aaron 2010-03-01 21:50 UTC
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I tried reducing the file size of some of the PDF files, but just didn’t get any good results. Finally I remembered that I had a Dropbox account which allowed public downloads without an account. Tried it, seems to work! So now all the stuff is available from the One Page Dungeon Contest 2010 page and authors are still free to provide links to their blog posts etc.
As for the question of quality, there are several aspects:
1. “Perfect is the enemy of Done.” – transmogrified from “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” – Voltaire :D 👌
2. Some people enjoy the learning experience of making a good-looking map. No problem. 👌
3. I wonder if anybody tried to contact map artists on the Mapmaking Requests forum at the Cartographers’ Guild. :question:
4. Last year somebody had made a cool map using Excel. Perhaps we just need to create super-simple instructions on how to make an ok map? :question:
5. Perhaps there’s some other way to further collaboration between dungeon designers and map makers? Perhaps we lack the writer/artist culture that pervades the world of comics.
This is an issue I’d like to tackle for next year!
– Alex Schroeder 2010-03-01 22:42 UTC