Time to dish out economy-sized servings of kudos for the Asinine Adventure Contest. I have been a little tardy in posting the winners, as usual I will spare you the excuse laundry list.
Culling through the surprisingly large number of entries—I was expecting somewhere in the 6-9 range and got 21--was no real work at all, a side-splitting clever bit of creation that enjoyed a bit. People seemed to have a good time keeping their tongue firmly in their cheek and coming up with clever little détournements. Bravo to all for the work.
As usual too it was difficult settling on those who deserve a place in the sun for participating. But here we go...
Second-place goes to a three-way tie:
In Search of the Fane of the Forgotten Mage by Fabian (a sweet one-page island crawl with some Eastern inflections. Bonus point for gorrilla golem.)
In Search of the City of the Serpent Queen by Porky (Who wins beau coup points for the pithy subtitle “Across the Great Verdant Cavern to the Ouroboral Lair, Coiled Pocket Universe of Woe.” He manages to crowd in a healthy number of oblique jokes into a half-page, fortunately he also provided me with a peek at the backstory too for full appreciation.)Against the Hawk Giant by Rev. Rosey (in which I work around my prejudices and recognize despite lite 4E-isms a nice little adventure package. Kudos for being a good sport and running with a tough set from the gods of chance.)
First-place winner:
Tomb of the Forgotten Toad-People (from the Planet of the Nameless Grimoire by Netherwerks. Upending the Gospels, the first shall be first. That wonderful team of Midwestern surrealists fired off an entry mere hours after posting the contest, and it just works—and rocks—all round. They even managed to work in another strange randomly-generated seeming non-sequitur, “the useful chalk scores the idiom”, into their design. Bully.
Conveniently they have a blog entry for their adventure that you can see here.
If the winners are amenable, I may put the winning entries together as a pdf download here later today or tomorrow.
I'm glad you liked it. I didn't really imagine I'd make it through, just for it being so left field. Feel free to put it in the pdf then.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, because it's so hard to judge something like this I'd argue for all the entrants being in there, assuming that getting so many confirmations is possible.
I'm very happy to see some new names in the list too, especially NetherWerks - what they post week in, week out is just amazing. They're doing a great job of exploring some new and strange paths in the old school way.
Also, if you agree, I'll post the adventure at the Expanse too, with some of the explanation from the email. Looking at it a few days out, I can see a lot of the thinking is less than clear.
Woot!
ReplyDeleteThat's cheered me up hugely after a bad day. I am also surprised mine got through - and mightily pleased too. Pdf away with my blessing.
I must admit that 4e is the only system I know well enough to do this sort of thing in and thought I'd be auto-disqualified. Thanks!
If it's any comfort, I grew up on AD&D and didn't game at all for close on 20 years, so I do think of 4e with an AD&D brain.
Like Porky, I'd love to see the other entries.
21 entries is a very nice turn out. We're glad that you liked what we did--this was a fun challenge that just fitted into the schedule for us. Definitely feel free to add our entry to the pdf--we're rather intrigued by this gorilla-golem that you mentioned...
ReplyDeleteWow! I had no idea mine would get so high! You van certainly compile it. I could do a neater version but the scribbled version has a certain charm, I'm told.
ReplyDeleteCongrats to all four of you--and for everyone else good sport enough to enter. I will include anyone's entry who is interested, as per Porky's suggestion.
ReplyDelete(I am holding off on adding my own in the main because I plan to unleash the Mountain of the Dog Demon at the table if the party ever chooses to mosey over to that part of the map.)
@Porky
I didn't really imagine I'd make it through, just for it being so left field.
The contest did have a call for cliche subversion, so that counted in the plus category. I appreciated the backstory so I would definitely recommend you add that to your own post (which of course you are entitled too, it's your baby).
The old netherwerks link is kaput. You can find the revised article/post at Hereticwerks. We've also made the one-page adventure available via BOX (just click HERE). Sorry for any confusion the inadvertant and unplanned trnsformation/migration might have caused.
ReplyDelete