Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Pimp Your Stronghold Contest Extension and an Annual News Round-Up

Hearing now my third plea for an extension on this contest from last week, I am officially extending the contest deadline until this Friday. So if you are furiously pimping your own dream manse you can leisurely coast into the finish line.

Also of interest to perhaps a score of you (and then again mostly players in the campaign, I have compiled a 12-page compilation document (with spiffy Ivan Bilibin cover and hex map) of my semi-regular news round ups that time to time find their way from the Hill Cantons Google Plus page to here on the blog. You can download the PDF here if you are interested.  


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The Pimp-Your-Own-Stronghold Contest


Many months ago—two years and some change, sweet lord where does the time ago—it popped into (one of many) discussions about domain play that one of the greatest pleasures of that arena back in the hoary day was the pimping out of ever-wilder paper designs of your dream stronghold.
Bombasticus wrote at the time: “For our gang, the tween years--10 to 12--were the developmental 'sweet spot' for this kind of domain creation. There was something hugely appealing about the construction rules at that age and we all spent many hours outfitting hidden valleys, cloud castles, secret undersea lairs.”

Rereading the comment resonated hard with me as it jivved with both my own past attempts at personalized utopias (sideviews, top-down graph papers, free-hand sketches, etc.) and more recently with teaching fantasy worldbuilding to kids of that very age group. 

So when the ever-tangential explosions of conversation that makes up Google Plus ran straight back into discussion of that old joy--strangely around discussion of this real life medieval fortress-city of suburban paranoia, the Citadel Project, and its oddly similar 'cool features' elements like a Firearm Museum with a matching Reflecting Pool (seen here)--my brain immediately went to “it's time for another stupid-ass Hill Cantons contest.”

So here are the particulars:
1. Contest participants will design their dream “fantasy stronghold”. The medium used can vary according to the whim of the participant but should include a visual medium (side-views, floor plans, etc) with some written content of the what the hell is going on.

2. Bonus points for filtering the designs through the twisted lens of one of your player-characters.

3. Bonus brownie (again not required) points for attaching some bonafide, vaguely plausible game justifications consistent with the rules of your choice (crap like budgets for construction, labor force, or whatever).

4. The contest deadline is February 27 (that's a week from today). All entries should be emailed to me at kutalik at the gmail dot the com.

What you can win (besides the sweet accolades of me and your fellow gamers):
First place: $10 gift certificate from Amazon.

Second and Third: a book of your choice from my obsessively-growing “book rescue” collection of pulp fantasy.

Winning entries may make their appearance in a corner of my campaign world even.