COMPACT RPG CHALLENGE!!!

[Ken]

I'm happy to say that the challenge is on! Big thanks to everyone for working with me over the last week. The group is set up, the links in place, and the polls are open. Since their are only eleven contributors, I thought it would be OK to open the polls to the world, so invite your gaming buddies or other interested parties and have at it (but don't use your uninterested family and friends to tip the scales...c'mon now). Also, everyone else here on the Forge is invited to vote for your favorites. I'll keep the voting up for two weeks and let the tallys run the entire time, so the contestants can see where they stand.

I'm not the most tech savy guy around, so I'm using Yahoo Groups. To vote, follow the link, and join the group (which may require you to set up a free yahoo account if you don't already have one...its painless). The games are listed in the LINKS section, and voting takes place in the POLLS area. Hope you like it:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/compactrpg/

Enjoy

Ken

[btrc]

Are you going to be posting the details of the challenge and where/how to vote to the various game news sites like Ogrecave, RPGNet, etc.?

Greg Porter

[Ken]

Are you going to be posting the details of the challenge and where/how to vote to the various game news sites like Ogrecave, RPGNet, etc.?

Greg Porter

Greg,

Actually, I only cruise the Forge, so I hadn't planned on it. If you are a regular at the other sites, feel free to post an announcement and link to the group.

Rock On!

Ken

[Ken]

We've reached the half-way mark at the polls. The challenge will conclude Tuesday, so if you haven't voted for your favorite games yet, this is the time to do it.

Thanks to everyone who has participated so far.

Take Care,

Ken

[Ken]

One day left for the COMPACT RPG CHALLENGE!!! If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. This has been a lot of to organize and I'm looking forward to seeing the outcome.

Get those votes in,

Ken

[Andrew Morris]

I'm going through the games now, but I'm unclear on one of the voting categories: "MOST INNOVATIVE DESIGIN/IDEA: Which game presented the game and story material in the most interesting and original way?"

What kind of "presenting" are we talking about here? Visual? Conceptual? Mechanical? Any? All? This category seems to overlap with...well....all the other ones, at least how I'm reading it. Can you clear this up for me, Ken?

[Ken]

I'm going through the games now, but I'm unclear on one of the voting categories: "MOST INNOVATIVE DESIGIN/IDEA: Which game presented the game and story material in the most interesting and original way?"

What kind of "presenting" are we talking about here? Visual? Conceptual? Mechanical? Any? All? This category seems to overlap with...well....all the other ones, at least how I'm reading it. Can you clear this up for me, Ken?

This is obviuosly a vague category, and one which I think is a good place to put the games that are really neat and inventive, though not necessarily the best of any of the others categories. Any criteria fits in this category. The originality can be any aspect of the game; whatever gets your attention.

I didn't create these categories. These were the original categories chosen by the forge member who originally started this challenge, and then was unable to finish it. I didn't think it was fair to change the categories at the last minute, because all of the entries had been completed, and I didn't want to upset anyone who was specifically aiming to cover the various bases of the contest.

Hope that helps,

Ken

[Ken]

Hey Everybody,

At long last, the results are in for the COMPACT RPG CHALLENGE!!!

BEST CONCEPT: SATANIC MILLS
BEST SYSTEM: EBON
MOST INNOVATIVE DESIGN/IDEA: SANTANIC MILLS/ ASSEMBLER
BEST THEME: SATANIC MILLS
BEST VISUAL LAYOUT: EBON/ JOY DIVISION
BEST GAME OVERALL: EBON

One last thanks to everyone who entered and to all who voted. It was great to see everyone come together and get this thing rolling. All of the entries were fantastic, and I hope to see more from all of the contestants. Would love to do it again.

Take care,

Ken

[btrc]

I'm stoked that Ebon won, but disappointed we didn't get more voters for the poll. I also noted after going through all the entries that Ebon was really the only "traditional" rpg in the bunch. It has a funky character sheet and interesting character generation system, but it is really not all that imaginative compared to the others. The fact that it had conventional mechanics probably contributed to the votes in that category, but does getting twice the votes of any other entry for "best overall" mean that overall, people still prefer more traditional systems?

Looking at the polls, it seems what we need is a 4 page game using Ebon as the system and Satanic Mills as the setting...;)

Greg Porter
BTRC

[redivider]

Congrats to Greg and Aaron & thanks to Ken for adopting this orphaned challenge.

Greg, I would almost think that voters on the forge would trend away from 'traditional' games, so Ebon must be cool to win.

Anyway, with Halloween looming, I hope people have a chance to try out some of these short horror games & let us know how they play.

mark

[emb]

Congrats Greg,

I saw Ebon about two months ago when the contest was starting, and I was immediately drawn to it.  What really pulled me in was the gamist character creation.  I mean, the system oozes the fun of "optimizing" a character for something, tweaking things, and then watching him fly.   I never got around to playing it, but even without playing, I made a character for fun and have incorporated some ideas into my designs.  Good work!

On another note, is there a compilation of all the games?  I'd like to read through them. 

-sean

[David Artman]

...disappointed we didn't get more voters for the poll.

For what it's worth, making your Yahoo Group members only, to view the files or participate in the polls, was probably the prime contributor to low turn-out. While I realize this restriction would help prevent ballot stuffing (well, at least limit it to folks willing to invent new Yahoo IDs), it also prevented me from looking over stuff or voting at all.

Maybe next time you could try using a public poll, or let folks vote via Message posts? It's kind of a tough Catch-22: you want folks to easily review and participate, without having to jump through hoops; yet you need a way to uniquely identify every voter.

Perhaps you could use a web board application (instead of Yahoo) which allows you to display the IP addresses of posters? That way, at least ballot stuffers would have to move around from computer to computer (or be able to reset their ISP IP allocation) to vote more than once.

Anyhow, just thought I'd give you some feedback, from someone who was passingly interested... but passed it up when the effort required to participate went beyond just reading and voting. Then again, it may be that such a low willingness to commit to judging makes me an undesirable judge?

Just 2¢ from...
David

[Andrew Morris]

I'm just sad Technolust didn't get more love. That game that has lots of promise for future development.

On the voting issue, yes, the YahooGroups thing was almost enough to stop me from voting.

[Ken]

On another note, is there a compilation of all the games?  I'd like to read through them. 

They are still up at the polling site (follow the link in my signature block). Someone was working on a compendium (I thought) but I haven't heard anything more about it.

Enjoy,

Ken

[DocMMedia]

Hi all!

I wasn't the one that volunteered to put together the compilation, but I did it anyway. It's just a basic PDF file...though a little big (5MB, I think). I didn't touch formatting at all for any of the entries. I hope everyone is ok with it. I did put in a statement in the TOC page that says that the authors retain the rights to the games...so I hope there are no worries on that end (I'm certainly not in this to make money or swipe ideas).

I think this was a really cool challenge and I was impressed by all the entries. If you haven't been able to see these...please download and take a gander. Some good stuff here. And extra thanks to Ken for following through with the voting!

The link to the file is: http://home.southernct.edu/~petroskid1/Compact_RPG_Challenge_Compilation.pdf

Cheers!

Dave