Monday, May 16, 2011

One-Page Dungeon Winners

This year's One-Page Dungeon Contest has ended with the announcement of 15 winners.  My entry did not make the cut, but after sobbing uncontrollably for over an hour I'd like to congratulate all the winners.  These guys have set the bar very high.  These adventures are great.  Imaginative, professionally presented and most of all, fun.  There are several familiar names on that winners list like Dyson Logos (this guy cannot stop winning contests, he is a machine), Greg Gillespie, artist Kelvin Green, Mike Monaco and Stuart Robertson who used the same creative layout for his recent hit, Weird West Roleplaying Game.  Congrats to all the winners!  All of you did a fantastic job.  I plan on going into more detail of each winning entry.  And some of the ones that did not win that I liked.

Like every year there is a free PDF of all the entries and a free PDF of all the winners. I downloaded my copy and plan on using quite a few of these in my own world. 

For the second year in a row Alex Schroeder has taken up the challenge to run and coordinate this contest.  And like last year has done a fantastic job.  So please, if you enjoyed the contest, downloaded the PDF or think he's just stylish, drop him a line of thanks.  Here's my thanks to you Alex, again, fantastic job. 

Let's not forget all the judges.  I plan on going through something what they did just to see how difficult it would be to select their favorites.  But it's a problem you like to have.  It takes a lot of time to go through all the entries.  

And then to all the gracious sponsors who donated products to the winners.  I know when I won last year it was great getting all those extra bits of gaming.  Loved it.  I threw my ballcap in this year and donated 3 copies of Knowledge Illuminates and Rob threw in a PDF and print copy of his Majestic Wilderlands.  There are so many good prizes, not to mention the $200 cash. 

To me, the One-Page Dungeon contest is the best example of the OSR, or what the spirit of gaming means to me personally.  You have a ton of creative people offering up these amazing pieces of work, you have people donating their time to judge and coordinate the efforts and then you have the sponsors who donate their products.  I dunno, but I think that's about the coolest thing in gaming there has ever been. 

5 comments:

  1. Sorry you were overlooked, Tim. If it's any cosolation, I will absolutely forward to you my prize copy of "Knowledge Illuminates," which I've heard good tihngs about. :)

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  3. Thanks, Tim. As for the work, there's a lot of stuff that needs two to three hours of emails and forum posting for a few days before and after the contest, and the judging itself is another 10-20 minutes per entry—so with 71 entries that makes for more than 10h and possibly up to 20h of reading and note taking and going back to your favorites, and comparing them again, and picking categories and wondering which of the three candidates really is the most badass wilderness hex crawl. It's cool to go throughh the list and really the entries. After all you also want to spot the hidden gems to use in your game even if you'll toss the map or the main bad guy.

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  4. While I accept the moniker of "machine", the judges were the real machines in this job.

    That said, they need some maintenance after throwing my own entry in with the other 14 winners.

    And I love how you made Race to the Adventurer's Keep mapless and yet awesome.

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  5. I think you and Alex have both been fantastic supporters of my blog - so take a bow.

    When's the sequel to Knowledge Illuminates coming out Tim? Or prequel?

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