Adventure Design Jam Winners!
Thank you so much to the DOZENS of adventure writers who submitted an entry into the recent Nimble Adventure Design Jam. My fellow judges (Matt "DoubleKing" Shiffler, and Ross "TwinSteel" Brubaker) and I had a HARD time judging all of them as so many were SO good. Without any further ado, here are the winners:
Adventure Design Jam Winners
- 1st Place: The Last Song of the Cloudwhales by Pablo Dapena
- 2nd Place: The Long Wedding by Finley Overland & Tyler Overland
- 3rd Place: The Rot Below the Griffon by Matteo Griscti
But that's not all
The even more surprising thing to me was that I came into this not even sure if I'd have enough good entries to make a top 3, but we had SO MANY great entries that I've reached out to more than a dozen writers whose adventures I really liked and would like to publish as well. The other top adventures finalists are below (In no particular order):
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The Track of Treachery by David Rienits
- A Wild Goose Chase by Julianna Kim
- Bread on Arrival by John Falconio
- Belchazar's Hunger by Vishendra Naidoo
- Behold, Stench and Rot by Zedd Takashi
- Tears of a Parched god by Jack Weighill
- The Bringers of Burgog by Shane Sperling
- Dragons of Shipwreck Point by Emil Andersen
- Curse of the Gorgon by Matthias Coym
- Mopping the Floor Adventure by Emil Andersen
- The Chimneys of Windwark Isle by Bruno Botelho
As with anything, the first draft is rarely perfect, I will be doing a livestream reviewing all the top adventures this Monday (11am EDT) and giving feedback for the writers to make tweaks. See below:
What I've learned for next time
It'll be more helpful to have the judging/scoring rubric available for all to see when the Jam is announced (rather than afterward), to make sure everyone has a clear idea of what we're looking for. I'll also be loosening up the word requirements, a lot of time and energy was spent trying to trim down the adventures to fit under 1000 words. Trimming is relatively easy if the content is solidly written, but it can be difficult to get to a solid adventure if too much time is spent worrying about word count.
With that in mind, the goal of the super tight adventures is to make prepping & running it as a GM as easy as possible. Fewer words generally equals less prep. But not always. Some of the adventures would have been better served by allowing 1600 or even 2000 words to better explain some of the more unique situations and concepts and giving the GM more ideas and content to work with.
So I think adventure layout will be 2 spreads (4 pages) rather than trying to cram it all into one spread.
- Page 1: Splash Art, Title & Description. (convince the GM to run this adventure)
- Page 2: Non-adventure information: Quest Hooks, Loot, Traveling Encounters, Rumors & Secrets, NPCs (housekeeping stuff)
- Pages 3–4: The Adventure & Map (the guts of the adventure)
This keeps the writing tight & brief without leaving the GM wishing he or she had just a bit more guidance. Flipping one page is easy enough, you won't get lost, and it keeps the core of the adventure to one spread. A great balance!
How can I get them?
I'll likely be releasing these adventures to the Patreon supporters first, and then eventually as standalone PDFs and printed Zines in the Nimble webstore (and maybe as part of a compilation for a possible future crowdfunding campaign). Between now and then is a lot of art commissioning, editing, iterating, layout, and playtesting though!
Thank you all again!
Thank you all so much for participating and making the event a success, I am planning on more in the future, they'll likely not be adventure related Design Jams, but for monster groups, subclasses (or even entire new classes), spell schools and more! Turns out this is a really fun way to design the game, so if you all are having fun, I am too!
— Evan