I am a bit late to this party but I thought I would express my interest in this. I am not certain I can get something done by the end of February (it is a short month), but I am seriously considering giving it a shot. Failing that I would definitely be interested in participating in future challenges. It might be nice to take an occasional break from the massive multi-module, "because professionally produced official campaigns are too short and too low quality" epic that I am usually working on.
A few random thoughts, questions and suggestions:
1) I see you are getting some complaints about the content restrictions. Personally I find them rather appealing. Apart from anything else, they should remind builders that this is about getting something done quickly, making do with what is readily available, and not fine-tuning every little detail of the module to be exactly the way one would want it. Although in my case, this:
henesua wrote...
I want builders to focus on the stuff that is more impressive to the players: Story,
Adventure, Dialog, Combat design, Puzzles, Novel Gameplay and so on. As builders
I think it is easy to forget this. I obsess over Custom Content too...But at the end of the day the play is the thing.
is preaching to the choir, since I tend to obsess and get quite perfectionist over everything on the list above and pay comparatively little attention to Custom Content. With the sponsorship system to attract my attention to various available materials it would not surprise me if I ironically ended up using more Custom Content in this challenge than I do normally, despite the restrictions.
2) Is sponsored content considered available only for the specific monthly challenge, with a new set of sponsors sought each month, or is it a case of "once a sponsor, always a sponsor"? If the former (which I think for most purposes of the restriction would actually make more sense) I suggest possibly making an exception allowing builders who actually use content in a given challenge to use it again in future ones, as otherwise it might make things difficult for builders who try to make a continuous series of modules over the course of the challenge (as you suggest doing) if content used in one part of their series suddenly becomes unavailable in another part.
3) One possible problem I foresee with this challenge is that with people trying to bang out modules in just a month, some of them are inevitably going to be kind of buggy. A complete playable module of any complexity at all has a lot of "moving parts" (so to speak) and there are lots of things that can go wrong with them, many of which surely will go wrong when there is not a lot of time for QA testing before release (as is the case here). We have the further problem that with a combined ABC entry (I assume a procedure similar to the CCC will be followed in this regard) it will not be simple for the builders of the individual modules to post revised versions of their submissions correcting issues that turn up. I am not certain exactly what could be done about this, but it might be worth giving some thought to what, if anything, we could do to simplify the logistics of getting revised modules out.
4) While it is too early to come to any definitive conclusions on the matter, I fear that it might prove over-optimistic to expect that something like this could actually be done every month. The initial announcement has certainly generated a lot of enthusiasm but at least some of that can be expected to wane over time. If we reach the point where there is a limited pool of regular participants in the challenge, they likely will get burned out trying to produce something every month (not to mention that those of us module-builders who are still active in the community mostly have other projects we are working on). To truly make this challenge a regular event I think it might be better to normally have it stretched over two months. Then we could perhaps do something like the following procedure:
a) A week or two would be spent spreading the word, generating a list of CC sponsors, and trying to round up interested builders.
With a list duly generated, and builders who therefore know what resources they have to work with duly rounded up, the actual module building could commence in earnest. Ideally this would take about a month, leaving:
c) a couple of weeks to do serious QA testing, thus reducing the probability of seriously bugged entries turning up (of course we could not actually force people to budget their time this way, but it could be set forth as the recommended ideal).
All-in-all, putting something out every other month would leave a little more margin for error and put a little less pressure on everyone involved. Just a suggestion, of course, so if anyone thinks doing this on a monthly basis is actually practical I am perfectly ready to hear you argue the point. Furthermore, to be clear, I am only suggesting doing this for future challenges. I do not think any of the rules for this month's challenge should be altered at this point. It would just confuse everyone.
Modifié par rogueknight333, 01 février 2013 - 10:08 .
