Tasks and Timeline

[Jengenritz]

1. Adrian decides dungeon structure, sets up guidelines
2. Adrian invites authors to contribute ideas for the adventure, following the guidelines
3. Authors submit proposals
4. Adrian selects authors, assigns remaining tasks
5. Authors write, playtest, and edit their areas
DUE: January 15th
STATUS: In progress
6. Adrian recruits module playtesters
DUE: January 17th
STATUS: Pending
7. Adrian makes 1st revisions, sends out playtest draft to playtesters, art and handouts to Joseph
DUE: January 17th
STATUS: Pending
8. Adrian incorporates all playtest comments
DUE: April 20th
STATUS: Pending
9. Adrian recruits '09 Judges
STATUS: Pending
10. Playtested module goes to Judges for comments
DUE: July 20th
STATUS: Pending
11. Gen Con draft send to Judges
DUE: April 20th
STATUS: Pending

[goodmangames]

Looks good, BUT why don't you have the module authors playtest their own rounds? That would eliminate the playtesting stage on your end. It still makes sense to have someone playtest it all the way through once all rounds are complete, but the tournament judges can do some or all of that...

[Jengenritz]

The authors won't have whole rounds to playtest, just jigsaw areas. I'd still expect single-encounter playtests to be conducted by the authors, but after it's all been pasted together it will need a lot of going-through.

Honestly, we can push the whole thing back one month and still be sitting pretty. In a "normal" year, we are now where we'd be in early March 2009.

I'd like to push the October date back one week (the 8th) to give more time for authors to come up with good ideas and ask questions.

[arlanni]

Bad idea to have an author playtest his own stuff. You get a much better playtest if a neutral party does it. They really tend to poke holes in things and don't mentally fill in the gaps.

[Jengenritz]

I want the authors to submit mechanically sound areas, stuff that flows well in actual play. That should avoid an author submitting a room that involves 3 random die rolls at the start of every round, or maybe they'll see that X monster-plus-Y hazard is a TPK no matter what their XP budget says and no matter how much they fudge the dice or fill in the gaps.
Plus good playtests give good ideas that can be incorporated...I'd rather the authors do that before I have to do it for them.

I don't expect them to fine-tune...that's what the actual, full-module playtesters and I are for.