First Post: Six Rejected Pitches

To start us off, I thought I’d post six of the seven pitches I sent in to the last Wizards of the Coast submission cycle (all were rejected—it happens). I don’t plan on resubmitting these since I already have a batch of new ideas for the next round, so I figured I’d post them as the beginning of this new gaming blog thing I’m doing. My retrospective notes are below each pitch (in italics). I may come back to some of these for later posts, so if you like anything you see, be sure to stay tuned.

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1. Working Title: Bazaar of the Bizarre: Gamblin’ Greg’s Garb

Estimated Word Count: 2,000 words

This article is for players and DMs. Gamblin’ Greg is a charming peddler of strange magical clothing. He has a mischievous sense of humor and a love for games of chance, traits he displays in the clothing he sells. For example, he is probably an Eladrin but it is difficult to tell through his Obviously False Beard. You can purchase just such a beard if you wish—it confers a +2 bonus to Bluff checks if the roll is even, and a -2 penalty if it is odd. You may also be interested in his Boots of Unpredictable Swiftness if you want to shift farther, and aren’t particular about where you end up. Or, consider the Cloak of the Darkness and Light, which has an equal chance when activated of granting invisibility, or glowing.

I may throw these items at my players someday, but I think I can see why this one got rejected. I don't think there's a whole lot of call for items that have a fifty-fifty chance of completely screwing players over. Also, I was amused by the Gamblin' Greg character but it's pretty obvious that he's just there to create a veneer of story over a big pile of goofy items, and as I recall they don't really want that.

2. I'm not including 2 but I'm too lazy to fiddle with the numbers on the others. I want to rework the basic concept once they start taking submissions for D&D Next.

3. Working Title: Bazaar of the Bizarre: Some Heavenly Music

Estimated Word Count: 4,000 words

Witness the restorative music of an Angelic Harp, send your allies charging into battle with the Dawn War Drums, strike fear into your enemies’ hearts as the Prophet’s Trumpet foretells their doom, and call your allies to your side with the Celestial Clarion. This article introduces additional musical instruments for players, based around the theme of the divine. The gods and their servants have made heavenly music since time immemorial, and even mortals who do not wield divine power directly have sometimes used this power through instruments either given to them by divine beings or crafted to emulate divine instruments.

There aren't enough musical instruments. The lesson here is that "there should be more X" maybe isn't enough to get an article out of.

4. Working Title: Bazaar of the Bizarre: Evard’s Handiwork

Estimated Word Count: 4,000 words

Those who know of the wizard Evard do not often think of him as a tinkerer. However, in the course of his research Evard did create a few magical items, perhaps only for his own strange amusement. This article, for players and DMs, introduces new magic items that all bear the mark of Evard’s unique mind. These items include Evard’s Ensnaring Blade, which forces your opponent to remain within your reach, Evard’s Embracing Armor, which when activated provides additional protection at the cost of restricting the wearer’s movement, and Evard’s Infallible Cord, a seemingly-intelligent rope of soft black silk—it assists you when you use it to climb, and when used to bind enemies it makes escape all the more difficult.

Man, going over this one again it just isn't very well written, is it? Like I'm long-winded as all Baator but even this looks long-winded to me now. It's also very, very weird. I think I came up with this one very late at night.

5. Working Title: Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Power of a Story

Estimated Word Count: 4,000 words

There’s no such thing as “just a story.” Every band of heroes to ever face a dragon has been empowered by the tales they have heard a tale of other dragon defeated by other heroes. Those who say that a god cannot be killed have never heard the story of Kas or the Raven Queen. And anyone who thinks you can’t cheat death just hasn’t heard the story of Acererak. Or at least, they haven’t heard it all the way to the end. This article, for players and DMs, features a set of Legendary Boons representing stories from D&D lore and the power they confer on characters that know them.

 Sweet Vecna, I felt so darn clever when I came up with this. I have no idea how I'd even use this in an actual game. "Now that you know how the Raven Queen thing happened, +2 on attack rolls against immortal creatures"? I mean I can think of bonuses and stuff for all of this but I think this was a misguided attempt to sort of merge roleplaying and mechanics more and the end result doesn't fly as well as I thought it did when I first wrote it.

6. Working Title: Adventure: God of the Stolen Dead (Side Trek)

Estimated Word Count: 3,000 words

This side trek, for players of levels 16-18, begins as the players awake in a strange temple, about to be sacrificed to an entity called the God of the Stolen Dead. They fight their way out through the spiraling corridors, facing the so-called god’s servitors. They are all undead creatures made from the adventuring parties whose escape attempts failed, including a death knight that was once a fighter, two tainted priests—one formerly a cleric, the other made from a druid which can still transform into a charnel hound leveled up to 17, a lich necromancer, a sword wraith made from a rogue, and a watchful ghost made from a paladin.

I feel like the hook is sound on this one but the execution doesn't work. I wanted undead monsters to feel like they'd been adventurers. When I originally came up with the idea I was going to use custom monsters but we're not supposed to do that, also I have no idea how to design monsters so there's that.

7. Working Title Demi-Puppets (Side Trek)

Estimated Word Count: 5,000 words

Inspired by William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this side trek for players of level 11-13 begins with the players stranded on an uncharted island. They are plagued by devils until they take refuge with an elderly hermit. He tells the players that the devils are servants of an ancient and powerful warlock, who rules the island with her cambion son. While the hermit has sufficient arcane power to maintain wards on his hidden cave, he dares not confront the warlock or her servants. The isle is surrounded by an unending magical storm, preventing any means of leaving. There is, however, one creature on the island who can help the players escape—a primal spirit, the guardian of the island, whom the warlock has imprisoned in a cloven pine and placed under constant guard.

The side trek is composed of three combat encounters and a skill challenge: first, devils attack the players when they arrive on the beach. After speaking with the hermit and going to free the spirit, the players encounter a devil patrol. Finally, the players must confront the warlock, the cambion, and their guards while also discovering a means of freeing the spirit. They ultimately learn that the spirit will be released if they break the warlock’s staff, bury it at the roots of the tree, and throw her magic book into the sea.

The adventure concludes with the grateful spirit seeing the players off to their destination, and includes suggestions for DMs who wish to expand the side trek into a longer adventure.

I don't imagine that the person at Wizards who read my submissions exactly jumped out of their chair when they saw that this was based on The Tempest, but I'm still too in love with this one to look at it with any pretense at objectivity. I may expand on it in a future blog post, because it will be a good exercise and anyway it's an adventure that I really, really want to write, paid or not.

In case it's not obvious, it inverts the plot of The Tempest, kind of. The hermit is Prospero, the warlock is Sycorax, the cambion is Caliban, the spirit is Ariel. The skill challenge references one of Prospero's monologues, and one of my favorite monologues in the whole Shakespeare canon: "I'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book."

It occurs to me that if you're not familiar with The Tempest the whole pitch might be a total non-sequitor, I have no idea.

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Thank you, hypothetical reader(s), for wading through this incredibly long blog post. Thanks also to the wonderful person or people at Wizards who read my original submission.