So they changed the submission rules. At first I was a little upset, but then I realized that it gives me a deadline to work for so I can actually set myself a timeline on what needs to be done when. It also means I can have a large set of submissions to throw at the wall and to see what sticks. It would also be nice to get some actual feedback on things submitted. A Sorry we aren't interested isn't terribly helpful for a hopeful designer, something along the lines of why they aren't accepting it is better. Knowing what I may need to improve on, or if it's just a matter of the magazines focusing on a different direction at the time.
I don't mind this.
But I should have really read the rules originally earlier. It seems they only want adventures of about 10,000 words. I'm over 7,000 already and I'm only on Encounter Area 4. I still have 5 more encounters to go, and to finish all the supplemental information. But I am also doing a word count on all the monster stat blocks as well, if they don't count those I may be in better shape. I'm not going to stop working on it regardless. That would be less than ideal since I've already put in a bunch of time on it. I may make a name for myself, and perhaps an exception can be made.
However, this actually works out for me in a different way.
My mind, a fount of odd happenings, has been churning out things that I haven't started work on. I'm a fan of Vermin; spiders, rats, scorpions, ants, and other insects have always found their way into my games. I think mostly because there is no moral ambiguity on killing them anymore than there is killing vermin in your own kitchen (or boot in the case of scorpions and Iraq). With 4e I've come up with some fun interesting vermin based creatures, some I'm using in the current adventure I'm writing. Others are just ideas that haven't been fleshed out completely yet. If you read my previous post about the scorpion touched goblin, yeah that's one of the ideas. To me there doesn't seem to be enough huge and gargantuan vermin. Most PCs, after a while, no longer worry about vermin, after all, they have power of near godlike magnitude. Why should a scorpion scare them? Well when it stands 40 feet tall and shoots blasts of fiery acid from it's tail, and has pincers that can cleave a man in twain, it becomes a whole different story.
The cool thing about it, is by following the submission rules, I can easily have 4-10 separate articles. I just need to figure out how I want to organize them. Do I want to do it by vermin type? Do I want to do it by theme? These are things I must think about.
