*** March '10 Challenge Voting Take 2 - The Town of Iwaizumi ***

[torstan]

The entries have been dusted polished and buffed to a shine. The time is upon us once again to judge between our fine stable of entrants. The winner will take home a golden compass, a pdf subscription to Kobold Quarterly and have their map published in Red Eye of Azathoth.

Remember that the map that wins must be judged not only on its attractiveness but also on how well it fulfills the art brief. The art brief includes very specific instructions. Please re-read these before you chose the map that you vote for:

Map Brief, Town of Iwaizumi, 1287 C.E. (1287 A.D.)
Red Eye of Azathoth, Chapter 2

This chapter is set in Iwaizumi, a small town in the northeastern part of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This part of the country is known as the “Tibet of Japan” – steep mountain valleys, rushing mountain streams, and winter snows make travel difficult.

Iwaizumi is intended to be a remote location in which the investigators are stuck by the winter snows. An inset region map showing the mountain road and valleys would be a nice touch but is not required by any means.

Iwaizumi is located at the junction of two rivers, one flowing east-west and one joining from the north. Two notable features outside Iwaizumi should be noted on the map, at least as directions:
1. the water-rich limestone caves of Ryusendo, which are up the northern river about an hour's march for armoured men.
2. Mount Sakainokami, southwest of town.

About 250 people live in Iwaizumi. The exact locations of buildings within the town are not important. For the sake of the plot, there must be the following items labeled or on a legend:

• a central square,
• a shrine to the local deities,
• a large fortified wooden house with guest quarters for the village governor, and
• twenty or so peasant houses clustered around the central square and governor’s house, including rice, wheat, and vegetable farmers, a beekeeper, sheep herders, and so forth.
• a mill,
• a tannery,
• a bridge over the east-west flowing main river, and
• a ford across the north-south flowing tributary.



The thumbnails of the challenge entries can be found here:

Challenge Thumbs

Please vote for two (2) maps only.

Please rep those that you vote for and any others that you think are worthy of it.

This poll will end in 4 days time (4pm EST on April 3rd). Good luck to everyone!

[Ghostman]

People sure loved to go for the bird's eye view / isometric for this challenge My votes went for Djekspek and Gamerprinter.

[Ascension]

I voted this time on what really made me feel interested in going there in person. Sap's snow reminds me of my childhood in West Virginia and Ravs' just looks eerie and creepy...very cool. I was tempted by Red's new techniques, which look really interesting, and Imm's buildings. GP's inset map really sold me and it was a toss up. Arkanin's reminds me a bit of Samurai Jack but needs a bit more polish to it and Naj's road needs work. Dj, well his stuff is always good but this one just didn't grab me as much as his other stuff.

[Araknin]

I voted for Immolate, who really did a great job labeling and keeping the feel, and Sap, who I think did the best job of capturing that winter feel.

I have to say it was fun doing the map and I'll probably continue to participate, but I'm humbled by how good you all are. I'd have any of you map makes for me in a heartbeat.

[Immolate]

I kept my vote as is.

Araknin we're all a little overwhelmed when we start. I persevered by doing a lot of tutorials and entering challenges, which kept me learning and practicing. I am not what I would consider a model of success, but for a regular joe who is a technician rather than an artist, I think I've made a lot of progress.

Thanks for the vote and I think you did a fine job. There is also a challenge lite where previous winners can't particpate. I encourage you to check that out if you haven't already. Good luck my friend. I hope to see a lot of great stuff from you

[ravells]

I stuck to my previous choices too. It was a really hard vote.

[Coyotemax]

I hadn't actually gotten to the point where I was voting.. I was still taking my time trying to decide I just had to go with Gamerprinter and Djekspek though, I liked the others, they all had good things going for them, but in the end I had to go with my gut (and it wasn't easy to narrow it down to 2, for the last few days I've been constantly going back over the entries to look at them again and think about them some more, lol)

Hopefully soon I'll be sorted out on the new meds and able to focus on more than one thing at a time again (and sleep less than 16 hours in a day) and get back into entering challenges!

[Gamerprinter]

I voted for the same I voted on before. Since there were so many isometric maps, I voted on the primarily top down maps. Though in retrospect, I really liked RR's new style, he should have gotten one of my votes. While there were road problems, I thought Najmir being a newbie, did a great job for his first challenge entry.

Great job everyone, and as always the choices were difficult.

GP

[tilt]

Djespek and Gamerprinter got my votes, but really nice maps all of them and kudos to Araknin for going up against the "big guys"

[Greason Wolfe]

Wow, that was a tough one, and it came down to balancing the requirements of the map against what, as a player or GM, I'd like to see when I open up the adventure pack. In the end, I really liked the atmosphere of Ravell's map as it had a kind of spookiness to it that I thought might fit well with, if I read the description properly, what could be considered a horror type of adventure. My second vote was even tougher as both GP and DJ had outstanding presentations. It came down to a "coin toss" between those two for my second vote with GP just edging out DJ. All in all, I'd have to say all the maps were fine, even those that might have needed a bit more work, and if I were the publisher, I might even pick up a few of them as auxiliary illustrations.

Great job, everyone!!

GW