Hey, everyone my name is Advent, and I run a Patreon called Advent's Amazing Advice! I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc., and fully prep them for New and Busy DMs. My prep includes detailed notes, music, ambiance, maps, encounter sheets, handouts, and tweaks so you can run the best sessions with the least stress possible!
I've been working on Advent's Amazing Advice for well over a year now! Thanks to all the support of my Patrons, I'm finally in the position where I can add someone to the team to lighten the load of prepping! With their assistance, I'll be able to expand the ways I can help everyone!
In order to find the perfect person, I'm creating a contest. The rules are simple. The person who can prep a One-Shot in a style most similar to mine will be the winner. I'll be judging this based on the following:
Main Criteria
- Formatting
(ie. How close you can match my style)
- Improvements
(includes additions; as well as flow, ease of use, etc.)
- Music Selection
(Picking the perfect tracks to match each scene) (*Create a YouTube playlist)
- Including additional resources
(ie. maps, handouts, encounters sheets, etc.)(Be sure to properly credit)
- Packaging
(Delivering the Prep the same way I would (ie. Folder Organization))
The One-Shot that contestants will be working on will be The Delian Tomb. I've chosen this one because it's short, has multiple versions, and is made for beginners to D&D. How you choose to prep will allow me to see how well you can get into the mind of a new DM; ensuring they have all the tools at their disposal to run an Amazing session!!!
Not only will the winner be joining the team*, but there will be prizes! Additionally, if 2nd and 3rd place impress me enough with their quality, they might just find themselves being called up to collaborate in the future!
Prizes
- 1st - $100 and have your prep featured on Advent's Amazing Advice
- 2nd - $50
- 3rd - $25
Deadline - 1/15/24
If this sounds like something you're interested in, you can get started by downloading the Contest Resources by Clicking Here or Here. Once you've finished, you can upload your files to Google Docs and send an email with the link, as well as to the YouTube playlist that you created!
Email - AdventsAmazingAdvice@gmail.com
For those of you who haven't seen my work before, you'll find an example of my Into Ivy Mansion prep in the Contest Resources Pack. I've also included additional examples of my prep below.
- Dragons of Stormwreck Isle - Click Here
- A Most Potent Brew - Click Here
- Index of over 4 dozen sessions with previews - Click Here
Position Info
- Pay: I’m offering the same amount that I charge for commissions, so $100 for each One-Shot Prepped; with up to a bonus $100 for each completed project based on how closely the person can match my style. If the person is good enough, then they’ll eventually be able to switch over to receiving a percentage of all profits from Advent’s Amazing Advice instead! Payment is via Venmo, but other ways can be worked out if needed!
- Content Production/Hours: - I’m looking for someone who can fully prep between 1-2 One-Shots a month, you can choose when, where, and how to complete the work! I’ll be guiding the person to match my style and be there to help with anything that pops up along the way.
I can't wait to see how this turns out and I'm so excited to have the chance to be able to do something like this. Thank you all so much, without you, I could never have imagined coming this far! If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to ask!
Cheers,
Advent
* Joining the team is contingent on producing high-quality content and being a person others would want to work with!
While I don't belive it is intentionally malicious, this is asking for an applicant to produce free work in exchange for the possibility of monetary compensation and no obligation on your part to extend a job offer.
Further there are no details on the job itself, including expectations or pay.
Definitely not trying to be malicious in any way and that's why I added prizes. Only the first-place person would be featured and I would have no use for any of the other prep.
The job itself is basically doing the exact thing that's being done for the contest! Prepping popular One-Shots and Adventures.
I'm offering the same amount that I charge for commissions, so $100 for each One-Shot Prepped; with up to a bonus $100 for each based on how closely the person can match my style. If the person is good enough, then they'll eventually receive a percentage of all profits from Advent's Amazing Advice! Payment is via Venmo, but other ways can be worked out if needed!
For Content Production, I'm only looking for 1-2 prepped One-Shots a month! I'll be guiding the person to match my style and be there to help with anything that pops up along the way. I'll still be prepping other One-Shots and Campaigns as well and expanding new ways to help people!
Hope that helps answer your questions, if you have any more just let me know, I'm only a message away!
Cheers, Advent
I'm not gonna lie this looks like a phishing email. I almost didn't read it but curiosity got the better of me.
Running a contest on its own is fine IMHO (given appropriate mod approval when needed, and I am not a mod here), but what makes this feel weird is the conflicts of interest (regardless of your intent).
Even if you don't plan to use the other works that didn't win, you stand to financially gain by retaining the unused works. At minimum you'd remember the other works, potentially weaving into your own inspiration (assuming you are in fact not a robot that can forget on command).
You also stand to financially gain by not selecting a winner and instead generating a random username and saying they won while showing off something you already wrote. Heck, you could have an alt account that just posts stuff to look real until they suddenly win this contest.
Let's also assume that any content, music, and art provided as part of your final submission package is all original or appropriately licensed content - be it OGL, CC, actual paid licence, whatever. Because once you are making money off something, royalties are probably going to kick in. Especially if you're using commercially available music. I'm not a lawyer, but even if you aren't including audio files and pictures and just link to/list them in your final "package", you're probably going to need an intellectual property lawyer to make sure your verbiage is rock solid. If I were an artist, even if I wasn't working with an organization who could enforce on my behalf, I'd still want proper usage agreements anywhere my content was used, especially if the other party stands to financially gain from the art. Depending on the artist preference, it may be as simple as a written "hey it's ok to use my work for this".
Is there a differential between an employee/contractor who can create the story notes/art/music themselves and someone who is hunting down art and music off the internet and reaching out to the artists for their permission? The outputs of each will produce very different works. Do the contestants perhaps care that those two pools are merged? Might be worth asking them. Maybe it's a non issue.
From a job perspective, you've mentioned what work is required for the final product, but a very critical detail is missing - how much work is required? One a week? One a month? One a year? Different people may not have time for all workloads. How would you handle a negative client interaction between your new employee and your customer? You mention high quality on your contest is contingent on the job offer - which does give you a nice way out to just say you don't want any contestant's work. I'm not saying that all entries would be good enough for a job, all I'm saying is that's an opportunity for a landmine in your face if not handled gracefully.
ill give you the benefit of the doubt that you are well known somewhere even if I myself do not recognize you. But right out of the gate this ad is my first exposure to your work, so I (as a random person on the internet) have no yet established basis of trust of you (another random person on the internet). Similarly, do you trust a random person on the internet to complete all of the above, with (un-forged) usage agreements where applicable?
Now I'm not an artist, I'm just a programmer/IT. I fix computers when I get a ticket that something's broken. I may be off my rocker with some of this. But if I were evaluating your company as a vendor, you would have failed several tests.
Hey, thank you for the detailed comment! I can definitively say this isn't a phishing email attempt. I'm just trying to find someone who can match my style of writing to work with. (Also as someone in IT wouldn't someone want to maximize the emails they get in a phishing attempt, I'll be lucky if 10 people enter haha)
Everyone's working on the same thing, it would be another story if I had everyone working on multiple different One-Shots, but since it's the same, it's of no use to me to have multiples. Only the first-place winner will be shown and they get $100 which is how much I charge for commissions and how much they would make for the prep to start. 2nd and third place also get a prize, so overall this is costing me more than if I just had one person to start. I can understand your concern about simply using something I wrote so I wouldn't have to pick someone, but again that wouldn't help me since I actually am looking for someone. If you have advice on how to make that less of a concern definitely let me know! It's one of those things where sure I can say it, but that won't change whether you believe me or not.
If you take a look at my prep you can see that I simply link to YouTube, I've never heard of that being an issue.
I'll be doing a final review of all the work before it actually gets posted, so I don't foresee a negative customer interaction so much, but if something did pop up then I simply wouldn't use them for future prep! The last line is just in case people submit Jiberish hoping that only 1-3 people enter.
I've updated the post to include more info about the position, I had updated other posts, but didn't add it here, so that's my bad!
If you have any suggestions on how I can make a post like this better I'd love to hear; I'm sure I'll eventually be looking for additional people in the future!
Cheers, Advent