I'm always fascinated by the fact that what excites one person will bore another. Dwarffall, for instance, popped out to me as the most exciting entry. It caused my imagination to roam.For me, I'd say that a concept such as Dwarffall would depend very strongly on the execution, because while it could be an interesting exploration of denial the inevitable and societies destroyed from within,
Different strokes for different folks.
I now have an embarrassing admission and public apology. My entry was Bedroom Vigilante. It wasn't until I saw cat's comment that I realized I had essentially ripped off Snarky's idea from the previous round. It's made even worse by the fact that I even voted for Snarky's pitch last time and thought it was brilliant. But had completely forgotten all about it by the time I came to write my pitch for this month. So sorry, Snarky.
In fact, Bedroom Vigilante wasn't initially supposed to be a Rear Window ‘em up at all. When I first started thinking about it I was thinking of the book “Sorry, Wrong Number” which I read last month. It's about an invalid woman on her own in an apartment who, due to some crossed wires, learns of a plot to murder a woman (her). The whole book (film, play etc) is set in one room and the woman makes a lot of phone calls in order to eventually find out the truth. It was from there that I thought I could combine it with Rear Window and have the protagonist solve a series of crimes with the telephone. So Snarky's pitch may have been in the back of my mind somewhere but I wasn't consciously thinking of that when it came to my pitch.
In answer to your questions, Snarky, I didn't actually intend for the character to be unlikeable. I actually envisioned him as just a downtrodden guy who's just had enough of being too scared to leave his room and decides to do his bit to make the streets a little safer.
As far as examples go, I imagined there would be multiple solutions to every puzzle but you'd also be looking at routines. So, for example, you would use the phone to send a pizza delivery to inturrupt a crime or call a public phone box to warn a passer by of a mugger waiting just around the corner. That kind of thing but preferably with lots of little side-stories and mini-character arcs.
The Luck Goblins
Should we switch to the model used by some of the other competitions, where the winner hosts the next round (or at least has "dibs" on hosting it)?It could be funny! I say yeah!
But first, I'd really like to hear how many people want to do the author-guessing game after the voting, and how many would rather just jump straight to announcing the identities once the winner is picked.I'd pick jump straight to announcing identities.