Paizo challenged amateur game designers from around the world to show off their skills in RPG Superstar 2010, the third season of Paizo's search for great undiscovered game designers. Judges Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games and Paizo's own Sean K Reynolds and F. Wesley Schneider narrowed the field to 32 would-be RPG Superstars, and guest judges including game designer Greg A. Vaughan, cartographers Corey Macourek and Robert Lazzaretti, and Paizo’s Creative Director James Jacobs, plus last year's finalists Kevin Carter, Eric Bailey, Matt Stinson, and 2009 RPG Superstar Neil Spicer provided their advice as the contestants answered each new challenge.
In the final round, we asked this year's Top 4 to propose a 32-page Pathfinder Module for use with Paizo's Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Contestants Alexander MacLeod (Raleigh, North Carolina), Jim Groves (Ontario, Oregon), Matt Goodall (Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia), and Matthew McGee (Davis, California) responded with four excellent submissions, but there can be only one RPG Superstar 2010, and so after the judges offered comments, the general public selected one winning proposal to be published by Paizo in early 2011.
Congratulations to Matt Goodall for his victorious proposal, Cult of the Ebon Destroyers. Here's a brief description of the adventure from Matt Goodall’s winning RPG Superstar 2010 submission:
Now is the time to bring down the Ebon Destroyers!
Too long have the secretive Vudran cultists known as the Ebon Destroyers gone unpunished for their crimes of murder and assassination. Too long has the Isle of Jalmeray suffered from their deadly machinations. The Thakur of Jalmeray has outlawed the cult, and received in response an ultimatum stating that if he doesn’t revoke his edict, he and his family will die before the month is out. The PCs must locate the Ebon Destroyers’ hidden temple headquarters, battle the cult leaders, and save the Thakur himself!
Cult of the Ebon Destroyers is an adventure for 8th-level chararacters, written for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and compatible with the 3.5 edition of the world's oldest RPG. Inside you'll find intrigue and espionage in the slums and palaces of the city of Niswan and a perilous trek through the dense jungle and rugged hills of southern Jalmeray to the depths of a diabolical shrine.
As RPG Superstar 2010's Grand Prize, Paizo will contract Matt Goodall to write Cult of the Ebon Destroyers, which we will release as a Pathfinder Module in January, 2011.
But you don't have to wait until January to reserve your copy! Head over to the new Cult of the Ebon Destroyers product page here on paizo.com to preorder your copy of Matt Goodall’s winning adventure! If you're already a Pathfinder Modules subscriber, Cult of the Ebon Destroyers will arrive as part of your subscription.
On behalf of our judges as well as the whole Paizo Publishing family, congratulations to
Alexander MacLeod, Jim Groves, Matthew McGee, and Matt Goodall. Though only one earned the title RPG Superstar 2010, you'll likely be hearing from all of them, and from other RPG Superstar 2010 contestants, in the months and years to come.
And we'd like to offer one final thanks to you, the readers of paizo.com, and to anyone who submitted an entry or voted during RPG Superstar 2010.
And for those of you who didn't, RPG Superstar 2011 is less than a year away!
Congrats Matt!
Altho my criticism of this years final 2 rounds was fairly harsh, i obviously couldn't have done any better, and i'm actually looking forward to see how closely the finished module resembles your proposal 10 months from now.
And altho i didn't even make top 32 this year, i feel slightly vindicated that the guy i voted for won the whole thing.
Awesome job to all the 2010 RPG Superstars and a special congratulations to Matt for the big win! Looking forward to possibly playing this in the future with my gaming group :)
Richard A. Hunt aka AWizardInDallas(RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8)
Remember that when you get involved next year! And help pass the experience on...
But, for now...take a deep breath and enjoy the win. You deserve it.
Thanks Neil, I was very happy to get your vote.
I do want to do the same things for future contestants that you have done for me and everyone else in Top 32. Your advice to the Top 32, incredibly useful! I don’t know if I can write as verbosely as yourself (or end each post with ‘But that is my two cents’ :-) but I will endeavour to pass what I have learned on.
Things I can think of at the moment:
Take time off work, get as many hours to do each task as you can. You will need them!
You can always do with another round of proofreading, because you will find errors/corrections/better ways of writing things. Especially in the rounds with longer word counts.
Get other people to proofread, the more the better. Find people who are good with the English language and get them to check your grammar, find gamers to check your rules stuff. Non gamers help as well because they will point out what sounds good, unbiased by game knowledge.
Find your process. This means work out what works for you to get the job done. For me, I avoided caffeine after finding that it just wired me up and made it harder to work not easier. I realised that that the natural drug - adrenaline was all I needed to work late into the night. :-)
And yes, you will probably need to work close to the deadline on every task, but get it in at least an hour or two before the deadline, because technology can fail.
Congratulations Matt!! Even though I changed my vote from yours to Jim's, I was still torn. You had an excellent proposal and I'm very happy for you that you won.
Congratulations too to the 3 second place finishers - all of you accomplished a lot and have a lot to be proud of!
Congratulations on the win! I'm looking forward to seeing high adventure in a Vudran setting.
Jason Nelson(RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Contributor)
Congrats again. Your adventure proposal was the best of the four and I look forward to seeing some Vudran/Jalmerayan goodness next January! Hoist a glass in celebration... then GET TO WORK!!!
The Jade(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber)
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