RPG Superstar 2010 has a winner!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

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!