Round 2 Challenge Preview

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Greetings, potential superstars! There’s been some discussion about the Round 2: Organizations challenge, as smart competitors want to start working on a Round 2 submission early just in case they make it into the Top 32. While we haven’t finalized the rules document for Round 2 yet, we have decided the Organization format will match that in the Inner Sea World Guide, which looks like this:

Organization Name

Alignment: [two-letter abbreviation]
Headquarters: [location]
Leader: [character name]
Structure: [multinational corporation, military hierarchy, orders of crusading lawbringers, loose affiliation of like-minded explorers, religious cult, assassin’s guild, and so on]
Scope: [regional, national, or global (specify region or nation, if any)]
Resources: [property, valuable assets, castles, fortresses, equipment, network of local agents, informants, safe houses, and so on]
[100-word introductory paragraph summarizing the organization.]
Structure and Leadership
[100 words on this topic.]
Goals
[100 words on this topic.]
Public Perception
[50 words on this topic.]

Note that the organizations in the Inner Sea World Guide are approximately 1,400 words, so your submission write-up is a lean, stripped-down version of that. If you don’t have a copy of the Inner Sea World Guide handy, here’s the entry for the Aspis Consortium - (3.9 MB zip/PDF) from that book that you can use as a model for your write-up.

Your organization should be something PCs would normally oppose or come into conflict with, not an organization a typical heroic PC would join. The organization doesn’t necessarily have to be villainous, but it should definitely be a potential antagonist.

Full details (including a BBcode-formatted template for this challenge and an example organization from the Inner Sea World Guide) will be available next week. In the meantime, use the above information to guide your design for Round 2.

Remember, the deadline to submit your wondrous item is January 6th! You can’t submit an organization in Round 2 unless you make it into the Top 32 by submitting a wondrous item!

Sean K Reynolds
Designer and RPG Superstar Judge