Four amateur game designers have advanced to the final round of Paizo Publishing’s RPG Superstar 2011, the largest open-call tabletop roleplaying design contest in history. Professional gaming cartographers Robert Lazzaretti and Jared Blando joined celebrity judges Ryan Dancey, Sean K Reynolds, Mark Moreland, and Neil Spicer to critique a fully mapped complete Pathfinder RPG encounter.
The Top 4 finalists for RPG Superstar 2011 and their winning semifinal entries are:
- Cody Coffelt (Boise, ID) — The Broken Crucible Foundry
- Jerall Toi (Port Elizabeth, South Africa) — The Old Cassomir Dollhouse
- Sam Zeitlin (Arlington, VA) — The Black Mirror
- Sean McGowan (New York City, NY) — The Rotting Kremlin
Having designed new magic items, archetypes, villains, and encounters, the Top 4 will now be required to write a full adventure module proposal for an installment of Paizo’s award-winning Pathfinder Modules line of “one shot” adventure modules. Paizo’s Creative Director James Jacobs will join the celebrity judges to comment on the four submissions, and the 80,000+ users of paizo.com will vote on their favorites. The proposal with the highest number of votes will be published by Paizo as a 32-page Pathfinder Module in early 2012, while the other three will be contracted to write a Pathfinder Society Scenario for Paizo's world-wide organized play campaign. Previous RPG Superstar-winning modules include 2011's Cult of the Ebon Destroyers by Matt Goodall and 2010’s Realm of the Fellnight Queen, by Neil Spicer.
Contestants must submit their 3000-word Pathfinder Module proposal to Paizo by 2:00 PM Pacific time on Friday, March 11, 2010. On March 15, the entries and judge comments will be revealed to the general public, who will then get to discuss the entries and vote for their favorites. Voting ends on March 21, and the 2011 RPG Superstar and his winning Pathfinder Module proposal will be announced on March 23, with the winning module to be published in early 2012.
For a complete schedule for RPG Superstar 2011, plus rules and FAQs, visit paizo.com/rpgsuperstar/previous/2011.
About Paizo Publishing
Paizo Publishing®, LLC is a leading publisher of fantasy roleplaying games, accessories, board games, and novels. Paizo's Pathfinder® line of rules, adventures, sourcebooks, and campaigns combines decades of game design experience into one evocative system compatible with the 3.5 rules. Paizo's GameMastery® accessories offer easy-to-use tools aimed at improving the tabletop RPG experience. Paizo.com is the leading online hobby retail store, offering tens of thousands of products from a variety of publishers to customers all over the world. In the eight years since its founding, Paizo Publishing has received more than 40 major industry awards and has grown to become one of the most influential companies in the hobby games industry.
