RPG Superstar 2012™ Round One Assignment: Design a Wondrous Item
Design a compelling wondrous item for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, using the Item Creation guidelines on page 548 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.
Entries must be submitted through the submission tool at paizo.com/rpgsuperstar beginning at 2 PM Pacific time on December 6, 2011, and must be received by 2 PM Pacific time on January 6, 2012. Judges will announce the top 32 entries on January 24, 2012.
The entire submission, including the title, must not exceed 300 words. The submission form includes a Preview button to view what your submission will look like, and will give you a total word count for your submission.
PRESENTATION: Use the presentation for magic items found in the Wondrous Items section of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook (page 496). The subject line of the submission form should contain only the name of the item. The body of the form should include only the complete item text in the appropriate format (this means the item name will be included in the body as well). DO NOT INCLUDE ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION SUCH AS NAME, AVATAR NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER, AND SO ON IN THE SUBMISSION ITSELF. Your paizo.com account provides all of the information we need; repeating it in the submission may be grounds for disqualification.
For your convenience, the following text contains all the necessary message board formatting to make your submission comparable to those in the Core Rulebook. You may copy this text to help format your submission, but are not required to do so. Remember that improperly formatted entries may be disqualified. You should not use ALL CAPS for any part of your wondrous item submission. "ZZ" is a placeholder to indicate you should replace that text with appropriate information for your wondrous item.
Which is more important: an item that has a lot going for it creatively, or an item that is perfectly balanced with no spelling or math errors?
An RPG Superstar does not see a contradiction between these "extremes." The best items will be both creatively unique and mechanically interesting. The judges must sift through hundreds and hundreds of submissions for the first round, so you'll want to come up with something that stands out from the pack. That said, rules are important too. Try to create an item that is both well conceived and well designed, and you stand a better chance of being among the 32 contestants who will proceed to Round 2.
Provided the item was not selected for the Top 32 last year, you can choose to resubmit it for this year's contest. The judges have long memories, however, and are probably not likely to advance an item that they passed on last year. Your best bet is likely to create an entirely new item specifically for this year's contest.
The selection process by the judges for Round 1 is supposed to be anonymous--they should not be able to identify who submitted what wondrous item in any way. If talking about your item in a public forum (whether on Paizo.com or elsewhere) before the Top 32 finalists are announced allows the judges to figure out which anonymous item is yours, you will be disqualified. It's best to not give any details about your item until the Top 32 are revealed on January 24th, 2012.
Will I be able to see the judges' comments on my item?
The judges' discussion for the Top 32 items only will be posted online, and fans will be able to consider that feedback in their own voting decisions in later rounds. We are sorry that we cannot provide detailed feedback for all of the items submitted to the contest, but the sheer volume of submissions makes this impossible. After the Top 32 have been announced, non-advancing contestants are free to post their wondrous items to the RPG Superstar discussion forum for feedback from their peers.
Can we refer to Pathfinder campaign setting material, such as nations, heroes, or gods, when describing our item?
Yes, but keep in mind that not all of the judges work at Paizo or have a strong knowledge of the campaign setting, and many of the voters are not regular Pathfinder readers. Contestants hoping to get an "edge" by including a bunch of Pathfinder and Paizo-related inside jokes may be shooting themselves in the feet.
Can we refer to the campaign setting material of other publishers?
No. And while we're at it, if you refer to a monster please be sure to use only monsters published in Pathfinder products. Reference to non-Paizo rules or monsters may be grounds for disqualification.
Provided the campaign has never been published, this is fine, but keep in mind that all submissions become the property of Paizo Publishing, LLC. You are probably better off inventing a new country or god or whatever specifically for the contest.
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