The Top 32

Joseph Lamothe is a good friend of mine, and a long-time player in most of my games. He gets all his talent from me. =3

Seriously, though: Good job, Joe! Congratulations, and keep up the good work!

Congrats, Top 32+4! Well done, all.

I'll be wandering around, dispensing my unsolicited thoughts on the items soon.

Good to see a couple of folks that I know have been trying hard to get in for a while. Persistence pays!

And for those going through this a second time, what better validation of your skills than getting in again? Excellent work.

To all of you, hang on tight. It's gonna be a bumpy ride!

The 32 finalists are receiving many congratulations, and so they should. Making it this far is amazing, and praise should be piled about them.

But I also want to thank them. Thank you all, for taking the time to make my hobby more fun. For working, worrying, writing, and most of all for wrenching yourself free from life's many distractions to create something that didn't exist before. Something that will be used and abused by people you'll never meet, and brighten their lives just a little. Good ideas are too rare, and good ideas with game stats rarer still.

So, thank you.

Congrats top 32! Good luck with the next round I can't wait to see what all of you come up with.

Yeah; man, this is a really cool batch of items.
Can't wait to see more stuff.

This was an excellent crop of items this year; finally submitting something after three years of following along gave me a new perspective on what can make a Top 32 item and why these were all winners.

Great job, everyone!

This was an excellent crop of items this year; finally submitting something after three years of following along gave me a new perspective on what can make a Top 32 item and why these were all winners.

One of the things I very consciously tried to do was provide as thorough of an examination as I could for each item (even many of those that didn't make the Keep pile or the Top 32). As everyone knows, I'm a pretty wordy guy when it comes to messageboard posting anyway. But, in terms of trying to uphold the duties of an RPG Superstar judge, I wanted to make sure I gave a lot of feedback and thought to every component of these designs. I think you can see a lot of that in the combined comments of all the judges this year, including the guest judges. And more of that may come out in the "Critique My Item" thread tomorrow.

All of this really gets back to the goal of RPG Superstar. It's not just an effort to find the next group of freelancers for Paizo (in my opinion). It's also an effort to get more and more people in this hobby thinking about game design. In many ways, that helps perpetuate the longevity and quality of the game. I think that's a very noble underpinning of RPG Superstar in addition to everything else. So, keep reading...keep following along...keep offering commentary, critiques, and feedback to these designers...and keep learning. Because that's a prize in and of itself. And a darn worthy one that's within everyone's reach...as long as you stay involved.

Just my two cents,
--Neil

Everyone did a great job, and for those of you that didn't make it, get to work, next year will be here before you know it.

Congrats to the top 32!!
I am honored and humbled to be in the company.

Congratulations to everyone who entered and to the Top 32 in particular! This is going to be quite the experience for us all! :D

Congrats guys! Good luck in the next few rounds. I dont know about the rest of you guys, but im interested in seeing the adventures and archtypes to be written :) Guys did great! I can say i would want to use all the magical items in the top 32!

Congrats everyone who made it. I can't wait to see the archtype ideas.

Go maire tu Top 32!
Double that for those who have done it twice now :)
Competition this steep will make this one of the best years yet!
I am so excited, way to go!

congrats everyone :)

Congratz to all, once more!

All of the entries fully deserve their placing methinks. My favorites are:

Joshua Stevens — Imp's Wishbone. Awesome flavor. A bit wordy perhaps.

Erik Freund — Corsage of the Captured Voice. Love the story potential. Will have to look a lot more sinister for use with my evil sorceress villain though!

Eric Hindley — Shadow Falconer's Glove. Clear, concise, and really really cool! But please, more story for the archetype!

Ethan Day-Jones — Eye of the Void. Scary, nicely brief, and great story device. Ratchet up the mechanical detail for round 2, maybe?

Sue Flaherty — Pharasma's Death Sacrament. Excellent niche thinking. I'd make these a temple staple in my campaigns, and would love being able to save a fellow party member from a fate worse than death.

There. Much less cluttered than posting love notes individually to everyone :-)

Congratulations to the top 32!

Clearly competition was tight this year, good times.

Please allow me to add my heartfelt congratulations to the top 32 and the 4 alternates. You have all done an amazing job.

I will be going through the items over the next couple of days and will try to provide some critique on each item.

The competition for my votes this year will be very tight, so I wont this year say if you made my vote list or not as I think this year more than previous, that wouldnt be fair to those who I didnt vote for.

Once again, well done to you all.

Late congratulations to the winners :)

(I read all entries right after they got posted, but that was at 11 PM for me and was too tired after to congratulate. Stupid time zones ^^)

The bag of holes is my favorite. I has a humourous theme to it without being just a joke.

But the others were interesting as well.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! It's an honor to be here.

Game on!

Had some time to look over the items - nice job everyone!

One very cool thing I noticed, given that this RPG demographic is pretty heavily skewed toward male ... there are multiple females in the top 32!

That's awesome!

Congratulations to the Top 32 (women and men) in this year's RPG Superstar contest. 32 jobs well done.

Congratulations also to the 4 alternates (what I wouldn't give to be in your shoes). ;)

I shall continue to watch this contest with interest. I can't wait to see what archetypes you lot come up with. (Forget SKR, Spicer, Moreland, and Ryan... now you need to impress US... the Paizo community). ;)

Seriously, best of luck to all of you.

Dean

As has been said by so many before me, congratulations to the top 32. I've loved each and every one of them. Good luck in the next round; I can't wait to see what you do in round two.

Congrats and kudos for being both creative and brave!

Congratulations all! Very well done! Keep bringing the awesome!

Well done! Now let's see who beat me...

Congrats guys and gals! I'm currently reading the entries and feedback.

Thank you everyone! I'm stoked to be a part of this competition and look forward to future rounds. And thank you for the comments as well, it's very helpful to see what you like and dislike about all of these fantastic items.

And kudos to my fellow 32! ROUND 2 - FIGHT!

Congratulations to my fellow Top 32 Paizonians! I'm just ecstatic about making it in. I can't wait to see what everyone's Archetypes are and what kind of twist happens in the later rounds.

--Keep on Vrockin' in the free world!

Perhaps next year I'll be able to join these happy few, but for what its worth, I salute you.

As an inside comment. Good job judges. Thanks for all your hard work.

Thanks everyone. And congrats to the other 31 members of Paizo's class of 2011.