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

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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

More likely, the delay in getting the Round 2 rules hammered out and ready is the same delay that put Paizo's production and shipping schedule behind. The Snowsplosion of 2012.

Personally, I think you've got more than enough to prepare yourselves for the reveal of the eventual Round 2 rules anyway. You're already getting far more than the norm (as compared to prior years). So, use what you've got to frame your ideas. Then, make the proper adjustments when the finalized template get posted.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16 , Star Voter Season 6

cool, thanks. I mostly wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. How much snow did you guys get down there? I'm in Ottawa (where it snows for real), so I may laugh at your "predicament" a little and would like to apologize in advance.

Contributor

Seattle and Redmond got at least 4-8 inches.

Which sounds trivial until you realize that many parts of the city have roads with 45-degree slopes.

And we have only a handful of plows.

And we avoid dumping salt on everything because we like having plants and fish.

And our moderate temperatures and high humidity mean we get wet, slushy snow that sticks to everything and doesn't blow away.

And turns to ice.

Especially under the shade of the omnipresent gigantic trees.

And we only get about a week of snow a year, so people don't have the opportunity to learn how to drive well in the snow... as if you could actually learn how to drive "well" on a snowy, icy, 45-degree-angle street. :p

We get by. People in other states laugh at us, but they really have no idea what it's like when it snows here. I've lived through Wisconsin and Manhattan winters... it's very, very different. :p


Eh, don't feel to bad. Down here, an inch of snow is considered a lot of snow and anything over an inch and a half is a blizzard. Yes it does snow in Alabama, just not often, and not this year at all.

Lantern Lodge Star Voter Season 6

I'm in Florida. It was in the low 60s the other day. Pretty chilly if you ask me.

-chuckles- Of course, I'm just kidding. My wife is from Wisconsin and I'm from Oklahoma so I'm a bit more familiar with snow than the Floridians here. And no, I'm not a 'snowbird'. I'm stationed at one of the air bases here.

Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

If you think you have it bad, feel for us Brit's. If a leaf falls upon the track's the trains will get cancelled, let alone snow.

Oh, and according to British Rail, there exists this thing called "the wrong type of snow" that will also halt all rail travel if so much as a single piece lands on the rails.

I so envy you Americans, at least when you get snowed in, you have the Disney Channel :P

Dedicated Voter Season 8

Heh, try Denmark then. Snow? Heh, heh, heh, yeah sure, but when you get it, it's one day and then everything turns to ice. And there's no such thing as mountains (the best we get is overrated hillocks), so no such thing as decent skiing.
This year of course we've had hail and rain rather than snow, so far. Maybe in february we'll get snow though. Typical if it starts when university does. I'd just love that.

Well anyway, enjoy the weather (or not?)...

Sczarni RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9

Severed Ronin wrote:

I'm in Florida. It was in the low 60s the other day. Pretty chilly if you ask me.

-chuckles- Of course, I'm just kidding. My wife is from Wisconsin and I'm from Oklahoma so I'm a bit more familiar with snow than the Floridians here. And no, I'm not a 'snowbird'. I'm stationed at one of the air bases here.

I love FL! Except those sandhill cranes seem to be suicidal and always trying to fly/walk where I am driving. Florida is my retirement place of choice when the time comes.

Unless there is a reason to move closer to a certain company starting with a P...

Star Voter Season 6

I grew up in Alberta, Canada, so I can't help but feel that I'm wronging my kids as they grow up in North Carolina, where I have yet to see snow more than one day a year, and some years not at all. And that snow shuts everything down- which at first seemed comical to me, because I've been in far worse snow and the city kept chugging. But really, my home city kept chugging because they had no choice but to maintain the infrastructure and equipment to make roads passable immediately. Here, that would be a ridiculous use of resources.

Still miss the snow, though. And I roll my eyes when my kids complain that it's cold. :) Apparently there was an epic level ice storm shortly before we moved here, though, so I've not given up hope.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 8 aka nate lange

i'm from buffalo ny... our snowsplosions are 4-8 feet, lol (about 10 years ago we literally got over 7 feet of snow in a 36 hour period)! though, in fairness, we have fleets of snowplows and salters (which we have no choice but to use due to the volume of snow we get...), and 0 roads with 45 degree inclines. they can post the official round 2 rules tomorrow or thursday for all i care, as long as this painful anxious waiting really ends at 2pm pacific time today :)


I grew up in the Seattle area (I miss living there a lot) ... and my favourite snow moment was walking down from First Hill towards downtown. There was a bit of snow on the ground, which meant no one was driving, cause Sean is right. I heard a slushing sound from behind me and turn around to watch a public bus sliding down the hill sideways. It was the only vehicle on the road and everything was silent except the slushing of its tires slipping down the hill. The people inside were pressed up against the windows and I assume were screaming, but you couldn't hear anything. At the bottom of the hill, it stopped, open its door and everyone walked out eerily calm and shocked.

It was a real haiku moment.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9 aka SmiloDan

I'm from Buffalo, NY, too. And this winter we've had snow on the ground for maybe 10 days, and not in a row.

Star Voter Season 6

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Bus? Haiku?

The bus is sliding
Slush churns, but death comes not yet
Soon it will be Spring

Shadow Lodge Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9

I live in emilia-romagna, Italy.
no snow here yet except for the mountains.
snow can sometimes create a prblem but we can deal with it.
on the other end we tend to have fog of epic proportion on fall/winter.
when fog is bad around here you struggle to see the end of your car


DerangedArchivist wrote:

I grew up in Alberta, Canada, so I can't help but feel that I'm wronging my kids as they grow up in North Carolina, where I have yet to see snow more than one day a year, and some years not at all. And that snow shuts everything down- which at first seemed comical to me, because I've been in far worse snow and the city kept chugging. But really, my home city kept chugging because they had no choice but to maintain the infrastructure and equipment to make roads passable immediately. Here, that would be a ridiculous use of resources.

Still miss the snow, though. And I roll my eyes when my kids complain that it's cold. :) Apparently there was an epic level ice storm shortly before we moved here, though, so I've not given up hope.

I live in Lexington, Kentucky, and if thats the same Ice Storm I remember from several years ago (the one we all speak of in hushed tones, just in case the snow gods are listening), than yeah - Epic is the word. It's literally referred to as "the big one" around here.


Severed Ronin, I live in Florida, but I grew up (among other places) in Lithuania during roughly 65% of the nineties (give or take - missionary family).

So: very familiar with snow. Stopping everything. By snowing up to the third floor of our apartment complex.

And Luthia, yeah, I remember what it's like in Denmark to. It was the place we always stopped when we were going back and forth from Lithuania, so I got to see it fairly often.


Hm. More on topic.

So. My computer did a funny little "thing" a few days back where it kind of corrupted my account. You know. Something small. Taking all my work on my organization (and all my other documents) with it. So, you know, freak out time, right?

But I'm cool! Because fortunately I have a backup portable hard drive with everything I've ever written on it.

... And I'm not able to access it right now. I don't know why.

So, I'm really working at not freaking out in every way.

*Breathes*

Dedicated Voter Season 8

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Tacticslion wrote:

Hm. More on topic.

So. My computer did a funny little "thing" a few days back where it kind of corrupted my account. You know. Something small. Taking all my work on my organization (and all my other documents) with it. So, you know, freak out time, right?

But I'm cool! Because fortunately I have a backup portable hard drive with everything I've ever written on it.

... And I'm not able to access it right now. I don't know why.

So, I'm really working at not freaking out in every way.

*Breathes*

Wauw, bad luck. Guess that's just when you have to tell yourself "Okay. So this is the time to rewrite my item with all my great, new insights to it, which I have gained over letting it rest for a while".

No, really, try and use the situation to remove any weak spots by writing by your memory of what worked really well and was awesome. If you recover the organization on your back-up use the best of both. If not, hope that you actually removed a few flaws by reworking it.

Best of luck - hope computer problems leave you alone from now on.

And hey, look at the bright side: if you aren't in, you don't HAVE to rewrite it all.
But, again, best of luck.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32 , Dedicated Voter Season 8 aka artofcheatery

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We all are freaking out about this to a degree, but the important thing to remember about the short deadline is that if were actually contracted to work on this we would have a short deadline.

They ask you for a organization to be the antagonist for the next [insert adventure format here], they expect it probably within hours, maybe the next day if they ask for it in late afternoon. And it still must me awesome.

We must be quick and subtle. That is the ancient law of the RPG Superstar.
-X


Word. It's what I'd doing now. Thanks to both of you. :)

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