The Open Call is over, and now it's time for YOU to determine our Top 32! Voting will run until 11:59 PM Pacific time on August 30th, and our Top 32 (and four alternates) will be announced the next day. Voting is handled by presenting two random items side-by-side to a voter, and having the voter select which is better. Over the course of thousands of votes, we'll sort through all the entries and determine which are most popular with the voters. Every couple of days we'll cull the lowest percentage of vote-getting items so they don't keep showing up, which should both keep the voting process more interesting for voters, and give us a better field of final items.
Since we are determining our Top 32 using just the public voting this year, the kind of contest we have is very much up to the fan-base. You can use any metric you wish to determine which items get your votes, but I strongly suggest you include asking yourself "would I want to buy a product written mostly by the designer who created this item?" There's nothing wrong with personal preferences, but remember that at the end of the day, we need someone who can actually write RPG products you want! We're trusting you to find them. We hope you'll take that trust seriously.
As a more specific voting consideration, voters should keep in mind that the official template presented with the Open Call rules didn't provide the BBCode tags to have spells listed as prerequisites be italicized. Since the proper format for such items as presented in the Core Rulebooks (referenced by the Open Call rules) is to italicize spell names, voters shouldn't penalize contestants who did so. Since the formatted entry offered in the open call rules lacked this, voters also shouldn't penalize contestants who didn't italicize spell names in the prerequisites section.
While of our Open Call judges are already looking at many of the entries, their detailed comments on each item wouldn't be put up until we have determined our Top 32. It'll likely take a few days, so we ask fans and contestants to be patient when Round 1 ends. We will get feedback to all our Top 32, it just won't be immediate. Subsequent rounds will function as they have in the past, with judges' comments presented as each voting period opens.
Speaking of subsequent rounds, contestants who want to begin work on round 2 should note that the maps this year are the same scale as Paizo's Flip-Mats, a 24 x 30 square grid with a 1 square = 5 feet scale that represents an encounter area. We'll provide a grid to download before round 2 starts (hopefully later this week). Each map should use the entire grid area in a useful and interesting way, provide all the details a professional cartographer needs to create a complete, engaging, useful encounter map, and should include a compass rose (in all cases) and legend (where appropriate), even though Paizo flip-maps don't normally have either. We don't care if you draw and scan your maps, use mapping software, or draw it within illustration programs, as long as the final entry matches the dpi and scale we'll list in the official rules.
These maps should present encounter areas that makes GMs itch with ideas for interesting challenges to run their players through. In addition to the map's name, each entry may have up to 50 words of prose to help provide context for the map, though this kind of description isn't required. The maps need not be publication quality, and the judges aren't rating maps based on artistic merit. However, the maps do have to be concise, easily understood, and presenting enough details to allow a cartographer to know exactly what the end product of each map is supposed to look like.
There's no specific theme for the map this year, and while the official Round 2 rules (which will be posted prior to Round 2 officially beginning) take precedence over this blog post, we aren't planning any last-minute twists to the rules.
I want to thank everyone involved in this contest for making RPG Superstar Season 9 possible. Obviously the staff and judges are doing in a lot of work over the course of the contest, and the contestants have put their creations out in the public eye, but I want to thank the voters as well. Going over entries, considering their merits, taking the time to vote, and even getting involved on the contest messageboards is often an otherwise thankless task, but without that effort there'd be no point in having a contest. We all appreciate the time and effort our fans put into the contest every year, and we hope you'll all be thrilled by the end result.
Owen K. C. Stephens
Developer and RPG Superstar Host
