The Overlord's bid for Superstar status!

Man, the suspense is killing me! When I first learned about Paizo’s American Idol-inspired RPG Superstar contest, I was intrigued but not that interested.

While I have a certain knack for words and things D&D as well as non-professional experience in both department, being a RPG designer/writer was never seriously on my radar (As mentioned before, I make a comfortable enough living writing laboratory procedures and investigation reports).

But when I learned the HE was one of the three judges and that initial entries would be anonymous… Well I just couldn’t miss a chance to pull a fast one on my Nemesis now could I?

So I submitted a 200 words or less SRD-compliant Wondrous Item (Fluff, creation and pricing details included), along with some 850 other applicants, hoping to make the top 32 cut. Initially I wasn’t that nervous, picturing my chances to be close to nil. Mainly because I let a slight typo in my entry.

But then, Necromancer Games‘ Clark Peterson (another judge, along Paizo’s Erik Mona), dropped by the Paizo Forums and dropped that little gem:

“I don’t mind extra fluff text. Well, I take that back. I do mind it when it is overdone. And a bunch of entries have been rejected for being more backstory than item. But that isn’t an auto-reject, that is just bad item design.

However, that doesn’t mean that we (or I) am opposed to flavor text. A line or two is fine. And even that isn’t a hard and fast rule. One of my favorite items we have seen (oh man it is cool; and all three of us love it) has more flavor and descriptive text than I would say is ideal. But the item is so freaking cool I will be shocked if it is not in the top 32. Heck, I’ll be shocked if it wouldn’t be seeded in the top 5 (if we were seeding, which we arent).” (End of citation).

Now the way the human mind works (at least it does in my case), this statement will be taken and analyzed such that a person’s perception of his entry will try to mold itself to fit that comment.

I can’t give you the details of the item as I want to keep my chances open and at least one judge has been known to drop by. I’ll ask Paizo permission to post the item here if it’s rejected or I’ll link to their boards if they ever post it with acceptation/rejection comments (I also gave up all rights to the item by submitting it).

However, my mind keeps telling me that the item fits precisely what Clark was talking about, so my hopes have sky-rocketed since.

While I can’t give details I can still share my design approach:

• I wanted to create an item that would be useful in my campaign, now.
• I also wanted something more in the lines of the Magic Item Compendium (MIC).
  • That meant an item that isn’t all that expansive,
  • With more than one power
  • Usable in a limited manner or a limited number of times a day
• I researched all Wondrous Items of the Dungeon Master Guide and MIC to see if the object existed
• I looked for items with similar powers on which I could base costing and spell needed to create
• I wrote the item’s crunch, including some aggressive costing, making sure that it was worded clearly with as little extra verbiage as possible
  • I ended up attributing 2 SRD class features to the wearer of the item.
    • One Passive
    • One activated on the x/day model
• I wrote the Item’s fluff with the remaining words. I added the item’s description and some setting-neutral info on it’s history and spread of use.
• I edited the whole entry to cut words here and there to make it as close to 200 as possible (I think I ended up at 198)
• I sent the item to Yan for comments (he said ‘cool’!)
• I sent the item to Math’, telling him his character could have the item if he wanted it.
  • He said: “Simple and elegant, doesn’t break anything and remains useful at higher levels. Cool!”

What more can you ask for? I submitted the item. I think that being motivated to create a balanced object my players would want to use right now helped me focus my design.

Hopefully it will be good/cool enough.

Wish me luck, results are due on the 28th of November.