Swords & Wizardry Light - Forum

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Announcing The "So You Want to be an OSR Superstar" Competition

I like a good contest. My readers like a good contest. Some of my readers like good contests enough that they even donate prizes and awards and such. So it is with the "So You Want to be an OSR Superstar" Competition.

What the heck is this about?

Real simple - some one suggested we put together a competition allowing fans of the OSR to strut their stuff. They even ponied up cash monies. R H should take the blame and the credit for the underling idea, as well as the seed for the prizes.

The competition will kick off this weekend. It will consist of three rounds.

The first round will seek new and unique magic items for the Swords & Wizardry game. We are using the S&W rules because they are free and can easily be converted to other OSR games or the originals they are based on (and they are my current "go to" ruleset). A panel of judges will pick 8 entries to move forward to the next round. I will not be part of the panel of judges and I will only vote if there is a tie that needs to be broken.

The second round will seek new and unique monster designs. The 8 entries that qualified from the original round will participate in this round. In addition to the panel of judges, there will be community voting. The community voting ranking will be the equivalent of a judge's vote in the tally of votes.

The final round will consist of an incomplete dungeon level drawn by one of our premier OSR dungeon artists. The finalists will need to complete the map in their own fashion. Their magic item and monster design will need to be included somewhere in their dungeon level. Again, the community will help vote on the entries.

Prizes for the first round will consist of $10 RPGNow Gift Certificates donated by The Tavern. 8 in all.

Prizes for the second round will consist of $25 via paypal donated by our own +Rob Conley . 4 prizes in all.

The grand prize will consist of $250 via paypal donated by RH as well as the OD&D Reprint Box that was recently released (I'll be donating the reprint. International shipping will be deducted from the $250 - so yes, the competition is open to all).

All entries will be posted here at Tenkar's Tavern. All entries will be considered as entered under the OGL. Any and all entries may be compiled by Tenkar's Tavern or one of our friendly helpers into free PDF(s) available to the community. Entrants retain all rights and authorship to their work, except as modified by the OGL and stated here.

So, this shit kicks off this weekend.

The first round will be open for entries for a week. The judging will take approximately a week, maybe more depending on the number of entries. The first round of entries will be posted to the blog in the they come in, in groups of 5 or 10 (depending on the number of entries) after the entry period has closed.





26 comments:

  1. Wow. You are going to get some incredible entries with prizes of that caliber... this is fantastic. Bravo for such an ambitious contest!

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    1. As usual, the idea was not mine, but from a member of our community. Well, as was the seed money for the big prize.

      This really is an amazing community to be a part of :)

      Delete
  2. I apologize if I've missed this, but how do we submit our magic item? On the form to the right of your blog?

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    1. the competition will go live this weekend

      there will be a specific email address to send you entries to

      Delete
  3. Multiple entries per author? Or just one?

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    1. I'm probably going to limit entries to 2 per author

      i'll finalize the number when the competition goes live

      Delete
  4. If there's enough entries, it would be nice to see some runner-ups/backups/something do some monsters. 8 monsters seems a little sparse to me - I realize that's the number of prizes available, which is why I'm thinking runners-up or something (there's a word but I'm not thinking of it right now).

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. I just can't get that stupid SNL skit out of my head.

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  7. Cool! (Starts digging through old game notes...)

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  8. Erik, I think Frog God Games can probably give a couple of 10% off certificates as a kicker for the people who win money, plus to create a couple of runner-up prizes. I think these things are MUCH more attractive if it's not all-or-nothing. How about if we give out 1 20% discount coupon, 5 that are 10% off, and 10 that are 5% off, to create some runner-up prizes? Bill is on vacation, so I can only offer discounts as opposed to actual free stuff, but I can authorize that. There ought to be runner-up prizes.

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    1. Matt, very generous.

      I'll reach out to you this weekend and we will figure out the details

      Delete
    2. I think I can probably improve the discounts, but I'm going to do a final confirm with Bill before I sweeten the pot. Since he'll probably be drinking mai-tais on a beach in Maui or something, he'll probably agree.

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  9. Does it matter which iteration of S&W? (Daft sort of question I know, but I want to check anyway.)

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  10. I would donate something to this but I also want to enter and my intergity would not allow me to enter if I was one of the prize givers. So ... I shall see the other designers in the fields of war! Friendly, war, where we are all supportive of each other for the good of the OSR Community!

    Someone at work gave me a Red Bull!

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  11. Hell yeah, this is great! I am definitely going to try to come up with something cool for this.

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  12. Is it permitted to stat up something that you invented a while ago?

    I ask because I have several magic items that I've blogged about.

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  13. Hi, May I add a prize to the pool? Use it wherever you deem it best, but I'll donate one or two copies of Yarr Pirate ArrrPG complete bundle: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/125795/Yarr-Complete-%5BBUNDLE%5D

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    1. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/125795/Yarr-Complete
      Maybe this one works...

      Delete