Game Design Tips from the Paizo RPG Superstar Contest

This year’s RPG Superstar contest from Paizo Publishing has been over for a few months, but there has been some discussion ever since.  If you haven’t followed it, the contest was divided into several phases: An open contest where anyone could submit a wondrous item.  From there, 32 winners designed a villian’s backstory, then 16 winners designed a villian’s stats, 8 winners from that round designed villian’s lair, and finally 4 winners pitched an adventure.  The winner of the final round was the RPG Superstar.

During each round except the open “design a wondrous item” round judges provided feedback on each entry and the winners for the round were determined through voting.  The opening round’s 32 winners were determined by the judges.  Only the feedback on the winning 32 entries of the “design a wondrous item” round were revealed.  But ever since the opening round ended one of the judges has been providing feedback when requested.  More on that later.

The wondrous items from the 2008 contest caused the judges to provide some general feedback on the wondrous items. Some examples are: Teh Item o Typoes, The Swiss Army Knife Item, The Silly Cliche Item, The “+6 Sword” (the item that is simply “one louder” than an item that already exists), and The Deeply Disturbing Evil Item That No Hero Wants, and That Makes Even Villains Hesitate.  More are listed at the prior link.

One judge (Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games) offered to pass along feedback to the people whose entries weren’t one of the 32 winners.  He did it last year also.  He isn’t posting the feedback verbatim–just the general constructive criticism from the judge’s.  He’s also being careful not to post anything too insensitive, but people still need to be prepared for criticism if they want feedback.

From reading the judges’ comments on this year’s items, here are some additional lessons learned (all of which can be apply to RPG design concepts beyond wondrous items):

• Don’t try to make something large and complex (a different magic system, a prestige class) into a magic item.
• Consider if there is a simpler item or spell that does the same thing as your magic item. (You can expand this concept to non-magic items, such as: don’t create a new prestige class ability when there is a matching feat.)
• Magic Items should not give out class abilities. (Many RPG designers feel that can make some classes less useful and ruin party composition.)
• One has to consider how others will use the item, not just how you intend the item to be used. Write up a description, then come back to it a day later with a fresh perspective. Brainstorm other ways the item may be used.

Note that there can be exceptions to the above guidelines.  Someone may be able to write an item that matches one of the problems above, but that person might do it just right that they thread the needle and have an excellent new item or other RPG game concept.

Mr. Peterson still has a long list of items that need public critiques.  He seems to be going through them in spurts.  Hopefully he’ll have time for more reviews soon.

In the interest of full disclosure, I entered last year and wasn’t one of the 32 winners.  Maybe I’ll note my item and what I learned in another essay.