Starting this weekend, +Erik Tenkar of the famous Tenkar’s Tavern will begin a 3+ weeklong contest that will pit OSR designers from across the globe (and maybe beyond?) in a contest of wits and design for a truly magnificent prize. I will be taking part in this (hopefully annual) contest in my bid to win the grand prize and reach the top of Mount Midoriyama! Wait … wrong contest.
From Tenkers:
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.
To sweeten the deal Mythmere/Frog God +Matt Finch has thrown in his support to the contest offering coupons at various stages of the competition in the order of 5% to 20% off Frog God products (note the last is assumed based on his blog post)
So let us all throw our support behind the various creators and designers of the OSR community during this most awesome of contests!
