Just half a year ago, you witnessed the crowning of Kobold Quarterly’s first ever King of the Monsters: the spark and its designer Adam Daigle took on all comers and stood victorious. However, Monster Island is a dangerous place, and its rulers never last long…

Behold the King of the Monsters Contest, the greatest and most glorious contest ever! Welcome to Kobold Quarterly’s second semiannual tournament of monster design where you, the fans, test your skills by designing amazing monsters that are evaluated by a panel of industry professionals and by the fans themselves, all for fame and prizes! It’s easy to enter the arena: you simply design a monster and submit it in.

Here’s how it works: To enter the contest, your monster submission MUST…

• Be sent to the King of the Monsters Contest—that is, to kotm2(at)koboldquarterly(dot)com—no later than Friday, August 13th, by noon PST. (That’s only 3-1/2 weeks from now! It’s a little longer than last time, but we wanted to give Gen Con goers a little extra time.)
• Be submitted as a doc, docx, or rtf attachment.
• Read KotM2 Submission [insert monster name] in the email’s subject line. Your full name and contact information should be in the body of the email (not in your attachment).
• Be designed for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game/3rd Edition D&D or for 4th Edition D&D.
• Be 800 words or less and contain 1 full statblock (no more, no less) and the appropriate flavor text and lore to flesh out your creation. (You should look to previously published Monday Monsters for insight about format and content. The splicer beast and Xaldraxis are good examples.)

We are looking for monsters of all kinds and all levels. Even a CR 1/4 Small reptilian humanoid can rise to be king!

Judging
All submissions that meet the criteria will be entered in the contest and be judged by us, the Kobolds, and our guest judges on originality, effective writing and design, and “fun.” The 10 best monsters will be published here on koboldquarterly.com and be voted on by the public. Of those 10 monsters, the one with the winning votes will be crowned King of the Monsters in September 2010.

So who’s judging? You already know the first two judges, Kobold Quarterly’s very own Wolfgang Baur and Scott Gable. And as a gesture of good will from the seated champion to his replacement, none other than Adam Daigle!

Adam Daigle bore the weight of the King of Monsters crown for half a year. However crowns are destined to move from one head to another, so he must bid it goodbye that it might rest upon the deserving pate of a new crafter of critters. Adam’s delight in designing monsters fueled the creation of a race of fiends called divs for the Pathfinder Adventure Path Legacy of Fire and dozens of other fantastic creatures for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary and Bestiary II.

But who else, you ask? Celebrity judges, you say? Why, none other than Jason Bulmahn and Logan Bonner.

Jason Bulmahn is the Lead Designer of Paizo Publishing, LLC. After having coordinated Living Greyhawk, the world’s largest D&D organized play campaign for the RPGA, Bulmahn joined Paizo Publishing as the Managing Editor of Dragon magazine in 2004. Since then, Jason has published dozens of articles and adventures in Dragon and Dungeon magazines. His RPG design credits include Dungeonscape, Elder Evils, Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer, Secrets of Xen’drik, and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. His work has earned an Origins Award and nine ENnie Awards.

Logan Bonner lives on the pain his creations foster. As a designer (and occasionally a developer and editor) at Wizards of the Coast, Logan Bonner created classes, monsters, and adventures for products ranging from Player’s Handbook 2 to Monster Vault to The Slaying Stone. Now, he’s a design mercenary, navigating the twisting alliances and precarious back-room politics of the game industry.

Prizes for the King
As the king, the winning monster will have its portrait commissioned and be published in Kobold Quarterly #15 (Fall Edition). In addition, its designer will receive a free print and PDF copy of their choice of the Zobeck Gazetteers. It’s good to be the king.

Additional Rules
1. The contest is open to all.
2. One entry per person. The entry must be your own work, which has not been published previously, is not being considered for publication by any other publisher, and is original and does not infringe upon any copyrighted material.
2. All entries become property of Open Design.
4. By entering this contest, you authorize the use of your name and likeness without additional compensation for promotion and advertising purposes in all media.
5. This contest is subject to federal, state, and local laws where applicable.
6. Open Design reserves the right to withdraw or terminate this contest at any time without prior notice.
7. All decisions of Open Design and the contest judges are final.