We Must Retain the Gauntlet!

Last year, the Paizo Inc. team defeated our opponents to emerge victorious in the first-ever Gauntlet competition! A team consisting of Paizo Publisher Erik Mona, Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn, Designer Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Project Manager Jessica Price competed against nine other game companies in a series of tabletop board game and trivia challenges. With a great deal of skill and more than a little luck, we managed to win the whole thing, and we'd like to do it again with your help!

More important that the competition is the fact that the Gauntlet Tournament is a major game industry charity event, with each team raising pledges of support from their fans in the form of donations to Hopelink, a great charity that helps homeless and disadvantaged families.

That's where YOU come in.

The more charitable donations raised by Paizo's team, the more "power-ups" we'll receive during the competition, making it more likely that we will be able to defend our champion status. 

You can donate to our team by making a pledge on the personal pages of one or all of us.

http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/team/Paizo
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/jason-bulmahn
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/erik-mona
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/jessica-price
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/stephen-radneymacfarland

The Champion's Gauntlet Dungeon

To celebrate the Gauntlet Tournament and as a "thank you" to generous donors, the Paizo team will write and produce a very special Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure: "The Champion's Gauntlet." With trap-laden rooms written by Erik Mona, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Jessica Price, "The Champion's Gauntlet" dungeon will be filled with the most devious and flat-out awesome dungeon challenges our team of RPG professionals can concoct.

If you pledge $20 or more to any team member, you'll get access to a PDF of this adventure later this summer (you must use the same email address on the donation site here as you do on paizo.com to qualify). If you need to update your email address, you may do so on your Personal Settings page.

As of right now, this will be the only way to get your hands on this exclusive adventure! To sweeten the deal, the dungeon will grow larger and larger as the team raises more and more money. Here is how it will work.

Regardless of how much money we raise, all four team members will each design one room for the dungeon. Depending on how much the Paizo team raises, each team member will design more rooms.

Team Total     Rooms Per Member
$1,000                   2
$2,000                   3
$3,000                   4
$5,000                   5
$8,000                   6
$12,000                7

In addition, each team member has personal goals. Check out their individual pledge pages for details on some of the great thank-you rewards you can score.

The fundraising ends at noon on May 17th, with the tournament happening that afternoon at the Mox Boarding House in Bellevue, WA. Donate today and if you are in the area on the 17th, stop by to cheer on our team. You can donate through any of the following links!

Erik Mona's Personal Rewards

As a personal thank-you to supporters who pledge directly through my page, I'm offering a number of unique items and one very special opportunity to take a look inside a Pathfinder RPG campaign consisting of prominent Paizo game designers and staff. 

Here are my pledge levels. Donors who qualify for one level automatically receive the pledge benefits of previous levels.

$20: Ostog the Unslain Sticker

Donors who pledge at least $20 will receive a limited edition Ostog the Unslain sticker mailed to the address associated with your paizo.com account. Additionally, you'll receive a unique "thank you" letter signed by Erik Mona, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Jessica Price.

$50: Ostog the Unslain Character Sheet

Donors who pledge at least $50 will also receive a double-sided cardstock copy of the official Ostog the Unslain character sheet, complete with margin notes, random scribbles, and probably a bunch of exciting rules mistakes for you to discover. Ostog is my semi-famous Pathfinder RPG barbarian who survived more than 50 sessions of James Jacob's official Paizo office campaign, "Shadows Under Sandpoint." Ostog managed to survive the whole campaign without dying, and without wearing a scrap of armor, as bare-chested as the day he was born. Now he can be yours.

$75: Signed Comic Book

Donors who pledge at least $75 will also receive an autographed copy of Pathfinder Origins #1, my first full-issue comic! Pathfinder Origins #1 tells the story of the first meeting between Pathfinder iconic characters Valeros and Amiri, and contains a short RPG appendix containing an original encounter and poster map. Your copy will come with a signature from yours truly. I'll also write pretty much whatever inscription you'd like.

$100: Paizo Staff Goblin

Donors who pledge at least $100 will receive a Pathfinder Goblin Vinyl Bank autographed by the Paizo editorial staff. This amazing goblin statue stands about 8 inches tall, and is the closest we've yet come to creating a life-sized goblin. And he'll look just adorable with all of our names scribbled over him, I assure you.

A Note on Non-US Shipping

Unfortunately, very high and unpredictable international shipping rates mean that the rewards listed above can only be fulfilled to United States donors. However, if you really want some of this stuff and are willing to pledge $100, I will send it to you at my own expense no matter where you live, because I am humbled by your generosity. I hope you understand.

The Big Prize: Kings of Absalom

Over the last several years, I've been recording all of my personal Pathfinder RPG sessions. That's left me with a vast trove of hours and hours of entertaining game sessions starring some of my best friends, luminaries in the Pathfinder and RPG communities. Turning these raw recordings into something useful and interesting to the general gaming public is a relatively enormous effort for a guy who also runs a publishing company, so I've been putting it off for years.

If you can help me raise $2000 for this effort, I will produce an "actual play" podcast of the first several hours of my KINGS OF ABSALOM Pathfinder RPG Paizo office campaign. The campaign takes place deep below the sprawling city of Absalom, and features the following players:

James Jacobs, Creative Director
F. Wesley Schneider, Editor-in-Chief
James L. Sutter, Executive Editor
Rob McCreary, Lead Developer
Jeffrey Alvarez, Director of Operations

The campaign is my 100% original design, and though I've run several different groups through the first "chapter," it has never before been seen or heard by the general public. Helping me to hit my personal fundraising goal of $2000 will help to encourage me that there is interest in this material, and may lead to additional released recordings down the road.

Thank you for supporting Paizo's team in this year's Gauntlet Tournament! We will do our best to bring home the Gauntlet again this year. 

With your help, we're already a long way toward that goal!

Sincerely,

Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Inc.


Welcome to my Gauntlet 2015 fundraising campaign!
I’m excited to help raise money for Hopelink, a local charity supporting low-income families and the homeless on their way to self-sufficiency.  ENGAGE - Card Kingdom and Mox Boarding House’s charitable giving program, is hosting a table top gaming tournament and fundraiser called The Gauntlet: Moxtropolis on May 16th! Help me support this amazing charity, and earn valuable "Power-Ups" during the tournament,  by donating to my campaign.  Just click the "Make a Donation" button to the right to get started!