The preparation for this year's tournament has been incredibly fun.  As we compile everything, assign responsiblities and tweak everything, we realize how mature this tournament has gotten over the last three years.  It seemed like a daunting task when we first conceived it.  We wanted a world where everyone existed, but did not hurt the "play" experience.  In other words, when you are playing a game of dungeons and dragons, we wanted you to know that what the other parties do matter, but not disrupt your game so that you're level 11 being attacked by a Tarasque because some jerk DM at another table summoned it.

Since, we have stuck with the storyline.

The first adventure was a prequel, with the PCs exploring lost relics of an ancient civilization.

The second adventure, the 1st, had the PCs dealing with the consequences at the end of that adventure, and battling a creature the 1st adventure folk released called the Zerstorer.

This adventure, our Empire Strikes Back, is a fairly dark adventure, dealing with the pyramid that arrived after the Zerstorer's destruction last year.

It rewards longtime fans and is built to be inclusive to new fans.  This year, we will have several narators to catch everyone up on the story and abreast people of new developments over the course of the adventure.

We'll also have a bit more controlled player versus player interaction.  Which we think everyone will enjoy.

Now, on to the big announcements.

1. The Level for this years IPT 2010, is going to be Level 7.  All Paizo produced products are available for to create characters from, this includes the new Advanced Players Handbook.  Your starting gold is 23,500 gp. The tournament requires that you use official IPT character sheets. So you will still have to transfer your character to the character sheet. 

Note, there will be other secret "criteria" (to be revealed at the tournament)  that you will have to add to your character. So do not create such a character that it can not be altered. 

2. We are allowing players to use several supplements by our sponsor, LJP Designs.  These supplements can be purchased and downloaded at http://www.rpgnow.com/index.php?cPath=1308&skip=20. 

These are the only 3rd party supplements we will allow.  These supplements are not neccessary but may be used for feat and item options for your character.Any other supplements will be discounted as cheating and you will be disqualified. 

LJP Supplements Allowed

• Arsenal of Arcane Might
• Black Powder Weaponry (Preview)
• UndeFEATable Books 1-20

It feels very good to be done with all handouts, creatures, and adventure modules for the tournament.  This year we're promising an event bigger and more fun than the last few combined.

The one thing that snagged us in the latter part of the design phase was again, what to do with death. Last year we went 1st edition evil and though it was  realistic to die and have to make a new character, it was too time encumbersome.  The previous years we tried stat penalties and such, which worked but we wanted to do more.

This year, we're having a no death zone until the last act. You will be maimed, you will be dismembered, you will even be knocked mentally ill, but you will not die.  Instead you'll receive mechanical and role-playing challenges that will exist throughout the entire tournament.

Playtesting it, it was smooth, fun and kept hte since of realism without wasting your time.

We only have 1 week until pregencon registration is over, so sign up for Iron Player touranments if you havn't already. We've listed all of them in the About page.

Recently, we added 2 hour smaller events of our large tournament for the DM Gauntlet and Iron Player Tournament. So if you don't have a lot of time, sign up for a challenge.