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Some thoughts on round 2.
While the project itself was somewhat limiting to a degree, I fully support Sean's reasoning for the task. Remember, the goal is not to give you, the readers, 32 fun things to read. It is to help Paizo winnow down the best freelancers.
And, to some degree, the second round has historically been one of the hardest to judge. So you really want the submissions to be very comparable to each other. It can't be, for example, "design a monster," because then the votes will slant to the higher CR cooler monster. So the limitation on this round really helped us from a judging perspective.
I also thought we got a tighter grouping of shots, so to speak.
For instance, I really thought there were about 5-6 really strong submissions (ones that I just loved), about 4-5 more very, very good ones, then about 6-8 more that were very good but all lumped together and difficult to distinguish from each other, then the rest were all good--just not quite as good in my view as the rest.
I can say this without reservation: There were NO BAD submissions this round.
In the entire time of Superstar that I've been a judge (all but one year) I don't think I could have said that before. Even the ones at the bottom of my list of personal rankings this year were still pretty darn good, just not as good as the others. And, unfortunately, only 16 get to advance.
So no matter what place you came in, no one needs to hang their head this round this year. This was a well-fought round with really good submissions all around.
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To me, there is a lesson here: BE AWESOME.
Some gripe this is a "popularity contest" just because there is a public vote. I don't agree at all. I have not really seen that in my years judging Superstar.
Each round works about the same:
A small group of submissions are just great and everyone agrees. Popularity is irrelevant. Awesomeness rules the day. This is the group you want to be in.
Then there is a group of really, really good ones, even if not the top few. These ones also usually advance, popularity be damned.
Then there is "the middle"--that group of solid entries that aren't in the top and aren't in the bottom, and that usually include more good entries than there are spots for to advance.
That is pretty much the only real area where popularity comes into play, where the public voting really makes a difference.
Year after year the public vote has tracked, in large part, how the judges view the best submissions and worst submissions. It is the middle where voting comes into play--which of the "other really good ones" make the cut.
But from a design standpoint, no one designs to be in the middle. You design to be in the top. Its either a failure of concept or a failure of execution that gets you in the middle and thus subject to vote (or the bottom, where you are likely not saveable regardless, unless I post a scathing criticism of your submission which has historically proven to be a boon, I'm looking at you Blink Dog Nation, for example).
So you can't really design to take advantage of popularity. Its too much of a crap shoot. You have to shoot for awesome. And that is how it should be.