Even with judge voting, sometimes it depends on which judge sees your item first and what mood that judge was in. If the first judge to see your item completely loves it or hates it, it'll naturally make the other judges more timid to express the opposite viewpoint.
The perils of mankind's tendency towards groupthink. :(
Even with judge voting, sometimes it depends on which judge sees your item first and what mood that judge was in. If the first judge to see your item completely loves it or hates it, it'll naturally make the other judges more timid to express the opposite viewpoint.
Yea, with public voting there's just no algorithm to account for personal taste when determine whats "best".
I've been saying these things about this competition for years. It is nice to see a judge finally admit this on the forums. To break into the first round, your item has to be good, but you also need a good deal of luck to see that the current judges and their particular tastes on that day favor your item over the other good entries.
I'd have to go back and recount, but it was something like only 7 out of the top 32 last year had unanimous keeps from all judges. The others had at least one dissenting judge that wanted to reject the item. There is an amount of subjectivity when judging game material. A different set of judges, or even just a different time frame might affect the items that get picked. There is no magic bullet in creative endeavors that trumps all personal preference.
Even with judge voting, sometimes it depends on which judge sees your item first and what mood that judge was in. If the first judge to see your item completely loves it or hates it, it'll naturally make the other judges more timid to express the opposite viewpoint.The perils of mankind's tendency towards groupthink. :(
Lemmings can be seen as individualists compared to us at times...
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Even with judge voting, sometimes it depends on which judge sees your item first and what mood that judge was in. If the first judge to see your item completely loves it or hates it, it'll naturally make the other judges more timid to express the opposite viewpoint.The perils of mankind's tendency towards groupthink. :(
Fortunately, if we look back over previous Top 32, we can clearly see that judges are opinionated people who will happily disagree (just like our fans!). But some degree of groupthink is natural in the process, and even without groupthink, especially in the pre-vote years, what I learned from reading the feedback threads (and seeing that sometimes there was only one judge's feedback) was that there wasn't enough time for every judge to see every item, so sometimes an item was nixed in those years by a single judge who really disliked it when maybe another might have thought it was cool.
For better or for worse, I hereby solemnly pledge that my initial opinion of no item will be influenced by groupthink
RPG Superstar 2015
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka mamaursula
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My item did not make the Cull either. I will not lie. It IS disheartening, even though I utterly never expected it to make top32 (though I had some hope for top100, not having seen critiques that seemed aimed at it).
At the very least, I expected to make the Cull.
That said, I obviously did not expect the Cull to be so wide.
And I think that is a mistake.
Right, now, I do not feel like trying my chance again. I do not even feel like keeping on voting. It all seems empty.
If other would-be designers, far more gifted than I am, feel the same way, then that is a bad thing for the industry.
So, I feel that keeping the Cull to the lesser 25% would have been wiser.
So that 250 more would-be designers could feel that they have at least succeeded at surviving the Cull.
I know that I have seen many of the items on my Keep list lost to the Cull. Especially the humorous ones.
I fervently hope that the designers of these items will post on the Critique my item thread so that I can at last tell them how wonderful their creation was to me.
I will likely put my item there too, together with the many reasons I guess at for not making it through the Cull.
Sorry for the down note guys, but I needed to speak my heart on this.
Making a deep cull is important to get the best items up against one another to find that Top 100. It is very disheartening to know that your item didn't wow the voters as much as you had hoped it would. Next Wednesday is the day that the 850+ of us who didn't get called up to the Top 32 get to tell each other what we loved about each other's items and we look at how we can be better next time. This is an incredibly supportive and beautiful community. You will get a lot of great advice and really listening to it, really taking into yourself and realizing that it's only going to make you a stronger designer is going to make you a stronger designer. And PLEASE look at what is being said about the other items too, even the ones you liked.
I am married to Andrew Marlowe (locke1520) and I have watched him enter this contest 7 times and reach the Top 32 twice. He heard some very painful things about how he designs and writes things (a lot of it from me, I'm kind of mean.) I have made friends with several of the Top 32 those years and they continue to improve too.
It's okay to be disappointed, but don't let it cause you to walk away. Take some time, have a great weekend and come back refreshed. Entering RPG Superstar is a humbling experience. No one gets through it without hearing something stinging and critical. Part of the contest is to see how you deal with that rejection. So shake it off, we still like you!
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The perils of mankind's tendency towards groupthink. :(Lemmings can be seen as individualists compared to us at times...
I think you're both forgetting:
The Metatheorem of Gamer Argumentativeness
In a standard RPG table of four players and one GM, the number of opinions can be mathematically demonstrated to be equal to L, where L equals "more opinions than can be mathematically demonstrated to be held between five people ostensibly playing the same game."
While this metatheorem has not been formally generalized to other table sizes (owing to vehement disagreement among gamerticians over the metatheorem's definition of a standard table), I am confident it will be.
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I hope everyone here who is feeling the gut punch, does not dwell on this for too long. I am glad so many of you are remembering the realities of this enjoyable, entertaining, and friendly competition.
Close to 1000 entries...and we have to find the top 32? The cull still barely makes it manageable!
Narrowing down entries like this, of course some great entries will be missed.
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Looks like my item didn't make it through the cull either. I plan to post it for critique at the appropriate time. And if I get flamed badly, at least I can learn what not to do next year. Negative feedback is better than zero feedback.
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Looks like my item didn't make it through the cull either. I plan to post it for critique at the appropriate time. And if I get flamed badly, at least I can learn what not to do next year. Negative feedback is better than zero feedback.
That's how you win
Negative feedback is better than zero feedback.
Honestly, this is very true. It's really tough putting out something and having no idea if anyone's even looking at it, much less what they think.
Looks like my item didn't make it through the cull either. I plan to post it for critique at the appropriate time. And if I get flamed badly, at least I can learn what not to do next year. Negative feedback is better than zero feedback.
I would highly recommend trying to provide critique for every item in that thread. It will be a huge learning experience.
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RPG Superstar 2015
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka mamaursula
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If we get selected are we barred from critiquing other items? I suppose it could be seen as currying favor. In that case I would promise to review as last year when the gag order is rescinded and then save the reviews in txt file format, ready to go! :)I'm 100% looking forward to critiques. Can't come soon enough.I'm hoping to not do any because of the gag order, but if I am not gagged I will do my usual good, bad, and ugly routine
You can talk about other people's stuff, but if you're in the Top 32, you're going to be busy. As the spouse of a Top 32, I even tried to keep it on the down low, which you know for me is like a life sentence in isolation. You need to be careful because it's really easy to get drawn in and want to say things that could come back to bite you in the butt. A couple years ago there was a contestant who DQ'd himself because he just could not keep his mouth shut. So, if you're in, you're in and you need to play it close to the vest.
There was a comment about the voters taste. Remember that the winning 32 +2ish alternates are selected by the judges, who select their lists from the top pool of of up voted items.
So if there is 352 post-cull items, I suspect the judges will look at least at the top quarter of the list (88 items) to make their lists and compare that with the other judges selections
Additionally, in the past, each judge had a golden ticket that would make one of their favorite items one of the 32. This means that there were items that made the top 32 that werent the top 32 up voted items.
I'm super happy about making the cull, but there are still over three hundred items being cut to 100, and then to just 32. So only 10% of the cull survivors will advance to the next round. Those are humbling odds... so I'll stay humble.
Developer
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Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
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I caught up with this thread this evening before I left work (and went upstairs to play in Rob's Mummy's Mask campaign), but I didn't have time to respond.
One of the things that was going through my mind was something I heard a while back from Ira Glass talking about starting off working in a creative field. It was part of a longer piece on storytelling, but here's a clever typography video of the important excerpt that kept running through my mind.
If this is something you really want to do, please, keep working. That's the most important thing. There are more ideas out there than actual finished work. If you want to make things, make things. Don't psych yourself out.
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Adam, I love that Ira Glass speech! I also highly recommend Stephen McCranie's Brick By Brick graphic novel. It is a comic that discusses how to be a creator. While the focus is a bit more on visual art, it's easy to expand it to encompass any creative field. The majority of it is available for free online.
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is an open call for designers to contribute items to Flying Crab Games for an as yet untitled tome of magic items...
is an open call for designers to contribute items to Flying Crab Games for an as yet untitled tome of magic items...
Oh, gee. They are going to get a ton of interest from this forum. It looks like the have about 8 PDF products. Has anyone worked with these guys before? I might see if they would be interested in my 30+ magic items I have created for possible RPGSS entries.
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Hrm, am I surprised I was hit by the cull? Certainly. Am I disappointed? Yes, sure. But you know what, this is still important. In most cases negative feedback is much more useful than the positive side of things. It means that what I've created is less than stellar and needs more than just some work. It means I need to rethink how I design, and, perhaps, that's just the kind of thing I need.
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Having just caught up with this thread, I will offer my opinion. I find myself happy that a deeper cull happened this year.
I agree that it might be better to do two culls at the 1/3 and 2/3 completed part.
In the ideal world I would love to see a pool of 1000 entrants cut to about 600 in the first cull and 300 in the second. The truth is that in all honesty if an entry does not make say top 200 I would find it hard to believe that it could make top 32.
I do completely understand holiday constraints however and would prefer a single deeper cull over a single shallower cull. The fact is that while this contest is a job interview, I also find it incredibly valuable for its communities giving nature. To me the fact is that the single greatest thing the majority of contestants will receive is the feedback in the critique my item thread and the impetus that the community here offers to improve, while remaining helpful and constructive.
The above is just my opinion of course.
Hmmm. I think Eric's got a good point there, especially with the critique thread detracting from the Top 32, though I think the nature of how you send that email out -- considering the anonymous nature of the submissions -- could be tricky.
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RPG Superstar 2015
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka mamaursula
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Notifying that many people that their item has been culled is a lot of work that Paizo likely doesn't have the man hours to perform. This is a contest, as with any other contest, you don't if you won until you know who won. Doing anything else is disruptive to the process and makes the announcement of the Top 32 anti-climatic. I don't think that any suggestion to change the process from "Enter your item by this day," "vote until that day," "Announce the contestants" to anything else is productive or in keeping with the contest nature of RPGSS.
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Technically, we only know who was culled by working amongst ourselves and compiling data. Paizo does none of that. They keep it anonymous from day one till the Top 32 are decided upon. Anything else breaks the anonymity to the judges at least a little.
Eric's suggestion has merit.
I agree with mamaursala it puts an unknown amount of work on Paizo folks that would need to be accounted for. They do not send email to any but the top 32 (+alts) even now. I also agree with Jacob, & I think the Top 32 announcement does get overshadowed by the C-M-I thread. Especially now that we are not getting the professional's critiques anymore. I've said before I would like the critique to be opened after R2 voting closes or later in the contest as interest starts to wane.
Would it be anti-climatic to do it pre-announcement? Maybe, but it is not a given and could be explored.
Emailing (or paizo-messaging) culled participants would be trivial from a technical standpoint, since the database obviously knows which entries are culled and who they belong to. The time involved would be writing up the message to send out and coding a simple script to send it.
But I'm not sure it's a good idea to do it. Or at least not to allow CMI before the top 32 are revealed. I have a feeling that discussing specific items in specific ways would affect the way people voted on the remaining items, and could easily lead to different winners.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16
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Dedicated Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka Rusty Ironpants
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Notifying that many people that their item has been culled is a lot of work that Paizo likely doesn't have the man hours to perform.
This is the type of activity that is a prime candidate for automation. When an item is marked as culled/removed from the voting pool, the system could generate a form letter email informing the person their item was culled. Given a reasonable database design this would be relatively easy to develope before/between the contest periods. Then during the contest itself there would be literally no extra work.
Edit:ninja'd by 5 minutes! that what I get for watching tv and trying to post at the same time.
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The contest is supposed to be about find the next RPG Superstar, and suggesting that more attention be paid to those who don't advance, whether by reducing the size of the cull or giving early notice to those who don't advance, is losing sight of the purpose of things, IMO. And totally unnecessary.
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RPG Superstar 2015
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka mamaursula
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Emailing (or paizo-messaging) culled participants would be trivial from a technical standpoint, since the database obviously knows which entries are culled and who they belong to. The time involved would be writing up the message to send out and coding a simple script to send it.
But I'm not sure it's a good idea to do it. Or at least not to allow CMI before the top 32 are revealed. I have a feeling that discussing specific items in specific ways would affect the way people voted on the remaining items, and could easily lead to different winners.
Again, that breaks anonymity of the contest, which is not the point of entering the contest anonymously. 500 emails go out that you have been culled, but the judges decide that there is a Golden Ticket among the culled, suddenly the automated emails have ruined that person's chances of being in the contest. Seriously, this is a bad idea.
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RPG Superstar 2015
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka mamaursula
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The contest is supposed to be about find the next RPG Superstar, and suggesting that more attention be paid to those who don't advance, whether by reducing the size of the cull or giving early notice to those who don't advance, is losing sight of the purpose of things, IMO. And totally unnecessary.
Thank you, this is not RPG Also Ran.
The contest is supposed to be about find the next RPG Superstar, and suggesting that more attention be paid to those who don't advance, whether by reducing the size of the cull or giving early notice to those who don't advance, is losing sight of the purpose of things, IMO. And totally unnecessary.Thank you, this is not RPG Also Ran.
*Nod*
There is a time and a place for recognizing everyone and bolstering people along their paths, and it is wonderful.
This contest however gives what is in my opinion a very small taste of the "Real" world.
Timelines are demanding, bars are high, and criticism fly's. All of this happens in every job or career you have unless you are one of the very few lucky enough to be wealthy or extraordinarily talented enough to avoid it.
I usually am all about helping people and building people up, but honestly I will just repeat here what I was told once when I was a child, and I brought home a "Participation" trophy.
"In the real world Participation and Effort mean nothing, only success. That's why they call the best winners. Do better."
Then they showed me how. The kindest thing that can be done for anyone attempting to improve is to be brutally honest about any areas in which they can improve. Coddling benefits neither them nor you.
.. the judges decide that there is a Golden Ticket among the culled
the judges probably look at less than 200 items now that the voting system is in place. As most of them do have lives outside of the contest. Clark has mentioned how much time the judges had to dedicated when they were the only ones processing the entries.
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the judges probably look at less than 200 items now that the voting system is in place. As most of them do have lives outside of the contest. Clark has mentioned how much time the judges had to dedicated when they were the only ones processing the entries.
.. the judges decide that there is a Golden Ticket among the culled
One of the judges actually already stated that he's read every single entry and 7 of his top 40 were culled. I'm continually impressed by how invested all the judges are in this contest.
Looks like my item was culled.
I'm really sad about that. :(
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The contest is supposed to be about find the next RPG Superstar…
[Emphasis mine]
I would agree that the contest is called Roleplaying Game Superstar, beyond that what the contest means to each person, or what it is supposed to mean are up for debate. I don't think that every person who submits an item does so in the belief that they have "what it takes" to be THE "Superstar". I don't think I could conceive of all the reasons the 800+ entrants had for submitting their item. Nor do I agree that the competition is a "job interview". Many highly motivated freelancers and soon-to-be freelancers make much of the competition as a high road to freelancing for Paizo and other 3PPs - take not of Frank Gori/GM_Solspirals comments about hiring direct from these threads or Adam Daigle's or Mark Seifter's ( both Paizo designers) advice to freelancers in this very thread, which seems to have morphed from a wake for culled items to "where can your creativity take you?" - which is great by the way.
and suggesting that more attention be paid to those who don't advance, whether by reducing the size of the cull or giving early notice to those who don't advance, is losing sight of the purpose of things, IMO. And totally unnecessary.
[Emphasis mine]
I would disagree again. As Eric Morton has noted, the purpose of things as far as the numerous and not just vocal posters on previous years competitions is manifold. And given the propensity for there to be a thread ["So far I've seen"] shadow-critiquing items by code and smoke and mirrors, and a corollary thread post Round 1 reveal to allow designers to have those critiques either quashed or justified ["Critique my item"] then it is quite clear to me that this competition serves more than just the titular function. And to my mind, this is more than a "competition" or "job interview" or even an exercise in creativity. It is a community event. That Paizo has created, and pretty much left to the community to moderate within its own need-framework.
I do agree that the ginormous CMI thread could overshadow the Top 32, but only for those that actually pay attention to them - I never have, being more interested in critiquing the Top 32 - in part because they have been "officially selected" but also to pass comment on the reasons why these particular items were chosen by the judges, and what those reasons might tells about the design mindset of the judges and the direction of the game we all play.
Staying off the OP which was cute but a little twee and overly dramatic, I agree that:
* changing the timing of the competition might help Paizo staff to make a better cull, whether that be by time or number or quality or whatever math does when it is intersecting all three of those combinations times by human error and butterflies on the other side of the world.
* this cull seems to have worked remarkably well as far as some of the big voters are concerned - the quality has improved dramatically.
* this does not mean some great items were not culled.
* my item may…. not have been….ok….was not…. one of these great items
* I do think that one big cull is ok, because even if you survived a lesser cull, and then another lesser cull, eventually your item, no matter how good it is will be paired up against another item a particular voter will like better. And if your item is not magnificent, it will slide inexorably down anyway. Surviving the cull is like prolonging the inevitable for many items.
* Do not forget ever that the random algorithmic voted analysis is n o substitute for your own personal opinion and honest appraisal of your item. It is nice to be lauded and have reassurance of "success" but then looking at popular culture "success" does not equal rigor, greatness or consistency.
* Do also remember that round 1 has ever been a crap shoot and very random, and that this year, even more crapshooty and random given the mix in item types that will necessarily pair up with other item types. Being paired with an item of the same type could be just as randomly bad/good as being paired with an item of a different type. Which could be completely differently viewed by the very next voter, or the same voter later/earlier after less/more coffee/yoga/alcohol/sleep/wotevs.
* Then again, as random as Round 1, that doesn't explain how there are some folks who make it to Round 1 (and/or beyond) multiple times.
* Unless someone mentioned voting blocks and collaborative pit crews. :)
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But do you know what I really really want? Just a little thing in the top..oh, I dunno, right or left hand corner (or central if it will cause less deviation in "oh shux, when faced with two equally "bad" items I always vote left side" voting) - a mslal thing really, not too much to ask, doesn't have to be fancy, or shiny or heck, even animated. Just a….. little, itty, bitty widget that
TELLS YOU HOW MANY VOTES YOU HAVE CAST.
Gaaaaaaaaaaah. #Marathontooksolong. #Championisforchampions.
The contest is supposed to be about find the next RPG Superstar, and suggesting that more attention be paid to those who don't advance, whether by reducing the size of the cull or giving early notice to those who don't advance, is losing sight of the purpose of things, IMO. And totally unnecessary.Thank you, this is not RPG Also Ran.The way the contest is set up right now, for hundreds of people, the Top 32 reveal is just a speed-bump on the way to the Critique My Item thread. Everywhere I look in this forum right now, I am seeing posts that essentially say, "Looks like my item got culled. I can't wait to post it in the Critique My Item thread."
Before Paizo added public voting in Round 1, all of that anticipation would have been directed towards the Top 32 reveal. "I can't wait to see if my item was chosen." These past three years, for hundreds of participants, that sentiment has become, "I already know my item didn't make the Top 32, so let's get that over with so I can participate in the Critique My Item thread, already."
I would rather get as many also-ran item critiques as possible over and done with before the Top 32 are revealed. That way, the Top 32 reveal is the most anticipated Superstar event of the week, not an opening event for another thread the majority of the voting public finds more interesting.
That's not me advocating that more attention be paid to contestants who did not make the Top 32. That's me saying something needs to change to keep the focus on the Top 32, because the current system seems to create more hype for the Critique My Item thread than it does for the Top 32 reveal.
The only real way to do that would be to ban the "items I've seen" threads. Keep in mind paizo doesn't do anything that tells people if they were culled or not, that's all the communities work. Also when you have 1000 entries and only 32 finalists its only natural that the CMI thread will be more interesting for a majority of people.
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Eh just let it play out. First you guys wanted a cull, then it was too big, next you want two culls. Just make your items. Play the game. Vote and wait for the winner.
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And in my estimation the pit crew guys are borderline cheating. I didn't even tell the players in my group what my item was because they use the forums.
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And in my estimation the pit crew guys are borderline cheating. I didn't even tell the players in my group what my item was because they use the forums.
Perhaps this little melodramatic bagatelle (from the So Far I've Seen thread) will assuage your concern...
Or, perhaps not. One does what one can and leaves the rest to itself. :)
My feelings are in line with Eric Morton's. I've got something related to this coming for Mikko's blog, but I think the focus has come off the Top 32 a bit in the last couple years.
I really like the Critique thread too (I remember my first year entering, I'd been annoyed I'd forgotten to send a copy of my item to myself so I could post it in the feedback thread, and then in 2013 I critiqued every item), but I think a lot of people seemed to jump ship after posting in there.
I think the community needs to find some way to make sure the Top 32 really gets their moment and aren't just a sideshow to the also-rans.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9
aka Arkos
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I think the public voting has been an amazing way to get the community more involved in the process of RPGSS, as well as giving everyone, competitors or not, the opportunity to become better designers through an onslaught of critique. And sure, that means the competition will no longer be the sole focus of everyone who reads these boards next month. But the competition isn't lightning fast, so having other things to do like critique other items is a useful pastime.
At this point, I've spent the majority of my voting time reading items that will NOT be in the top 32, and I'm much more ready to explore those ideas than the relatively small chunk that will move on to the next round. If we could have skimmed a list of items, then maybe my brain would be sorted differently, but we were asked to give them all equal weight. One minute each. Even knowing the reveal is coming, CMI is what will validate that time commitment.
Besides, Paizo has, wittingly or not, created a forum where 1,000 people get together and publicly share their designs, with the absolute understanding that this is only practice and no one is getting paid. What community out there has a design team 1,000 folks strong? This opportunity, purely as a learning experience, is invaluable.
I think what happens in the CMI thread should be celebrated, and I would be sad if that experience were somehow diminished in the name of refocusing on the competition.
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As someone who has entered for the past few years, I can understand being upset at not advancing. It is disappointing. But you either take that failure as a sign that you need to improve or you take it as a disheartening defeat that prevents you from submitting ever again.
That is a choice of the individual. No amount of change to the process will make that any different. We as creators or just as people choose to either get back on the horse or lay there in the grass. No one decides that for us.
Based on the myriad of posts on this topic, there is clearly no system that will please everyone. No matter what, there will be people who have criticisms of how things work. And some of those criticisms will have merit. But ultimately any changes made will just result in different people being upset.
If your item has been culled or if you don't make it to the top 32, the best you can do is ask for criticism and then listen to that criticism. That's really all that is within your power to do, and ultimately it is all that will actually help you.
If someone whose item was culled instead advanced because the cull was lesser in some way would only prolong things. If your item was on the cusp of not making it, then it isn't going to somehow squeak through to the top 32. Better to find out as soon as possible and work to improve.
All kinds of awesome
Hear hear! Hear hear!
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* Then again, as random as Round 1, that doesn't explain how there are some folks who make it to Round 1 (and/or beyond) multiple times.
Actually, randomness can explain a lot more than you would think. People always expect total randomness to look really arbitrary and evenly spread, but it doesn't, and that's where superstitions like dice superstitions are born.
To make the math cleaner, let's say that there are 1280 entries every year, and then we'll simplify the contest by saying that the Top 25% of items (320) are all Superstar enough to win and that it's totally and completely random who wins among those Top 25%. Here's some interesting numbers:
*Your chance of not hitting Top 32 ever for all 8 years, despite being an awesome enough designer that you always are in that Top 25% and submitting every year, would be 43%, so still fairly high.
*Assuming the Top 8 are banned from participating in future years and that the other 24 all always participate, the chance that somebody repeats Top 32 between any two consecutive years is 87%, and the chance that somebody gets in each year who has made it in any previous year, even non-consecutive, is much higher.
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Math!
And when you factor in that the randomness within the entry pool is likely further constrained by things like a certain proportion using difficult-to-read non-standard formatting, citing public domain common myths, and making other design choices that may automatically lead to more downvotes than upvotes, the likelihood becomes even greater of a repeat.
Moral of the story: There is more awesome than can possibly be published.
Get em mama!