In the thread "Round 2 Assignment Questions--Taking Your Input", Vic made the following suggestion:
Which leads to this unsolicited advice from me: regardless of the length we assign, prospective authors should plan to make sure that the audience has fallen in love with the submission before they've read 100 words.
Apparently, many of the RPG Superstar Top 32 didn't read this advice. Over half of the country entries open up with something droll like government, history, or geography. (And if geography is the most compelling thing about your entry, you have other problems.) The excellent entries opened up with either a teaser or a description section that summarized the coolness of their country.
So, to the 16 of you that make it to the next round, please heed Vic's advice. If you're not leading with your best material, you're going to lose to others who do. Lazy judges like me won't even bother to finish reading your entry if you don't grab us in the first few lines.
You nailed it Pallen, and some of us (me included) didn't.
WC
For what it's worth, I really liked the Chiurgeon's Chest.
I just went through all 32 entries today... and I have to say, that if you didn't grab my attention in the first paragraph, I tended to skip down to the judge's comments to see what was special (or not special)... and in some cases, I didn't bother to go back and read the rest of the entry, because of this.
Catching a readers interest in the first 100 words isn't required to succeed with this contest, but it can only help your chances. I read nearly all of the entries top to bottom including comments before voting. I also took some time to think it over and to reread a few entries as well. There were at least 20 that after reading them, I stopped going back to make comments or to read other peoples feedback. So grabbing someones attention is important to at least a good portion of your readers and after reading my 26th country, even I was starting to skip stuff.
Though I have yet to read all the entries, I thought the same. There were one or two entries that caught me with a phrase, which is just as good, but often failed to deliver.
I am looking foward to reading the rest, but seeing some of the names, my hopes are quickly fading.
Still, I will but forth a vote or two, but I doubt I will use all my five votes.
So, to the 16 of you that make it to the next round, please heed Vic's advice. If you're not leading with your best material, you're going to lose to others who do.
Ditto!
I read all 32, but only once. I did read all the submissions all the way through. But if you're prose didn't grab my attention (or at least was neutral and not offputting so that I could appreciate your ideas), you didn't make it to my short list.
I just went through all 32 entries today... and I have to say, that if you didn't grab my attention in the first paragraph, I tended to skip down to the judge's comments to see what was special (or not special)... and in some cases, I didn't bother to go back and read the rest of the entry, because of this.
Right on the money.
I read all 32 entries - sort of. For virtually all of them I skipped over a huge boring historico-governmental textbook (or rambling backstory with wacko names) to the DM secrets. I'm a DM, why would I want to run this? Then I read the judges' comments, and sometimes I went back. But not usually.
And you know what else? Formatting counts. A lot. All of the entries that had a bolded section titles like History and DM Secrets were up several notches above those that looked like rambling stream of consciousness straight out of Faulkner.
From my point of view, all 32 of these people beat me out. So in any given entry, I expect to see something better than I could come up with, or I'm not voting for it.
I not limiting myself to 100 words. If that was the point then the contest should be about creating a 100 word entry that pitches the germ of an idea for a country.
So, to the 16 of you that make it to the next round, please heed Vic's advice. If you're not leading with your best material, you're going to lose to others who do. Lazy judges like me won't even bother to finish reading your entry if you don't grab us in the first few lines.
I share your observation. I did notice as I was reading the entries and reviews that the submissions that start out with a bit of flavor at the top seemed to go over well with the judges.