Round over round changes

[Ernest Mueller]

It's interesting going back and looking at previous rounds' entries and how they did in this round.

In the country round my picks were, roughly in order:
Carnamach
Cyrehllan
Eluraleon
Yithnai
Karistynia
Stained Peaks (I remember debating with myself over Karistynia vs Stained Peaks to the point that I can't remember which I actually voted for)

In this round, my picks were, again roughly in order:
Avinash
Abzirael
Seskadrin
Elsie (marginal) - got cut

So my bottom 3 country picks all got eliminated, and my bottom 1 villain pick. My "both round favorites" are Russell and Boomer, although Christine had my favorite country and Jason my favorite villain. (I say bah to most magic items so I'm not bothering to include my thoughts from that round. D&D needs less of those, not more.)

So let's see what happens! But I'm at the point I'd put $5 at 2:1 on those 4 hitting the final round!

[magdalena thiriet]

For me the order is changing...Christine being the only one who has produced "yay, this is great!" work on both rounds, otherwise the people whose villains I liked best produced countries I wasn't that enthustiatic about, and vice versa...

Well, three countries I voted for are still in (Christine, Neil, Rob) and three villains I voted are in (Christine, Joe, Joseph).

But should I place bets for future contests, I'm quite sure William McNulty could kick ass in a year or two because the flavor is there, the execution still suffers...

[Steven Helt]

Thus far, Christine, Boomer, Jason and Rob (in order listed) are my top overall picks, with Carnamach and Berekhet earning honorable mentions in the country round. Of course, people have different strengths and weaknesses, and maybe monsters is the magic bullet for any one of these contestants.

Remember, contestants: a lot of voters are ignoring your previous results and only voting round by round. So regardless of how much you have impressed me, you're only going to get my one or two votes if you have the best creature submissions - and at least one of them had better make me soil myself when I think of its encounters and possibilities.

Big ups fpor people who submit something I really want to play, also.

[Curaigh]

Four of my five picks for country made it to round three, but only two made it onto my favorite villains. Neither of those are in round four. One of my villain picks did make it on, so I guess I am saying this has been all over the board for me. One thing I am rating on is how quickly I say 'yoink' and that is probably been the least consistent part so far (for me-ymmv).

[Starglim]

Two of the people whose countries I voted for are still in the contest. Of them, I voted for one of their villains.

I don't know that this is particularly a good thing. As they say, it's just a thing. It would be better to have six or eight people in Round 3 who seemed to do consistently better than the rest of the entrants, but maybe the competition is really that close and the assignments are just that tricky and stressful.

[Jason Nelson]

Starglim wrote:

Two of the people whose countries I voted for are still in the contest. Of them, I voted for one of their villains.

I don't know that this is particularly a good thing. As they say, it's just a thing. It would be better to have six or eight people in Round 3 who seemed to do consistently better than the rest of the entrants, but maybe the competition is really that close and the assignments are just that tricky and stressful.

Obviously the people still in have put in good stuff, but I think the competition is that close and the assignments... stressful I'd say yes and tricky... maybe yes as well, because you never know for sure how people will read them. I have a set of monster ideas that I think is really cool, but the readers may not think so. Clearly people weren't spending hours creating countries or villains or magic items they thought were crap, but time after time we have seen folks end up running far afield from what people were interested in seeing, or from describing in a way that captured people's imaginations.

Some entries have failed on mechanical grounds, which could be labeled as skill or talent or expertise, but not all, and some with sound or even excellent mechanics have failed to advance. Some have failed on weak, sloppy, or dull writing, but not all, and some with evocative and robust language have failed to advance.

I think the competition is close, and I think a large part of what will tell the tale is how well contestants can hit the sweet spot: Something different and unique enough to make judges/readers say "That's something I wouldn't have thought of" but close and familiar enough to make them say "but that is really [bleeping] cool and I wish I had!" All of that, of course, with good writing and good mechanics to not torpedo the concept. It's not an easy target to hit, and trying to over-game your creations to TRY to hit it is apt to leave you flat, like a product designed by committee.

So that's a lot of blather about not much, other than to say yes, it's really close, and there are a lot of good D&D people here, both still competing and already fallen by the wayside, and those still in it have got to load for bear and take their best shots and hope when the smoke clears they've scored a hit.