| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
• (Putting this first just in case this is the only one you read) Authors! Don't reply to any comments about your item until the voting period is over. The contest rules allow you to make general comments, but avoid the temptation to say anything. Just keep your mouth shut, let people discuss, praise, and criticize, and don't respond. Focus on your monster. Don't get DQ'd for making a comment that toes the line or crosses the line.
• R2 is generally the hardest round on the judges. It's easy to look at the later rounds with the long wordcounts, or the monster round in particular because of the stat blocks, but 450 words x 32 submissions (+4 alternates) means this is the most word-count-intensive round after R1... and we only have a weekend to do it in, instead of the full submission/voting period of R1. This meant late nights this weekend for all three judges, and there's a certain amount of fatigue that sets in. /cry
• I want to thank Chris Lambertz for all her hard work getting R2 up and running, including getting it posted today and getting the R3 rules ready.
• R3 rules may be available later today. UPDATE: They are! We're shipping a big book this week (and ordering freelance for another big book this week) and it's eaten into my time available to get ahead of the ball on the next round's rules, so I didn't get the rules over to the tech team until about an hour ago.
• This year's archetypes are a mixed bag—some are especially good, some are serviceable, some are adequate, and a few are unremarkable. Overall, I'm pleased with the results (I think I had 16 or 17 that I recommend advance to the next round).
• It's interesting to note that despite having my advice thread and advice in the FAQ for round 2, some people chose to ignore that advice and did things I specifically recommended against. Sometimes it paid off. Usually it didn't.
• As always, sometimes the judges were unanimous in their agreement, and sometimes we had 2 for and 1 against or 1 for and two against. That's why we have three judges. :)
• Remember that the judge's comments are about your item, they aren't about you. They're not personal. Read them, learn from them. If there is a complaint or criticism, don't take it personally. And remember that we didn't have a lot of time for these, so we don't always have positive feedback for you. Whether the feedback is negative or positive, try to learn from it.
• For each archetype, I've stated at the end of my comment whether I do or do not recommend an item advances. Specifically, I said "I DO recommend" or "I do NOT recommend," and the other judges did pretty much the same thing. Do not take that capitalization as any emphasis on my part, it's just (1) so when I'm doing a final review of all my responses, I can quickly determine if it's a yes or no from me, and (2) ditto for the readers. In other words, "I do NOT recommend this archetype" doesn't mean "man, he REALLY didn't like this archetype!" It means "he's trying to make sure he can tell at a glance if it's a yes or no."
• Just because I or another judge voted against an archetype doesn't mean it's a BAD archetype. Sometimes the writing was rough, or the rules were wobbly, or the theme wasn't very interesting. I think almost all of them could be fixed in development. I've seen archetypes from professional freelancers that have arrived in a rough state and turned out quite nice. My purpose in this round is not to fix your archetype (though I may have pointers for doing so or "this should be like X" comments), it is to evaluate them as written. Archetypes aren't easy... but it's clear to me that people have learned a lot more about writing them since the last time we had an archetype round. So: good job.
• Remember that only 16 people are advancing to the next round. That means 16 people are out after this round. No matter what category you're in, you should be proud that you made it this far, and keep practicing.
Congrats and good luck!