I've decided to submit an entry for the first time. But now I have noticed that you don't have a lot of time for writing submissions for the later rounds after you receive notifications that you have passed the previous round - only four days after the winners of the previous round were announced.
That's not a lot of time, especially for those of us with busy day jobs (personally, I see myself writing various lengthy project reports until the end of March...). So I was wondering how the veterans of this contest dealt with that. Did you write entries for subsequent rounds in advance, under the assumption that you would progress to that round?
Yes, the trick is to be general enough that any special spins or twists revealed later don't cause great deals of re-work.
I am currently working on a full bestiary entry, concentrating on making it look as much like the Bestiary 1 format as possible. I hope to have at least 2 or 3 different beasties statted up and in first cut before voting starts. The rounds tend to stick with the main core rule sets, so Bestiary 1 is a good guess, but even if they ask for a more modern of different approach, I am likely to only encounter template/formatting rework.
I also have the core theme in mind for my encounter, nice visuals, unusual environment - I just need to check the golarion has a suitable setting for the environment to sit in - I may be too generic on this one is my worry here.
The one round I am struggling to prepare anything for at the moment is the final proposal - that doesn't worry me too much right now as I often get inspired during the earlier rounds.
But yes, between submission and voting, getting some ideas down, even in rough scribble will save much grief should you progress - if you don't progress, you can still benefit from the practice and solicit feedback on what you would have submitted in the threads of "What what you have submitted in round xyz" that often appear later in the forums.
I've decided to submit an entry for the first time. But now I have noticed that you don't have a lot of time for writing submissions for the later rounds after you receive notifications that you have passed the previous round - only four days after the winners of the previous round were announced.
That's not a lot of time, especially for those of us with busy day jobs (personally, I see myself writing various lengthy project reports until the end of March...). So I was wondering how the veterans of this contest dealt with that. Did you write entries for subsequent rounds in advance, under the assumption that you would progress to that round?
Coffee, alcohol and a willingness to sacrifice sleep and social contact.
But yes, it is absolutely vital to prepare mentally for the possibility that you are going to advance to the next round. The twists for each round are generally given some time before it is announced who moves on, and you already know the general themes.
Practice your general skills (i.e. stat block building, monster creation, encounter design) as much as you can. If you have practiced making a lot of different elements, you will better be able to adapt to a specific twist.
Then, once the exact rules for the next round is made public, start working on your specific entry as if you already knew you were going to advance. This includes the possibility of making Top 32, so EVERYONE who have submitted an item are strongly advised to start practicing their monster making skills NOW!
Every year, we have contestants who made excellent items, but can't deliver a strong follow-up submission due to being caught unprepared. Believe me, that round 2 deadline is going to be coming at you like a runaway freight train, and you have to wrangle your focus away from reading the comments people are making about your item, and deal with a mental state that is a mixture of elation and pure panic.
So...keep your eye on the prize and never assume that you won't make it any further.
I agree with the above advice -- I basically spent every non-work moment working on my entries after I got into the contest (even walking the dog, where I spent the time thinking about what I wanted to do), since I hadn't expected to. I was so excited that I had some trouble sleeping, so that was time I spent writing too. Even after I didn't expect to advance in Round 3, I still started working on an encounter, testing a couple ideas with my RL gaming group.
My one adddendum is don't tie yourself down to anything yet; there'll be a "twist" in the rules and that can mess up your plans. For example, the monster I had been working on didn't work at the higher CR that ended up being chosen, so I had to start over. That said, they've been revealing the twists sooner and sooner, so that's helped a lot.
Other things you can do now is go through previous years of the contest's later rounds to start culling advice from judges' and voters' comments. Read the successful entries to see what they did, and unsuccessful ones to look for traps you can avoid. Also if you've got the Inner Sea World Guide, it can't hurt to read through it again to bone up on your Golarion knowledge (the monster round is usually to create a Golarion monster) and/or look for inspiration.
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During my year, I think we had 3 days in which to submit our next design. Thankfully, Paizo was kind enough to post in advance what each round entailed, so at the very least, I could brainstorm ideas and imagine how I'd round them out if I advanced. I didn't actually create any additional entries beforehand, though. That was purposeful so I could read the next round's rules and roll with the punches if a twist or limitation undermined what I'd planned. But I brainstormed plenty of "options" so I had contingencies I could fall back on regardless of what came up in the final reveal for that round's rules.
Now this year, it appears they won't be doing any major twists that'll derail you. Sean talked about that on his podcast interview with Know Direction about some of the changes this year. That means, you should be able to maximize your preparation time even moreso than prior contests. That said, one other "trick" I used was to take off work for a single day during my 3-day turnarounds (usually the second day) so I could focus just on that round's design and do all the heavy-lifting for it. I didn't do that for every round, however. Just the ones where I felt I could use the extra time to work on something that wasn't necessarily my strongsuit. I didn't take any time off for the final round, as they gave us an entire week to polish our adventure proposals, and that was plenty.
My two cents,
--Neil
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Jürgen, a couple of additional points I'd like to add:
1) You can do it.
2) See #1. :)
What twists in the past have been used in previous years? I'm sort of confused on the subject. I'm not sure whether to make something basic before hearing the twist.
Twists in the monster round have tended to be the CR of the monster (which I think is less a twist than a narrowing of ranges, and which I'd expect to exist again). In 2012, monsters could not be a construct, dragon, ooze, or outsider, while in 2013 the monster environment must be forest, river, or swamp (or more than one of these.
The encounter round frequently requires use of a monster from the previous round, and last year also required a trap to be part of it as well.
You can look back at the rules for each round of the previous years to see other examples.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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If you look back at the rules to each round from previous years you can see the twists are in the specifics of the task vs. the one line description of the round found on the event calendar.
I expect the round 2 twist will be create a monster of X CR for this environment.
Or something similar.
Round 3 may be you have to make an encounter with a monster from the previous round or the environment from the last round.
Art images and Mini selections have also been used as the twists for monster and encounter rounds so we won't know for certain but educated guesses can be made.
So, a twist which means that you can't really prepare the monster in advance, much. Only four days to create it. And it's in the middle of project report writing crunch time for me, too - and not the "college report" kind, but the kind of projects involving very large sums of money and multiple external partners.
Oh, well, I guess that's intentionally part of the challenge. And if Sean K. Reynolds himself says that we can do it... ;)
Jurgen, lately they've been revealing the twist earlier. Last year, I think you actually had a week to write your final idea, though you didn't know if you needed to until three days before deadline.
The Round 2 twist was revealed before the Top 32 even were, so there was no excuse for any of them to have not been ready.