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Message: <blockquote data-quote="anonystu" data-source="post: 998540" data-attributes="member: 10897">I'll post just on one note now, then rather try to address all these great issues brought up immediately.I agree strongly that the role of the Judge needs to be reconsidered: I think that no matter who's judging, Incognito, Rune, PirateCat, Gary Gygax, or aliens from outer space, I'm less interested in trying to figure out their quirks, and trying to appeal to them, then I am in just trying to write the best module possible.I understand, that all judges (and especially those rascally aliens) will have quirks, and that objective judgement  is nigh impossible, but I think the goal of the judge is not to mystify what they want to see, but rather, to be as personless as possible: they are just helping figure out what's the best written game for those ingredients.I feel that there are other reasons too: lots of people know each other on these boards: knowing a person, if they choose not to make it explicit, or try to uphold to an objective standard. Making it such that the judge's preferences are both held as something that is good, and held secret, means that people with prior history with the judge, or those with Community Supporter access and who can search the archives have an advantage, and privileging of Community Supporters in a contest by letting them figure out what types of games the judge runs, or what systems they do or don't play is kind of contrary to the spirit of the board (where CS'ers aren't supposed to get anything more than a funny (or not funny, in my case <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) board title.Why is the judge even known in these events? Why not create an IRONDM_Fall03 account, and be the mystery judge that noone knows, but can reveal their identity at the end to all the curious masses? It's even a great role to sit into: the mysterious judge from onafar, sending thunderbolts of judgement down.I also note that a lot of these issues go away if you just add more judges: it lessens any quirks that any one judge may display.(Full Disclaimer: I just competed in an iron DM judged by Rune (ongoing), where Rune holds the view that teasing out the judge's preferences is part of the game. I disagree, but still feel he's doing a fine job, and don't feel cheated just because other people know Rune better: I feel the best writer won, and that wasn't me. That said, I'd like to see a system going towards something which is clearer, tighter, and puts less stress on judges and players.)</blockquote>

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