Seeing as its the last day to send in, I'm going to put my thoughts about the whole contest down.
I don't think, exactly, that WotC R&D "couldn't hack it", so to speak. I think, for a project like this, perhaps they'd have asked for proposals from their R&D people and, since they've been having cutbacks and R&D is not as large as it may have once been, with talented people we all know no longer working directly with WotC, they may have planned to call for submissions from talented freelancers, regardless.
If the talented freelance pool is already going to be getting a call, why not a "contest"? With a "contest", where submissions are blind and anybody in R&D not on the panel can submit, anybody in the company, and any previously published authors, you're going to get the entire body of industry people that know what's going on and know what's needed ... but you're also going to build some excitement.
I think, personally, the excitement is more important than the off chance that Joe Average Gamer is going to have a drop-dead brilliant idea and the writing skills and know-how to pull it off over four selections. In all honesty, I suspect that the contest will be won by somebody already working for/with WotC/D20. They know how to write for the market, they know how to write for the audience.
That being said ... this contest has the community stirred up. Everybody is running around excited about D&D again. We were all off exploring D20 products like StarWars and Spy Craft and this turned our heads and we're thinking about D&D again. Friends of mine who hadn't even wanted to switch to 3E came over to the dork side to write a 1pager "on the off chance" ... and all these homebrew worlds are getting created, getting broken back out. And if you've got it out, why not play it, eh? I know that's how I feel. I've put two weeks of work into an idea that'd sat around in the back of my head for a year and a half, and after those two weeks of work, I want to use it ... so I'm getting a game group together when I hadn't planned on gaming with my college friends ... didn't think they'd be the type of people to be into it, and you discover odd things when people finally drag out of you what you've been working on for two weeks.
And y'know what these new game groups need? Player's Hand Books and Dungeon Master's Guides ... two of the backbone WotC products that they're basing the money-making sales on. Adventures, expansions, and settings have always been chancey sellers, but the PHB and DMG are always there. You "need" them to play any D20 product, really. The Windows approach. Everybody has to have the standard platform to run software written for the standard platform ... not every player is going to need Forgotten Realms or Scarred Lands ... but they'll all need the PHB/DMG. Anything that breeds excitement and new interest in the game breeds sales.
So that's another angle for WotC ... nothing sinister, mind you, but that's business. The contest is a great way to generate sales of the Core while getting the freelancers and R&D people who would have proposed anyway. And all these homebrew campaigns aren't going to hurt the sales of the new product because it isn't going to be ready for a couple years, and in that time all of these homebrew worlds will have begun to get a little stale around the edges.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The poster that said they're not looking for "different" but "brilliant" is exactly right. I don't imagine they'll be looking for something unlike FR or DL. Quite the opposite. Al Qadim sunk like a rock. Dark Sun floundered around and keeled over. Even Planescape didn't do that well, for all the people who supposedly love it. Fundamentally, the "overall" market is going to enjoy "stock" fantasy. There's a very vocal minority of elitists who call for something "new" and different ... but those of us on these boards are a minority. Joe Average Gamer doesn't have time to learn about deep backstory before he games, Joe Gamer doesn't really -want- to play the lonely bird-winged paladin riding the skys of a world reduced to living on floating rocks since the seas rose ages past ... Joe Gamer wants to put on armor, get on a horse, and go forth to do battle and slay dragons and such. DM Bob might really be into a totally under-water world because it would be interesting and different, but that totally alienates the Weekend Warriors who want to get in, kill stuff, grab the loot, and hit town.
In the end, I think the setting that will win is going to be, at first glance, "Stock Fantasy". You will have knights on horses, you will have Bad Guys, you will have dragons, and you will have dungeons. The setting will allow for an overarching epic storyline, yet be broad enough in dimensions to allow for sweeping campaigns totally unrelated to the original narrative. The "central" stage will be somewhat european, with grasslands, farmland, and castles. There will be "other" cultures. It will be, in a word, generic ... but it'll have punch. It'll need punch. There will be "something" about this world that makes you interested, there will be all of the necessary stock portions, and something more.
I'll allow for a few misses in that. There might be somebody totally unbelievably brilliant that put his setting in an ancient greek-like culture or who did away with dragons. I honestly doubt it, however, because Sales = Familiarity to a large extent.
They're going to get alot of "different" worlds. They'll get a hundred or so variations on the Underground world. They'll get a bunch of variations on the Desert World Redux. (not to insult the thread-started) They'll get a bunch of "Jungle" campaigns as well. (I know two friends alone whose submissions had to deal with jungle worlds). You'll get the Air World, the Water World ... probably a Mountain World or two. Take any particular environment or terrain type, add the word "World" after it, and they're going to get a submission on that theme. I'm sure somebody out there thought a Lava World was a hot idea, and thought up all kinds of ways to make it work ... ... in the end they'll choose a World World ... at least I hope they do. If they choose a Jungle World they're going to come up with a campaign setting that, in the end, sells squat. Hyper-Expanded Terrain Worlds are interesting for a little while, but eventually people get tired of the novelty of hanging out in the trees. It's worth about three novels, a few weeks of campaigning, and a single expansion pack. You'll alienate a huge number of players (everybody that says: "Uh, no, I don't want to play in the jungle all day."), you'll alienate everybody that doesn't like that terrain, and everybody that wants more than that terrain, and you won't sell much.
Science Fiction is the far-flung "Speculative" fiction genre. You can take one idea or theme, expand it out to the Nth degree of your ability to do so, add a classic story arc, and sell a novel, maybe three. Successful fantasy tends to have a world of varied terrain types and an epic storyline. Jordan and his overdrawn Wheel Of Time manages to weave a bunch of epics together with serial and romance themes, keeping a large readership coming back for more. (He bored me after about book six. It's the same thing, over and over, just a different way to complain about it. That's just me, tho.)
So, in the end, I think you'll find the setting that makes it is "Stock Fantasy" with something a little different. That's why my submission was 368 words (including questions). I sliced out all the lengthy explainations of stock fantasy, and condensed them down to small references to themes that revealed I knew what stock fantasy was, and indeed I had included it. I concentrated ON stock fantasy, but what was different about my stock fantasy. More or less I said: "You've got the usual _____, but here's the interesting part, if you change things subtley like -so-, then it's different without throwing anybody off."
I dunno if what I had was brilliant, but I think I can sell it. It turned the heads of a few of my jaded friends, and I have a few players who are enthusiastic to try it out, even if I don't need to expand it for a 10-pager.
--HT
...I guess it's gonna be pretty standard...
