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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 8311242" data-attributes="member: 11760">I've entered a lot of writing contests in my time. I am really looking forward to seeing the winning entries, which I hope we see as soon as possible after the D&D Live announcements. In my experience, a chunk of winning entries in writing contests are "huh, that feels comparable to mine; I wonder what made this stand out to the judges" and a chunk of "holy crap, on my best day, I never would have come up with that."I've also been a judge in writing contests, and often, what makes something stand out is impossible to plan for. If everyone submits extremely similar ideas (and the way the Xanathar's trap section is laid out, I bet there's going to be a ton of overlapping ideas), the most unusual ones will stand out, even if they're not objectively "better." On the other hand, it needs to be something that can be parsed relatively quickly, as each of the judges is going to have an enormous pile to dig through. I know that by the end of an eight hour day of looking at entries, I'm fried. I can only imagine how rough it'll be for the judges a week or more in. Since they're judging based on order received, this will likely advantage the people who submitted theirs on Thursday or Friday.</blockquote>