Fair question, and I'm glad you asked. I've written plenty of roles, but as you know, this was my first role contest.

I, too, have a hard time getting over the role hump you described. I try to have some kind of lifelong motivation for my characters. It gives me something NOT "raid/retrieve/gear/gather preps" to do, and gives me ammo for the next role chapter (if appropriate).

As for Fjarn-role-contest-winning roles specifically, I enjoyed the story-style roles that still captured all of the character motivations. First and foremost, you have to grab my interest. If I can't get pulled into the story (especially early), it's going to be hard to win. Of course, exceptions to this rule were granted for overview and summary chapters.

I especially rewarded character growth - not just "I heart cabal" or "I heart religion" or "I heart hearts". I mean real growth: Major decisions or screw-ups that set the character back, followed (usually dozens of hours later) by a chapter of how it was overcome in the game. These could be gameplay related (Tribunal accidentally commits a crime and pays for it, Fortie accidentally kills a good and pays for it, Guy-who-swore-not-to-kill-a-sentient-being accidentally does and spirals into depression, friend dies/deletes and now we're woe, kicked out of cabal for XYZ and what happens next, etc). They could also be more scripted - a plot twist you put in to spice the character up (familiar turns against his conjurer and now you don't use it anymore, etc).

A lot of satisfactory roles provide religion updates. I talked to my god and this happened. I'm waiting to hear back from my god. My god is really neat. These are good for update purposes, but were generally not high scorers in a role contest sense. One thing I noticed was that these kinds of updates might be 4 weeks apart, but when they're read in sequence, it's very repetetive. I was guilty of this with Fjarn's role, actually, as he sought his Wind God throughout his later life.

Since you mentioned Derogker, this was a drawback of his "rest of the role". I'm sure his god really appreciated it, but several of his chapters could have been summarized by "I'm looking, I found, I spoke to, I worship my god." Again, there's nothing wrong with this - but it wasn't a "winner" in a role contest sense. I would rather have seen some character growth along the lines of the first couple of chapters - not just god stuff, but how he grew and NOW interacts with the characters from the early role.

By the way, when I read my winners to another Imm, they commented "Huh, that's why we have different people run different role contests." What I like is not necessarily what the next guy likes. If you didn't win this time, don't let it keep you from trying again.

If you'd like, you can email me with specific questions about your role. I don't care about linking players to characters or anything like that. I do think that we, in general, need a better way to provide feedback than imm comments after the character's dead. So there's your invitation, if you want to use it.

In fact, at the risk of inundating myself with emails, I don't mind providing specific feedback to anyone who asks on roles that have been entered in the game, even outside of role contests. I won't write a new chapter for you, or help you/tell you where to go with your character. But I can provide some Fjarn-style feedback on what role chapters you've already got available in the game.