If there are no prizes involved (reward icon), then rules can of course be much more flexible in terms of how many cards people can submit or what the cards are about. If fact, we could almost forget the rules altogether and see what craziness people come up with. I personally am not a big fan of those kinds of competitions but maybe others like the freedom.
My personal philosophy is that even though a competition is about fun, that does not mean we should automatically throw out the rules. Having no rules does not equal fun and creativity, and vice versa. For some people, like myself, the fun part comes from being able to cope with the restrictions and still produce something fun. That is what real creativity is all about.
It's like comparing deckbuilding competitions where one has specific rules and restrictions, while the other has none. Latter is not that fun or creative because you can submit whatever and there's no real "point" in building those decks. Instead of having a deckbuilding competition called "Build a Deck", there should be a specific theme, and all submissions should follow that theme.
I really should have made one card that was "12 Days of Christmas" but that wouldn't have been as cool. :/
Of course. I think we can all agree that the idea was cool and fit perfectly because of the 12 elements. However the point is that if the rule part "one submission" means only one card like it usually does, then submitting multiple cards should not be possible under any circumstances. In other words, even though you have a cool idea, you still need to follow the rules like everyone else. That's only fair, right?
But like I said earlier, if there are no rewards, then the competition is more about the whole process, not really who wins and who loses. In a situation like that, bending the rules is not a big deal,
but I think the first post should be edited a bit to make sure that everyone knows what the deal is.
I think that in the future, we need to make a more clear distinction between..
A) "serious" competitions
B) fun competitions with clear rules
C) fun competitions where anything goes