What kind of writer are you?

[Breaker]

I feel like Althanas's big problem is that the rubric is forcing us to write these big, sweeping paragraphs about what kind of lighting and wall decorations are in this new tavern our characters have stepped foot in, just so we can bump our Setting up from a 6 to a 7 at the expense of the story's flow. With how much we pride ourselves on the stupid thing and how much focus we put on it, it hinders our development as writers and prevents us from finding and honing our individual, unique writing voices.

It sounds like you're misinterpreting the rubric. Here's what it actually says about setting:

Every story has a setting, and Althanas has many unique realms to work in. This category includes faithfulness to the region's canon, and the writer's description of their characters movement through those environments. To score high in setting, a writer must go beyond painting backdrops. Setting is not just to look at. It exists to be experienced by the characters, and through them, by the readers. For instance, if you describe a chair, did your character sit in it or pick it up to smash in an enemy's face? Is it hot or cold, sunny or rainy, and are its effects on the character described? In short, a good setting does not just describe place; it makes it smell, move, hear, and breathe. It makes the setting a character all of its own.

If we boil it down, there's essentially three elements to scoring setting; description, which is mostly what the character perceives and includes things like time and location, interaction, which includes what the character does with the setting and how they influence or change it, and inclusion/development of canon, which is pretty self explanatory. While it's possible that individual judges may focus too much on description at times, that's not a built in function of our rubric, and if you ever find that the commentary you receive only addresses description, a quick PM to the judge would probably get you some notes on interaction and use of canon as well. Sometimes it's just difficult to fit everything in, especially in the case of condensed rubrics.