World of the Season Winter 2012 Competition!

StoryNexus
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FBG is happy to announce the second World of the Season Competition!

We want to recognise and promote the best community-created StoryNexus worlds, so we’re running the quarterly the World of the Season competition.
This competition is the Winter 2012 season. We’re looking for the best StoryNexus worlds to share with the world. To enter, you need to create an original StoryNexus world and reply to this thread with the world’s name.
The panel of judges will pick the World of the Season Winter 2012 from the entrants.

Judging

In addition to the three judges from industry and the Failbetter panel, we’ll have the winners of the Autumn 2012 competition joining us in judging.

Many thanks to the judges for offering their time and effort in helping us to judge the competition. The judges for the Winter 2012 competition are:

From industry:

  • Jon Ingold, author of award-winning interactive fiction All Roads and Dead Cities. Jon is also CEO of inkle studies, who make inkle writer and the Frankenstein iOS interactive novel.[/li][li]Caitlin Burns, transmedia producer and editorial lead at Starlight Runner Entertainment. Caitlin has worked on the transmedia aspects of titles like Tron Legacy, Avatar and Transformers.[/li][li]Dan Franklin, digital publisher at Random House Group. Dan produced the Night Circus game.

The Autumn 2012 World of the Season winners:

  • Meg Jayanth (Samsara)[/li][li]Gordon Levine (Zero Summer)[/li][li]Caitlin Lill (Evolve)

And the Failbetter panel completes the judges.

We had a large and entirely splendid field of entrants for the previous competition, so we’ll be instituting a short list from now on. The Failbetter judges will create a short list of entrants, and then the short list will be passed on to the other judges.

Entrants will be judged on three categories: Writing, Game Design and Originality.

What we’re after

We’re looking for quality rather than quantity. To have a chance of winning, a world must be complete and playable, but it doesn’t have to be big.

Prizes

The prizes for the winning world are:

  • The creator of the winning world gets ‘Accredited Architect’ status. This means that Failbetter recognises the winner as a reputable and skilled creator. You’ll get a fancy badge showing your status when we get the profile pages live. It also opens the possibility of commissions and collaboration with FBG on things like Kickstarter projects. We’ll announce your new status on these forums. We’ll also give you the option of doing an interview with us about your world. If you want to do this, and we’re both happy with the results, we’ll put the interview up on the Failbetter blog.[/li][li]The winning world gets added to the list of promoted worlds, at least until the next season’s winner is announced, and possibly longer. The world also gets permanently added to the list of recommended worlds.[/li][li]Our art department, will draw a banner for your world! This will be a 655 x 150 pixels picture displayed at the top of your world’s StoryNexus interface, where the ‘welcome to the StoryNexus World Builders’ Beta’ banner currently is. You can ask for a particular subject, but final word on the banner rests with our artists.

Rules

Entries must be in the form of StoryNexus Worlds.
To enter, you must reply on this thread with a link to your world before midnight GMT on the 31st December 2012. You can enter multiple worlds if you like. You can re-enter a world that has been previously entered.

Any world that you enter must be playable, playtested, finishable (i.e. have at least one [GAME_END_EFFECT] event and/or a storylet that marks the end of an episode) and original. It can be an episode of a larger work, as long as what you submit is narratively coherent on its own. There’s no problem if your intention is to expand the work after the competition. It can’t be fan-fiction or set in someone else’s universe (including FBG universes). Your world must be written in English.
Your world must have at least 12 storylets, and at least 20 branches. There is no maximum size, but larger worlds aren’t necessarily better than smaller ones.
Worlds will be judged by FBG and any guest judges we appoint, and our word is final. Worlds will be judged on writing, design and originality. We’ll announce winners as soon as we can after closing.
This competition is subject to the rules covering all Failbetter Games competitions, which can be found here: http://about.failbettergames.com/competition-rules/

EDIT: just one winner this time round!
edited by Alexis on 12/17/2012

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Are previous winners allowed to submit the same content to subsequent contests? Do new episodes of longer games count as new content?

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Previous entrants may submit the same world. This includes previous winners, but previous winners are unlikely to win again unless there are significant changes to the world. A new episode or such is a good idea in this case.

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Can an entrant submit more than one world? alone or being part of two diferent teams?

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Multiple worlds from one creator are entirely welcome. Also, no problem at all with someone being on multiple teams.

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We’re delighted to announce the judges for the Winter 2012 World of the Season competition. In addition to the three judges from industry and the Failbetter panel, we’ll have the winners of the Autumn 2012 competition joining us on the judging panel.

Many thanks to the judges for offering their time and effort in helping us to judge the competition. The judges for the Winter 2012 competition are:

From industry:

  • Jon Ingold, author of award-winning interactive fiction All Roads and Dead Cities. Jon is also CEO of inkle studies, who make inkle writer and the Frankenstein iOS interactive novel.[/li][li]Caitlin Burns, transmedia producer and editorial lead at Starlight Runner Entertainment. Caitlin has worked on the transmedia aspects of titles like Tron Legacy, Avatar and Transformers.[/li][li]Dan Franklin, digital publisher at Random House Group. Dan produced the Night Circus game.

The Autumn 2012 World of the Season winners:

  • Meg Jayanth (Samsara)[/li][li]Gordon Levine (Zero Summer)[/li][li]Caitlin Lill (Evolve)

And the Failbetter panel completes the judges.
edited by Goatdance on 11/6/2012

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Does the world need be entirely complete, or can it be a playable first section of planned larger one? (IE can the ending be “You’ve escaped the castle! Off you trounce on your shetland steed for new adventure that is possibly coming Spring 2013…”?

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HanonO - That’s how it works, yup. =) The rules say you can enter if you have "a storylet that marks the end of an episode". I entered last time with that arrangement.

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My entry: http://annwn1985.storynexus.com

Thanks! :)
edited by aximperator on 12/4/2012

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Wonderful Alex! Excited to see entries starting to come in. :)

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[b]Shattered Veil

If one person enjoys it, I’ll be happy.[/b]
edited by Azreul on 12/13/2012

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I’d like to submit DOCAP :

http://docap.storynexus.com

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[color=#009900]Hello all - I’ve just corrected an error (which was my mistake, not Nigel’s) in the original post. The first time we ran World of the Season, we had a huge field of entries, so we added the runners-up requirement. This time, as expected, the field is[/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] much smaller (though I assume we’ll get a few more before the deadline!) and the front page is already very crowded, so we’re reverting to the original one-winner approach.[/color]

[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]This still leaves the door open to us featuring non-winners that particularly merit attention (as we did last time, with Maelstrom).[/color]

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My world, Wanderlust, is not currently ready for addition (we need to add some more rank boosting cards before chapter 1 is complete, though that may change and this post will be edited with it if that is the case) but I have a question about the Email sent out today. I live below sea level. Does that mean I get ice cream if I win?
edited by digiexpert on 12/17/2012

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[color=#009900]It’s certainly possible.[/color]

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How much time do I have left to finish up and submit a world?

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The submission deadline is "midnight GMT on the 31st December 2012".

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Ah! Thanks. So plenty of time :)

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[color=#009900]You may already have seen the mailout, but sorry, all - due to illness on the judging panel, the closing date will be later - provisionally, 31st January. We’ll be in touch, though.[/color]
[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]Apologies for the confusion. It does at least mean that some of you may now have time to sneak in an entry…[/color]

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I would like to humbly submit Knightly Tales ( http://knightlytales.storynexus.com/ ) for this competition.

This is a story about being a medieval king. No, not one of those sit back at home and have all his knights do all the dirty work for him sort of king; those sort of kings eventually die from cardiac arrest because they don’t get enough aerobic exercise. No, this is a story about being a warrior king, one of those who go out into the wilderness to hunt dangerous creatures like cockactrices, manticores, dire wolves, hobgoblins, poltergeists, necromancers, demons, fallen gods and so on. It’s a hard life, but someone’s got to do it.

More Le Morte d’Arthur than Dungeons & Dragons, but still more The Once and Future King than Le Morte d’Arthur, Knightly Tales is a light-hearted romp through a fantasy medieval setting. The player gets to build up his castle from the ground up, starting with just a Treasury but eventually building Barracks to house fighting men, a Forge to make new weapons, a Wine Cellar to begin alchemical experiments, a Kitchen to begin feasting your life away, an Embassy to entertain diplomats and maintain foreign relations and so on. Knightly Tales also boasts of a robust and sophisticated combat system with four different styles of combat (though only 3 will be unlocked in the first episode) and a whole range of supplementary combat options such as trapping, different terrains, potion use and so on.

Community Thread: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic1255-knightly-tales.aspx