[Ntanel]

Molly has asked questions, now to answer them.

> What are the ´planned rules?

Well, you and Neranz did a good job with the 2001 rules, I would like to base the ImmU event on them.

http://www.mudworld.org/awards/2001/

> Things that come to mind are:
>- Do the stories need to be based on an actual zone?

No.

>- Any restrictions as to length? and subject?

Less than 10 pages at arial font 10 double-spaced. Just a guess, looking for opinions.

>- Will the stories be judged under different subjects or all together?

I like the different topics idea, seems to work.

>- Any restriction to the amount of stories the same person can submit?

It does bring in a question on fairness. You could stomp most anyone easily. If we limited to one, then people would have a fair chance.

>- Who will the judges be?

No volunteers as of yet, but I do not want Iluvatar or Keolah to be judges.

>- Are the judges allowed take part, if they don't judge their own stories?

We would not have a judge work on a category they submitted in.

>- Should the entries be 'anonymous', or do we post under our usual 'board signatures? (Personally I think anonymous).

I do not want real names. The only exceptions I have ever made where for Brody and Neranz. If you mean in display and judging, I could make them anonymous to prevent favoritism, but I would have to exclude myself from participating to keep track of submissions and aliases.

>- And above all: what will be the deadline for submitting?

Do not have the volunteers needed yet to set a date, have not inquired formally.

[Iluvatar]

Hey, it took the four 2001 judges considerable time to hash out those rules along with you, Ntanel. It wasn’t just Molly and Neranz. I personally think they came out pretty good too and were even applied to the MudCons with few changes.

I’ve always considered the topical or theme concept to be the best as well and it worked well for all the contests I’ve seen. Regardless of the genre, how a story is written is always pretty much the same when it’s to be used as a base theme for a zone that might be written to support its concepts of a theme. With a good base, other short stories can be created to expand on the base and totally flesh out the resultant zone.

I’m not sure you’re going to find sufficient judges to exclude them from judging in categories either they or people they work with submit in. What worked is when a judge felt there was a conflict of interest, like the submitter worked with them, they recused themselves from judging that story and it defaulted to the contest manager to judge. I and I expect Keolah would like to submit stories this time and any judging would be a perceived conflict in my opinion which is why I volunteered to be used as a judge only as a last resort.

After the numerous stories Sir Vorpal Tribble submitted at once, I recommend only one submission per contest too. The actual size you accept really depends on how much space you want to dedicate to publishing on your website but what you stated sounds pretty good if you’ll specify the format. In a .doc or .txt file I think it works out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-3.5k words. There is a consideration needed for the number of submissions though and the max I’ve seen so far is 11. With the forethought in this contest, there might be considerably more. That means it might be really harsh to actually put all the stories submitted up on the site because of space but I would recommend putting judge critiques up per story. We did those critiques as constructive criticism with both praise and suggestions for improvement for the next short story.

Hmm, rather than a banner of the durations mentioned, perhaps we can weasel an icon from Synozeer on the TMS homepage with a link to a bio and the actual stories. There’s some decent space for it on the left of the page. We might even be able to put the stories submitted into a post in one of the forums here too. Any other ideas?

One last thing about names…Regardless of the name submitted as author of a story it really doesn’t matter to a competent judge who wrote the story. A large part of this is both personal satisfaction as well as advertisement of the quality of the zones you build and the Mu* you work for so I would recommend using your most commonly known nom-de-plume.

[Ntanel]

http://www.mudworld.org/ImmU/contests/

This is what I have put together so far. Once we all can agree on something and modifications are made, I will make things official and send out press releases.

If there is another resource out there who wishes to partake, let me know before these things become official.

I also need three more judges, Sywin of Itheria has already signed-up.

[Iluvatar]

I reviewed the rules and applaud your efforts. Good Job!

[Molly]

Looks good to me too.

One suggestion though, about the length of the stories:
Maybe you should also express it as 'max numbers of words', since that is much easier for the writer to check in WinWords than number of pages.

[Ntanel]

Word length suggestions anyone?

[welcor]

I'd suggest about 3.5K words max. It corresponds (in my Times new Roman 12 pt) to about 5-6 pages. I think that's reasonable for a short story, and should be enough to judge the creative writing skills of the contestant.

Welcor

[Iluvatar]

From my experience with Orion, setting a specific word length presents a few problems. What if the story is 3510 words or perhaps 3558 words and where do you draw the line.

I think sticking to number of pages in a specified format is much more appropriate and easier to manage in the long run. If I choose the word 'obfuscate' and others of that ilk and my page length is too long, I can always change that to 'lie' and do the same with other long words which would affect the length of the story but not the number count.

[Ntanel]

So then, stick with what I have?

[Iluvatar]

In my opinion, yes.

[Ntanel]

Do the date's on the event sound good?  Open from July 1 to the 24? Judging the next two to three weeks after deadline.

[welcor]

Sounds ok to me. However, it _is_ the summer holiday for some, so we might not see as many entries as we would wish. I can't come up with a quick solution to this, though.

[Ntanel]

"Summer holiday." We talking summer break or forth of July? There is three weeks to prepare and three for submissions.

[Iluvatar]

The hard part is getting reliable judges. I wouldn't set the dates in stone until all the judges are lined up but what you have is a more than reasonable target date. Even if the submission dates have to be postponed, starting the story about now can't hurt anything at all.

I've already started spreading the word about the contest and have one quasi-committment already for an entrant.

[welcor]

Originally Posted by (Ntanel @ June 08 2004,06:31) "Summer holiday."  We talking summer break or forth of July?

I was referring to summer break.

The reason for my concern is that quite a lot of the mudders I know of take a mud break in the hot summer months - which would lower the potential number of contestants. However, times may have changed, as more people are connecting from home computers instead of school networks.

I hope I'm mistaken

[Molly]

It's true that most muds experience a decrease in player activity during the summer break. But I doubt that will affect Ntanel's contest. The people taking part in that will be mostly Admins, I believe, and Admins don't take summer breaks.

We are chained to our muds forever. Woe betide us.

[Ntanel]

Well, I have two judges right now, would like two more, one of these four will be the alternate. No offense to Sywin or Welcor, but I would like a judge from the past who has past experience with this and is not Molly, Keolah or Iluvatar to act as the lead judge. Anyone know where Neranz is hanging out?

Judges signed up:
Sywin of Itheria
Welcor of Builder's Academy

[Iluvatar]

Neranz faded away into the nether regions for the most part. I haven't seen her in ages. She had cited home responsibilities a few times in the past and I'm sure she's concentrating on them.

I miss her and I'm sure quite a few others do.

[Ntanel]

I emailed her, so we shall see. Else I will approach Brody (Wes Platt) next.

[Ntanel]

Immortal University is holding a creative writing contest. Submissions will be accepted between July 1st and July 24th. If you are interested, please refer to the link below for the contest rules.

http://www.mudworld.org/ImmU/contests/