The BATTLE of the CENTURY! [S!7] - Round 1: The New Frontier
06-22-2012, 02:00 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
The Premise:
The Rules:
Rules format slightly pilfered from Ix and Sanzh.
What:
This is The Battle of the Century, the seventh battle in Season Intermission. It’s one of like a million Grand Battles, which are eight-player collaborative roleplays. Everyone can freely write for the other player characters, and every couple of months or so, the player whose writing or storytelling is the weakest is eliminated, their character dies, and the remaining characters are slingshotted off through time and space to another setting.
Despite appearances, this isn’t really focused on fighting, although the ultimate goal of your character will be being the last person standing. So, your goal isn’t necessarily having the most powerful character you can possibly think of – it would actually benefit you more to come up with an interesting character who you’ll be able to tell a bunch of different stories with, even if they’re comparatively weak.
The Battle of the Century is going to work a little differently from typical Grand Battles; as explained in brief in the introduction, instead of going to a different locale each time, you’ll be in the same setting a hundred years later. So, later rounds will be heavily influenced by the actions of your characters and the world-building you do. Try and keep that in mind when designing a character.
Rules:
Generally speaking there's a lot of rules and such you can read from other battles, but these are a few points I would like to emphasize.
Judging:
Writing ability is important, but what really matters is your storytelling. While your technical ability as a writer is as important as it is anywhere else, it's more important that you're able to create and develop interesting characters, interact with other player characters, carry a story, world-build, and things like that. Your level of activity and your interaction with other writers are decently important, too. Historically speaking, keeping to yourself and not interacting with anyone all round is pretty much a sure-fire way to get eliminated in Round One.
Applications:
Applications are open until the end of the month or so, or up to two weeks if I can negotiate for longer. Applications are not first-come, first-serve. Take your time and come up with a good character. Use the following application as a guide. Feel free to put the sections in different orders if someone else would need to understand your character's backstory to make any sense of their abilities or physical description. If you really have to, you can make a non-profile. Remember, besides proving that you can string words together into coherent sentences, you're trying to do two things: Convince me that your character is interesting enough that I'd want to see more of them, and provide a how-to guide for the other players who are ultimately going to be writing your character.
The Premise:
The Rules:
Rules format slightly pilfered from Ix and Sanzh.
What:
This is The Battle of the Century, the seventh battle in Season Intermission. It’s one of like a million Grand Battles, which are eight-player collaborative roleplays. Everyone can freely write for the other player characters, and every couple of months or so, the player whose writing or storytelling is the weakest is eliminated, their character dies, and the remaining characters are slingshotted off through time and space to another setting.
Despite appearances, this isn’t really focused on fighting, although the ultimate goal of your character will be being the last person standing. So, your goal isn’t necessarily having the most powerful character you can possibly think of – it would actually benefit you more to come up with an interesting character who you’ll be able to tell a bunch of different stories with, even if they’re comparatively weak.
The Battle of the Century is going to work a little differently from typical Grand Battles; as explained in brief in the introduction, instead of going to a different locale each time, you’ll be in the same setting a hundred years later. So, later rounds will be heavily influenced by the actions of your characters and the world-building you do. Try and keep that in mind when designing a character.
Rules:
Generally speaking there's a lot of rules and such you can read from other battles, but these are a few points I would like to emphasize.
- If you plan on posting something that will affect important characters or the plans of other writers - which will likely be most of your posts – you’ll probably want to make a post ahead of time that just says “reserve.” That way, you won’t have to worry about other players making posts with the characters you’re working with, and the other players won’t have to worry about you doing the same. If you do post a reserve, try to follow up on it as soon as possible. Three days is fine, a week is stretching it.
- Try to keep in contact. Co-operation is pretty essential for a collaborative endeavor like Grand Battles, so don't try to go without interacting with others. You will be expected to write for characters other than your own, and clarifying characterization with other authors helps with that a bit. Don't inflict major injuries or character changes on others without asking, don't plan things out too much that other authors are constricted, and for what plans others set in place don't deliberately go out to ruin them. (That doesn't mean you can't try to get in other people's ways, though.) There's an IRC channel for Grand Battle stuff (#grandbattle at irc.esper.net). Using it isn't necessary, but it does help. There might be a planning page on GoogleDocs at some point.
- Don't be a jerk. This includes killing or maiming other characters when you aren't supposed to (which is most of the time), dominating the plot at the expense of others, and mis-characterization of other contestants—stuff like that. A corollary to this is that should you be having problems - with other authors, their writing, the round location, your character and how they aren't fun to write for anymore, or anything like that - you shouldn't hesitate to let me know. Don't feel like you can't speak up. You have just as much of a right to be here as the other players.
Judging:
Writing ability is important, but what really matters is your storytelling. While your technical ability as a writer is as important as it is anywhere else, it's more important that you're able to create and develop interesting characters, interact with other player characters, carry a story, world-build, and things like that. Your level of activity and your interaction with other writers are decently important, too. Historically speaking, keeping to yourself and not interacting with anyone all round is pretty much a sure-fire way to get eliminated in Round One.
Applications:
Applications are open until the end of the month or so, or up to two weeks if I can negotiate for longer. Applications are not first-come, first-serve. Take your time and come up with a good character. Use the following application as a guide. Feel free to put the sections in different orders if someone else would need to understand your character's backstory to make any sense of their abilities or physical description. If you really have to, you can make a non-profile. Remember, besides proving that you can string words together into coherent sentences, you're trying to do two things: Convince me that your character is interesting enough that I'd want to see more of them, and provide a how-to guide for the other players who are ultimately going to be writing your character.
Quote:Username: Your username. Sort of a relic of an older time but still nice to have.Character Roster:
Name: Your character’s name.
Sex: Male, female, or none. Or both, if you want to show off.
Race: Human, ghost, sentient plant, or your very own incredibly specific type of alien. Don’t bother with an intricate description – save it for the description section.
Color: A text color for your character. Backgrounds are allowed, but you’ll probably regret deciding to use them once you meet up with another character and start alternating between text colors every couple of lines. Don’t pick #000000 or white on black, since those are the grandmasters’ colors.
Description: Both the character’s physical appearance and their personality. Remember, other players are going to glance over this section of your profile in particular to get a sense of your character before writing for them, so it’s probably in your best interests to keep this down to a couple of paragraphs.
Items/Abilities: Your character’s abilities, which extends to skills they have, crazy supernatural powers, and whatever weird things their species might be able to do. Also extends to the things that your character just so happened to have on them when they got pulled out of space and time.
Biography: Your character’s backstory. Occasionally, people will substitute this for a short scene featuring their character, which is okay, but only so long as that scene conveys something about their past. This is another part of your profile that other players are going to need to reference. Don’t write a massive essay, but, again, you might want to write a couple of paragraphs to help out the other players.
Other: An optional section. If you wrote an actual backstory but you still want to write that short scene featuring your character, go ahead and put it here. Otherwise, include your character’s theme song.
Actually, do that anyway.
- Pinary as Michael "Mickey" McMillan
- Lord Paradise as Heironymous Fisher
- Sanzh as Csillag
- Ixcaliber as President Vladimir Roth
- TimeothyHour as A butterfly
- Anthano Zasalla as Oth
- XX as The Ragazza Ridente
- Snowyowl as Quino