Team Registration and Qualification Trial Guide

[Christoph]

Now that you’ve gotten your character approved and found a partner, you will need to register your team and submit a Qualification Trial.

Team Registration Template:

Team Name

Team Members

Links to characters

Arena Exclusion (if applicable -- see the ToC Rules and Regulations thread for more details)

Qualification Trial

Your final step on the road to the Tournament of Champions is to submit a brief combative exchange between the two characters on your team as a roleplaying trial. It is essentially a short set of posts, between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, designed to serve as an example of your roleplaying and writing abilities. This should be posted in the same thread as your team registration.

There are a couple reasons for this requirement. First, it’s a good way to get some extra practice roleplaying with your partner. Second and most importantly, it will serve as a preliminary qualifier and will determine who is placed into the first round. Depending on the total number of entries, the number of teams accepted into the first round brackets will either be 28, 40, 56, 72, 88, 104, 120, or 136. Naturally, if we miraculously land on one of those numbers, nobody will be cut. The accepted teams are contacted on January 2nd and given 48 hours to respond before their spot is given to a runner up.

Each team’s trial will be judged by a number of three-person panels formed from the Tournament judging team under the direction of Ataraxis, the Head Judge. The entries will be graded using a modified version of the main rubric. The categories are Story, Character and Writing Style and each are worth 5 points (there will only be one score for both participants). At the end, the highest scoring will make it into the first round. The deadline is the closing date for team registration, December 30th.

It cannot be stressed enough: there will be a limited number of spots available in the tournament. Your trial is crucially important and should be your best effort. If you don’t manage to pass the qualifiers, fear no! There will be a number of opportunities to earn a place in subsequent rounds by winning Fate Points in the multitude of side events. More information on side events can be found, naturally, in the Side Events forum. More information about fate points can be found in the ToC Rules and Regulations thread.

[Cassandra]

Does it matter what venue my partner and I use to write our battle? I mean, does it have to be done on the forum or can we use I? IM would be easier and faster for us and we still write in full sentences with proper spelling and grammar and the like.

[Christoph]

So long as its final form is presented with the team registration in play-by-post format and consists of between two and four posts, it doesn't matter where you wrote it or what method you used -- it's all about the final product. Just keep in mind that this is a traditional PBP forum and that every trial will be gauged accordingly and equally.

[Christoph]

An important note: It is allowed and highly recommended that teams start on their trials as soon as possible. You need not wait until team registration opens, and it is advised that teams not wait until the last minute.

[Zieg dil' Tulfried]

So do you want us to start posting them now? Or just start working on them...

[Christoph]

Just start working on them.

[Lord Saladin]

Perhaps I am being a little dense here, but do we need to first have our individual characters approved before making registration for the team? Also, where do we register teams? Is there a specific place, or just within the same forum as the character registrations?

[Christoph]

You need to have your individual characters at least posted before you can post a team registration. There may be a specific sub-forum created just for team registrations and trials, but we may decide to just have them posted in the character registration area. We'll let everyone know when that time rolls around. ;)

[Lord Saladin]

Alright, thank you for clearing that up. Much appreciated. :)

[Inkfinger]

Couple quick questions for ya! In regards to this bit here:


Qualification Trial

Your final step on the road to the Tournament of Champions is to submit a brief combative exchange between the two characters on your team as a roleplaying trial. It is essentially a short set of posts, between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, designed to serve as an example of your roleplaying and writing abilities. This should be posted in the same thread as your team registration.

Does this exchange need to be our characters fighting against one another, or simply combat that involves both of them?


The deadline is the closing date for team registration, December 24th.

Is this still the deadline? Looking at the subforum from the main page, it seems that the opening date is Sunday morning, but I've noticed some people have started their team registrations - have I missed something in some thread somewhere? Just wanna make sure before I start sticking things up.

[Christoph]

Question 1: Either one.

Question 2: The deadline is still 11:59 PM on the 24th, but I really don't care if you want to start posting it now.

[Masika Ixidar]

For combat that involves both of them, can the opponents therefore by npcs with the team fighting against them?

[KazeTanade]

I would believe that, since it is Play By Post, it's easiest to play AGAINST your teammate... you rake in numbers and posts easier than tag-teaming with him, in this case. Though, the trial is to test your aptitude and creative writting level, so whatever goes that shows those. ^^

[Ataraxis]

Thank you Kaze, you summarized it incredibly well!

Indeed, you can write any sort of interaction you want. It might not even have to be a battle (though having it be a battle is a good warm-up). If you want to have your characters spar, or create NPCs that came from other worlds but that will decide not to participate after being soundly defeated by your team, it's perfectly fine. As long as the writing is as engaging and as interesting as you can make it, you can do as you wish!

[Ataraxis]

Oh, and there was a bit of a misunderstanding:

Team Registration ends on the 28th of December at 11:59 PM. Christoph realized he had answered about the Character Registration deadline, which indeed ends on the 24th of December at 11:59 PM.

We would like to apologize for this, and for any undue stress this has generated.

[Logopolis]

Is the 1000-2000 word limit strictly enforced, because that's a cripplingly small window to work within.

[Ataraxis]

We won't be counting down to the unit, no. If you somewhat exceed this number, we won't be docking points like there was no tomorrow (or docking them at all). It's only in the cases when it's clear that your Trial is dragging on that we'll be stricter in our judging.

Moreover, the Trials are not meant to be flawless, completed works. They're simply there for us to get a good idea of your writing skills. We understand 2000 words is not a lot to work with, but consider that a challenge, testing your ability to write a story without unnecessary embellishment (namely fluff and filler) by using a judicious choice and number of words.

[Jericho]

Hey! A couple quick questions, just to be resoundingly clear:


It is essentially a short set of posts, between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length,
The total word count of the "short set of posts" should be between 1,000 and 2,000, yes? As opposed to it being a short set of 1,000-2,000 word posts.


Your final step on the road to the Tournament of Champions is to submit a brief combative exchange between the two characters on your team as a roleplaying trial.
Ataraxis mentioned that the thread could feature any kind of interaction we wanted, so I just wanted to confirm that it'd be okay for little to no combat to appear in the trial. Thanks!

[Christoph]

Question One: 1,000 to 2,000 words total, of all posts from both players combined.

Question Two: Theoretically, it can be whatever you want, but written combat is recommended because this is, after all, a battle tournament. ;)

[Alecia Crawford]

Wait. I am confused about that. You mean that each post done by one person has to be in the 1k-2k area, or are you saying that the end product, all posts combined, has to be no more than 1k-2k?

[Ataraxis]

Alright, let's try and answer this question clearly, once and for all!

We are expecting at most 2000 words from the team, and so about 1000 words from each member of the team.

So let's say teammate A writes 500 words in his or her first post, and teammate B replies with 500 words, teammate A can post a second time with 500 words, and teammate B can then post one last time with 500 words, for a total of 2000 words.

Alternatively, teammate A can post a 1000 word post, to which teammate B can reply with his or her own 1000 word post, for a total of 2000 words.

There is an infinity of variations in post number, for those wondering. So hey, you could write [ 265 -> 327 -> 764 -> 256 -> 388 ] words per post as well, for a total of 2000, if that's what you fancy. Really, we're not here to gauge how well you use math in conjunction with your writing.

I will also repeat this: we will not be explicitly counting the number of words. It's a ballpark figure, and we'll only check if we can guess just from reading that the suggested limit was obviously exceeded. This is to prevent works of 3000 words and over, as that would put us even more behind schedule.

[MaxBlade]

When do we have to have the interaction threads posted?

[Ataraxis]

You now have until the 30th of December, at 11:59 PM. As you can see, a lot can already be read in the Character and Team Registration subforum.

[MaxBlade]

OH NOEZ! Can we (me and my teamate) attach a battle thread that we're doing, or does it exclusively have to be for ToC.

[Christoph]

It needs to be ToC exclusive, but 1,000 - 2,000 words between two people isn't very much at all.

[MaxBlade]

Yeah I know, I'm just scared he will not see it in time. He's been busy....-_-