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View Full Version : Vanguard Fantasy Fiction Contest - Win a Beta Spot!


Fricka
11-29-04, 11:15 AM
Vanguard is sponsoring a Fantasy Fiction Contest. Basically you write a story, submit it to the Safehouse staff, we post all the stories at the same time, then everyone votes on the best one and is presented as one of the finalists on the Vanguard site. The winner gets into the Vanguard Beta and their story gets added to the game.

It is interesting to note that you can NOT use Vanguard's timeline, history or known characters, nor any other copyrighted characters, places, etc. Be sure to read the full rules below.

Dec. 8th - Submission Deadline to shmods@thesafehouse.org

EDIT: Entry update: We received 10 entries by the deadline

Dec. 10th - Stories get posted on The Safehouse and voting begins

Dec 17th - Voting closes

Dec. 22nd - Contest winner announced on the VG site

General Rules

1. Contestants must be registered members of the Official Vanguard Forums ("Forums"). All entries must be submitted and displayed under the contestant's Forum name. It is the contestant's responsibility to ensure that his Forum registration information is accurate and current.

2. Submissions must be emailed to any one of the Affiliated Fan Sites listed below. All submissions must be received by the Affiliated Fan Sites by midnight PST on Wednesday, December 8, 2004.

3. Only one entry per contestant. Contestants submitting entries to more than one Affiliated Fan Site will be disqualified.

4. The Affiliated Fan Site may determine, in its sole discretion, whether a particular submission is appropriate to be displayed to the public. All accepted submissions will be publicly posted on each respective Affiliated Fan Site on Friday, December 10, 2004.

5. Members of the community are invited to visit the Affiliated Fan Sites and vote for which submission they like the best. The public voting for the finalists ends on midnight PST on Friday, December 17, 2004.

6. The finalist with the most votes at each Affiliated Fan Site will be submitted to Sigil Games Online. The winner of the contest will be chosen from among the finalists by a panel of judges comprised of Sigil Games Online Team members. Judging will be based on originality, creativity, technique and style. Decisions of the judges are final.

7. The winner will be displayed on the Official Vanguard Site on December 22, 2004.

8. Contestant may not submit an entry to a Fan Site for which he or she works or volunteers.

9. Submission must be no longer than 1500 words.

10. All material must be original. The story should read as a work of fiction that would be told to players as a story within the game. There should be no reference to any other work of fiction nor any reference to Vanguard’s timeline, history or its known characters.

11. Any reference to any copyrighted name, character or place, or a real name or place, or any variation thereof is grounds for disqualification.

12. Vanguard is a game for a wide public audience. Please keep this in mind and refrain from using unacceptable language or questionable material. The decision to reject an entry based on content deemed unacceptable will be at the sole discretion of each Fan Site Administrator and Sigil Games Online.

13. Prize: The winning story will be put into the game for players to read at their leisure, most likely in libraries throughout the world. The winner will also receive a spot in Vanguard’s first public Beta.

14. Upon submission, finalists are consenting to their work being displayed on the Vanguard Site. Additionally, the finalist will be asked to relinquish certain rights in the submission to ensure that the story can be included in the lore of Vanguard.

The above General Rules explain the terms and conditions upon which Sigil Games Online offers the Fantasy Fiction Contest. Your submission of any fiction to an Affiliated Fan Site constitutes your acceptance to these General Rules. No purchase is necessary to enter or to win. It is expressly understood that the Fantasy Fiction Contest is a contest of skill and not a game of chance. The Fantasy Fiction Contest is void where prohibited by law, rule or regulation.

Those are the rules, now have at thee and may the best story win!

Fricka
11-30-04, 12:32 AM
As one entrant pointed out, I did not provide information on what format to send...

Submission Format Guideline:
We will be copying and pasting your story into a post on the board so please keep your story formatting simple (no colored or special fonts, etc). DO include paragraph breaks. Also, be sure to provide your forum name in the email.

You can send your story as a Word doc attachment, or just paste it into your email.

shehab aldean
11-30-04, 03:31 AM
11. Any reference to any copyrighted name, character or place, or a real name or place, or any variation thereof is grounds for disqualification.


how do i check what is copyrighted and what is not ? does mentioning names of char i created in EQ or other games make them copyrighted ?


and another question , what theme ? fantasy ? sci fi ?

Llabak Tharr
11-30-04, 06:55 AM
[quote]
how do i check what is copyrighted and what is not ? does mentioning names of char i created in EQ or other games make them copyrighted ?


and another question , what theme ? fantasy ? sci fi ?

The intent of this is a common sense interpretation, I believe. Don't write a story about Drizzt (no one should, after all), or a story that takes place in Qeynos or Rohan or London. However if you write a story about "Trueheart Evilsmiter" or whatever sissy name you gave your paladin, you don't have to go on a search to find out if anyone has ever used that name in another work before. A general rule of thumb is that anything creative is copyrighted - just because it doesn't have the little (C) jobbie doesn't mean it's fair game. Don't use someone else's character.

The theme should be Fantasy, I'd expect, since this will become part of Vanguard's in-game fiction, and Vanguard is a fantasy genre game.

Brelkor
11-30-04, 10:31 AM
Are we allowed to use common Vanguard 'lore'? Meaning are we able to use items from the sight such as creatures, places, etc? I realize they don't want us writing 'history' i guess, but i want something i might write to feel like its part of the land.

Aidden
11-30-04, 10:33 AM
10. All material must be original. The story should read as a work of fiction that would be told to players as a story within the game. There should be no reference to any other work of fiction nor any reference to Vanguard’s timeline, history or its known characters.


I would assume if what you want to use falls into the History, Timeline or Characther catagory then no.. if not then yes..

JookaWoo
11-30-04, 10:57 AM
good luck all you storytellers out there.

Soulstealer
11-30-04, 11:50 AM
What size story are they looking for? 2-3 pages or a small paperback?

Aidden
11-30-04, 12:28 PM
1500 words or less

9. Submission must be no longer than 1500 words.

Fricka
11-30-04, 08:53 PM
The genre is Fantasy. I had that in the first line of my post but not in the thread title, I put it in the title to make it clearer :)

Think of the type of story as something you might tell around the fire while in the world of Vanguard... yet not using any copyrighted characters. So while you could mention your liege, you could not actually use Vanguard character names, or EQ names, or Tolkien names, etc.

When the winning story is included in the game one possibility is that it might be as a book available in various places in the game.

Nymm
12-03-04, 10:16 AM
For those that don't read the vanguard forums, it's been clarified that "relinquish some rights" actually means "relinquish all rights" for the purposes of this contest. The winner will be required to sign over all rights to their fiction. So don't write about characters or places you have any desire to publish elsewhere.

Pearll
12-04-04, 04:32 PM
Got mine in.

Personally, I don't mind giving up rights to it. I write for fun and hope that others find my works as enjoyable. Heck, submitting it will give it some exposure, even if it's not chosen, which is enough for me.

Trayson
12-05-04, 01:03 AM
Sent mine in. :kroe

I always enjoy entering writing contests. I figure Safehouse to be a good challenge as well, what with the wonderful minds this community has cultured over the years. :D

Nymm
12-06-04, 04:59 PM
I'm in the horrible predicament of having written a safehouse story, but knowing the odds of getting to the finals are better submitting it elsewhere.

Fricka
12-06-04, 06:06 PM
Hmm, tough one.

When the deadline gets closer I think the other sites will have more entries and we'll all be even in the end. Then at least here you might have the "hometown" advantage ;)

Or... you could submit it to another site but simultaneously post it in The Fireplace forum for us to read here and then tell folks where they can go vote for you.

Nymm
12-06-04, 06:25 PM
I went ahead and sent it to the safehouse mods. In the end, it's not very good but it is a rogue story and belongs here.

Deishan
12-06-04, 10:16 PM
Should we put in the mail both our safehouse name AND the vanguard forum one? Or only one of them?

Fricka
12-06-04, 10:49 PM
Should we put in the mail both our safehouse name AND the vanguard forum one? Or only one of them?
Both names please :)

Nymm
12-07-04, 12:18 PM
How do we know our submissions were received? Should we have received a confirmation message or something?

Llabak Tharr
12-07-04, 12:36 PM
We got yours :)

Fricka
12-07-04, 03:28 PM
We received yours Nymm. I updated the count again, we have 6 total. One person was disqualified but we got another entry to bump it back up to 5.

Just a reminder, you can only submit your story to 1 fansite.

Deishan
12-07-04, 06:01 PM
Got mine? Please, tell me i am not the disqualified one...

Nocte
12-07-04, 06:34 PM
We have yours Deishan. The disqualified one was a voluntary withdrawal.

Deishan
12-07-04, 07:09 PM
Thanks..:)

DerangedGnome2.0
12-08-04, 01:27 AM
Sorry, didn't realize I was supposed to use both names - the entry for Jesslyn5 is mine. :)

Dragynphyre
12-08-04, 09:09 AM
Gah! I didn't notice this one until the due date, and I don't think I can scramble my brain fast enough to get a good submission in.

DerangedGnome2.0
12-08-04, 12:53 PM
Will you guys be sending acknowledgments of entries recieved? Jesslyn5's was sent in late last evening <or early this morning, lol>

Nocte
12-08-04, 01:02 PM
I don't see anything for Jesslyn5.

We did get one last night entitled "By Dawn" without anything but the authors real name.

'zat you?

Edit: And we did recieve another untitled story early this morning by someone with the same surname as that of the "By Dawn" author. That also didn't contain either SH or Vanguard handles.

Edit again: Yep, that was hers/yours... I didn't read the subject line... I'm assuming By Dawn is yours or someone you know? We'll need both SH and Vanguard handles for both stories... but we do have them in hand.

DerangedGnome2.0
12-08-04, 02:08 PM
'By Dawn' isn't mine...I will resend with both names in the headline, I'll send from my AOL address this time rather than hotmail. Thanks for the response.


EDIT: Oops! Sorry. After sending it in on the AOL acct., I read my hotmail e-mail from you Nocte, requesting my SH handle. That e-mail has been answered, sorry about it coming on both e-mail accts, I just wanted to get it in before the deadline, and thought you hadn't recieved it. Thanks for all the help.

Nocte
12-08-04, 02:25 PM
Okay then. That's one mystery solved. :p

By Dawn is still unaccounted for. I sent an email to the author-- we'll need both Safehouse and Vanguard names to qualify any story recieved prior to midnight PST!

Fricka
12-08-04, 03:18 PM
I already got that guy's info. I've been emailing everyone as soon as I got their story. Only one I didn't was Nymm but he would've seen we got it if he checked his icq :P

Nocte
12-08-04, 09:36 PM
Ah. Sorry for scaring everyone then. Just trying to make all the bases were covered. Good luck everyone.

And might I add, the SH is representing in the contest- currently the most known contestants. Great job.

Fricka
12-09-04, 01:01 AM
Good luck everyone! It's now past midnight PST. We received 10 qualified entrants. We'll be posting all the stories at the same time, on Dec 10 for everyone to read. Voting will begin then and you must be a registered member to vote.

Trayson
12-10-04, 12:02 AM
When the deadline gets closer I think the other sites will have more entries and we'll all be even in the end. Then at least here you might have the "hometown" advantage ;)

Well, in the end you guys had the most submissions. Of all the sites that were listing number of entries (only two weren't), the next highest was 6 and I think three sites had that number.

Definitely going to be a bit more challenging here. :D

Digo
12-10-04, 01:30 AM
I purposely published my story here, knowing full well it would receive the most traffic and competition because if it wins, I know damn well it wasn't by default.

Winning without blood and suffering is hardly worthwhile.

Pokenm
12-10-04, 10:15 AM
Are they posted yet? If not what forum will they be in?

Fricka
12-10-04, 10:31 AM
Yep, guess I'm no Nostradamus with guessing entry numbers, lol.

I'll post the entries now. Each story will be up in The Fireplace but I will post the voting poll/news item in this forum and link to each entrant from there for easy access.

Fricka
12-10-04, 12:44 PM
I've posted the poll with a list of all the stories here:
http://www.thesafehouse.org/viewtopic.php?t=17247

DerangedGnome2.0
12-10-04, 04:02 PM
G'luck everyone! I really enjoyed reading all of the stories.