King's Library Writing Contest!

The Great Council is happy to announce the first Writing Contest hosted by the King's Library!

The Prize Pool:

1st Place: 350k gold, 1st Place Trophy lovingly hand-crafted by the Gods themselves, and your story also will be copied into a very special and unique book for prominent display in the King's Library.


2nd Place: 250k gold, 2nd Place Trophy hand-crafted with slightly less love by the Gods themselves.

3rd Place: 100k gold, 3rd Place Trophy hand-crafted by one of the God's interns.

There are secret prizes as well! We will not reveal the conditions to earn these prizes, but several lucky people will win extra prizes for accomplishing un-named tasks with their stories!

The Prize Pool is open for donations as well - if anyone in the community would like to contribute to the prize pool, please let me know and I will update it! More prizes in the pool not only means larger 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes, but also more secret prizes, and therefor more winners!


The Contest:

You will write a story using this writing prompt: Origins (as this is the first of our Writing Contests, it seemed fitting!)

Let your creativity run loose and come up with the best story that you can come up with as it relates to the writing prompt. You can write it in any style that you wish, any perspective. The only caveat is that it must relate to UO. Examples could include the origin story of your character. It could be about the start of a guild. It could be about a very special item you have. It could be anything as long as it pertains to UO. Have fun with it!

• All stories must be written in In-Game books (I recommend the blue ones, they have 40 pages, the rest only have 20).
• There is no minimum or maximum number of pages or words for your story. You can use more than one book if needed.
• Due to the diverse nature of languages on this shard, we know not everyone speaks English as their primary language. Although submissions should be in English for consideration, grammatical mistakes will NOT be held against anyone. We will be looking at the content of the story, not the grammar of it.
• Every submission should contain the following information on the front page of the book: UOR Forum/IRC Names, title of the story, date of submission, and the words "King's Library Writing Contest".
• Submissions can be turned in any time up until September 10th 11:59pm EST. At this time I will collect all submissions together and any submissions after this deadline will not be considered.
• You can submit your books at any time before the deadline either directly to me (contact me in the Forums, or in IRC Alex_Caember), or you can drop the book off directly at the King's Library. There is a box on the front steps that you can drop the book into.

Judging:

Judging will take place over the following week following the deadline. The judges are Zyler, Jupiter, and myself. We have come to an agreement on a point-based system that will help us collectively determine a ranked order for the top prizes. Winners will be contacted shortly after determination through the Forum or IRC names provided on the front page of their submission.

One note, all submissions will be kept in the King's Library archives, and may be used for display in the future.


And that is it! I hope everyone has fun - Happy Writing!

-The Great Council

Due to a very generous donation to the prize pool, the prizes for the top 3 spots have been increased! Thanks @mafghine !!!

@Azoth i hope you give this a go!

In the words of my good friend and better enemy, the Gray Wizard "I heart this thread". I am inspired by the prompt and will do my very best to submit a story for consideration.

Thanks for this awesome event!!!!

Giving this a bump - the deadline is approaching, only 5 more days!

Give it a shot, even if you do not fancy yourself a writer - you have nothing to lose and some awesome stuff to gain!

My submission is in the drop box

Thanks for the reminder... As usual I thought I had more time than I did...

Yeah, that is how it usually goes - 2 weeks out nobody cares, but as the deadline looms everyone scrambles

4 days to go!

They see me scramblin...

This is my lifelong struggle with deadlines in a nutshell right here.

A question for you fine gentlemen.... Would it be okay to post our story on the forum in the Tavern section also or do you want them to be exclusive to the contest and the library?

I thought posting them there might get more interest for the contest.... Just an idea.

Awesome idea, by the way. I'm impressed with the work the Council has done so far. Perhaps one day I'll be able to earn a seat there myself...

*smiles and tips hat*

Good evening to you all, and I await your reply....

I would say wait until after the contest and then if you want to post the story to the forum go for it - but probably best wait until after the judges had a chance to read them.

Will do. Thanks.

In honor of 9-11 are you going to go through 104 stories in about an hour?

the heck's wrong with you?

Too soon?

Only about a day left for anyone else thinking about submitting something!

Closing in on the dead-line! About 9 hours left for any last-minute folk

Thank you all for your submissions! The three judges (Jupiter, Zyler, and myself) are busy reading the submissions and will use our pre-determined system to assign points to them and create a ranked list. This process may take a few days to a week, so please be patient. We will notify winners as soon as this process is complete!

Thank you!

Fantastic Alex, You folks created a fun contest. Thanks for doing it and thanks Judges

Alright folks! The entries are in, we all read them (multiple times), and we all abided closely to the system we devised to help us create ranked lists. We each created our own ranked lists and then averaged all 3 together to come up with the final scores and placements.

Before going further, I just want to say I am very proud of everyone who wrote something and entered it into this contest. Whether you win a prize or not, it just is really great of each of you to put something of yourself in there for others to see. On a personal level it means a lot to me. Thank you. I am also very proud of both of the other judges, @Zyler and @Jupiter who helped devise the judging system so that it would weigh fairly the thoughts and observations of all judges and not allow any single judge to bias the outcome of the contest. Their thoughtful opinions and timely reading of the entries is very welcome and appreciated!

There were 10 entries into the contest, totaling 19 in-game books. It was not easy coming up with ranked lists, and some of the entries were so close to tying. It was difficult to choose because the quality of the books was great across the board! Without further ado, here is the list of winning entries:

@The Watch To Keep the Watch by Ascher Kraw - 1st Place + Secret Prize for longest story (7 in-game books!)
@Azoth Mysterious Origins by Azoth - 2nd Place
@Christoph Brock A Moonless Night by Christoph Brock - 3rd place
Urk First Blood by Shik'bah - Secret Prize for shortest story


I will get in touch with the winners in the near future regarding their prizes (part of the wait is for the Gods to craft some of them!)

The prices once more are as follow:

1st Place: 350k gold, 1st Place Trophy lovingly hand-crafted by the Gods themselves, and your story also will be copied into a very special and unique book for prominent display in the King's Library.


2nd Place: 250k gold, 2nd Place Trophy hand-crafted with slightly less love by the Gods themselves.

3rd Place: 100k gold, 3rd Place Trophy begrudgingly manufactured by one of the God's interns.

The secret prizes are worth 50k each, one for the longest story, and one for the shortest story.



Once again, thank you all for participating in this event, and thank you to those who donated to the prize pool! I really enjoyed doing this, and if I can talk Zyler and Jupiter into doing it again in the future, I hope to have another writing contest!

Thanks again everyone!