Hello everybody,
I've been thinking about this for some time.
Many gaming forums host competitions where players attempt to write a story related to their game and compete with other stories.
The voters - all of us - would ultimately decide who is the winner.
This is a pretty ambitious proposition, which is why I'm trying to find out if there would be any interest in the first place.
No point doing this when only 2-3 people take part.
The general idea behind this is to write 2000-5000 words in a short story format.
As for the details, it's pretty clear it would have to be something from the world of Ancardia, preferably from the Drakalor Chain.
The main factor contributing to victory, aside from a well-written piece of fiction, would be its adherence to the rules we all know and love (or hate).
What I mean is that ADoM offers a vast multitude of choices and possibilities, so you won't have to make anything up, save for descriptions of known features, because everything has already been "created", as in - it exists in the game.
Imagine reading a story and suddenly thinking: Hey! I know this shit! I lost a promising mindcrafter in the very same situation.
Of course, how well someone describes the events we all know and have experienced at some point, is going to be the measure of their success.
Writing about things every ADoM player can relate to would make it easier to judge a story and ultimately decide who managed to "keep" the spirit of the game on the virtual paper.
We have magic, we have might and we have stealth. There are monsters, companions, dungeons and artifacts... plenty of stuff to choose from.
I'd even say that embedding certain descriptions authored by Thomas would be especially welcome.
Finally, the technical side:
Two people are selected to write stories and then both are posted in a designated thread.
People then proceed to read them and finally rate both stories, giving each 1-5 points.
1 meaning it's gibberish written by a one-eyed goblin and 5 meaning it's the Mad Minstrel himself behind that keyboard.
The victor is the author with the highest number of positive votes.
Another two stories compete after that and once more the community decides which one is the best.
At some point, we reach the final stage where victory determines who's the best ADoM writer.
What's the prize? I guess it's just recognition but most importantly - the journey beats the destination. The competition is the prize itself.
Everything is subject to change though, so we don't really have to follow this guideline, but I've seen this done like that and it worked.
I added an optional poll so the interest might be gauged properly.
Ideas? Comments?