I'm putting this up plenty of time in advance, so that if you want to adjust your schedules to participate (assuming you have a life), you can do so.
Well, it seems as everyone here has some degree of ADD...
Erm, as I was saying, we've been trying to find some means to keep you folks active (why can't you be active on your own? Lazy! Lazy!
), and we thought maybe that your short attention spans could use a few
even shorter events. (Seriously, how short would we have to make these?)
Hence comes the first ever Quick Write. (Made it to the second paragraph? I underestimated your attention span, have a cookie). This competition is different from any you have likely done, however it shares a few similarities to some of the platoon stories that we've done in the past. Starting on Friday, September 19
th and running only until Sunday, September 21
st, Quick Write: Episode I will begin, a story that you will only have 3 days to post your hearts out.
Episode II will run from Friday, September 26
th to Sunday, September 28
th. Episode III shall follow suit on Friday October 3
rd through Sunday, October 5
th.
Essentially here's how the Episodes will work:
- On the Thursday before, you will find a preview post up containing misc info, from key NPC bios, planetary information, and any other references we deem would be useful to know in advance.
- Friday, approximately 4 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) one of your overworked and underpaid command staffers will post the first post of the story and you'll have the green light to get those itching trigger fingers dancing across the keys.
- While the story is running, we'll do our best to keep an updated but vague outline of the story for those that can't read 10 posts made since they last logged in. (although we do encourage you folks to read them
) - Then on Sunday, at 4 PM Eastern (still -5 GMT), which is VE meeting time, we'll conclude the story for that weekend and wait for the next one.
- Still reading? Damn you for having an extensive attention span for just this once... Fine, take another cookie.
Short and sweet stories during the weekends, followed up by a full week of rest (or school/work for those of you with a life
). Overall I think it's a fairly good deal, as the weekend is when most of us have time to hop onto the VE and have some fun. And with each story running continuously for 48 hours, it really doesn't matter what timezone you may be in.
And instead of enforcing the infamous minimum word count... we're enforcing... a maximum *waits for everyone to breath again* word count. I know this is a shocking concept, but please try to keep all posts below 400 words. Posts may go up like wildfires, and we like to give everyone a chance to at least post once. Granted this does
not mean we are giving you permission to post one sentence posts. Still reading? Damn you, get a third cookie. So of course we
still expect quality over quantity, and if your post is only a mere short paragraph that contributes nothing...expect it to be deleted.
And for those of you without a life, what in the Galaxy can you do during the normal weekday? God forbid that Doc is asking you to do nothing?
Of course not, we'll be running different (but short) competitions during both of those weeks for those of you with no life (or just some extra time
). More details on those later, I don't want anyone cheating by getting a headstart, let's play fair folks.
And now, how will we score ya'll? (I bet you stopped reading already, right? No? Damn,you get cookie number four, I hate you
). It's fairly simple. We'll pick the best posters (in terms of activity, effort, and quality,
NOT solely number of posts) from each weekend story and reward them. Then the people we deem did the best overall (considering all three stories) will be rewarded slightly further.
So what will be the rewards? Who knows?
Promotions, medals, ICs, a mysterious box, all are equally valid. (I swear the box isn't empty... *cough*).
So, let's get ourselves ready to make AWESOME STORIES (tm), and have LOTS OF FUN (tm). This promises to be a GOOD TIME (tm) with plenty of COOL REWARDS (tm pending).
Any questions, comments, love letters, and the like, post them below. Have a nice day.
Why are you still reading? That was clearly the concluding sentence, so your attention span should have wandered elsewhere... Fine you win, have your fifth cookie... You'll get fat on these cookies, and then you'll wish you had a shorter attention span... how will you feel about that then, huh?
HUH?