Schedule, Structure, and a Big Announcement.

[Vin]

All right, guys. This announcement is a big one. It's a game changer. This is some never before seen stuff, and I think you're gonna like it. Before I get to that, though, I want to go over some general housekeeping and schedule notes.

First, an announcement about a lineup change. Nando has unfortunately dropped out of the contest. Since that leaves a gap in the lineup, we're tagging in the second place writer from the beast master category to take their place. So, I want everyone to welcome Timbones to the cast.

Second, schedule. There's a bit of categorization going on here so let's go over it together. Warpath is going to take place in three phases, and each phase will contain 3 rounds. Each round will have one post by each contestant.

The reason I have split up the contest into phases is so that we are able to take natural breaks in this story so we don't burnout. For instance, the holidays are coming up fairly soon and nobody wants to be writing over the holidays. Or, maybe you actually do want to be writing but you can't because you have to spend time with the fam. Whatever the reason, the holidays are a busy season. So, phase one will end before the holidays and we will have a break for the holidays before returning to the contest in January.

In general, rounds will be two weeks to give authors more time to get everything in place. Because of the shifting lineup this week, though, the schedule is going by a bit quicker. Here is the current structure and schedule for Phase 1:

Phase 1
-round 1.1 Friday Nov 5 - Friday Nov 19th.
-round 1.2 Friday Nov 19 - Wednesday Dec 1st
-round 1.3 Wednesday Dec 1st - Friday Dec 10th
Break for Holidays

This means that over the next week, we're going to finally start seeing story posts! Hopefully you guys are excited.

Speaking of excitement, it's time to talk shop. The big announcement. I've talked a lot about audience engagement over the last couple months, and I've made significant changes to the survivor format for Warpath to encourage that. The first step? Removing weekly death votes. That's right. In this contest, every single contestant you voted in will make the final. You will watch each character grow throughout the whole story and, hopefully, connect with each of them before deciding their ultimate fate.

But wait, Vin, you're probably saying. That's counterintuitive, isn't it? The weekly death vote is how the audience participates! If you take that away, how can we participate? I'm glad you asked, random audience member.

This contest, presumably for the first time ever, members of the audience will have a chance to write in the contest. Each round, instead of voting for a contestant they want to see die, they will vote for a new character that they want to see in the story. This character will write a collab post with one contestant from the contest. This means that if your application didn't make it into the main contest, or you didn't apply to the main contest because you didn't have time to write for a full contest, this is your chance to take part in creating the world of Warpath.

So how will this work?

Each round, I will release a list of applications on which the audience can vote. This round, the applications will all be taken from the top 20 apps. In the future, these applications may still be ones you have seen before, but they may also be new applications you haven't ever seen before. The audience will vote, and the winning application will be writing a collab the following round.

If you want to write an application or submit a previous application, you will submit that application to me, through dms either here in the forum or on discord. I will put your application into the application pool. For this week only, applications are open solely to members of the top 20.

The rules for applying and for voting will be the same general rules as for the contest applications, with a couple extra rules for applying due to the specialized nature of the vote. First, you may only choose one application to go to vote each round. Second, there are only two categories: North and South. This is your chance to create lore for this world, and I want to see new ideas that are going to enrich the story that the main contestants are writing. That being said, a helpful tip in regards to writing an application here: the contestants will have a say in which app joins the collab. This means that in your application, you want to make sure that you aren't ignoring or contradicting the lore that they will be setting up in their chapters.

There will be two categories, but only one application will move on to collaborate with a contestant. So why have categories at all? Simple. The category lets the voters know which characters this applicant might be collaborating with. An application classified as "North" will potentially collab with Bahto, Marrow, or Marunae. An app classified as "South" will potentially collab with Siroc, Timbones, or Gilhert.

Hopefully, you guys are excited about this. These votes will not be the only audience vote of the contest, but they will be very significant. This is very much an experiment, and me taking the opportunity to play with format a little bit. Things may not necessarily run 100% smoothly to start off, but I think this has the potential to be a very fun mechanic. I will post this round's application list hopefully by the end of tonight, or tomorrow afternoon at the latest. As soon as the list goes live, you will be able to vote.