Please sticky this until January 1st, 2005. plzkthx.
For those of you unaware of the world around you and that the United States has been at war with Iraq since 1991, this year RPGClassics is celebrating the tenth anniversary of what many of us here consider to be the The Greatest Game of All Time: Final Fantasy VI. Whoa, has it been ten years already? Am I already getting that close to the day of my demise? Sadly, yes, but your impending death need not be completely in vain. For you, yes you, the proud member of the RPGClassics Forum Community, can carry with you to your grave a shrink-wrapped, brand-spanking-new, fresh-as-a-pair-of-teenage-lovers copy of the original Final Fantasy VI soundtrack. The best part is, you can enter the eternal sleep with 30 or 40 bucks in your pocket, cause you don’t have to spend it on this gem. That’s right, you can get it for free. Hot Damn! What’s the catch?
Well, you have to participate in this little contest of mine. The purpose of this contest is to write a story or an essay about any topic of your choosing that has to do with Final Fantasy VI. No, fanfiction will not be allowed, unless it’s clevery disguised. The purpose of this writing is to be about <i>you</i> and <i>your experiences</i> with Final Fantasy VI. Some possible topics include:
<ul>
<li>What you remember from the first time playing FFVI
<li>How you feel the game has contributed to your development as a whole, or at least as a gamer</li>
<li>Any experience with the game that left a strong memory or impression on you
<li>How you feel the game has contributed to the development of games and RPGs in general
<li>You hate this game for some reason, and here’s why it’s the most overrated piece of garbage ever
<li>General <s>angst</s> nostalgia about the day when RPGs were about story and characters and not graphics, and it was cool to be part of the underground rather than part of the mainstream
<li>Be creative, and come up with your own topic
</ul>
Here are the rules regarding the writing of this story or essay:
<ul>
<li>Deadline for submissions is December 31st, 11:59PM GMT. That’s Greenwich Mean Time.
<li>The contest is only open to members of the RPGC Community (including staff). This means you must have a registered forum account and have at least made the slightest attempt to become part of the community. This is both to reward people for being part of the community and to make sure I don’t have to read 800 essays.
<li>The reccommended word limit is 1500, but the absolute maximum is 2000. This is including all words in the document: the title, your name, all that crap. If I open up Open Office and it says the word count is 2001, I won’t read it. The line has to be drawn somewhere. So be careful.
<li>Please no fanfiction. If the fanfiction maintainer wants to run their own contest, then by all means, go ahead.
<li>You must submit the document to me in either .DOC or .RTF format. No unformatted .TXT files please. My email is at the bottom of this post. You will submit two copies of the document to me. Listen up carefully now. This is extremely important, and if you do not follow these rules, your submission will NOT be read. I will be reading these essays anonymously, so as not to be influenced by any biases I have toward certain people. You will submit two documents with the following guidelines.
<ul>
<li>DOCUMENT ONE: In the text of the document, include your title, your name (forum name alone is fine), and a working email that I can contact you with. Of course, include the text of your essay or story as well. Title the document as follows:
<p><b>Title.doc</b> - of course, replace Title with the actual title of your essay.
<li>DOCUMENT TWO: Include ONLY the text of your essay or story. No title, no name, no email. Title the document as follows:
<p><b>abcdefghij.doc</b> - replace the garbage with any random ten characters. Make them random. I don’t want to be able to recognize any of the stories by the garbage letters.
</ul>
</ul>
Finally, here is how the essays will be graded, in order of my preference.
<ul>
<li>Your ideas and Presentation - Is your essay entertaining and fun to read? Is your impression both personal and universal at the same time? If you’re making an argument, is it well formed? Will you have me picking roses for you by the end?
<li>Structure: Does your story or essay follow a line from beginning to end, or do you jump around all over the place? Note, I have a big preference for essays that follow a straight line. Be creative, but each part of the essay or story should build on the last part and come to the right denoument.
<li>Grammar, Spelling, etc. - This is not an English paper. I realize English might not also be the first language of everyone here, so I am trying not to be too strict on this. For the most part, I just want to see that you’ve spell-checked and proofread it, and that glaring mistakes aren’t everywhere. If you’re submitting an essay or story to a contest, you should want it to be as perfect as you can make it
</ul>
That’s it. If there’s anything I haven’t covered, or you have further questions, reply in this thread, not by email. Chances are if you have a question, someone else has the same question as well.
Regarding the prize. As stated above, the prize is a still-unopened, shrinkwrapped copy of the original FF6 OST. The soundtrack is Three Discs. Already have it? Sorry, but I’m not changing the prize. If it’s really that much of a problem, then don’t enter the contest. Or write a shitty essay and make me read it because you hate me. I don’t care. Or, what the hell, why not win a second one? I’ll bet you’ve opened the one you have anyway. This one can sit and collect dust and be pretty and impress your nerdy significant other. Admit it, (s)he is pretty nerdy, isn’t (s)he? It’s alright. Love is blind right? The prize will be mailed to the FIRST PLACE winner only. In fact, there is only a FIRST PLACE. One FIRST PLACE, and a lot of losers, just like it should be.
But I’m being facetious, because in fact, everyone is a winner in this contest. Your essay will be presented as part of the Millenial Fair exhibition celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of FF6, and after that, it will forever become a part of the infamous FF6 shrine, owned and operated by none other than yours truly, for the world to see for eternity. Nuclear holocaust? No problem. I hear the afterlife has finally got DSL (sorry, it’s still dialup in Hell), so these works will truly live on, even after the aliens invade.
One final declaration: upon submitting this essay, you agree to give me the right to modify your story or essay in any way that I see fit for presentation in the Millenial Fair, unless you explicitly say in your email that you do not want your submission presented to the public. This doesn’t mean I’m going to go and add Terra-Chocobo hentai to your essay. It just means that I will be adding some HTML formatting, and perhaps fixing a couple of spelling errors. That’s all. I promise. Unless of you course your article already is about Terra-Chocobo hentai. And that’s totally cool too.
submit all works to zeppelin@rpgclassics.com
And of course, Happy Fucking Holidays.
Ok This is Rule Brake Down/ Nutter’s Points Post. This has only been done once before here at the RPGC. Zep Correct me if I got an Miss underdstanding.
