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Contest Rules


*i

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I decided to post this in a new topic. These rules are to be considered to be near final phase and are the results of much discussion. Please read them over and if you have any minor additions, changes, or corrections, please indicate below.

 

You may puruse previous discussions here .

 

* * *

 

Eligibility

 

Both Blades of Avernum and Blades of Exile scenarios are eligible for entry into the 8th Scenario Design Contest with the following guidelines:

 

1) The scenario cannot have been an entrant in any previous Spiderweb of Olympia scenario design contest.

2) All entered scenarios (utilities are exempt) must have been submitted to Spiderweb Software.*

3) The deadline for entry is November 30, 2006.

 

* If you already submitted to Spiderweb and either have not been posted or have been removed, you may host it independently. However, you must have actually attempted to submit it to Spiderweb software.

 

Categories

 

Small Scenario

Large Scenario

Newcomer

Best Utility

 

Small Scenario: < 25 zones

Large Scenario: >= 25 zones

 

Zones is the total number of towns plus outdoor sections. Near identical towns (such as use of VTE) count as 0.5 of a zone.

 

To be eligible for the Newcomer category, you must not have been a participant in any previous Spiderweb or Olympia scenario design contest. If this applies to you and you have more than one entry in this contest, you may select only one to be in the Newcomer category.

 

Judging

 

Initial Rounds

 

Scenarios in each category will be given a score from 1-10 based on quality, 1 being lowest and 10 being highest. The decision criteria is generally up to the individual judge so long as he/she is consistent where possible. The exception is that a judge cannot favor either BoE scenarios over BoA scenarios or vice versa, each must be judged on it's merits. All judges scores are averaged to make a cumulative score.

 

The highest ranked scenario in each category (except Best Utility) and any scenario with a score of 80% the highest score in the category will advance to the Best Scenario round. For example, suppose a category has four scenarios ranked 8.8, 8.5, 7.6, and 6.3. The cutoff for admission to the final round is 7.04 (0.8*8.8), so the top three scenarios advance and the lowest one does not.

 

Final Round

 

The scenarios that advanced are judged in a final best scenario round. All participating judges then discuss and debate to rank the scenarios from best to worst. Each judge is given three votes that he/she may distribute as he/she sees fit with a maximum of two for one scenario. How the judge actually allocates votes are secret.

 

Once voting has completed the lower 50% rounded down (if there are 7, only the lowest 3 are dropped) are eliminated. If there are ties within the cutoff, all tied scenarios remain. Any votes for eliminated scenarios may be redistributed at the judge's discretion; votes for scenarios still in play may not be reallocated. The process continues until one scenario has the most points.

 

Tie Breaking

 

In the event of a tie that cannot be broken because no votes remain to be reallocated, with the exception of the final decision round, the cumulative score of the initial round is used to make the decision. Should those scores be tied, the high scores are compared and on down to second highest, third highest, and so on. In the event of an actual tie between all scores, both (or all those tied) scenarios are eliminted.

 

If a tie occurs in the final decision round (i.e. two scenarios remain), all votes are cleared and the judges vote for their preferred scenario. If this vote ends in a tie, the above criteria are used. If all criteria are tied, the competition is a tie and both are co-winners.

 

In the event more than two scenarios remain and all remaining scenarios are tied, the original decision criteria is used until two remain (at which a vote is done as above) or the tie is broken. Should the tie be impossible to break, a vote will be done to attempt to break a tie. If doing so is impossible, then all scenarios that are tied are declared co-winners.

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TM, who one must assume will be entering this contest, has some opinions on the voting:

 

Quote:
If we're going with a voting system by hook or by crook, I'd rather have it go as such:

Take the number of finalists and divide the number by two. If there is an odd number of finalists, round up. This is the number of scenarios a judge can vote for. Order scenarios by the number of votes received, then use that same number as a cutoff, taking the scenarios with the highest number of votes. Then, take the number of remaining scenarios and repeat the process.

It'd probably be better to have this discussion on the Lyceum forums, considering that TM, who is definitely going to enter this contest, is banned here.
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Ephesos - judging by past contests, *i will post a topic, probably in November, where you can volunteer. He'll probably have some rules.

 

*i - So basically, if you submit a scenario to SW that wasn't in a prev. contest, you're in? That makes me wonder, because SW hosts scenarios eligible for previous contests but weren't entered.

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For clarity, to be eligible, you cannot have entered any previous Spiderweb of Olympia contest. Every scenario deserves one shot at glory, in my mind.

 

As for judging, I'll put something up sometime in November soliciting volunteers. I don't want to put it out too early. If you volunteer, you can judge any categories that you do not partake in. Having too many volunteers is rarely, if ever, a problem.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

As we have five days left:

 

As far as judging goes, will you assign judges to categories based on their entries and game access?

 

And to everyone else, this is your last chance to complain about the rules! :p

 

EDIT: Haven't noticed this before. According to those rules, utilites are elgible, but you've said previously they're not. Which is true?

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If the voting is done in secret — which I think it has to be — then why even bother opening a forum? The person running the contest can just post basic results as necessary, i.e., "Echoes: Renegade and Magus of Cattalon are the two scenarios from Large Scenario moving on to the finals," or whatever.

 

And a scenario gets entered in exactly one category? That is, a Newcomer scenario is only a Newcomer, and not a Small or Large?

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Quote:
Orginally written by Kelandon:
If the voting is done in secret — which I think it has to be — then why even bother opening a forum?
Quote:
Originally written by *i:
The scenarios that advanced are judged in a final best scenario round. All participating judges then DISCUSS and DEBATE to rank the scenarios from best to worst. Each judge is given three votes that he/she may distribute as he/she sees fit with a maximum of two for one scenario. How the judge actually allocates votes are secret.
(Emphasis added)
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Quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:
And a scenario gets entered in exactly one category? That is, a Newcomer scenario is only a Newcomer, and not a Small or Large?
My belief was that each entrant selected the appropriate category(ies) for each scenario being entered into the contest, within the guidelines for categorization. Each Newcomer scenario would therefore be in either Large or Small (if desired).

But, whatever.
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Quote:
Originally written by *i:
We expect judges to be honest in the initial rounds. After all, there is nothing at stake other than bragging rights really so I don't see the consequences to be too bad.
I would gather from this statement that one of two things has happened. Either Jeff was unwilling to donate a prize or prizes to the winner(s), or he was never asked.
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Ok, I guess I'll enter Graphic Adjuster then. While I would like to make a windows version, basically none of the existing code or my current programming knowledge would be of any use, so I just don't have the time. Oh well. As long as this won't totally break your judging system, I don't mind a decreased score.

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