Everything you need to know about Scribe’s Contest
What is this contest?
This competition is run irregularly on CDO. It is run in between Golden Hat and Artisan’s Contests, but never in parallell.
The Scribe’s Contest is a background (usually referred to as “fluff”) writing competition. The writing includes songs, famous quotes, legends, short stories etc.
Additionally, Scribe’s Contest will eventually include one or more audio recording competitions for reciting, singing or the production of background music.
The winners of this competition gets a medal and a number of slaves according to how many people have entered. There will always be Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for Scribe’s Contest.
The competition is always announced in the Website News section. We officially announce the contest, with a deadline. After this has closed we start a thread with the entries and a request for people to vote, then after the voting has closed we start a third thread announcing the winner(s).
Unlike Golden Hat and Artisan’s Contest, the Scribe’s Contest is not a standing part of Chaos Dwarfs Online, but run with a particular aim: To bring the world and culture of the Chaos Dwarfs to life and allow for the future “release” of a fully-fledged package of background texts and even sound files.
View it as a fluff marathon.
Previous Scribe’s Contest Winners will be displayed in the CDO Contest Galleries.
What can I enter?
Each contest will have a specific theme. An entry that bears absolutely no relation to the theme (unless it is called an ‘open contest’) will not be allowed. Texts have to be fully written by the person entering them.
Likewise, audio recordings have to be fully performed by the person entering them. Note that you can use texts written by someone else for the audio recording, so long as you receive permission from the writer for doing so. You have full permission to use any of @Admiral 's and @MadHatter 's texts for Scribe’s Contest entry audio purposes.
The Scribe’s Contests are always Chaos Dwarf related, you cannot enter texts which does not deal with Chaos Dwarfs in any way (like a Wood Elf song about flowers for instance).
You are of course free to write about Chaos Dwarf-equivalents in whatever setting you want, be it an official one from some organization, or a homebrew setting of your own.
When can I enter?
The deadline will always be clear in the announcement thread. It is always based on Eastern Standard Time. So regardless of where in the world you are you need to look up how far ahead or behind this time you are to make sure you get your entry in on time.
No entry regardless of how cool will be allowed to enter after the deadline. If someone has made a valid attempt to enter before the deadline but have had technical issues (such as links being invalid), they will normally be allowed.
How do I enter?
There are three ways to enter a Scribe’s Contest, the one required will be made very clear in the announcement thread.
> Entering links by Personal Message
To enter by personal message, you first have to upload an audio file of your entry to a hosting site. For instance any of those found here: http://www.audiohostings.com/ All of those listed are free hosting sites. For the purpose of anonymity your audio host account name must be different from your CDO account name.
To enter the contest all you need to do is simply click the link provided (it will always be to the ‘GoldenHat’ account) and/or to chaosdwarfsonline ( at ) gmail.com and send the link to the audio file. If you do an album link I will try and ask which ones you want.
> Entering text by Personal Message
For most of the Scribe’s Contests you can just copy and paste your story into a personal message to GoldenHat and/or to chaosdwarfsonline ( at ) gmail.com.
> Entering by email attachment
Sometimes uploading big audio files onto free hosting sites can distort them. So for any like files we always say you can enter by sending an email to chaosdwarfsonline ( at ) gmail.com instead. Do not forget to notify the contest organizer about this via PM. Note that we will need to know your username if you send it by email.
What happens after I have entered?
The personal messages all sit in the @GoldenHat inbox until after the deadline has passed. After this time one of us will look through them all and start to save all the entries to our computer. It is expected that people will answer any and all questions about their entry (and do what is required) within 48 hours of the competition closing. If they don’t, perhaps because they have not logged in since, the staff member will either make a decision themselves or potentially disallow the entry.
Once we have all the entries, the staff member will do some editing to make them look pretty for the site, and to make sure they all have a similar formatting to make things fair. See rules below for more on this.
The staff member will then make a thread with all the entries and request people to start voting (see how to vote below). After the voting has closed the staff will collate all the votes into a spreadsheet to find the total votes for each entry. Note that this is something all staff members can check, there is no vote rigging here! 
Finally we announce the winners, the voting key and assign the medals and slaves.
How do I vote?
The voting will be done by personal message. Send a pm to the @GoldenHat account (as described above) with the 3 entries you consider best, whatever that means to you. You don’t need to rank them, or give reasons why. You must place three votes, don’t know who deserves your last vote? Choose one at random.
You are not allowed to vote on your own entry in competitions.
Participation Medals for Scribe’s Contest
Participating in Scribe’s Contest will not count toward your secret veteran medals tally. There will however be a special Scribe Contest’s participation medal tally for veterans who have entered into 5, 10, 15 and so on Scribe’s Contests.
Judging
Scribe’s Contests will always be judged by CDO members who PM 3 votes to @GoldenHat .
We will not instruct people what to consider when judging. It is entirely up to them to judge on whatever grounds they want to determine the winner(s). We may give suggestions to help people.
SCRIBE’S CONTEST
General Rules
Each member may only enter once. Any member of CDO may enter.
Staff will likely not do any editing for grammar, punctuation or spelling. Any winning entries that appear in the CDO webzine may have these edits. The top three entries will be displayed in the CDO webzine.
No entries submitted after the deadline will be allowed, no matter how cool it is.
Unless by specific permission, nothing can be changed after the deadline.
No text that has been posted or entered into another competition may be submitted.
If the entry breaks forum rules by its content it will not be allowed.
NO ART OR MODEL PHOTOS are allowed.
Entries are made by email attachment or by PM, though formatting may be lost by PM.
Each member may only enter something they have written themselves.
The CDO staff claims full permission to post your entries on the forum and in CDO webzines after the contest if you do not do this yourself. Likewise the Staff claims full permission to use your entries in PDF and other formats in the future. By entering the contest you agree to this arrangement.
> Anonymity Rules
The competition is supposed to be anonymous, so please do not post your entry online until after the voting has ended. Do not start a WIP blog of your entry as you make it, we may not allow it to be entered.
If you have just finished a piece of writing or audio recording that is ideal for the competition, but have already posted it in the forum just ask one of the staff if it is ok to enter it still. Preferably people will not say which entry is theirs until voting is over, but this is not ‘rule breaking’.
> Staff discretion and editing
If the texts or audio files provided are in very poor condition you may be asked to improve your entry.
The Staff decision is always final on any matter, it is not open to public debate (unless we ask it to be).
> Artistic interpretation
We encourage creativity, so when we say (for example) ‘the theme is a Chaos Dwarf nursery rhyme/children song’, this means people are free to interpret this however they want, as long as it still looks Chaos Dwarf themed and conforms to the theme specific rules.
Bear in mind that people will be considering how well your entry fits the theme when they are voting.
If you are in doubt please ask the Scribe’s Contest organizing member of staff, otherwise you risk having your entry disqualified if it is too far from the theme.
> Writing Rules
Entries must be written:
- either “in-universe” (written as if made by an actual Chaos Dwarf or Hobgoblin, including poetic stanzas),
- or describing something in the setting, akin to the background found in army books outside of 6th edition WHFB,
- or prose fiction story, like that found in a Black Library novel.
The theme rules for each specific contest will detail which of the three above styles are allowed.
This means that texts about D6s, re-rolls and miscast tables are not allowed.
Note: You are, however, welcome to convert tabletop exploits into songs, quotes etc. so long as no allusions to game mechanics, Games Workshop or the modelling and painting of miniatures are included.Entries must be written in intelligible English. No netspeak. Please spell-check your entry before submitting it.
For audio recordings, just exchange “writing” above for “voice performance”.
> Short Story & Legends Scribe’s Contests
You can write your entry in the form of a story OR as a description. When it comes to judging people must remember that we have said both are equally good.
There is a maximum word limit of 2250 words, and a minimum word limit of 500 words unless stated otherwise, so please double check before sending it. It’s so easy to check that there isn’t really a reason not to. It would be handy for people to state their word count on submission.
People will be contacted after the deadline if they are over the limit. They will have 48 hours to delete and rework, but if they don’t get back to me by then anything over the word count will be deleted.
