Detailed Age WritiNg Contest (DAWN)

[Trylon]

Thanks for all the great responses.

A bit of clarification: When I say "story" I'm more referring to background information than an ongoing progressive story.
In it's most basic form "story" can refer to asking yourself "Why is that object here?" and "How did it get here?" That will help in the design/modification of the object and it's environment, so that it can really fit in into the age.

I'll add everyone to the list in the first post shortly

Edit: In the case of Payiferen, Negilahn, etc. there was the map, which informed us that there were more pods and that all the pods were on the same Age. That too is a form of story - showing the audience what is beyond the rim of the age (even though it isn't modeled).
Perhaps "immersion" or "continuity" is a better term for that.

Edit2: Updated the lists in the first post (and added a bit of clarification to point 2)

[D'Lanor]

Eder Delin/Tsogal and the pods do have an implied story. They are ages that were tampered with (by the Bahro or Yeesha?) to lead explorers to the Bahro cave. It is a pity we'll never see the end of that story now. I would really like to know what the purpose was. But then I doubt even Cyan knew where they were going with that.

[J'Kla]

Writing a story has it's own restrictions believe me I know. Would I be able to build on my story Dot, it says in the DAWN rules you can build on previous work

BTW that is not a serious suggestion as my two current ages are already built on that new back history I am developing.

DAWN looks a little like normal age building with restrictions. I am not trying to kill this but why add a time frustration to the existing process.

[edit]First sentence re-structured. What the hell it's only punctuation. [/edit]

[Trylon]

Mostly since I can't do any serious agebuilding without a bit of time motivation J'kla
And it's a nice thing to have a number of new ages planned for a certain time.
Plus the competition aspect could be a motivator to add that little extra bit of quality

The restrictions can be based in the individual contests themselves. For example - the first one focuses on where the last RAD left off: ages where the explorable area fits within a confined space.
Other contests could focus on other themes - cavern expansions e.g. or other things.

Oh, and you first sentence seems to be composed of multiple sentences - I'm not sure what exactly to make of it...

[ametist]

/me raises hand ... I would very much like to be a judge again, but since I've done it twice I can hide around the corner and hop in if there isn't enough maintainers in the end

[Chacal]

There has to be a rather short time limit. Make it more than 2 months and real life will interfere and no entry will ever get completed.

[mar]

I agree with Chacal, two months is short. December is a busy month. December the fifth we have in the netherlands a family day where we make presents, sateric poems and a lot of fun. Than we have Christmas and Silvester. I find three months a good period for the DAWN.

[Nadnerb]

But Chacal doesn't agree with you. He said that anything longer than 2 months would be too long. I agree with Chacal. If the period is too long, procrastination will occur, and the point of these contests is to motivate people.

[Aloys]

Mostly since I can't do any serious agebuilding without a bit of time motivation J'kla
And it's a nice thing to have a number of new ages planned for a certain time.
Plus the competition aspect could be a motivator to add that little extra bit of quality

The restrictions can be based in the individual contests themselves. For example - the first one focuses on where the last RAD left off: ages where the explorable area fits within a confined space.
Other contests could focus on other themes - cavern expansions e.g. or other things.

The best aspect of the contests is to have completed Ages produced, and of a high quality. But that souldn't hinder the production of Ages that wouldn't fit in the specifications of the contest. (see Andy's posts above for instance).
Also the whole 'contest' aspect isn't that important either. It's not like there's anything to win, beside the pride to produce a complete Age (which might be the greatest reward anyway).
We never had that much Ages done before the contests. And that's the most important and that should be encouraged. Maybe in order to do that the contests should evolve into something else. That is: rather than do what we currently call 'contests' we collectively decide that around specific periods we 'push harder' to produce Ages for a given deadline. But we wouldn't have to force themes and other specifications/restrictions. Also the judging aspect should be kept and maybe expanded as it is a very valuable constructive criticism for the Ages writers.
Since the opening of the board there's been ongoing discussion about the best way to foster production of Ages. So far the contests have been the best incentives, but IMO they're not really contests in the end so maybe they should be changed to reflect that and help us produce Ages.

[mar]

You are right Nadnerb. I have read the comment of Chacal to quickly. So I disagree with him.