Chocobo Down, and the 2012 Chocobo Races!

[ffexchange_mod]

Every year, after DOINK! Final Fantasy Exchange, we release the master list of all the unfilled prompts we've collected over the years – also known as our Chocobo Down list. It also includes prompts from our beta volunteers (marked by a beta summon sprite), whose prompts are included in our database as a thanks for the time they donate to the exchange. Since participants submit 4 prompts and usually only get 1 gift – and DOINK! has 5 years under its belt – this is quite a list!

We like to use this list in the exchange off-season to encourage more fun fanworks. Here's what we do with our Chocobo Down database:

• Anyone is welcome to fill any Chocobo Down prompt at any time. You don't have to be a past or present round participant; you don't have to be a Chocobo Racer; you don't even have to gift it to the person whose prompt it is if you don't want to. Simply fill the prompt and add it to our AO3 Collection for Chocobo Down.


• If you've incurred a Doink penalty – defaulted after the no-penalty date, for example – you pay that penalty in pieces of Chocobo Down. The number of pieces you owe will have been communicated to you by the mod team (and if you're confused, please ask!). You'll need to fill your Chocobo Down Penalty before the start of the 2013 exchange, or you won't be able to play.


• Chocobo Racing is a DOINK! event we started last year, to great success. It's a team-based, points-based friendly competition – participants sign up for a team, and then fill prompts every month to win points. Some months have themes ("small fandoms", or "kissing"), and filling prompts that fit the theme gives your team bonus points. Anyone is welcome to join the Races – you don't have to be an exchange participant to play, and you're welcome to play even if you owe us a Chocobo Down penalty. (Especially if you owe us a penalty – you can fill your requirement and get points!)

We're happy to announce that we're doing our stretches and warm-ups: the 2012 Chocobo Races will begin very soon. You can find some more information on Chocobo Racing below, if you're curious! We'd love to have even more faces – and even more fanworks. Last year we added 30 new works during the 2011 Chocobo Races. That's the target to beat this year!


SADDLE UP YOUR CHOCOBO

• This year, we're going to have three teams: Team Ifrit, Team Shiva, and Team Ramuh. Each team will be "led" by one of the mods. The winning team gets to be featured on a banner we'll use to advertise next year's exchange – plus bragging rights!


• This is just a friendly competition to encourage off-season fanwork. You don't have to be friends with a mod to be on their team; you don't have to sign up with your friends (or a mod you're friends with) if you don't want to, although you're certainly welcome to do so – or sign up against them deliberately! We encourage all kinds of friendly, silly trash talk (especially if it uses FF macros!) and love to see happy competitive spirit.


• Signing up for a team doesn’t commit you to creating any Chocobo Down and there’s no punishment if you can’t. So if you think you’re interested, definitely err on the side of joining a team now! Last year the outcome might have been different if a few people had signed up a little bit earlier.

CREATING CHOCOBO DOWN

• Written pieces only need to be 500 words or more for the Chocobo Races. We still encourage you to edit and beta your work, and longer pieces are always welcome!


• Works of art just need to be better quality than the doodles Sev draws in her notepad during monthly meetings — art’s harder to qualify, so whatever you think is comparable effort to a 500-1000-word piece of fiction. Again, we welcome and encourage masterpieces too!

POSTING

• You may post your work in any of three places: into the LJ community (ff_exchange), into the DW community (ff_exchange), or into our collection on AO3. We will open posting on all communities when the first race starts.


• You must post your work directly on the official DOINK! community of your choice first. After that, you can crosspost your work elsewhere.


• Please use appropriate headers (fandom, characters, rating) if posting into the LJ/DW communities and please label appropriately if posting to AO3. Also, please include the CD prompt you started with. We won’t be able to share your work in our round-up post unless you have header information for us! You'll find further directions and copy/paste headers in the post where we announce the monthly theme.


• It is your choice whether or not you want to 'gift' your CD to the participant whose prompt you’re using or not (you can assign them a gift on AO3 or include their name in your LJ/DW post). We really just ask that participants remember their 'recipient' may not be around to comment, and that 'recipients' remember that CD prompts don’t come with any personal preference information.


• Because the CD prompts don’t come with Content Preferences attached, PLEASE use appropriate warnings if necessary!

OFF TO THE RACES

• Each month, we’ll open the races with a monthly theme. Some of the themes will earn you bonus points for creating work within the theme!


• All work will count if you’re on a team, even if it doesn’t fit the theme of the month.


• Once we've posted a theme, you're welcome to complete work for that theme at any time during the Chocobo Races, even if you miss the deadline. However, you may miss the bonus points related to that theme – we'll let you know in that month's post if there's a points-related deadline.


• You can create as much CD for your team as you’d like! If there are limits on the number of points you can get within one of the themes, we'll let you know in the post. We also encourage teammates to comment on each other’s work, to encourage more CD and more points!


• Deadlines will generally be the beginning and end of every month, with slight deviations to consider weekends and the modly schedules. We’ll announce deadlines as they come, so just make sure you’re following one of the comms.

SCORING

• The Team Captains will keep track of scores during each monthly round. At the end of the month, we’ll compile all the work and announce each team’s point total! We’ll also post a compilation of all of the work submitted to Chocobo Racing, as long as it has header information for us to use.


• Usually, CD that fits the theme will be worth 10 points. Any other CD work (that doesn’t fit the monthly theme) will be worth 5 points. We’ll let you know going into the month if this changes.


• The mods reserve the right to award bonus points for any unusually awesome things that happen.

If you have any questions, please comment and we'll try to answer them as soon as possible! :D The sign up post will be available shortly!

Also: the 2012 Exit Poll for the exchange is still open. Please share your thoughts if you haven't already!