2014 Chocobo Races - Intro Post!

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The 2014 Chocobo Races are about to begin! Whether you’re a new player or a veteran of the Races, please read on as some of the details have changed.

WHAT ARE THE CHOCOBO RACES?
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 7 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 2015 exchange, or you won't be able to play.


• Chocobo Races is 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 "ladies!"), 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!)

Last year we added 44 new works during the 2013 Chocobo Races and had an amazing turnout for the Kiss Battle. That's the target to beat this year!

( Onto the details )

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

2014 Chocobo Races - Team Registration!

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We're happy to announce that the 2014 round of Chocobo Races is open for team registration!

Not sure what Chocobo Races is? You can look here for an in-depth explanation. In a kupo-nutshell: Sign up for a team; fill prompts and get points for your team; repeat monthly with special bonus themes for extra points; the highest-scoring team next March wins the round!

We're going old-school this year and switching back to our two-team setup:

• Team Cactuar will be led by vrazdova


• Team Tonberry will be led by owlmoose

At the bottom of this entry are two comments - one for each team. To officially sign up for the Chocobo Races, reply to the comment for the team you want to join. It's okay if you don't have a Dreamwidth! You can comment using your Livejournal, using an OpenID, or simply use an anonymous comment to leave us your information. It's just a lot easier for the mod team to only have to look in one place to get our current team rosters.

When you comment to sign up, please leave the following info in your comment so that we can recognize your work and give it points!

<b>LJ username</b>: <b>DW username</b>: <b>AO3 username</b>: <b>I will be posting:</b> [fic / art / both] <b>One awesome thing I am bringing to my team</b>: <b>Additional comments</b>:

A couple other notes on Chocobo Races sign-ups:

• Feel free to sign up for whatever team you want to be on! They're both open and you don't have to 'know' a mod to join!


• That being said, please try your best to make sure teams are evenly distributed. We'd hate to have 1000 Needles Cactuars and only a handful of Tonberries, however formidable that handful may be.


• Signing up doesn't commit you to anything, so if you're on the fence but interested, sign up anyway!


• You can sign up at any point during the round! Just remember, we won't be able to count your work for points unless your sign-up is dated before your posted work. This is why, if you think there's any chance you'll want to participate later, it's a good idea to sign up now.

Get ready – the 2014 Chocobo Races are about to begin…!


TEAM CACTUAR


TEAM TONBERRY

Feel free to use the banners above to spread the word and enlist others for your team!

For those of you who are really excited, we've technically already spoiled the first round’s theme - during the month of September, you’ll earn bonus points for filling any prompts in our database. Start looking through and collecting ideas: we'll officially open the round in a few days!