OOC - Beware the Ides of March

The Ides of March (March 15th) is but two weeks away. Guess what that means? On top of being the two thousand and sixty-third anniversary of the assassination of Julius Ceasar, the fifteenth of March also marks the deadline for submitting both Squiddie and Tournament of Simulations (ToS) nominations. As of Tuesday, Charles Star had zero ToS nominations from Ongoing Worlds, and I'm not sure how many Chris has gotten for the Squiddies. Now, I image a lot of you guys are like me and are waiting until the last minute to submit stuff, but I assure you that it won't be easier to submit a nomination on the 14th than it will be to submit it this weekend. Also, I'm sure Charles and Chris would appreciate it if nominations got spread out more evenly over the next couple of weeks.

Chris is working on a post that should help you guys with nominations for the Squiddies, so while he does that, I will do the same for ToS.

First, the details for the required formatting of a nomination can be found in the Ongoing Worlds Blog article "Squiddies and ToS and SciWorld, Oh my!", but I will repost most of that here for convenience.

Nominations for ToS are to be emailed to star.idf@gmail.com . The subject line of nomination emails should be ToS: (Name of Game)

The body of the nomination email should include the following information:

• Name of the submitter (I'm assuming a username is fine)

• Submitter's email address

• The name of the game that is being nominated

• Genre(s) of the game being nominated

• Category of the game being nominated (if it is an Ongoing Worlds game, it will be a play-by-post)

• URL to the first post you want the judges to read (out of ten)

• Backstory (optional, less than 250 words)

• Poststory (optional, less than 250 words)

• Would you like to be a judge? (Yes/No)

And that's it. Nominating is intentionally designed to be as easy as possible, so if you have 15 minutes to spare and know of a game that you think is awesome, go ahead and nominate it. If you are pressed for time, skip the backstory and poststory, as that stuff isn't graded anyway.

To provide an example, I'll show you guys a ToS nomination that I will submit to Charles Star shortly.

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To: star.idf@gmail.com
Subject: ToS: Maelstrom

• Nim

• nimpbp@gmail.com

• Steampunk, Apocalyptic, Horror, Mature

• Play-by-post

• http://www.ongoingworlds.com/games/3399/posts/93

• Backstory: Things have become unusually exciting in Dusk as the city is rocked by an explosion at the Green Docks Rail Station and a Workers Strike at the Silken Mill. The owner of the Silken Mill, Councilman David Corbet, was recently murdered by his abused wife, Stella, during a tremor. The Councilman's death is widely considered to be an accident. His brother (and Stella's recent lover), Westley Corbet, is set to inherit the beleaguered mill while Stella has recently been offered the absent Council position. The first day of the strike (reviewed in my post "When Your Boss Asks a Favor...") is something of a success for the Strikers, but will their luck hold for a second day...

• Poststory: Emily and Tate do manage to miraculously survive the explosion of the Silken Mill, although not entirely in one piece. Westley too is gravely injured whilst his scorned lover rises to power.

• Yes

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Now it's your turn. To quote Charles Star in an email he sent me:

"To put it in perspective, if 10 OW Sims enter ToS, 3-5 will probably win an award. For the Squiddies, all nominees are announced. Just crazy not to enter both. Nothing but good can happen."

We got this Platformers! There is talent here that is just waiting for recognition. It would be a shame to let this opportunity go to waste.

Anyway, time to get off my soapbox. If any of you are interested in learning more details about how ToS works, you should read this article here. Happy nominating!

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Also, on an unrelated note, tomorrow is the last day to submit a quote for the 2nd Quote of the Week. More quotes are welcome and desired!