{"id":5462,"date":"2009-10-14T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=5462"},"modified":"2009-10-16T08:42:55","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T12:42:55","slug":"super-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=5462","title":{"rendered":"Super Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: We managed to create a Twenty Sided supergroup in Champions Online. If you’re in the game and you’d like to join, send a \/tell to @shamus_young.<\/p>\n

A reader has passed along three<\/em> 14-day trials for Champions Online. Now I’ll have a total of 32 character slots to play with! Awesome.<\/p>\n

No, that wouldn’t be right. Perhaps giving them away is the best move. But how to decide who gets them? How about this: Write a character bio for a superhero. The three people with the most interesting \/ exciting \/ compelling \/ entertaining stories will get the trial accounts and be able to freeload around around the world of Champions for 14 glorious days. <\/p>\n

Even if you’re not taking part, feel free to “nominate” ones you like and give approval to entries that really work for you. I promise to maybe take these suggestions into account, or not. <\/p>\n

The rules:
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co_poet.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n
    \n
  1. While the bio of a poetic hermit who lives alone and has no powers might be interesting, the goal here is to design someone you might plausibly play in the game. While you don’t HAVE to create or play the character if you win, it would be cool if you did. Having said that, feel free to make whatever and pick whatever tone you like. Gritty, absurdist, satirical, whimsical? Whatever works for you works for me.\n<\/li>\n
  2. The system requirements<\/a> fall somewhere in the “totally not kidding around” area of the spectrum. Please don’t enter if you can’t run it, because you might win, and not be able to use the trial. And then there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.\n<\/li>\n
  3. The in-game limit for your bio is exactly 500 characters, so let’s impose that same obnoxious limit to this competition, just to be annoying. You can use this applet<\/a> to check your character count. To make things interesting, I will be ruthless and pedantic about this.\n<\/li>\n
  4. Do try to observe the normal rules you’d be bound by in the game and avoid the use of sex, drugs, profanity, or anything else that would bring down in-game moderator wrath. And yes, I know some ass is going to demand that these rules be explicitly defined, enumerated, and justified to their satisfaction, because some people are legalistic cranks who would rather haggle over the letter of the law than obey the spirit of the law. In order to counter this, I promise to be completely unfair and arbitrary. Look, just leave out the cussing and humping and doing heroin<\/a> and this won’t be a problem.\n<\/li>\n
  5. The trial key is just a big long string of letters. That’s all I have to give. Downloading the software, getting it to run, and managing your life afterward is your problem. <\/li>\n
  6. Please leave your entry in the comments below. No, don’t twitter them into your MyFacebook feed reader from an email on your iPhone, because I find the technology you young people use to be incomprehensible and occasionally frightening.\n<\/li>\n
  7. What happens next depends a lot on how many entries there are. If there are just a handful, I’ll probably pick the winners myself. If there are a lot and it’s hard to decide, I might put up a poll. Basically, we’re winging it.<\/li>\n
  8. I’ll be notifying the winner via the email in your comment, so make sure that’s a real email that you check. <\/li>\n
  9. I’ll only consider entries posted before 8am EST on October 15th. So, you have until tomorrow morning (New York time) to post. This is so I can do any tie-breaking or whatever on Thursday and get the winners their prizes before the weekend. That’s the plan, anyway.\n<\/li>\n
  10. Lists of rules seem to always have exactly ten items, don’t they?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The fine print:<\/p>\n

    Yes, the rules are hazy and possibly unfair. This is not because I want<\/em> to be unfair, but because running a rigorous and carefully balanced contest is a TON of work. Far more than I could afford to put into this. I want this to be fun and lighthearted. It’s just a 14 day trial for an MMO, not a New Car for crying out loud. Please don’t freak out if the rules seem a little mushy or if things don’t go your way. It’s either this or I just pick three winners at random. I thought this would be more fun. Some restrictions may apply. Void where prohibited. DO NOT EAT.<\/small><\/p>\n

    Edit: All done. Thanks for entering, but please stop now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Note: We managed to create a Twenty Sided supergroup in Champions Online. If you’re in the game and you’d like to join, send a \/tell to @shamus_young. A reader has passed along three 14-day trials for Champions Online. Now I’ll have a total of 32 character slots to play with! Awesome. No, that wouldn’t be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}