NOCT2 T-4weeks update!

Current participant count: 7 writers, 27 artists - and counting!
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
(Also: how did Eel get to be one of the most popular Pokemon? lol) X-D

Since it's very clear now that we will have a fully separate writers' division, I just thought I'd state how the competitions will work:
--The writers' division will be a partial round-robin
--The artists' division will have random pairings the first two rounds, then proceed as a Swiss-style tournament from R3 on (this is the same as has been previously stated, just in a more formal way)
--If either division has an odd number of people for a given round, the NOCT2 staff will provide an NPC so that everyone has a battle partner.  The participants paired against the staffer NPC will not get an instant win, but they will get a bonus in the voting.  Myself and BlueBlueFox are the writing staffers, and Krisantyne and Mastachaos are the artist staffers.
--The full rules for the side contest will be posted during the main tournament's R2, but it will be the same structure as last year: several 8-person knockout brackets.

Now, NOCT2 is clearly bigger than NOCT1 in terms of participants, and I am foreseeing the possibility of needing tiebreaks since we're only having five rounds instead of ten.  I could have limited the number of participants allowed, but that's not my philosophy when it comes to group events - everyone should have the opportunity to join community events!  I just wasn't expecting to get so many more applications this time around, which is a great problem to have! =-)

Anyway, I'm doing this a bit on the fly, but here's what we'll do for potential tiebreakers: we'll open an optional "round zero" (R0) right now, which will be open to app deadline (and give people NOCT2 stuff to chew on between now and the official R1 open date).  If you want to make an R0 entry, simply show/tell us more about your OC and his/her team!  Maybe there's family history you want to explore, or show why your char wanted to go to Galida, or how they're going to react to The Plot (might want to wait until Kris gets done w/ prologue pt4 if you wanna go that route).  Size limit will be six panels for art, 2k words for lit; submit R0 entries to the normal entries folder so they don't get lost in the extras folder.  R0 will not be voted on unless necessary: if we need tiebreakers at the end of R5, we'll do a run-off ballot using the submitted R0 entries.  Does that sound good to everyone?

Speaking of The Plot, I hope everyone has enjoyed the three parts of the prologue that Kris has been making for us!  If you've missed the first three so far, here they are:

One more prologue chapter is coming, and that will fully link what we've seen so far to how the NOCT2 tournament starts.