Greetings Troopers!

As referred to in the news post here is a full list of the rules and guidelines for the First Strike Fan Fiction Contest.

The Rules

This is a short story writing competition, your story should be no more than 2000 words (we'll give you a grace margin of 100 words, because we're kind like that, but a word over 2100 and we'll have to disqualify the entry), and should take its inspiration from either any of the intel reports from current First Strike maps (you can take a line from the report and expand upon that, or the situation described as a whole), or you can also create fiction based on in game experiences within First Strike. Contestants can submit as many entries as they like but will only be judged on the best one of them, so you won’t get extra points for creating a multi story saga, any story will be judged on its individual merits. Your stories must also fall within parameters that are in tune with the spirit of the Star Wars movies, meaning no pornographic or excessively gory or profanity filled pieces. Aside from that you should just go for it and let those creative juices flow.

Entries shall be posted by their authors in the Contest Forum in individual threads for each story. Here you can post them for people to see and critique, and you can as the competition continues post additional improved drafts based on people’s feedback if you wish. The final version of the story in the thread at the time of the close of the contest will be the one that is entered into judging for the competition.

Once the closing date of the competition has been reached on...

Friday the 29th of May 2009

All the entry threads will be locked and a panel of judges made up of Dev team members will read these works giving them marks out of 5, The story with the most points after this period of judging will be declared the winner, and the writer will receive his or her prize that being the opportunity to write an Intel Report as mentioned above.

As for the issue of copy write, a contestant by submitting a story gives us the right to publish it only on our forums, we may not publish the work elsewhere and it may not be reproduced in any fashion other than relating to the FS Fan Fic Contest, but this does not affect the author's right to publish his or her work as he or she sees fit.

Finally the Intel Report written by the contest winner as part of their prize will become the property of First Strike to be used within the mod and in any promotional material relating to that mod.

FS Fan Fic Contest Forum Guidelines

Now we can move on to the guide for contestants and visitors' use of the Contest Forum.

Contestants wishing to submit a story for the competition may do so by posting a thread, the title of which should be the title of the story within (also in the first post indicate what is serving as the inspiration for your tale, which map's Intel Report for instance, or if you're using in game experience, make a note of which map). In this thread multiple drafts can be posted of that story, and that story only. If you wish to submit another separate story then you must start another thread for that entry. The final draft of the story in the thread at the close of the contest will be the one judged. Only the original author may post drafts of their story in a contest entry thread, drafts written by people other than the original author will be ignored or deleted.

Forum users may wish to post critiques of people's work and are free to do so in these contest entry threads, or in separate threads within the Contest Forum, but please try and keep all criticism positive, and as with all the forums flaming and baiting will not be tolerated.

I think that is just about it.

Have fun and enjoy the contest.