Premise
There are two types of Original Character Tournaments on DeviantArt. One is the Tournament proper, where the participants are paired off in knockout single-elimination rounds, with the winner passing to the next round. In these tournaments, the characters compete for a goal in the setting, fighting against other participants’ characters, and often coming at odds with the secret plan the setting and it’s NPC’s have in store. The other kind is the League, where participants are allowed to duel against anyone on the roster, in order to increase their ranking.
Both types of tournaments have their pros and cons. The Tournament proper usually has a strong storyline, with the winners of the various rounds often influencing the setting. The downside of it is, defeated participants don’t have any incentive, and often cannot canonically contribute anymore to the tournament once they lose. The format discourages cooperative victory and formation of teams. And once the story is over, there is no more reason to contribute to the setting and explore it’s aftermath. Also, the prize the OC winner receives in universe does not ‘stick’ with him, as the participant isn’t obliged to continue the character’s story (if the character was made especially for the tournament) or make it part of the character’s canon (for characters imported from the participants own stories). Finally, you cannot duel the people you would like to duel, as match making is random or follows a predetermined ladder.
The League does provide the latter in the form of the roster, as well as the ability to duel others in various formats, from comics to written pieces. It also provides a strong community, and a permanent setting. The downside of it is, it lacks the strong storyline that you get from tournaments, as the participants are not compelled to follow the canon version of a certain battle, and the setting often remains in its original status quo. Even tournaments set in this setting are often not taken into account in future battles.
As for the matches themselves, the current format is a ‘duel’ where opposing characters confront each other over an objective (which often is battle or a race), and resolve their issues. The norm for most duels is that they are somewhat physical in nature, which means fighter characters are the norm, while non fighters have a hard time coming up with a way to beat them. It also discourages other match formats, such as ‘create the best picture’ matches, or ‘best story that advances the overall plot’. This may be a minor issue, as most people join OCT’s for the chance of their characters ‘duelling’ and defeating other characters, but there could be some potential in these kind of duels.
Idea
To form a league, possibly open to both writers and artists, that is both competitive and collaborative in nature. Participants will be able to duel each other, and through these duels, contribute and influence the ongoing storylines, both of the characters involved in the duel, and of the overall storylines of the setting. In this league, canon duels and tournaments have consequences, which in turn spawn numerous other events and storylines for other characters to pick up, for winning character to follow through, and for losing characters to work around in order to achieve their objectives.
Proposed Setting
A series of interconnected dimensions, each with it’s own specific theme, theme duels and storylines. Centre to these dimensions is the City, a circular city with deep chasms, a central caldera, and four giant tusks on which buildings can be built, three circling the caldera, and one emerging from the centre. The city is surrounded by walls, with a number of towers dotting them. This city exists simultaneously in five different dimensions, but can only be accessed by the dimension it is currently in phase with, with the city phasing through each dimension in turn, to keep the system in equilibrium. These central dimensions are also connected between each other and to other, outer dimensions through the use of portals.
The central dimensions and the City will be the main focus of most storylines, especially tournament related, but events in other dimensions can have further repercussions to the former, and thus to the City.
Proposed ideas for the central dimensions is to have three allied to the City, one in political disarray, and one actively opposing the City. They will be based around the colour wheel of Magic the Gathering, or other ideas to be discussed with the administrators. One dimension could be a never-ending city, another could be a forest with a number of medieval kingdoms, another could serve as the forge for the City and it’s organization, the rebel dimension could be immersed in constant twilight, and the final, water dimension could be the place where rationality and science mix.
The City will rule the central dimensions, and possibly have outer dimensions under their control, thanks to the alliance of the city dimension and the water dimension, and the forge dimension producing everything needed for their army. They currently have a firm control on the forest dimension, but the political situation there requires constant supervision. As for the rebel world, they control just a few outposts outside the city, but the remainder is in the hands of the rebels.
Rules and Structure
For every central dimension, including the City, there will be a judge/ administrator/volounteer monitoring that dimension, and the duels and events going on in it, advising participants on what could and could not work for canon, and organizing events. These ‘Guardians’, alongside the remaining judges, administrators, and possibly even a couple of volounteers, will be in charge of ‘the Council’, which will oversee the entirety of the setting, contribute to the setting with snippets involved the higher ups of the City government, note potential repercussions of events in one dimension to other dimensions, and organizing tournaments.
Participants will be entered in a general roster, with the newest entry starting at the bottom of the list. By winning duels, the participants will be able to climb up the roster and reach the top places. To make climbing the roster worthwhile, special events, with prizes in-universe (control of a storyline, start of a series of events, character rewards etc.) and to the participants (artwork, points or subscriptions) will be offered to the top X participants of the roster on a regular basis. These events will form the basis of the continuing storyline of the setting.
When a particular storyline could potentially radically alter a setting, a tournament will be held, using both participants of the events involved, and other participants to fill up the empty places. The winner will obtain, amongst all the other prizes offered both in-universe and to the participant, the chance to propose ideas and collaborate with the council of Guardians in matters related to the setting.
Participants join the league by creating a ‘Champion’, which is done by providing a reference sheet and an audition piece of the character to the league. This OC will be the protagonist of the story that they want to introduce to the setting, and most of participant’s duels and entries will serve to further their Champion’s storyline, with the opponent’s Champion serving as the willing or unwilling antagonist, or obstacle, or collaborator, depending on the nature of the duel. The winning duel will serve as the canon story that everyone must take into account in future duels.
Not all duels have to involve opposing champions, however. Duels can be ‘write the best story’, or ‘further a particular event without your characters’, or other such examples, and in such cases, participants will be able to create and reuse other characters, or use other characters and NPC’s. However, the main focus on the storylines will be the Champions, and as such, a Champion will be required for tournaments, and possibly most of the special events.
Participants may be allowed to create more than one champion, up to a maximum limit, provided they meet certain requirements, such as rank, or number of entries posted per month, or as special prize for events.
Any kind of dimension (within reason) can serve as the background of a duel, however, most duels in the City or in the central dimensions will become part of the canon, while duels set in the external dimension can be non-canon, depending on the results of the duel, and how connected the outer dimension is to one of the inner ones. Each of the central dimensions plus the City could also have preferred theme duels. The twilight dimension, and possibly the forest one, could hold most of the physical duels, while political intrigue could be the theme for the city dimension and the kingdom politics of the forest dimension. Participants wanting a certain kind of duel could station their Champion in a sub-roster containing all the ‘local’ Champions in random order, promoting duels between bottom and top ranking participants. Champions are free to change dimensions, as long as there is an in-universe justification for this change.
Potential Problems
-Participants who refuse to take canon duels into account, for various reasons. The point of this league is to have a setting where character actions and duels have consequences for everyone, winner, loser, and bystanders alike, as this makes the setting much more challenging and interesting, especially for the latter two categories, as they are forced to rethink their plans. However, there may be cases where opponents intentionally derail the plot or kill off characters for the lulz, or out of spite, or due to bad storytelling that may win due to better grammar and structure. Such cases should be dealt ultimately by the judge of the duel, and, in cases of canon brawls and events of relative importance, by the appropriate Guardian.
-Overtly complex plot: as the story progresses, and many storylines get developed, it will progressively become harder to track the events that have become canon, for both the Champions and the setting, which makes it hard both for veterans and new participants to follow the story without resorting to reading ALL the previous entries. One solution to this is to have a ‘tracker’, a log of each significant event, both for the setting and for the champions. Participants are required to keep their character’s tracker updated at all times, while administrators and Guardians will do so for the setting. At different intervals, such as 10-15 duels per character, and every two-three months for the setting, the character profile/setting description will be updated with all the canon changes, and the tracker reset.
-Canon timeline placement: With different duels potentially affecting each other, timeline placing will become an important issue. To solve this, the duels will be arranged on a first come, first serve basis, and Champions can only duel once all their current duels have been judged. This will require judges being prompt in their judging, to allow participants to use their champion in other duels as soon as they can. Participants could be allowed to book their duels in the timeline beforehand, or start work on them while working on others, in which case they should indicate a date by which the judges of the previous duels should have completed their judgement, in order to take it into account in their future duel.
Current Status
Writing a draft intro story of my Champion into the setting, will start looking for people interested quite soon.
