WHAT IS AN OCT?
An Original Character Tournament (OCT) is a collaborative comic-making event where participants are paired up with each other and each challenged to create a comic about their Original Character (OC) defeating their partner’s OC in a fight/interaction. Judges will then decide which comic is the better, and whoever wins has their story made canon, while their opponent redesigns their character to adapt to the events.This may sound brutal, but the heart of an OCT is the same as in events like Art Fight; it's about investing yourself in another artist's character! There are also many ways to write your partner's character being bested that don't involve violence, or even antagonism. (For more about OCTs, check out tvtropes, or People Make Games’ very good video about War for Rayuba.)This particular OCT is based off of Dimension 20’s A Crown of Candy and Ravening War, a D&D actual-play show created by Dropout. It’s set in Calorum, a continent of six food group nations: Ceresia, Vegetania, Fructera, The Meatlands, The Dairy Islands, Candia—and they’re all fighting a vicious war.(As a result of this being a high fantasy setting, canon lore can be dense. We’ll summarise as much as we can for you! If something’s not here, then it’s free reign for you to make up your own lore!)
TOURNAMENT INFO
SUMMARY
Hosts: Sam Kindlestuck, Faust Shantywolf, August Cloudmancy
Mediums Allowed: Comics
Tournament Bracket Type: Non-Elimination, Opt-In
Audition Deadline: May 25th
Genre/Theme: High-Lethality War & Political Intrigue
Additional Tournament Information:
- Character Sheet Required
- Audition Comic Optional
- 15+ Only
- Opt-in Format (Auditions open every round)
- Both Official Matches and Open Battle Royales
- Writer/Artist Pairs allowed
- No Prizes
- Spectators welcome
SCHEDULE
| AUDITIONS OPEN | May 11th - May 25th |
| ROUND 1 - SUMMER | May 30th - June 16th |
| ROUND 2 - AUTUMN | June 27th - July 14th |
| ROUND 3 - WINTER | July 25th - August 11th |
| ROUND 4 - SPRING | August 22nd - September 15th |
GENRE/RULES
Despite the comedic and light-hearted food setting, this genre is one of high-lethality political intrigue, violence, and war. The premise of Calorum is that it’s ‘Game of Thrones in Food Land’, and we are committing to that—you must be prepared to combine your punny comedy with gritty tragedy! Characters may be hilarious in presentation, but should be treated with seriousness in-universe.However, unlike Game of Thrones, we are instating a PG13/Mature content rating. We ask that you only participate in this OCT if you are 15 or older. No explicit sexual content is allowed in our server, though coarse language, innuendo, and darker content are fair game, if you warn for it. If you are unsure about what you are allowed to depict in your comic, please ask a mod. Submissions that include any explicit sexual content will be disqualified from the tournament.Likewise, while the themes of prejudice, oppression, and bigotry are common to the genre, no outright hate speech is allowed in our server. We’re following Brennan’s rules on this one: misogyny and homophobia do not outright exist in Calorum, but society places great importance on birthright and family lines, meaning that the pressure to produce an heir impacts those of higher class the most. Please tread carefully when exploring these themes!
ROUND INFO
This OCT will be 4 rounds, each spanning a season in the final year of The Ravening War, starting with Summer. The interesting part: the war has already occurred in canon, and its larger results can’t be changed. Participants are asked to create a character and side with a nation that fought/existed during the Ravening War’s canonical calamities, and write a story in between. They’ll be pitted against a participant from an opposing nation and asked to write a story where their characters interact/fight, resulting in their opponent sustaining an injury or trauma in some way. The winner will have their story made history, while their opponent redesigns their character to adapt to the events.Each round will be 18 days, spanning 3 full weekends; always starting on the Friday and always ending on the Monday after (this structure has been borrowed from OCT Hastilude!) This is in the hopes to give our full-time employed participants as much time as possible. A link to your comic must be submitted to your match’s discord channel by this deadline, (though there will be a grace period of 48 hours after the deadline to make final edits before judgment).Sign-ups/auditions for each round will be open to ANYONE between one round and the next, regardless of if you participated in the previous round. Depending on the number of submissions, our judges and organisers (Sam, August, and Faust) will select and pair up participants into official “matches” before the round begins. Each official match will have its own discord channel. We will also be hosting Mess Hall Free-For-Alls (similar to War for Rayuba’s Grand Battles), where anyone else can create and submit a comic to be read. Mess Hall comics won’t be officially judged, but will be read and used as inspiration to affect next round’s Special Events!To try out for an official match, simply submit a character sheet of your OC to the auditions channel. You are also encouraged to submit a short audition comic to introduce your character to the judges and audience, but this isn’t required (find more info here). If you’d just like to participate in Mess Hall, a character sheet/audition comic isn’t required, but may be shared if you’d like to. You also do not have to keep the same character throughout all the rounds if you submitted with a different character previously (or if your previous character died).If you’re not an artist and just here to spectate, you’re also absolutely free to join the server and hang out!