UESP Forums

These monthly competitions are a chance for you to demonstrate your creativity and talents while getting a chance to know your fellow members and have a little fun. Hopefully! Each month is going to have a different theme and a different talent – and maybe a surprise or two! Or not! But only one member can wear the purple coins and fancy title of CotM Winner AND INSERT BONUS PRIZE HERE! Unless there is a tie, then that previous sentence was false! Do you have what it takes? Specifically, the coupon to some fast food restaurant (anyone will do that is not Hardees) that is necessary to bribe me? My standards have gone down drastically since the last time I was made to do this.

The basic rules are as follows:


This month... Ummm.

Alright, I'll be blunt with you guys, we are completely out of ideas. Beta was literally sobbing over Skype when we came to this realization. Like a little baby. But we still have to do these, apparently, so the goal this week is to ensure that this will never happen again. Create your own concept for the Competition of the Month! Baby Beta is very distressing, do not put me through that again.

Try to think of what makes a good Competition of the Month. You might wish to review the Hall of Heroes to see past contests for some possible ideas. Remember that the goal of any good CotM is to have fun. Also keep in mind that certain ideas might be impractical for all members, like say "Create a video of your favorite Morrowind moment" would be hard for any user without a capture card or software to do so. As an added bonus to the usual award, we will also almost definitely do the winner's contest next month, and we may also use any other idea submitted here somewhere down the line.

Our schedule for the event of this month (not sure which one that is completely!) is as follows:
August 7: Competition begins! Start planning and send in those submissions!
August 24-30: Voting period – vote for your favorites! I swear the vote shall not be rigged! Really! I rigged it last time I ran it, but that was purely by mistake and shall not happen again!
August 31: Our winner is announced!
Please note that all times are determined by me, AKB, and therefore will run according to what time I say it is. This might be largely arbitrary!)

Remember that the CotM is not possible without you, so please participate, contribute, discuss, and vote!

(This fun event is hosted by AKB. If you have any questions, feel free to ask AKB within this thread or by sending AKB a PM or email by selecting the appropriate button below AKB's signature. Have some suggestions on what you'd like to see? Head over to the ideas thread and join in on the discussion!)

PARTICPANTS
Aarah
AKB
BetaB17
DarkEastwood
MARS
Musicman247
Thelastdovah
Unionhack
ZeRoc

From the desk of AKB -- dictated but not read

Here is an idea:

Make me this month's winner.

(Disclaimer:this is not my entry. I'm just being silly and will enter later)

And we're not truly out of ideas here, we just wanted to see what you guys can come up with. To prove this, let me submit one:

Create a plausible outline for the plot of Elder Scrolls VI. Go over what province it should take place in, who the big bad will be, who the hero will be, that sort of thing. Bonus points for including more extraneous details, like side quests you can do, information on followers you can obtain, descriptions of locations that can be visited. The more in-depth you go, the better. Maybe you'll work out the details all the way down to what lines M'aiq will have this time, or precise descriptions of the whole main quest.

So, I propose a Song Parody Contest.

Either in the way that the staff chooses a song (something contemporary maybe or just something older that everyone knows, or maybe even a song in one of the Elder Scrolls games) and has participants rewrite the lyrics bsaed on the Elder Scrolls or the UESP community.

That, or, participants could just select a song of their own and parody it on the same basis. It's either staff chooses one that everyone parodies or the participants select their own songs.

Either way, it's not a singing or playing contest; it's simply a lyric rewriting contest. Do the whole song or just a verse, who cares, so long as it's funny. Or just entertaining to read/hear in your head.

That seems like a pretty nifty idea Union! That's the kind of thing we're going for here, something easy enough for any user to do, but can truly bring out the best talents in our users, ideally. Thanks for submitting that competition!

I like that idea, Union!

Try to immitate or otherwise impersonate an ES character of your choosing! In audio format.

That would certainly be fun. I would probably want to compose a list of characters with unique voice actors before launching it as a contest, to provide some references.

I like the song parody idea. Says the guy who turned the entirety of Part Of Your World into a story about eating a pbnj-sandwich.

E: Oh damn, Mars. That's even better.

Yeah, I can hear Belethor doing Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song.

Please make it stop.

In accordance with the impersonation idea from earlier, I saw a thing on Reddit where this guy makes backstories or just regular stories using one of TES NPCs as a main character, which proved pretty interesting. It's essentially a fan made explanation of why a character is here, or does this, in story format.

So "Create an NPC" contest? That sounds very exciting! Thanks for entering DarkEastwood!

As an additional announcement, this month's winner will also receive a gift copy of the game Paper's Please in the spirit of doing someone else's job. The gift copy is redeemable through Steam, the winner can privately message me their Steam ID so I can send you it. If you already have it, I believe you can pass it on to a friend via Steam as well, or I can give it to a runner up instead if you'd prefer that.

Sorta kinda. You're using a pre-existing NPC, just providing a backstory in story format. Example: I explain why Hadvar joined the Legion, or how Bulgruuf became Jarl. But I do this not trough just plain explanation, but like a tale written in first or third person view in x characters or less.

EDIT: I found one that the dude wrote, this one regarding Lokir. This might give a good idea of what I'm attempting to say.

Oh, that's also a good idea! I could see that being a very cool CotM!

There's still plenty of time, but we'd love to have any ideas you can muster. Please. They don't feed me when the CotM isn't very busy.

I can't go back to the shelter.

I guess I'll try my hand at this<_< wouldn't want AKB to starve after all..

TES Shaming: Has anybody else seen those pictures or posts to where a pet(or an individual) did something worthy of punishment and was given a sign telling what they had done in a means of shaming<_< Yeah something tells me alot of followers would recieve their well deserved shame. Honestly the entree could be done simply via text, but obviously using an image and editing may be the better product. It really is something simple though, but almost everyone can relate to a degree

I think shaming is an abhorrent practice.

Nobody asked what you thought.

Idea: Recreate the cover of an ES game using only MS Paint (or Mac equivalent, if there is one).

I'm not allowed to express my opinion on suggestions? That's a new one.

Of course you're allowed! That's why it wasn't deleted. Duh. No need to act all dramatic.

We're veering off topic, though, so if you'd like to further discuss this, feel free to PM me.

Here is my super serious idea.

Feed AKB. Every day, we send him food and in return, he decides who to give the purple coins to.

The Elder Scrolls:A documentary

People have to submit entries done in the style of short documentaries based on TES. For example, UESPer 1 uses a nature documentary for Skyrim.

It could be a lot of fun!


If you were a villian in TES

If you were a villian in TES, how or what would you do. Would you take over Tamriel or steal all of the sweetrolls? Go crazy with it!

Elder Scrolls Memes

A screenshot with a funny caption to go with it.

Last few days to put in ideas. I'd love to see some more!

Write a story that led up to your character being in jail. Was it an exciting caper that got you caught? Or was it as simple as a post made by Mars a long, long time ago?


It could apply to any game, Morrowind, Oblivion, (and to a lesser extent) Skyrim.

The voting has officially started! Who will get the whatever the prize is for this?

I have been informed that it's a unique user rank and title, your idea being used in the future, and a copy of Paper's Please that is redeemable on Steam. You live and learn, I guess.