All right, everyone! Welcome to my latest competition- as you might have guessed, things are gonna work a little differently this time. However, we'll get the basics out of the way first:

The Competitor Bill of Rights

As a competitor in these Games, you have the right to:

1. A fairly and dispassionately assessed entry. It should be considered a given, but the world is terrible and people suck. So there you are.

2. A minimum of seven days to complete any entry. 

3. A minimum of 20 hours to vote, since I know schedules can be tricky. 

4. The right to vote for yourself, should you ever find yourself up for votes.

5. Freedom from minimum or maximum word limits.

6. One 24-hour extension, no questions asked. Don't tell me why you need it. I don't care. Use it because you were too busy playing with your cat for all it matters to me. Just don't ask for another without serious cause (as in, medical emergency level cause). Also, put To Battle! in the Other section when you sign up.

The Host's Bill of Rights

1. I am the host. My decisions on winners in a pairing (or any other are, for that matter) are final. Do not argue. You will lose.

2. I will cheerfully ignore any entry which is not sent to joe(at)vaccarofamily.org.

3. In the event of a tie in voting, I reserve the right to break the tie in whatever manner I deem appropriate.

4. If you hand in late, I will decide how this affects your entry: depending on the degree of lateness, you may be posted but automatically lose the matchup or even start with a penalty in votes.

5. Please bear in mind that I have a life, and applying to grad schools may take precedence over swift rulings. I will try to be prompt, but if I'm not then just be patient. It'll get done, I promise.

6. If you're considering being a dick to your fellow competitors, don't. If you're considering being a dick to me...well. That'll be amusing. Not for you, of course, but for me and any sadistically inclined observers. 

The Tournament

This competition will take place in six rounds, each a different genre. You must write in the genre assigned that round. Failure to do so appropriately will result in automatic failure. 

In each round, authors will be randomly matched into pairs. This individual is not your friend, however! Each pair will be assigned a specific prompt from my prewritten pool of them. Each author within the pair will respond to the prompt to the best of their ability and present me with the resulting short story at the end of the week. Whichever author I determine has done the superior job will proceed to the next round, while the other will go up for votes. 

Simple enough, right?

This format will change a little for the latter three rounds. In these, there will be no chance for survival if you lose your matchup. In Round 4, we will have 8 authors and four pairings. I will decide the outcomes of two of them, and leave the other two pairings up for votes. In Round 5, we'll have 4 authors and two pairings. I'll decide the outcome of one pairing, and leave the other up for votes. For the Championship, I'll be rather extraneous-- only voting will decide the outcome.

That's about all, folks! I understand the setup's a bit odd, but for clarity's sake, I'm including a section for-

FAQs

This section is for clarification of any rule you're not sure about! Just leave a question in the comments below, and if I think it's important (or somebody else asks it), I'll post it here along with my answer.