The Between Writing Contest

We are holding a Threat-writing contest for The Between roleplaying game! To learn more about The Between, check out our DriveThruRPG page. To learn more about the contest, read on!

Submission Guidelines

To enter the contest, you must write and submit a Threat of no more than 2500 words. The Threat must take place in the game’s default setting of Victorian-era London and should generally conform to the Writing Guidelines (see Resources Folder section, below).
Submissions must be in a Google Doc, 11 pt. Arial, with no special formatting (bold, italics, and bullet points are fine). Your name should not be included anywhere on the Google Doc.
Send a link to your Google Doc to Jason Cordova, who will be organizing the entries for the judges, via email: jason.cordova@hey.com. Subject line: THE BETWEEN CONTEST
When you send your submission email, indicate if you wish to opt-out of the public viewing folder (see Public Viewing Folder section, below).
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM Eastern on August 29th, 2021.

Resources Folder

A collection of resources can be found here. The resources folder includes:

A PDF of the Writing Guidelines (from The Between rulebook).
Three of our published Threats: The Limehouse Lurker, The St. James’s Street Ghost, and Sally No-Face.
A Threat in Google Doc form (to see what your submission should look like).

While it is not strictly necessary, you may also want to have the full rules of the game on-hand. If you intend to participate in the contest but don’t own the full rules of the game, and purchasing the game doesn’t fit in your budget at this time, you can DM Jason Cordova on Discord and he will send you a copy free of charge (see Discord, below).

Discord

You are invited to discuss the contest and solicit feedback on your entry on The Gauntlet Publishing Discord server, via the #writing-contest channel. The server can be found here.

Writer's Workshop

The Between's author, Jason Cordova, will be holding a special writer’s workshop for contest participants. The workshop will be via Zoom on August 7th, 2021 from 12 PM - 3 PM Eastern. Anyone participating in the contest is welcome to attend; a Zoom link will be sent out via Discord. The workshop will be recorded so it can be viewed later.

Public Viewing Folder

Entries will be made available for public viewing after the deadline for submissions has passed. If you don’t want your entry included in the public viewing folder, you can opt out by telling us so when you send your submission email.

Judging Criteria and Announcement of Winners

The entries will be judged on writing quality, creativity, and playability. The entries will also be judged blind, meaning the judges will not know who wrote which submission. The judging panel will be announced at a later time. The winner and runners-up will be announced in late September during a special podcast episode.

Prizes

While the primary aim of the contest is to have fun and engage in a creative process with like-minded writers, there are also some prizes available.

Everyone who submits an entry will receive a PDF of a new official Threat, The Court of the Occluded King. This Threat is exclusive to contest participants. Each participant will also receive a postcard in the mail featuring artwork for The Court of the Occluded King as a memento for participating in the contest. Joke entries or non-substantive entries that were clearly submitted solely for the purpose of getting this prize will be ignored.
1 winner will receive $250 USD.
2 runners-up will receive $100 USD each.

Publication and Text Ownership

You own the text of your entry and are free to publish it wherever you wish after the announcement of winners. We are not actively seeking to publish any entries (again, the contest is mostly for fun) but if something catches our eye that would be a good fit for our publishing plans, we will make a formal publishing offer to the entrant. If the winner or a runner-up receives such an offer, we will pay our publishing rate in addition to their prize money.

Official Threats (Published or Planned for Publication)

It’s not a contest requirement, but you might wish to avoid writing a Threat that is similar to the ones we have already published or plan to publish. A list of those Threats, and a short description of each, follows.

The St. James’s Street Ghost: A ghost is haunting a family’s townhouse on St. James’s Street.
The Limehouse Lurker: A vampire with the body of a child is terrorizing Limehouse.
The Creature of Cremorne Gardens: A “fish-man” is terrorizing the pleasure-seekers at Cremorne Gardens.
Sally No-Face: A killer from urban legend carefully removes the faces of their victims.
The Whateley Camera: A camera possessed by a demon.
Figg’s Piggs: A family of cannibal pie-makers.
The Coven: Witch’s coven; tied to The Vessel playbook.
The Cursed: Werewolf; tied to The American playbook.
The Pinkerton: Pinkerton agent; tied to The American playbook.
The Orphan (Threat): Frankenstein’s monster-type creature; tied to The Mother playbook.
The West-End Wraith: Phantom of the Opera, basically.
The St. Petersburg Mirror: A troupe of fraudsters may actually have a magical mirror in their possession.
[Untitled Devil’s Acre Threat]: A politician is doing demonic sacrifices of the poor.
[Untitled Fae Seamstress]: Just what it sounds like.
[Untitled Gay Boarding School Ghosts]: Just what it sounds like.
[Untitled Big Game Hunters]: Just what it sounds like.
[Untitled Tube Tunnel Ghosts]: Ghosts of people who were killed while digging the tube tunnels haunt London.
[Untitled Abbey Murder Threat]: A demonic mystery involving a body found walled-up in an abbey.
The Court of the Occluded King: A cursed, King In Yellow-style play is causing problems in London.