Last Ship Sailing: Round III

The Last Ship Sailing is a weekly round-based elimination competition where three to five sailors come together to write a story -- sailing their ship into the unknown! Join others on a ship and collectively write 2500 words each week. Last the longest to obtain the coveted title of the Last Ship Sailing.

How to Sign Up

1. Sign up in the LSS Tavern as a Crewmate!

2. Join together with other Crewmates in the Tavern to assemble a full Crew. A full Crew consist of Three-Five Crewmates.

3. Elect a Captain. A Captain is agreed upon by all Crewmates. They create the Ship Roleplay and OOC thread for the Crew. They will post in the Ship Log weekly to update the Ship's progress.

4. Your Captain creates a Ship Story Thread in the Storybook Sanctuary and a Ship OOC Thread.

5. Sign your Ship up at the LSS Port.

Before The Competition Starts

Before the competition starts, it is allowed and encouraged to:

• Have a concrete story idea and synopsis that all Crewmates have agreed upon.
• Have a full roster of characters from all Crewmates, including competed Character Profiles.
• Have plotted and outlined to your Crew's content.

Any in-story writing before the competition starts is not allowed.

Once The Competition Starts

Your Ship's Mission: write 2500 words a week as a Crew.

If a Ship fails to complete their Mission, the Ship will have a one-time Lifeboat. The Crew must write 4000 words in the next week to continue in the competition.

If a Ship does not accomplish the Lifeboat Mission or does not accomplish the regular Mission after using the Lifeboat, it will become a Pirate Ship. Pirate Ships are still encouraged to write, but they are out of the competition. A ship may also initially join as a Pirate Ship, meaning that they are participating similarly in the spirit of the event like other Ships, but are not officially competiting for the victory or subject to the word count or participation requirements.

This is a competition about collaboration. If a Crewmate does not write for two weeks in a row, they will become a Ghost. As a Ghost, they may still contribute to the story, but their writing will not count towards the weekly 2500 word goal.

In the event that a crew member becomes a Ghost and your crew seeks to add a new writer to the ship, you may request a Lifeguard in the LSS Tavern. A Lifeguard will be a regular crew member, aside from them joining late, and are subject to the same crewmate participation rules. They cannot be from another crew, however, and since the role is dependent on someone accepting an invitation, getting a Lifeguard is not a guarantee.

More Information

Spoiler

• All LSS Ships must follow Roleplay Rules.
• If you plan to join as a Pirate Ship, please state it in your LSS Tavern post.
• Crewmates may only be the Crew of one Ship.
• A Ship must be a new idea. No previous in-story writing will count. New ideas can be: reboots, sequels, or spin-offs.
• Although your Ship is sailing in the Storybook Sanctuary, it can be any kind of roleplay. Learn more about roleplay types here.
• Only in-story writing posted in the Ship Story Thread will count towards Missions: that is, OOC content or unfinished/unposted writing left in a Riseup/WFP cannot be counted for that week.
• There is no post limit.
• There is no word count limit.
• In order to count towards writing, a crewmate must post the writing themselves. Collaborated posts will only count towards the poster.
• Any writing before the current week will not count towards the current week's Missions.
• Weeks are considered Monday-Sunday. The start is Beginning of Day (BOD) Monday in your Captain's Timezone and end End of Day (EOD) Sunday in your Captain's timezone.
• Missions must be completed by EOD Sunday.
• Ship Captains must post or delegate a post in the Ship Log by EOD Sunday.

Useful Links

Spoiler

LSS Tavern - For Sign Ups and forming Crews
LSS Port - For Ship Sign Ups
LSS Ship Log - For Weekly Updates
LSS Club
LSS Badge Thread

Roleplay Rules
Storybook Profiles: A How To Guide - For assistance in Character Templates and Profiles
A Quick Roleplay Guide - If you are new to the forum

Is there a way we can watch this happen as a bystander if we aren't sure we want to participate but want to see how it works?

@WinnyWriter Yes, there is! You can subscribe to the contest threads such as the Ship Log to get updates on the competition, and you can read along with each ship's roleplay by going to the Storybook Sanctuary and clicking on the roleplays that have "LSS" in their titles. Roleplayers also really appreciate it if you drop encouraging comments in their Out of Character threads!
If you want to try out participating without the pressure of competing, you can also join as a Pirate Ship. ^^ That means you can get weekly reminders to write, but you aren't officially competing for the victory, so you don't need to adhere to specific word count rules.
Hope that helped. :] Let me or another rp mod know if you have more questions! <3

LSS Round III has begun! Don't forget to claim your badges in the LSS Badge Thread as you collect them. Set sail, brave adventurers!

The LSS Word Counter has been updated!

What's new
-> Mobile users: your eyes are saved! No more having to read overlapping lines of text!
-> Ghosts can be inputted now, and their word counts will not be counted in the "Word count this week" section. They'll still be included in the "Total word count" section.

Upcoming
-> A graph to be able to see word count over time (mayyyybe this week, probably not since I'll be traveling soon)
-> A histogram showing the most frequently used words (same timing as above)
-> Automatically outputting whether a ship has met word count or not and whether they successfully used a lifeboat or not (same timing as above)

As always, let me know if you find any bugs! I will squash them forthwith.

Hello Everyone!

RP Crew here to just remind everyone to submit their Ship Logs by 12am today (in your Captain's time zone)! :D

Just a quick explanation on how to submit/access your Ship Logs:

• At the end of every week, your Captain will need to submit a Ship Log in order to stay in the competition!
• The Ship Log thread can be found in the 'Information Desk' (the same forum this topic is in! :D)
• Follow the instructions on the first page, and please remember: do not use any word counters like Word or any other website. @Spearmint and @Carina have graciously created an LSS Word Counter just for us, which can be found on the second post of the Ship Log thread, and even right above my post in this thread.

Thank you all for participating! You are all doing great <3

As ships continue to write, the LSS Word Counter may slow down as it tries to count hundreds of thousands of words... xD I've created a second version that does not include total word count! So, if the usual version doesn't work, you can try this one.

Upcoming
-> A graph to be able to see word count over time (mayyyybe this week, probably not since I'll be traveling soon)
-> A histogram showing the most frequently used words (same timing as above)
-> Automatically outputting whether a ship has met word count or not and whether they successfully used a lifeboat or not (same timing as above)

I have not forgotten about this! It's on my list of to-dos. There's a pretty large backlog on my list right now, but hopefully I'll have more time next week :]

It definitely has not crashed trying to count our ship's twice now. Nope. Not us.

Thank youu!

So, a small bug in the LSS Word Counter is apparently more impactful than I thought it'd be, oops ToT. The wonderful KateHardy has noticed that Once Upon A Time's word count is over 200 words less in the LSS Word Counter than some other word counter sites. The bug is that the word counter sticks the last word of one line to the first word of the next line sometimes, thus counting two words as one word. When testing it, the difference was only a few words for every thousand or so, but the difference is more noticeable when there are more line breaks, such as in a poetry-style roleplay. So, my sincere apologies to the crew of Once Upon A Time! @EllieMae @JazzElectrobass @LuminescentAnt @Inferno @AmayaStatham

I'll take a look at the word counter tomorrow or the day after and see if I can fix that bug, but if not, if two external word counters both show you're over 2,500 words for a week, that is absolutely acceptable to post in the ship log! (Same goes for other ships.) This also applies whenever the LSS Word Counter is bugging out about something different!

Some word counters:

• Google Docs (this is mainly what the LSS Word Counter is based on)
• https://wordcounter.net/
• https://wordcount.com/
• https://wordcounter.world/

Whoops, I mean @NadyaStatham!

@EllieMae @JazzElectrobass @LuminescentAnt @Inferno @NadyaStatham The bug has been fixed! The LSS Word Counter still doesn't completely align with Google Docs, but the difference is now within 1-5 words for every 3000 words or so, which I think is acceptable.

If anyone is curious what the differences are, feel free to click on the spoiler >.>

Spoiler

The differences I've noticed so far are:

• Google Docs counts two words separated by an em-dash as one word, while the LSS Word Counter counts them as two words. Personally, I think counting them as two words is more accurate. Note that both word counters count hyphenated words as one word.
• Google Docs counts single or multiple emojis (not separated by spaces) as one word. The LSS Word Counter does not count single emojis, but it counts two emojis next to each other as two words. I have no idea why that is, but it's not a major enough thing for me to worry about xD

And as always, please do keep reporting any bugs you find! Thanks!! ^-^