THE RULES
The rules of the game are essentially the same as last year -- with one major twist, however, concerning the reporting of completed tasks.
Game Period
As in previous years, the game lasts from
November 1 through December 31.
Holidays, Tasks, and Points
Like an Advent calendar, our festive calendar has 24 ”doors“, behind each of which hides the square for one particular holiday falling (with one exception) into the game period. Most of these holidays you’ll recognize from last year’s game, some are new -- and one has gotten a bit of an extra twist.
With each of the 24 holidays included in the festive calendar,
one book reading task (typically, coming with several alternative choices) and
four non-book tasks are associated:
Completing either the book task (in any of its alternative incarnations) or any of the non-book tasks suffices to complete that particular square / door.
However, completing more than one task per square / holiday will earn you a corresponding number of
extra points. You can earn
up to five points per holiday / square (1 for the book-related task and 4 for the non-book-related tasks).
Task Reporting Form
MurderByDeath, our resident coding whiz, has tweaked a Google form to turn it into a handy task reporting form for our game, which is going to make it much easier than before to keep track of all tasks reported.
We've included the form in our
main "Card and Rules" post, posted a little earlier today, and we will include it in every holiday / "calendar door opening" post.
Two important notes:
(1) ONLY tasks reported using that form will be counted.
(2) In
the main "Card and Rules" post the drop-down menu to select the holiday for which you are reporting tasks will be updated as the game progresses. At the beginning of the game, it only includes the holidays's we're revealing today (Nov. 1), with further holidays to be added as we're "opening" the respective calendar doors. As stated above, each of those posts will, in turn, also contain an updated version of the form / drop-down menu, up to and including that day's holiday.
BUT we will not go back and update every single previously-posted "door opening" post every time a new "door opening" post goes up.
So, to find a version of the form that includes the holiday you want to report for, there are basically three methods:
(a) Bookmark
the main "Card and Rules" post and go back to it to report tasks completed; or
(b) Find
the post for the holiday for which you're reporting a completed task; or
(c) Find
the post revealing the most recent holiday, which should automatically include all previously-revealed holidays up to and including that holiday / square.
"Door Opening" / Holiday Posting Schedule
As a general rule, like last year, we will be “opening” the festive calendar’s doors on the dates on which the respective holidays occur. “Opening” a door will reveal the holiday hiding behind that door and the associated book and non-book tasks.
There are two exeptions from this basic schedule:
(1)
Melbourne Cup Day: As our established horse racing guide from previous years, MbD, won't be home on this holiday this year,
Darth Pedant (formerly known as Darth Pony) has graciously agreed to help out. Our heartfelt thanks and a big round of applause to her as well!
DP will announce the horses in this year's running once that information has been made public (Nov. 3 or thereabouts), and she'll post the winners and the horses placed second and third after the race is over.
One of the game's other hosts will separately post the "full" set of Melbourne Cup Day tasks, i.e. including the book task and the other three non-book tasks.
(2)
The eight final holidays: As our calendar matches the actual date of each holiday included in the game, this year we have eight holidays either directly before or after Christmas. As -- like last year -- we don't want anybody to have to cram these into the year's final ten days, and into time you'll likely want to spend with friends and family, we'll be revealing these holidays and the associated tasks ahead of time:
*
The names of the eight final holidays of the game and the corresponding book tasks have been revealed today HERE; and
* The non-book tasks for all eight final holidays will be revealed on December 1.
Book Joker
You have the option to replace
up to two holiday-related tasks (for different holidays), either books or non-book tasks, by using the
book joker card. To use the book joker, read a book for any of the holidays on the card that are already unveiled at that time.
Charity Donation
Finally, like in previous years, we will be using the number of total points accumulated by all participants as a basis for the amount we’ll ultimately donate, on behalf of the BookLikes community, to one or several book-related charities.
Let the games begin!!
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IMPORTANT NOTE: If you intend to use an image of the playing card in your own posts, you're going to have to copy and save the image at the top of this thread.
Like in last year's game, the "door opening" technique involves some fancy coding (all courtesy of MbD, of course), which basically means that what is going to appear as one seamless card in our posts from now on is actually going to be a bunch of individual images all sitting snug right next to (and above and below) each other, so wherever you right-click on "copy", you're only going to be copying that particular fractional image.
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