Planet Profiling Competition Format
Every few months, the Mastermind Creative Writing Community will host a three-week long competition under “Planet Profiling.” Participants will be informed about any upcoming seasons for at least one week in advance in a post on our Discord titled “Planet Profiling Season Announcement.”
During the three weeks of the competition, any member can participate by creating their own Planet Profile. In every Planet Profiling competition, competitors will first be given the same randomly generated dataset about the fictional planet’s corresponding star system, the fictional planet itself, and a map of the planet to examine. This information will differ from season to season and it will be randomly generated from the Donjon website on the page “Star System Generator” (https://donjon.bin.sh/).
What you can be given:
The host star’s spectral type
The host star’s radius
The host star’s mass
The host star’s temperature
The host star’s luminosity
The planet’s orbital semimajor axis (orbital radius)
The planet’s orbital period (period)
The planet’s low resolution map
The planet’s physical composition in terms of percentages by volume
The planet’s radius
The planet’s surface area
The planet’s land area
The planet’s mass
The planet’s density
The planet’s gravitational constant
The planet’s escape velocity
The planet’s water and ice percentages
The planet’s rotational period
The planet’s axial tilt
The planet’s atmospheric composition in terms of percentages by volume
The planet’s atmospheric pressure
The planet’s min/max/avg temperature
The planet's general chemistry
The planet's lifeforms
The planet's civilization type
The planet's population
The planet's societal level
The planet's technological level
The planet’s special feature(s)
Example: Examine both images below. The terrestrial planet with the Earth icon is the planet we are focusing on making a planet profile for. Please ignore all of the images from the dataset except the map of the terrestrial planet on the right. The Earth-like image is NOT Earth.
Then, the contestants must create their own Planet Profile using the information given and their creativity to answer the questions below. Alongside the written answers, competitors are recommended to include diagrams and images to enhance the visual appeal of their submission. Please note that the answers to each question do not need to be scientifically accurate. Rather, submissions will be assessed on their logic, reasoning, creativity, and use of the dataset. We also expect the answers to each question to not contradict the dataset from the Donjon Star System Generator (https://donjon.bin.sh/).
1. Create and describe in detail the natural geographical features, atmosphere, and climate of the terrestrial planet and two of its (man made) landmarks.
2. Describe in detail how the terrestrial planet eventually became able to host complex life.
3. Create and describe in detail two significant events and two significantly impactful individuals from the history of this planet’s civilization in the last 50 years.
4. Create and describe in detail the planet’s demographics, cultures and social customs, religions/philosophies/belief systems, societal level, technological level, economics, and politics that exist in its civilisation today. (Choose three categories from this list!)
5. Explain how the planet’s special feature impacts the daily life of the planet’s civilization.
6. Further expand on the information from your answers to the previous questions to predict the status of the planet’s future.
Once the competitors have answered all the questions, they must communicate their answers creatively using a magazine-style article, a series of digital posters, or a full mini-newspaper. The final submission must be linked or attached to the competitors’ submission posts on the “Planet Profiling Season Submission Thread.”
After the competition duration, all opportunities for submissions will close and any community member (including members who did not participate) is welcome to take a look at everyone's submitted work and discuss them on our Discord.
Finally, once the opportunities for submissions are closed, the judges will grade the submissions and post the grades and written feedback on the “Planet Profiling Season Results Thread.”
Please give our team at least three weeks to return the feedback and scores. Once the scores are finalized, the results thread will become available. Scores are assigned based on the following marking criteria:
At the end of the competition, we will contact contestants via email from info@mastermindbp.com if they are eligible to receive a prize. We will not use any other email address to give out the prize money.
All prizes come in the form of PayPal donations so you need to have an email that is connected to a PayPal account to receive the award(s).
The submission(s) with the highest average will win the $100 USD prize. The submission(s) with the second and third-highest averages will receive a $50 USD prize each.
If you have any questions or queries, please stay up to date with us on our Discord Community. Note that you will need to create a Discord account to do so and it is free.
Link to our Community Discord: https://discord.gg/xkXqs7YwhF
Planet Profiling Competition Rules
Respect everyone on a basic level. This includes but is not limited to avoiding harassment and spamming.
Plagiarism and any use of AI (except the provided dataset) is strictly prohibited and will result in immediate disqualification.
You can look up some scholarly journal articles for inspiration but it is not required. Scientific accuracy will not be assessed.
You may use images and diagrams from outside sources but you must indicate where they are from. Otherwise, the images or diagrams must be made by you from scratch.
You are not required to cite nor submit a Bibliography/Works Cited/References page.
In your reply to the Season Submission Thread, your submission must be attached as a PDF or Word Doc. The maximum file size is 500 MB. We will not accept links to Google Docs.
You can submit your response any number of times before the deadline but we will only grade your most recent submission. If possible, please delete your previous submissions from the same season so then we can identify which file we want to grade.
In the Season Submission Thread, your submission can only contain your file submission. You should not reply to anyone's submission in this thread but you can address their work on our Discord if you want to give and/or receive constructive feedback.
After the submission period has ended, you are not allowed to edit your submission.
Prizes come in the form of PayPal donations. If you are eligible to receive a prize, you will be contacted by email.
Please direct any questions you have to our Discord (note that to do so, you must create a Discord account and it is free).