Festivids Rules Update for 2025

[fest...@gmail.com]

Source: festivids

Thanks everyone for your feedback on our rules questions! We really appreciate hearing your perspective.

We've made a few rulings on these topics for this year:

Complex "Adaptations of ..." Umbrella fandoms

If a list of adaptations or "in popular culture" is messy, we'll be using a quick checklist to differentiate adaptations from references. This is intended to make the identification of adaptations vs references straightforward.

• Are there characters or analogs from the original canon in this piece of media? (For example, for Moby Dick the presence of a Moby Dick, a Moby Richard, a Fishmael, or a whaling captain who is pursuing his nemesis white whale would all count as characters or analogs.)
  
  AND
  
  Are there plot points or plot analogs from the original canon in this piece of media? (For example, for Moby Dick you might have Ahab drowning or flying into space, Fishmael alone in the ocean at the end, and a promise of a doubloon or an IOU note.)
• If those two features aren't present, the canon is a reference. (For example, an Assassin's Creed DLC has a white whale in a whale hunting scene, but no characters or plot points in common. Star Trek First Contact contains a Moby Dick quote, but there are no characters or plot points in common. These are references; they could be used as outside footage in a vid about Moby Dick adaptations, but they are not in themselves adaptations. Also, because they are brief references, neither of them could be vidded alone to make a Moby Dick vid.)
• Individual episodes of larger shows can disqualify an "Adaptations of …" Umbrella.

Actual Plays

For Actual Plays, we took everyone's feedback and have tried to balance different fan perspectives on what makes an Actual Play fandom.

We're trying something new this year, which is adding a level of a fandom for "Actual Play Series: $Universe Name." This means that you can now nominate an individual universe from within an Actual Play series by itself. So, using Dimension 20 as an example:

• Dimension 20: UNIVERSE NAME: A vid about the cast or characters from a specific universe, covering animatics, actor footage, and mixed media. For example, D20: Dungeons and Drag Queens would be its own universe. D20: Fantasy High Universe would be its own universe.
• Dimension 20 [UMBRELLA]: An Umbrella fandom covering all D20 campaigns, specials, etc, which could use animatics, fanart, actor footage, or otherwise use mixed media to vid multiple D20 universes together.
• Dimension 20: UNIVERSE NAME RPF: A vid about the people who make that specific universe within Dimension 20, which could use footage from their lives / social media / etc
• Dimension 20 RPF [UMBRELLA]: A vid about the people who make Dimension 20, which could use footage from their lives / social media / etc

We know that this makes more sense for some Actual Play anthology fandoms than others, but we're trying to set a consistent standard that balances the different Actual Play fandoms while still making it possible for nominations reviewers to screen the fandoms.

If you have any questions, please let us know. If your Actual Play fandom is somewhat confusing and you'd like to talk through it, please drop us a line before you nominate and we can walk through it. This will be especially helpful if your fandom doesn't list universes on their wiki, since nominations screeners are often totally unfamiliar with the fandoms they are screening.

Animatics

We're going to continue to treat vid-like animatics as vids this year (but not include scene-like animatics).

As always, if you have rules questions or ideas please let us know—we're always open to adjusting things in the future.