About Original Character Tournaments

Original Character Tournaments or OC Tournaments (commonly shortened to OCTs) are art or writing competitions where competitors compete by making a story with their own Original Character(s) and their opponent's Original Character(s).

Detailed Summary
Original Character Tournaments or OC Tournaments (commonly shortened to OCTs) are art or writing competitions where competitors compete by making a story with their own Original Character(s) and their opponent's Original Character(s).

Most competitions have an Audition Period, where prospective competitors will submit a character and an audition depicting the start of the character(s) story and how they ended up in the tournament setting.

Once accepted, competitors will get matched up in Rounds, where they are given opponent character(s) they must impliment in their story.

Tournament Formats may vary, but commonly accepted terms are Elimination Tournaments and Non-Elimination Tournaments.

Elimination Tournaments are normally a traditional tournament-bracket format, where each round will half the number of competitors by picking the best of each matchup. For example, a 5 round OCT would start with 32 competitors.

Non-Elimination Tournaments are a format which involves no forced elimination of the competitors. Competitors are eliminated if they fail to submit an entry or the criteria set out by judges. Typically a winner is decided via a point-based system.

Media Types
Most tournaments allow a certain type of media for entry. This includes:
 * Comics
 * Animation
 * Games
 * Writing

The majority of tournaments require some form of visuals.

Types of Entry
Competitor Entries - These are stories submitted for a tournament's rounds.

Spectator Entries - These are stories based on the Tournament's settings and characters. Both competitors and non-competitors can make these entries.

Related Art Contests
There are several art competitions which work in tandem with OCTs.


 * Entervoid
 * Original Character Leagues
 * Oculama

Tournaments that occur within these sites do get listed in the Complete OCTs list.

Early OCTs
OCTs have existed on DeviantArt since at least 2007. The first recognised OC Tournament was Endzone OCT by Endling, which was made in celebration of Endling's DeviantArt reaching 2 million pagehits. The idea of an OC Tournament likely came up due to Endling's history of running art tournaments on their DeviantArt.


 * Endzone OCT was based on its creator's webcomic Everafter and ended up having 64 competitors.


 * Endzone also began the concept of spectator entries . Other tournaments like Rumble in the Summer OCT also appeared in 2007.


 * Endzone finished its final round with Unknown-person and their character Climber as the winners.

OCTs continued to exist on DeviantArt, with Endzone popularising the concept. Before groups were introduced, artists used either their own personal accounts to run these tournaments or made seperate accounts to act as a central hub for all the tournament's information and images associated with it.

Original Character Leagues also started at this time, providing a similar but different concept, where competitors could pick who they want to fight without a fixed tournament bracket.

2010s
OCTs would continue into the 2010s, with tournaments using the group function to act as a hub for all entries to be gathered in. Software like DeviantArt's message system and Skype would be used for communication. Groups like the OCTFollowers, OC-YellowPages and the-OCT-list formed in order to advertise upcoming tournaments.

In the late 2010s, making discords for OCTs became much more common.

After DeviantArt rolled out their "Deviantart Eclipse" update, many users left the site due to its more limited functionality. Pantheon OCT gave the option for competitors to submit "off-site", with entries being linked on the PantheonOffsite Deviantart account.

2020s
In 2020, Sukoshi Kaze on Twitter hosted the Tournament of Steel - a competition where users would vote on which OC they thought would win in a fight based on a list of their abilities and skills.

Sukoshi Kaze would run an OCT on Twitter later in the year, named the Tournament of Two Souls, introducing many new people to Original Character Tournaments.

In January 2021, War For Rayuba was hosted by ABBADON.


 * Based on his webcomic Kill 6 Billion Demons, the tournament had people create characters fight for two factions (the Pyre and the Bastion) to fight over the fate of the World Rayuba. The tournament had a map-based battle system and proved to be massively successful with 953 artists and writers contributing.


 * The Youtubers People Make Games competed in the competition and made a video in June 2021 documenting their time in War For Rayuba, introducing their audience to the concept of Original Character Tournaments and further boosting War For Rayuba's popularity.

Splinter City OCT also proved to be massively popular, getting 202 auditions applying for its 32 competitor roster.

In September 2021, the OCT Newscast was set up to document past and present OCTs.