Well aloha, Survivors! I’ve never been a fan of obvious eliminations, but if I survived Survivor X, I can weather one here, I suppose. Let’s dispense with the dramatics and just get it over with:

Vote One: Ryan Fossum (his own).

Vote Two: Ryan Fossum.

Vote Three: Ryan Fossum.

Vote Four: Ryan Fossum. “Well, I’m not gonna think about this one a lot.”

Vote Five: Ryan Fossum.

Vote Six: Ryan Fossum. “The nonsub.”

Vote Seven: Ryan Fossum. “No submission. No hesitation.”

Vote Eight: Ryan Fossum. “Because, well…silver bullets and Diabetes may weaken lycanthropes and Wilfred Brimley, but non-subs won’t.”

Vote Nine: Ryan Fossum. “I vote for Ryan Fossum because I want to vote for a former winner and the rules don’t allow me to vote for Brooks.”

First Elimination from Spookymilk Survivor XIII: Ryan Fossum

That’s two straight games where a Survivor winner has been the first one eliminated. However, Ryan offers insight: “just been working 80 hour weeks. I had no time. Didn’t realize when I said I’d do Survivor I’d be expected to take on another job. Give my regards.”

Just sayin’, though, we’ve had several people submit while in the hospital, doped up so much that they probably had the brainpower of someone who’d just worked eighty hours. But I kid the Ryan. He’s great.

The next challenge, an all-new one, is Choose Your Own Adventure (those who played the challenge of the same name in XI, it’s not the same).

Each team will write a complete Choose Your Own Adventure story. The first player will open the story with section 1, and at the end of that section will create a diverging path of two or more choices. That player can continue with part 2, but each person has a word limit of 150 across all sections (not counting the words in the choices, if that makes sense). I’d love to offer more, but judging this week was tough enough with so many of you.

I do ask that you move the story forward in order, so the first person’s choices should go to 2, 3 and 4, if there are three choices. This is for ease of judging, as each person, not section, will be scored. I also figure it will help you organize as a team.

If the person before you created two paths, you are under no obligation to write both, and you can leave one for the next person.. You can spend all your words on the same section, if you so desire. However, there must be at least three endings contained in the story, no matter where they’re located.

Each team will also get a 1-5 score on overall enjoyment as a unit. The story does not have to have the same spirit throughout each section, and it can diverge wildly from where it begins. I’m not looking for this to match up; I’m just looking for an overall experience. If your team fails to have three endings, this will be an automatic zero.

The team with the lowest average score will have to vote someone out. Of course, if anyone nonsubs, then this will trump everything and they’ll be on the hook.

I was scared to run this because of the coordination necessary, but the last time I ran a “rely on your teammates to write something” challenge, it was done in record time because nobody wanted to be the weenus who screwed it up. So, here’s hoping you defend this decision, Survivors.

They’re due Monday, June 17th at noon Central. These will take some time to judge so that accounts for the time of day, and I pushed it out one day longer than intended because Sunday is Father’s Day and this place is lousy with fathers. You should, of course, send in your own section as soon as it’s done, and not wait for the team. As will always be the case, in the unlikely event that everyone has submitted early, we’ll judge well before Monday.

Cheers, Survivors. If there are any questions about this fairly complex challenge, ask them here.