Welcome to Kartograff, the world’s first online Storytelling contest with real world adventures & unique experiences as prizes.

www.kartograff.com

This document will guide you through the basics, such as:creating an accountsigning up for a contestcreating a Story using the Story Editorvoting & commenting, and finally,finding out who won

With Kartograff, contestants upload Stories for a chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. In essence Kartograff is a collection of stories and storytellers interested in new cultures, exploration, adventure and new experiences. We’re nomads, travellers, adventurers, photographers, writers, videographers, journalists and armchair anthropologists.

Our inspirations are VICE, Reddit, Atlas Obscura, Kickstarter, and even Werner Herzog.

Let’s get rolling. First up: creating an account.

To begin the process, click become a member just above our logo.

Membership is free and allows you to upload your Stories to enter contests. It Also gives you voting rights and access to random draw prizes.

As you can see, creating an account is pretty straightforward. If you already have an account made, you can use this page to log in.

Note: once you create an account, the Story Editor will appear! You don’t need to create a Story right at this time, but it is a good idea to at least familiarise yourself with how it works. Like G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.

Here’s my member page, it’s not too filled out now, but that’ll change! Note that these pages are publicly viewable.

Profile pics: can be photos or .gifs, and like your short bio, can be updated anytime.Mail is basic and internal.Recent activity can be used to follow recent comments and contest entriesStory Editor is where you create, manage and edit your Stories (more on this soon!)Combined Score carries no weight on individual contests, but is instead just a bit of friendly competitionErasing a profile: please email us, as we can only erase profiles that are not in any current competitions

Let’s check out the top page a bit more before signing up for an Adventure, cool?

The Kartograff top page has 2 navigations: the main navigation sidebar and the Adventure Navigation in the top right corner. There are also 3 stages of contest:

1. Live Contests. You can’t sign up for these, but you can vote & comment on them (as long as you’re a member!). Every live contest lasts exactly 7 days.

2. Proposed Adventures. Sign up for these! Most proposed adventures will collect contestants over a 30-day sign-up period.

3. Successful Contests. This is basically just a scoreboard showing everybody’s score from the previous contest.

Cool? Let’s sign up for an Adventure Contest! That’s why we’re here, right!?

Next up: signing up for a contest

Let’s use our Beta Test contest as an example, and start by clicking BETA TEST - HELP US IRON OUT SOME WRINKLES in the adventure navigation box.

Here’s the BETA TEST info page. All Adventures at all stages have similar info pages.

SIGN UP in the top right.A “stats box” underneath that gives you a lot of info at a glance, including the skill factor.A detailed write up underneath the stats box.A big ass map in the middle (at Kartograff, we dig maps - it’s right there in our name!).And finally, some images under the map to help you visualise the adventure in question.

Because we’re signing up for a contest, let’s go ahead and click SIGN UP.

So we’ve gone & clicked SIGN UP, and it brought us to this page. What we need to do to enter this contest is:

1. Select our Story (or create a fresh Story on the fly)2. LOCK IN our Story in the top right to confirm.

BUT we haven’t made a Story yet, have we? Let’s make one right now.

note: some contests are crowdfunded, which have a $1-5 entry fee depending on the adventure in question. If so, a 3rd step occurs: pay the entry fee by PayPal. Don’t worry, we only collect your entry fees if enough people sign up for the contest, otherwise no money exchanges hands.

Before we create a Story, let’s learn why they’re important.

Kartograff is a game, right? Well, your Story is like your game piece. Each contest’s prize is an Adventure, and Stories are a way of figuring out who deserves to win!

Your Story is a collection of up to 10 images, gifs and text proving to the world that you deserve to win the adventure! It’s part blog post, part tumblr, part Vine, part portfolio, all story. Using the Story Editor is super simple, but making a compelling Story can be quite tough. The best advice we can give you is to have a storyboard prepared beforehand. Having your images all lined up and knowing what you’re going to write about makes the process a lot easier!

Making a Story part I

Step 1: give your Story a title. This is the first thing people will see, so make it pop!

Step 2: add a main image. When adding images first Choose File then click Upload. You can crop afterwards (*no cropping in mobile)

Step 3: start adding text & more images to build up your story. We don’t allow video uploading, but try to get creative with linking, etc!

Making a Story part II

Step 4: click save to profile in the bottom right to finalise the process! Note that you can have up to 3 stories at any given time.

Story Editor Troubleshooting:* make sure that you give your story a title & main image or else it won’t save.* if the text input doesn’t work refresh the page and let us know.* After saving, wait up to 5s while your Story is uploaded. You’ll get a confirmation notice when everything is set! (see next page)

Making a Story part III

All done, and confirmation to prove it!

Why did we create a Story again? Oh yeah, to enter a contest! Let’s go back to the Proposed Adventure page and enter the Beta Test contest.

So we’ve found our way back to the SIGN UP page and now we have a Story made (“On The Road”); all we have to do to finalise entry is:

1. click SELECT beside ON THE ROAD, then,2. click LOCK IN in the upper right corner

Successful contest entry will bring up a confirmation page (see next page!)

And there we go! SIGN UP changed to SIGNED UP; let’s move on to Voting & Gameplay.

Next Section, the guts of the platform:

LIVE CONTESTS: Voting & Gameplay

You’ll notice a lot of countdown clocks on the site, which are here to make Kartograff as fair as possible (and were detailed way back on the 5th slide). So let’s assume that the timer clicked down and turned the BETA TEST Proposed Adventure into the BETA TEST Live Contest. It’s now time to vote!

First things first, find the BETA TEST Live Contest on the top page and click on it (again, top right).

Voting & Gameplay part 1: main info page

Truth be told, not too much to do here. Most of the info didn’t change, though if you check the stats box you’ll be able to see how many people signed up.

The main focus of this page is to ensure that non-contestant voters know the adventure & contest details. Remember, any member can vote on any Live Contest as long as they’re signed in.

To keep moving forward, just click VOTE & DISCUSS in the top right corner.

Voting & Gameplay part 2: Story Grid

Kinda pretty, isn’t it? These are the thumbnails of every Story uploaded to the BETA TEST contest.

1. Sort Stories (highest, lowest, most discussed) 2. Find specific Stories (your own, friends, family, etc)

to vote & comment on. 3. Click the thumbnail to open up the Story Detail,

which is where you may vote & comment.

Voting & Gameplay part 3: Story Detail pt 1

Finally here! This is the Story that kuritan entered into the BETA TEST contest. It’s short Story, just one image, with lots of text. Everybody will tell their story differently in their attempt to win the prize, but the Story Detail core features remain the same:

1. Upvoting & downvoting determines your Story Score2. Commenting determines your Comment Score

This phase of the contest always lasts one week, and your final score is calculated with the following formula:

[story score x skill factor] + comment score

Voting & Gameplay part 3: Story Detail pt 2

There are a lot of fine points to consider when playing & strategizing, more than we can cover here.

We highly recommend that you check out the GAMEPLAY subheading in the main navigation to find out the details, where we explain things like the skill factor, what happens in case of a tie, and various tips & tricks to help you create a great Story & get the most out of the Kartograff platform.

For the time being, there’s just one more small section to cover: Successful Contests.

Last Section:

SUCCESSFUL CONTESTS

Should look familiar by now, no? The main info page always stays the same, only the button in the top right changes. Now it prompts us to view rankings, so let’s check it out!

Should look familiar by now, no? The main info page always stays the same, only the button in the top right changes. Now it prompts us to view rankings, so let’s check it out!

And here we go! The final rankings all loaded up in the Story Grid one last time. You can still open up individual stories and check individual scores, but of course voting & commenting is locked.

This grid is essentially the final say: if your name appears at the top, you win!

All done! We’ll leave it up to you to check out other features, such as Suggest an Adventure.

Good luck & keep adventuring!