voiceteam

Audio of Voiceteam 2025 Rules/FAQ (read by klb):

What is Voiceteam? You could describe it as a fandom challenge, or as a creative competition, or as a series of friendship quests for podficcers. At its heart, Voiceteam is a fannish game for the podfic community with summer camp vibes. It takes place on Discord, where you’re grouped into teams of around a dozen players each. Across three week-long rounds in May, you can earn points for your team by making voice-based or voice-adjacent creations that fulfill different challenges. Each round begins with ten new challenges being revealed, and then teams are set loose to strategize, create, earn points, and have fun!

Sound interesting? If you’d like to learn more, read on for all of the specifics, logistics, updates, and rules of Voiceteam 2025!

TIMELINE

Sign-ups: April 1–28
Discord Server Opening/Orientation: May 1–3
Check In 1: May 2
Round 1: May 4–10
Break 1 and Check In 2: May 11–12
Round 2: May 13–19
Break 2 and Check In 3: May 20–21
Round 3: May 22–28
Break 4: May 29–30
Tiebreaker: May 31
Results: June 1

Voiceteam runs on UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). All single dates listed above are scheduled at 12:01 AM UTC of the relevant day. All date ranges begin at 12:01 AM UTC on the first day in the range and end at 11:59 PM on the last day in the range. To get a sense of what that is where you live, you can do a Google search for “midnight UTC in my time zone” or enter your location on this time conversion website. Your mods—eafay70, forzandopod, irrationalpie, klb, novalinium, and twtd—are in EDT (UTC-4), MDT (UTC-6), and PDT (UTC-7), but we have players from across the world. Anyone from any time zone is welcome and able to participate!

Note for new players: Voiceteam has been running for 11 rounds, and every round we’ve made tweaks to help the experience work better for more and more players and situations. We like all of these changes, but they’ve also made the details of Voiceteam more and more complicated to wrap your head around all at once! So we’ve made a simplified overview of Voiceteam as a starting place for new players that just focuses on the basics. Feel free to start there!

MAJOR CHANGES FROM LAST YEAR

There will be a box to check at sign-up for experienced players who would like to volunteer to help guide a new player through their first Voiceteam.

Likewise, new players will have a box to check at sign-up to request being paired with a more experienced guide. Those who choose this option will be matched with a guide on their same team. They can reach out to their guide whenever they’d like for extra help, support, and collaboration, knowing that the guide volunteered for the role and will be happy to help!

This year, the three days after the Discord opens will include an orientation for new players. This orientation will involve three short practice challenges that players can complete for fake points. Players can use these practice challenges to familiarize themselves with how challenges look, what contributions count for points, how collaborations are scored, how to submit to Airtable, how to check their point totals, etc. Experienced players are welcome to complete the orientation challenges as well, for a refresher on how Voiceteam works, a way to warm up and bond with their team, and of course for fun!

We have revised our rule for going on retroactive points break. This round’s rule will be: If an unexpected emergency arises in a Voiceteam player's life (such as them or one of their loved ones being unexpectedly hospitalized) they are allowed to opt in to points break for that round even if the opt-in window has passed.

We are bringing over from Mystery Box the BYOBonus. This is a customized bonus that each player can create for themself, and it will add 5 bonus points to any of their Voiceteam creations that meets the bonus condition. They should choose their BYOBonus condition by thinking of a goal they want to motivate themselves toward and making it worth points!

We have added a check-in after the end of Round 2 and before the start of Round 3.

We are no longer having an “Amnesty” period at the end of Round 3 where works from closed rounds can be submitted for half-points.

RULES

Each player will have a cap for how many points they can earn for each round’s challenges. You can sign up for a lower point cap (200 points max for each round of challenges) or a higher point cap (400 points max for each round of challenges).

Each team member has the final decision about their own creations (including their part in collaborative creations, if they choose to participate in any). There are no requirements about the quality or size of your creations.

Completed creations should be turned in via an Airtable form. A mod will look over and verify your submission and will reach out to you if we disagree about the point value or need more information from you. You are also encouraged (but not required) to share your creations within the Discord and/or crosspost your creations to our AO3 collection so that other players can see and enjoy them!

Since team sizes and point caps will vary, each team’s final score will be scaled. Points will be determined by dividing the number of points each player earned by their total maximum (based on their choice of point cap), averaging this number for all the players in the team, and then multiplying this number by the average team size.

You may take a points break for any round of challenges—just let the mod team know you want a points break either before that round’s challenges are revealed or during the opt-in time window (24–48 hours after the challenges were first posted). If you take a points break, your score is not included in the team’s scaled score for that round. Players are welcome to take a points break for as many rounds as they want.

If an unexpected emergency arises in a Voiceteam player's life (such as them or one of their loved ones being unexpectedly hospitalized) they are allowed to opt in to points break for that round even if the opt-in window has passed.

Players who are absent from the Voiceteam Discord for a whole round and who do not submit any creations for that round will also not be counted in that round’s points.

Other than players on points break or players that are absent the whole round, all players’ scores will be counted towards their team’s points for the round.

At the end of all 3 rounds, if two or more teams have tied for first place, the winner will be determined with a 24-hour lightning tiebreaker round. This tiebreaker will be opt-in for any players who want to participate. During this 24-hour period, players who have opted in will be able to submit fanworks for any of the 3 challenges that have received the least submissions across Voiceteam 2025. There will be no point cap during this time. At the end of 24 hours, whichever team has earned the most points for these submissions (scaled by number of participating players on that team) will win the tiebreaker and be the winner of Voiceteam. If there is no tie for first place, we will still have the 24-hour lightning “tiebreaker” round just for fun, but the points earned from this round won’t affect the order the teams place in.

Challenges will sometimes leave room for interpretation. If you're not sure whether something counts, please check with the mods. We support creativity, so we will often be generous with what we allow!

We will have three check-ins. One will be for group fit and will happen before the Round 1 challenges drop. The second will be after the end of the Round 1 challenges, and the third will be after the end of the Round 2 challenges. We will announce in Discord when it's time for each check-in, and you can then check in via Airtable to let us know how things are going and if there are any changes that would make things better for you!

Even in between check-ins, please feel free to come to the mods to request support with any issues, including but not limited to: feelings of exclusion, conflict with a group member, and concerns about the rules or structure of Voiceteam. If you suspect a problem might be brewing but are unsure whether it’s worth checking in with the mods, PLEASE give us a heads up about it. We’ll keep your concerns confidential unless you give us the go-ahead to share them, but we can help you think up solutions or make mod-level changes as needed to address the problem. For more serious problems, see our anti-harassment policy.

Code of Conduct for Players

This is a community space, and players are expected to act in ways that take the needs and feelings of other community members, including players and mods, into account. Specifically, players should not publicly complain about their team, give unsolicited critique of another player’s fanwork, or pressure or exclude team members. Pressuring team members includes repeatedly suggesting ways for the team member to earn more points, or repeatedly checking in on a team member's progress, without that team member having agreed to that type of interaction first. Players should also honor mod decisions about Voiceteam rules and refrain from lashing out at, attacking, or personally insulting mods when sharing feedback or concerns.

Any player who breaks this code of conduct will be contacted by the mods and asked to stop. If this type of behavior happens repeatedly, they may be asked to leave Voiceteam or asked not to return in future years.

The above code of conduct is not intended to silence calling out or calling in of racism, transphobia, or other behavior harmful to historically marginalized communities. This community will always make space for that kind of feedback, and the mods will always work to support players who speak up about this type of behavior. This includes calling out/calling in of the mods.

Code of Conduct for Mods

Mods will not delete any words by players from our Discord unless those words violate our anti-harassment policy and their deletion is requested by the affected community members. In case of deletion, we will keep screencaps of the unedited conversation for accountability reasons.

Mods will listen to player feedback about Voiceteam structures and mod decisions thoughtfully, and we will work together as a team to make sure that any concerns or issues brought to us are addressed with respect and care.

If necessary, we encourage participants to hold us accountable to our own actions. We aim to mod this event from within the community, not above it. We will always be open to suggestions and feedback from members of our community for how to improve in our anti-oppression work and our work on making Voiceteam a fun and healthy community.

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FAQ

Where did this idea come from?

Voiceteam is inspired by a combination of Amplificathon, GISH, and the 2000s era sorting and landcomms on LJ. (Name inspiration is from here.) We wanted a point-based podfic event like Amplificathon used to be, and we also wanted an event with excitement, fun, and occasional silliness, where anybody who loved podfic would feel welcome and would have plenty of opportunities to bond and make new friends!

If you want a lot more information on the origin of Voiceteam, you can check out the audio documentary An Abridged History of Voiceteam, created by TheLordOfLaMancha during Voiceteam Mystery Box 2023

Do I have to be an experienced podficcer to join?

No! You just have to love podfic. There are non-voice ways to participate in audio fanworks for points, like contributing writing, beta, editing, directing, or graphics. There will also be some challenges that can be fulfilled without audio fanworks. No one has to do every single challenge.

How big of a commitment is this going to be?

No bigger than you want it to be! The point of this event is to have fun and make friends, and if you end up getting inspired to create a bunch of stuff, cool. If not, that’s also cool.

Okay, but what if my version of fun is to scheme with my team members and Crush The Competition?

Go for it! Just make sure that it’s all in good fun and that team members with different reasons for participating don’t feel pressured.

How do I earn points?

At the beginning of each new round, a list of ten challenges will be posted in the Discord’s public channel. For the seven days that the challenges are open, these challenges can earn points.

What’s an example of what a challenge might look like?

You can find examples of past Voiceteam challenges here.

What if I don’t like some of the challenges?

That’s okay! The challenges are spread out to interest a wide range of different players, and not every challenge will work for everyone. In some cases, you might have feedback about how to tweak the challenge to make it more fun for you, which we invite you to share in the #feedback-about-voiceteam channel or by DMing a mod. If none of the challenges of a particular round work for you, please also let us know, because the mods may be able to add a bonus challenge for the week to give you and others who feel similarly an alternate way to earn points.

In other cases, you might find across the round that seeing what other people create inspires you and changes your mind about some of the challenges. Sometimes players even find that the challenge that seemed least appealing to them at first ends up being their favorite! We encourage you to keep an open mind, and to reach out to teammates for ideas about how to make a tricky challenge fit with your interests, or for cheerleading and support in trying something new.

We do ask, though, that you keep any negativity about challenges or rounds that don't work as well for you to appropriate areas (such as #feedback-about-voiceteam or conversations with mods) and that in team spaces you focus on the challenges you are interested in and/or constructive problem-solving about those that you are having trouble with. This will help keep team spaces positive, encouraging, and fun!

How do I keep track of when challenge drops and deadlines will happen in my time zone?

We know this can be confusing! We will have a time zone converter set up in Discord in a prominent location to help players keep track of when the next drop or deadline is coming up.

Another way to keep track of Voiceteam happenings is to subscribe to the Google Calendar with our schedule. (You’ll need to click the + in the bottom right corner to add it, which will convert it to your local time zone.)

Those in time zones where 12:01 AM UTC is too late at night to comfortably stay awake for challenge drops can opt into a special channel where the challenges are dropped 4 hours early, so that their sleep schedules are not too disrupted by Voiceteam!

What is Discord?/Tell me more about how the Discord server is going to work.

Discord is a chat-based platform. Every server (like the Voiceteam server) can host multiple text and voice chat channels. Some of the channels will be open to the entire Voiceteam community and some will be visible only to members of your team. Voiceteam players will be emailed an invitation to the Voiceteam Discord server on 12:01 AM UTC May 1st.

Do you recommend teams create their own separate Discords or group DMs to coordinate projects for Voiceteam challenges?

We hope this event can be an opportunity for participants to get to know each other better and form lasting connections! However, in the interests of facilitating moderation we'd encourage you to keep to the Voiceteam Discord for coordinating Voiceteam projects with your team, rather than creating a separate team Discord for yourselves. If you do decide to create a separate Discord for your team, we highly recommend you add one or more of the Voiceteam mods so it's easier for us to get caught up in the case of issues - you can always remove us after all of the challenges have closed.

Regarding DMs, all players will have the opportunity to assign themselves the roles “DMs Open,” “Ask to DM,” or “DMs Closed.” Please respect the DM preferences that players show through these roles.

How will the teams work?

We’ll use the info you give us in your signups to create teams of around 12 players. Once you’re assigned a team, anything you create counts toward your team’s point total. Beyond that, being on a team can be as interactive as you want. You can hang out in your team’s Discord channel all the time to chat and scheme and create with team members, or you can just check in every now and again to say hi and see if there’s anything happening you want to participate in. Or anything in between!

To help teams start conversations and get to know each other better, we’ll provide optional icebreaker questions when the Discord first opens and during each break between rounds.

How much input do I have about who's on my team?

In your sign-up, you can specify one friend (aka sign-up buddy) that you want to guarantee is on your team. You can also let us know if there are any people you definitely do NOT want to be on a team with, and we'll honor that. And if there are any fandoms you're not comfortable interacting with you can let us know and we’ll make sure not to put you on a team with anyone who lists those as their primary fandoms, for the sake of everyone involved! Other than that, team sorting is up to the mods. But we’ll try to sort you onto as fun and well-balanced a team as possible! If you feel that the team you end up on isn’t the right match for you, please let the mods know and we can help you move to a different team.

What are Discord "ghosts"?

Discord ghosts is the name we use for past players who are not able to participate in the current round due to life circumstances but who still want to hang out with everyone in the Voiceteam Discord. Ghosts will not be part of a team or able to submit any creations on Airtable, but they will have access to All-Team Channels in the Discord and can help cheer on and support all of the players from there.

What is a mod dare?

Mod dares are an extremely optional just-for-fun twist that arose organically in Voiceteam 2023 and that we've continued since then. Every round, there will be a secret dare by the mods hidden somewhere within Voiceteam. If someone on your team finds it, and it sounds like fun, the team can decide to take the dare! Mod dares are always completed as a group rather than as an individual, and they don't earn any extra points—just a shout-out in the stats post at the end of the round.

Are there limits or requirements for crossposting creations I make for Voiceteam?

Nope! You may crosspost any works made for Voiceteam whenever and wherever you want. You can also choose to not crosspost at all and only share with the mods, or only share within the Voiceteam Discord. One reminder, though, is that since many Voiceteam works are collaborations, all collaborators should discuss and be on the same page about when/where a work will be crossposted.

What if I was already working on something before Voiceteam started? Is it possible to get points for it?

Any creation can earn points for a Voiceteam challenge as long as it is completed during the time that challenge is active. This includes WIPs you were already working on that happen to align with one of the challenges.

How are multichapter works scored?

For multichapter works, each chapter can be submitted for points separately. Different chapters will each be treated as their own creation, so you can submit any chapter for any challenge, independent of what challenge(s) other chapters of that work were submitted for.

What if I'm collaborating on a work with other players and someone doesn’t complete their part by the deadline?

If a good-faith plan is made for multiple people to collaborate on a work and some members aren’t able to meet the deadline, the partial project can be submitted for points by the members who did finish in time.

Are minors allowed to participate?

Yes, minors (and over-18 folk who prefer to avoid mature content) are welcome to participate in Voiceteam! To accommodate these participants, NSFW content in the Discord server is kept in separate age-restricted channels. The only time NSFW content would be mixed in with SFW content would be in team-specific channels, and only in cases where every team member is over 18 and has expressed comfort with doing so.

I observe Shabbat in a way that makes me not able to participate on that day (or have a similar situation that means I’d need to take a certain day each week off from playing), but I still want to compete for points! Is there a way for me to do that?

Absolutely! If you'll need to take off a specific day each week but still want to play for points, let us know in advance and we'll make your deadline for each round a day later than everyone else’s to make up for it.

What are content moderation rules and how do they work?

We've put in place two content moderation rules. If someone finds a fanwork that they think may violate one of the rules, they can report it privately (and anonymously if they want) to the mod team.

We have designed our response plan to prevent this system from being used to harass fanwork creators. We will never publicly share information about any reports, and we'll only contact the creator(s) about a report if we are sure the fanwork really is against one of these rules. If it’s unclear to us whether the fanwork violates the rule, the mod team will privately consult with one or more members of the marginalized group impacted, or as close as possible to that group, to assess if harm is being caused to the impacted community by the fanwork. If harm is being caused, we'll move forward in private conversation with the creator(s) of the fanwork to discuss the situation together and figure out possible next steps.

If the work is in violation of one of the rules and the fanwork’s creator(s) cannot or do not wish to alter it, any points previously earned by the work will be removed and the work will be removed from the Voiceteam AO3 collection.

What plans does Voiceteam have in place to address racism within fandom and our community?

At the start of Voiceteam, players will have the option to opt into a section of channels intended to be a safe space for creators of color. This space is run by a mod of color, and none of the white mods will have access, nor will any white player in Voiceteam. We ask that everyone - whether you're a person of color or not - respect that space.

We will also continue with the universal bonus of +10 points for any Voiceteam fanwork that centers one or more characters of color. This includes racebent characters.

We are continuing to reflect as a mod team about our anti-racism practices within fandom, which we recognize to be a space deeply shaped by racism. We remain open to suggestions and feedback from members of our community for how to improve in this area.

How do I sign up?

Head to this year’s sign-up post or directly to our sign-up form.

What does the winning team win?

BRAGGING RIGHTS but the real prize is the friends we made along the way.