Rulebook of the Helios Festival

The official rules of the Helios Festival can be found here, and all HBS countries are expected to follow these while participating in the contest. Failure to comply with these rules may result in penalties being handed.

Format
The contest will consist of a grand final, and in the case where there are more participants that can reasonably compete in one show, semi-finals will be introduced.

The hosting nation, in addition to the five highest-scoring countries of the previous contest, automatically qualify to the grand final and do not participate in the semi-finals round of the contest.

Participation
To compete, a country must have a national broadcaster that has active membership in the Helios Broadcasting Syndicate. Countries who withdraw for two consecutive editions or more will see their status demoted to associate broadcaster.

To join the contest, a player will have to fill-out a sign-up form. They will have to write their Discord handle, come up with a country name, and add a short paragraph about their country’s culture. They will have the option to design their flag themselves, or to ask the Reference Group to design one for them.

Upon unanimous approval by the Reference Group members, they will be added on the Discord server and placed on the waiting list until a spot is freed.

A player can only control one country.

Entries
Each participating country is able to send only one song per edition. They must all fit the following criteria;


 * The performing artist of a song must have been aged 16+ at the point of release.
 * Songs must be between two and six minutes in total length.
 * Covers are allowed, but the orchestration must be different from the original song.
 * The song must not have competed in the Eurovision Song Contest or in any of its spin-offs and national selections.
 * The song must not have competed in the previous Maia or Avalon Song Contests.
 * An artist can only represent one country per edition.
 * All songs must be free of hateful or otherwise political lyrics. Exception is made for politically-engaged songs advertising good causes.
 * In the case where a song doesn’t have an official music video or lyric video, the player is required to provide a 25-secondes-long timeslot video for the recap, with the studio version of the entry as the backing track.
 * Songs must have less than 100 million views on YouTube at the point of submission.
 * A country will be able to claim a maximum of five artists, should they want to reserve them for future use.

Players are able to choose their entry as they wish, be it in an internal or an open national selection. All songs competing in those hypothetical national finals will have to abide to the rules above. There are no restrictions on the language or date of release of an entry. Additionally, instrumental songs are allowed, as are covers, as long as the orchestration of the submitted entry is different from the original song.

Voting
The voting system in place for the Helios Festival is 12, 10, 8-1 points to the ten favourite songs. All participating countries must vote in the semi-final they are allocated, as well as the grand final, or may incur penalties. This includes non-qualifiers from the semi-final voting in the final. The scale of penalties that may be given to players can be seen in the corresponding part of the rulebook.

Voting windows typically last a full week. The deadline can be pushed back by up to 4 days if the hosting team feels the need to.

A country cannot vote for its own entry, and revealing their votes, as well as trying to influence other players into voting for them, is forbidden.

The country with the highest number of points received at the end of an edition will be crowned the winner. In the event of a tie, the country that received points from the biggest amount of juries among those in contention will be declared victorious. In the case where this still doesn’t break the tie, the second tie-breaker counts the total number of 12 points, the top mark a jury can give an entry. If the tie is still not resolved, the tie-break moves on the 10, 8, 7 points and so on until a winner can be declared.

Hosting
In-game, the winning country of an edition will automatically gain the rights to host the next contest. The head of delegation, that is, the player in charge of that country, is given great flexibility in the hosting of that edition; they will be able to collect the votes, make announcements, have input into the graphic design of the edition, host live listenings and present the results. The Reference Group and eventual volunteers will naturally be helping them or stand-in for them in case they are not able to do everything.

Each edition, the Reference Group will also publicly ask participants if anyone is able to help in the running of the contest (making recaps, playlists, scoreboards, collecting votes, hosting live listenings and so on). Players able to help will be joining the hosting team as volunteers.

In the event where the winner declines to host the next edition, the opportunity will be passed on the runner-up, and so on until a host is found.

Reference Group
The HBS Referece Group is the committee supervising the Helios Festival’s running, as well as the management of the Discord server, the wiki and the community as a whole. Its role is mostly moderative, making sure that the community is a safe and good place to be in. It is made up of three to four members, and is the instance in charge of approving new countries and enforcing the rules. Reference Group members are the only people able to give penalties in case of misconduct.

In the event a Reference Group member decides to resign, the remaining members can seek a replacement if they feel the need to. Recurrent members of the Hosting Team will be solicited.

Currently, the Reference Group is made up of three members:


 * Hugo B.
 * Hannah T.
 * Oisín T.

Hosting Team
The Hosting Team is the group in charge of the running of the contest. Renewed every edition, it is fully open, and a member can join (or leave) at any time. It is made up of the Reference Group members, the host, and an unlimited number of volunteers.

The Hosting Team can decide to edit or amend this rulebook if they feel some alterations (which have to be approved by the Reference Group) must be made in order for the contest to run smoothly. It is qualified to give contest-related penalties to players without the approval of a Reference Group member, and also decides which countries debut or return in a given edition.

Penalties
Penalites work on a points system. Every participant is given 10 points. In the event where they fail to abide to the rules presented in this article, they run the risk of getting some of those points removed. If a participant ends up with 0 points, they shall be banned from entering the contest and interacting with its community.

Examples of contest-related sanctions, given out by the Hosting Team, are:


 * -1 point for failing to vote, with valid reasoning given, -2 points without.
 * -1 point for not submitting a valid entry before the deadline.
 * -2 points for not confirming or announcing a withdrawal before the deadline.

Greater point losses can be debated if the matter is deemed more serious. Similarly, in the case of pure disciplinary misconduct, the Reference Group is able to freely decide the number of points being removed from the player, depending on the severity of their actions.

Any point loss can be contested by the sanctioned player, who can appeal to the Reference Group. In this case, the Reference Group members, upon an unanimous vote, will confirm, reduce or cancel the penalty.