Battleship 2025 signups are now open from June 30th to July 9th! Signups are guaranteed to remain open for at least 24 hours, but otherwise will close earlier if we reach 280 signups.

Sign up through this Google form. You must fill out and submit this form to be placed on a team! An individual person may sign up with a maximum of one AO3 username, including pseud if applicable (ex. “Exchange Sock (McSockerson)”). There is no gift guarantee, but there will be plenty of gifts to go around.

The AO3 account you sign up with must be able to receive treats. Make sure to enable the “Allow anyone to gift me works” option in your account Preferences.

Prompt through the prompt collection, regardless of whether you’re signing up for a team or not. Prompts are very important and we need as many of them as possible! You don't have to sign up in order to prompt, and just putting in a prompt doesn't sign you up for a team. Prompting will remain open throughout the game. Multiple accounts may be used to leave prompts in the prompt collection. Prompts may not be anonymous; anonymous prompts will be deleted without warning.

To see who has signed up for Battleship 2025, see the list of signed up (and approved) participants. Mods will post in the Discord channel #works-checks-shot-calls when we have worked through a batch of signups, and post updates on how many people have signed up at regular intervals.

You will need a free AO3 account in order to sign up and/or prompt. If you don't have one, contact the mods for an invitation code.

Signing Up

Please read through all of the signup instructions (present both here and on the form) to ensure that you have signed up for this year's game correctly!

An individual person may sign up with a maximum of one AO3 username, including pseud if applicable (ex. “Exchange Sock (McSockerson)”). All works submitted must come from that username, and all gifts must be received by that username. If you utilize multiple accounts or pseuds, submit works through the username you signed up with, then transfer the work after it has been approved into the team collection. Work approvals will happen in batches and be announced in the relevant channels of the Battleship Discord.

Before signing up through the Google form, submit at least one prompt to Battleship 2025 - Prompt Collection. You must have at least one prompt to sign up. This prompt may be as general or specific as you'd like, but it should be a non-placeholder prompt you are willing to receive a gift for as submitted. You may continue to add prompts throughout signups and the game.

Mods will be checking prompts as signups come in. If we can't find your prompts we will remove your signup!

To sign up you will need:

• An email you have access to and are willing to use for Battleship-related communication
• AO3 username, for creating/receiving purposes (and knowing who signed up)
• A link to a prompt made by that AO3 account in "Battleship 2025 - Prompt Collection"

We will also ask for:

• Discord username (answer required, but can opt out), to assign you to your team in Discord for channel access purposes
• Likely availability (answer required), so we have an idea of when you will or won't be around
• Other participation questions (optional)

Due to the nature of the game structure this year, all works must be gifted to an ao3 account that has made a prompt - no anonymous prompts will be allowed. Mods will periodically check throughout the signup period for anonymous prompts, and these will be deleted without warning if we spot any.

Please also check your account settings under "Preferences" scroll to "Collections, Challenges and Gifts" and make sure that "allow anyone to gift me works" is checked for the duration of Battleship 2025. As we do not run matching and no one will be assigned a creator and prompts will not be fillable, it is essential that this setting is on.

We will check at the end of signups to ensure that everyone allows gifts with the AO3 account they are signed up with, and reach out via email if there are any issues. Anyone who does have an issue will be given 24 hours to respond - if your account cannot receive gifts at the end of those 24 hours, your signup will be deleted.

If you wish to delete your signup, or edit your AO3 or Discord handle, please email battleshipexchange@gmail.com using the email you signed up with so we know it's you.

If you have any Do Not Matches, or team requests, please email battleshipexchange@gmail.com to inform us of these requests. We will honor all reasonably made Do Not Match requests. We will do our best but may not be able to honor all team/teammate requests due to the nature of the game.

Due to Battleship's game structure, the mods are capping this year's round to 280 participants. Signups will be open for at least 24 hours, but otherwise will close early if we reach this cap.

What to Put in a Prompt Request

You may make up to 50 prompts per account (the maximum allowed by AO3).

Each prompt must request 1 fandom, 1-20 characters/relationships, 1-3 mediums (in the character slot), and 1-576 tagset freeforms (20 in Additional Tags plus any number in Optional Tags). You may also optionally request 0-4 archive warnings (Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Noncon, and/or Underage Sex). Freeforms must come from the Battleship 2025 tagset. Fandoms may be requested multiple times.

If you're requesting original work or original characters, please note that these will be created by the work's creator. To request work with your OCs, nominate your original work as a fandom.

Since nominations will be open throughout the game, you may want to periodically check the tagset for new nominations and adjust your requests.

Do Not Wants/DNWs

Please list all Do Not Wants in the optional details, clearly labeled with either "DNW" or "Do Not Want." Your DNW list does not need to explain why you don't want something. Please don't use your DNWs to disparage something that someone else may be into. DNWs not present in the AO3 optional details box will not be enforced.

DNWs that create an impossible request, such as "DNW incest" for an incest ship, and DNWs that are vague or difficult to understand, such as "DNW hard kinks," will be disregarded. DNWs that directly contradict a freeform (such as requesting an omorashi tag and then "DNW watersports") will be disregarded. However, DNWs may be used to specify how freeforms are applied to requested ships or characters (“DNW Bill Nye wetting his pants”).

If you're requesting a solo character, you have the option to DNW romantic or sexual ships involving that character. By default, your creator may depict that character being in relationships.

If you're requesting Creator's Choice of Fandom (CCOF), Any Fandom I've Requested Before (AFIRB), Any Fandom I Agreed To on Discord, or a similar wildcard fandom, you may DNW up to three fandoms.

Please Note: DNWs that create a fully impossible signup (ex. requesting only the freeform “Hot Springs” but DNWing Hot Springs, and no other requests) will lead to your signup being deleted, since you won’t have a fulfillable prompt.

Mediums

Fic must be in English and at least 300 words long.

Art must be at least a clean sketch on unlined paper, or digital equivalent.

• Allowable art formats are limited to two-dimensional physical or digital drawings, paintings, pixel art, and comics.
• Photos, manips, and physical or digital 3-D art are not allowable mediums for Battleship.

Podfic must be in English and at least 300 words long.

Archive Warnings

Everyone has opted into No Archive Warnings Apply by default.

Selecting one or more archive warnings for a prompt is an explicit opt-in for those warnings in that prompt request. A creator may include one or more of them in a work, or (unless you opt out via DNWs) none at all. If you do not want any archive warnings, don’t select anything in this section.

If you Do Not Want an archive warning, include that in your DNWs. Not requesting an archive warning is not equivalent to DNWing it – a creator may still include one or more archive warnings if it is not DNW’d (though this is less likely). The purpose of this prompt section is to make it easier to find requests opting into archive warnings.

If you want to opt out of No Archives Warning Apply/NAWA (ex. a prompt where you only want Major Character Death), include that in your DNWs.

Freeforms

Due to AO3's structure, the optional tags field will allow you to select additional tags that are not in the tagset. This is not allowed for the purposes of the Battleship game.

If you are looking to add more than 20 freeforms/additional tags, please copy them into the Optional Tags directly from the official list of Battleship 2025 Freeforms (also listed in the Battleship 2025 tagset). The Optional Tags section (and all other sections) will accept a comma separated list, especially one from the handy Battleship 2025 Freeform Picker spreadsheet, which will generate a copy-pastable lists based on your selected freeforms.

While AO3 will not stop you from selecting any canonical tags from the dropdown in the Optional Tags field, any prompt found listing freeforms other than the ones approved for Battleship 2025 will be deleted without warning.

Optional Details

Ideas, inspiration, and likes are encouraged but not required. Your DNWs must be included in this field to be enforced.

For each prompt, you may opt in to receiving sequels to your past gifts and remixes or sequels of your own work.

Linking a letter or a list of likes is encouraged but not required. Please complete and unlock letters by July 11.

If you request Any Fandom I've Requested Before, please link to a list of your past requests or your "everything search" results in the AO3 Automagic App.