Party at Garriott's place!

NCsoft wants to fly you out to Richard Garriott's massive Texas mansion for a big old party.

It's the star prize in the latest community competition for his new game Tabula Rasa. If you want to win it you'll have to develop a name and back-story for a mysterious Allied Free Sentient Forces (AFS) soldier, totalling no more than 1000 words.

Originality, creativity, quality and presentation are the marking criteria, but bad spelling and grammar will also be taken into consideration - so get someone to read over your work before you send it in.

The soldier's picture is over on the official website, alongside a bunch of prompts to help get your creative juices flowing.

The closing date is 6th August, at which point six finalists will be chosen and their work deliberated over by the game development team. The top two entries to emerge after this will be flown over to Britannia Manor in Texas sometime between 3rd - 9th September, for the Tabula Rasa pre-launch party.

Make sure you read the rules on the site, for possible trip-ups like having to be over 18 to enter and so forth.

The closed beta for Garriott's MMORPG is currently under way, but unfortunately NCsoft couldn't confirm to Eurogamer when the open testing would begin.

It also isn't clear when the game is due to launch, despite the lure of the pre-launch party date mentioned earlier.

We'll be talking to Richard Garriott this week at the Develop Conference & Expo in Brighton, where he'll be delivering a speech and showing his game. Keep your eyes peeled for our thoughts.