Honest Question Regarding Rules

[Niwashi]

okay so a few scenarios in mind "donate to gil bank to win"-that sounds like a no go now with these replies "raffle for fun"-sounds okay, but what about something like a gathering contest "get all the ds ore" or something like that for example....maybe I should just scrap the idea and play it safe.

The basic rule on RMT is that nothing in-game can be exchanged for anything out-of-game. As long as you avoid receiving anything in exchange for people entering or winning your contest, then giving an out-of-game reward wouldn't involve such an exchange, so should be ok so far as I can tell.

"donate to gil bank to win" — definitely RMT
"raffle for fun" — I agree, that sounds like it should be ok
gathering contest — so long as it's not "gather this stuff and contribute it to the FC" but instead limited to "gather this stuff and show that you've done so" (where people keep everything they've gathered), then that also sounds ok.

IANAL

But as mentioned, it may just be better to go with in-game rewards. Then you don't need to worry about it. And a lot of players will prefer those anyway. OMega_ARcane's examples sound nice.

Any prizes I'd talk about those only on discord

When the question is "is this allowed?" saying "only talk about it where you can't get caught if it isn't" kind of misses the point.