Arf, typical me didn’t check his calendar correctly. I can sadly only stay until 21h-21h10. Hope we can start early around 6-ish so that I have time to wholeheartedly mess up for the party and then just leave…
The only question is … which teams bribed you to sabotage the competition?
The metagame gets more convoluted every year …
Since the question came up:
Perhaps surisingly, this hasn’t been the case. I can remember only one instance way back in year one where a veteran player gained a significant advantage from familiarity with the game. On the other hand, in the following year, not knowing the game allowed somebody to find an out-of-the-box solution the old hands never would have come uo with. (Neither wound up winning.)
Some other tournaments did extensively test players’ rules knowledge, but this isn’t the goal here. These scenarios are designed specifically with the intention that anyone should be able succeed, regardless of experience.
My turn to ask a question now: How did those of you who have played these things before typically spend your downtime? Idle chit-chat? Planning and puzzling? Thinking up choice curses to aim at the DM?
Since the winner ruling has always been inscrutable (I’m guessing it has something to do with how often we made the GM laugh), there’s no actual way to sabatoge.
Yes. Also sometimes strategically going for a smoke, in an attempt to hear what was going on at another table.
Ok, I just spoke with @H, and I am able to be there at 18:00, so we will definitely have enough people to start at least one early group. I know some people can’t show up until 19:30 or even 20:00, but apparently staggered grouping is not an issue (I have only been to one Tournament, last year’s). Anyway, that way we can only sabatoge each other.
At its heart, the scoring system will give you points for doing good things, like finding the magic +1 toothbrush, and penalize you for doing things that aren’t so good, like being turned to stone while watching America’s Next Medusa. There are a few additional tweaks - for example, your score isn’t entirely independent of the other parties - but essentially, that’s the underlying system.
The tricky part, of course, is to assign an appropriate value to each of the components that make up your final tally. In the past, this has worked fairly well, and the rankings of the groups has more or less matched the eye test. It only gets murky when two groups have practically the same degree of success, such as last year when the top two parties were virtually indistinguishable from one another. In that case, the winner can come down to quirks in the scoring system, and there isn’t much that can be done about that. (The only solution I can see would lead to a high number of ties, and I don’t think anyone really wants that.)
In other words, it’s not an exact science, but it does try to be as impartial and common-sensey as possible. Good luck!
(Note that once again, there will be no individual scoring. You will not be competing against the other members of your party, or against those playing the same character at other tables, because I believe that such dual objectives are inherently flawed.)
Organ donor card? Contact information for next of kin? An envelope stuffed with unmarked bills for the DM?
You really don’t need anything at all, because there’s generally enough of everything floating around for everyone. But if you can, yes, please bring dice (all flavors), pencil and paper.
In addition, I’ll be asking one person at each table to act as timekeeper. This has always been a huge help.
(Rulebooks are not required - in fact, they aren’t allowed.)