Tournament Feedback

M

mikestrauss

Virtuous
For those that participated in or watched the tournament, I'd like to get feedback regarding the tournament. Feel free to provide feedback about specific events, pacing, prizes, rules, etc. Please try to avoid getting caught up in any side conversations.

A few points that I definitely would like to hear back on.

--Challenge of Champions: Did you enjoy it as (as either a participant or observer)? Would you recommend any changes? Based on preliminary feedback, this has a good chance of becoming a permanent event (though the name needs to be changed I think).

--Archery: Was the rules change better or worse?

--Trivia: I know most people didn't get to watch this because of plot and a second contest going on. For those who did watch or participate, was it better or worse than previous years?

--Combat: No shield, no two weapon. Discuss (Dan, feel free to put in writing what we already discussed).

And, if there is anything else you want to discuss, feel free. This is an open forum. I want next year's tournament to be the best ever.

-MS
 
i guess i never understood how the hunt works. is there 1 correct answer /item for each hunt item or can you make stuff up and as long as it fits the criteria it is accepted? if there is only 1 item (for those that require items) sometimes i feel like the item should say so on it so you know you got it right.
 
I had a great time with Trivia as the participation award was geared toward helping out people like myself who have many skills left to learn. Also the questions were actually amusingly enough things that I'd looked at just a week before the event by random chance. This allowed me to actually win a round! I liked the style of a pool of answers and you just need to remember more then the others rather then having to know one single answer.
 
Actually, I thought the point of the differences in the events was to leave the Grand Ducal Tournament standardized, while personalizing the individual tournament to the culture of the group throwing it, an idea I thought was cool. Of course the elves had a race through the woods (which I really liked, despite being stung a dozen times by ground wasps while still a half mile from town).

I didn't see much of the challenge of champions, but I heard people had a great time with it, and I really liked the idea. Leaves room for anyone with a special talent to get involved.

I liked live combat archery (I also think a fully moving target would be interesting, even if you had to let people get closer). But I also like to watch the real archery.

I liked the combat, although I would have done the later rounds one at a time, so we could watch better. I also have some wierd IG issues with it- all the higher level people pull things to make it more even, which sounds all nice and noble, but doesn't really let the people watch their champions be champions, and makes the field difficult to judge when watching.

I would have liked to be able to watch the trivia (even though part of me will always miss riddles), and didn't care for it overlapping with other things, although I can see how difficult it is to set up timing during any event, let alone tourney.

As for the hunt, I have always loved the idea, but have never been able to figure out a single one of the items. I'm not good at puzzles, and a whole sheet of them makes me give up rather quickly. (I kinda liked something someone said about interpretable items- leaves room for creativity).


That's all off the top of my head

Sheila
 
--Challenge of Champions: I love the idea of people challenging other people to games of their own creation, skill, strengths. I honestly didn't participate in this even as much as I probably should have, and will definately do so more in the future, though i do think it needs to remain an event for the individual tourney only, doesn't really hit me as a team event.

--Archery: The rules change did make this an event that relied more on IG skill, as the old event was almost entirely OOG skill. I think it did move along faster as well. The headshot disqualification was something i think we could do without. I don't think anyone would go out there and intentionally aim for the NPC's head.

--Trivia: I was too busy with Braveroars SF to see this, but based on the past well... bring back riddles... or mind teasers.

--Combat: The new rules opens the field to more than just fighters, since any weapon can be used. Could lead to some interesting matchups in the future. Doing combat in heats is great for the early going, and single elimination speeds things up greatly, but toward the end, they should be one at a time, so the finalists get center stage.

As for the hunt, I don't think anything needs to be changed. Nobody should be able to solve EVERY item, there should be (and always are) some toss ups, and each item should be a single thing. IE: if it says "a sap", then the weapon tag is needed, not just a phys rep, not sap from a tree, and not a soft-hearted person.

just my 2 cents
 
-Challenge of Champions was fun, and opens it up for people to be creative and doesn't solely rely on combat. I enjoyed it.

-For the ducal tournament I'd keep it the standard target archery, but I liked the golem idea. I'm with Mike W though - the headshot rule was unnecessary since per the standard game rules we're already so ingrained not to aim for the head. If you want to, make it so that head shots don't count, but the instant disqualifier kinda sucked.

-Trivia: no real opinion, as I didn't see enough to really grasp how it was being run. I do enjoy trivia though, and while I enjoy riddles I understand that after a while you run out of ones that are appropriate for the game. I liked the set up of trivia for the last ducal tournament where the teams not answering had a chance to earn points by agreeing or disagreeing with the answer.

-Combat... can we go back to padded? Please? I know we made it "live" combat because of the confusion of people cheating IN-GAME and marshalling hits and such. In-game though, I know only a few characters who like it, and a lot who don't.
 
I only feel qualified to critique the Trivia contest. I enjoyed it very much (and not just because I won ;) ).

I enjoyed the format quite a bit. I did not have a clear idea of how the scoring worked.

I loved that the trivia was all based on IG things completely. The subjects were all very good.

My only critiques would be that I could not hear the others due to the specific venue. Well, that and that the judgment lists need to be complete (Ownership is a ritual dag nabbit!!) ;)

Critiques aside, I really enjoyed the Trivia contest a lot.
 
Ownership is a ritual, but it's an NPC only ritual (read: on artifacts only and plot only). So depending on what the question was, it may or may not be a valid answer.

But you won anyway Hoyce, so it's really a moot point.

Scott
 
I would make the point though that wouldn't characters in the game world never make the distinction between NPC and PC rituals? Now granted I wasn't there, but I mean if its a fully IG trivia session why would it make any difference to the character that the player knows oog they will never get their hands on it in a way that is not supper controlled if at all?

I mean if its an IG ritual then I would think a character would still be inclined to include it in ritual lists if they have found out about it IG even if the player knows its npc only...
 
It depends on how the question was phrased. NPC only rituals are in the database to be used as plot effects on artifact items. No one ever has a scroll that says "ownership" and never casts it as a standard itual, so it's not really a ritual in that respect. Maybe some evil liche painted his sword with dwarf blood while eating Rice-a-roni and that gave him ownership of it. Maybe the lady of the lake, arm clad in the shimmering samite handed the sword to the brave knight.

Scott
 
It's not really that big a deal, just a critique to try to improve future tourneys.

IIRC the question was "name all the rituals."

Even if I didn't win I still wouldn't be bent out of shape about it. I'm not losing sleep about the outcome of a game within a game. ;)
 
Thanks for the feedback.

Some thoughts of my own.

Trivia - For those fond of riddles, I am sorry, but that event is basically scrapped. After about 10 years, there really is no new riddles to use. And, way too many are too modern. As to Hoyce's comment... I think I will go with a friendly OOG reminder in the future that sometimes it is good to metagame positively. In truth, I (Mike Strauss) have no way of knowing of what NPC only rituals exist and neither to a majority of players. There was no way an NPC only ritual would be in the trivia given that. My source was pretty clearly the rule book. But, yeah, there isn't a good way to say that in game.

***Side note, the tournament used to have some "metagame positively" reminders in the rule book/player's guide and on the pre-weekend rumor sheet. Those weren't present this time around and it did negatively impact a few events (nothing major).

Archery - The head shot rule was entirely an OOG decision. I was trying to protect a blindfolded NPC and I was very worried about an eye shot. It may have been overkill, but I was hoping it would prevent head shots completely. As for standard archery, in truth it is painfully slow and uses no in game skills (for all intents and purposes). Admittedly, other events use no in game skills, but this one has the opportunity to do so. There is also the other side of the coin, excellent in game archers often end up being terrible at it. I am looking for a balance. Consider this a work in progress.

Combat - Time was an issue. Event was already running late. Otherwise combats would have been separate near the end. Sorry about that. As for the padded combat, I am working it over in my brain. I have heard that request... ALOT. The goal is to include more skills than proficiencies and parries in the equation. I have a year to work on it. I am sure I can come up with a good idea on how to re-introduce padded combat and still use combat skills. The old system (30 virtual hit points) is really way too out-dated to work.

Challenge of Champions - 30 PCs participated (there were 50 at the game). Only wave battles get that kind of participation. I will find a way to duplicate this if possible.

Hunt - See my next post (probably tomorrow). I will reveal some of my thinking and give some answers. I don't like giving all answers because then I can't re-use puzzles (these are actually hard to make).

Overall, the lowest participation in an individual event was 9 (I think), which means that each event had at least 18% of PCs participating. Challenge had a whopping 60% and Combat had 40% participation. All in all, that is a lot of participation, which is good.

-MS
 
Real quick regarding combat:

I think having the multiple fights was actually pretty awesome. The one thing I hated about tourney was that the fighting always seemed to take forever, and as a spectator (no offense participants) this can get very boring, very quickly. I thought this year's Combat was not only really efficient, but it allowed for it to go relatively quickly, and keep everyone entertained, because you could watch multiple fights at once. The other thing you can do is maybe do one fight at a time in the final string (if there lets say 2 groups in the final string) that sort of thing.

2 cents,
Ali
 
A few personal opinions about the Tournament:

Combat:

1. I also liked the multiple fights for the first part. It won't be as easy with team combat, but it's doable.

2. I like having each team face each other though. As it was, luck had a lot to do with the last competition as opposed to skill; if you faced off against a really great opponent in the first round, you could be eliminated even if you were better than 90% of the rest of the competitors.

3. There will always be problems with either way of doing this ("real" weapons verse padded). No way will ever please everyone. We switched to "real" weapons because of the problems with padded ones, which some people may be forgetting. I prefer "real" because with padded, we spent like 20 minutes before each competition having to explain all these new rules to everyone and there were more Holds and such too. Everyone knows the rules for "real" weapons already.

And there are certainly people who like the old way better. Those are usually the ones who you hear from most, because the ones who like the new way don't say anything. When we had padded, it was the exact opposite: The people wanting it to change spoke louder and more often. That's the way it is with politics too, of course -- the ones speaking the loudest are the ones most wanting a change, but they don't necessarily represent the majority.

Now, I said "don't necessarily represent the majority" so I could be wrong. Maybe everyone does want a change back. I'd like to hear from people on this.


Archery:

Personally, I like seeing real archery, which of course doesn't always make sense given how the game works. But if everyone would rather use game archery, I have no problem with switching.


Trivia:

Trivia is so much easier to do than riddles. After a while, players were winning the Riddles competition because they'd remember them from the previous year. There are only so many before they start repeating.


Challenge of Champoins:

Works very well in an individual tournament but I can't see it working in a team one as well.
 
Just an idea, but this years Caldaria tournament had several "team mele" situations for both spell casting and weapon fighting. Basically 3 or 4 members from each team all went in a ring together against 3 or 4 members of each other team and all faced off. So basically it was a team mele where you could fight together. I don't know if that's something that people would want to introduce here, but it seemed like it worked out pretty well there.
 
I would be interested in team combat where all skills and spells were allowed. Perhaps not magic items, but allow the rest, including high magic. that way it is a measure of your IG skills and not your IG monetary worth. 4 on 4 sounds nice, and make the "ring" big enough to allow them to maneuver ok, but not make it a whole field or anything huge. I could see some very interesting fights come out of that.
 
If we want to keep the archery as IG packet archery, I'd set up a number of targets to knock down, and draw have a line to stand behind with rope or something. I think everybody was pretty honorable with the "stay about X feet away" thing, but we probably screwed ourselves and stayed further away than was needed because we didn't want to break that rule.

Set up isn't overly complicated. The harder the target is to hit, the more points it's worth. This can be a combination of the size of the target and the distance from the shooter - with the smallest, furthest thing away being worth the most, and the big, close, easiest to hit things being worth the least amount of points. So archers have to choose - do I go for the easy points, or take the longshot?

Everyone gets however many shots is deemed appropriate to rack up as many points as they can. Make it clear to the participants which targets are worth what... you can even put the numbers right on them. They can be things like a propped up shield, a can on top of a box etc, or you can get fancy and put little bulls eyes on stakes in the ground. As long as they have something to indicate that they were hit (they fall over or whatever) you're fine.
 
yea, for what its worth I am a big fan of keeping archery contests to IG packet archery. Because it keeps the competition to a comparison of the skill that people really use/develop when they are actually using their archery skill IG. Plus it doesn't require getting extra props and reps people don't normally have on them.
 
Okay, folks, as promised, here are some answers to Hunt puzzles over the last two years and quick blurb on the hunt.

Blurb: The majority of the time there is one correct answer to a hunt puzzle, and it is something specific. It isn't always a physical object, but unless the answer is something like a password, saying an answer will usually be incorrect. If the answer requires an in game item, both the phys rep and item card are required (I have seen about 10 staff weapon cards without staff phys reps over the last three years that didn't get points). Very rarely, there are multiple answers to a puzzle. Also, some puzzles have generic answers. The majority of these will be puzzles that say "A" or "An" at the start of the puzzle, like "An Apple".

Now for a few answers, so you can see how I think:

The Missing Poison - This was designed to be a trick puzzle. Almost everyone assumed it had to do with the search a word (The Missing <blank> usually does). Nope. That was a red herring. In fact, "The Missing Poison" was the name of a riddle. If you asked an NPC riddle master to tell you that riddle and you solved it, she gave you the hunt item. The riddle master was in town for about 3 hours total (Thanks Amelia). In fact, as a rule of thumb, if you meet a riddle master, a dance instructor, a cook, a joke teller, etc. during the hunt, ask about specific hunt puzzles. There is a good chance that NPC is some way involved.

A Meeting with Algernon - Algernon advertised about this meeting in the Ashbury Times. The post said to meet her at noon holding a small flower. In fact, three different hunt puzzles had answers in the Ashbury Times. I may use one again, so I won't reveal it, but the other one most people did solve (pronouncing the tournament master's name). In general, read both the Ashbury Times and the rumor sheet on/before tournament weekends.

Ignore All Other Hunt Puzzles - Due to my own incompetence in placing boxes under stairs, very few people actually solved this one, rather than simply stumbling onto the answer. That said, it was solved by one person and shows another common style of hunt puzzle. There were seemingly random letters on the hunt "work sheet". When the letters from "All other hunt puzzles" were stripped from it, the remaining letters spelled out "Look under the porch stairs". A similar trick solved "Beat Slethglyn at Thieves Dice" and another puzzle was also a cipher (unsolved). So, that makes three ciphers, unless I miscounted. Also, from two years back, "The Dukes favorite color" was also a cipher.

I also tend to make good use of the Ashbury Player's Guide. Two years ago, "An Appropriate Gift for the Most Recent Holiday" required you to know which holiday was most recent. The Player's Guide had the answer. Another puzzle that year required it as well. The Player's Guide has information on things like holidays, zodiac signs, popular alcohol, common trade goods for a kingdom or a fief, etc. This is all good for puzzles.

Aidavarts - This years I used this puzzle. The correct answer was an eight of hearts (I didn't take it because I didn't want to ruin someone's deck of cards). Last year I used "Paradise" with the correct answer being a pair of dice. These are both simple word plays. Say it faster or slower and it sounds like the answer.


I will also be writing an in game article with similar details soon.

-MS
 
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