FTP 2: A 5 Round Tossup/Bonus Trash set

[Progcon]

Hello quiz bowl trash community: we decided to make another 5 packet iteration of Fuck This Packet. If you haven't read FTP 1, I'd recommend you'd read it if you like trash packets with bizarre answerlines and somewhat glib comments throughout the set. Myself and MSU's Trent Koch, Tony Incorvati and Alan Hettinger are preparing this monstrosity this year, and we would like it mirrored throughout the quiz bowl world. The mirror fee will be $7/person and I think the set should be played at least as two player teams. I felt the Waterloo mirror went well last year with 4 person teams for the record. Email me at bunkerha@msu.edu if you are interested in mirroring this set. I will be allowing mirrors until December 2017 and this set is only 5 packets so it's easy to run after a longer academic tournament. The set will be finished by around July of this year and we have made great progress already.

This is the distribution for FTP2. We will try to stick to this packetized sub-distribution but I can't make any promises. There will still be some niche and/or vanity trash including more than a couple metal music questions but I hope this set will be fun and interesting for a large audience this year.

Category Tossups Bonuses
•Music 4 4
Rap/Pop 1 1
Rock pre 1990 1 1
Rock post 1990 1 1
All other categories and previous 1 1
•Sports 3 3
NFL 0.75 0.75
NBA 0.75 0.75
MLB 0.75 0.75
NHL 0.5 0.5
Other Sports (Golf, Tennis, college sports, etc.) 0.25 0.25
•Television 4 4
Drama 0.75 0.75
Comedy 1 1
Cartoons including Anime 1 1
Reality TV and previous categories 1.25 1.25
•Movies 4 4
Drama 1 1
Comedy 1.5 1.5
Pre 1980s Movies 0.5 0.5
Previous Categories and Borderline film 1 1
•Video Games 2 2
Pre 2000 Video Games 1 1
Other Video games 1 1
•Culture and Other 3 3
Internet Culture 0.5 0.5
Pop and Celebrity Culture 0.5 0.5
Grab Bag 2 2
Tiebreaker 1 0
TOTAL 21 20

Changes from last year: We are going to have less answerlines on impossible, obscure, goofy shit and instead try to use these clues in common links and bonuses. Don't worry though, there will be strange tossups like the one on Tiptoes written in the second person from FTP1 and the tossup on Tila Tequila. We changed the distribution to have less sports and less video games due to popular demand. I am trying to limit tossups to 8 lines Times New Roman 10 to keep the length more reasonable.

I have one question for the community regarding bonuses, however. Some players have noted that trash bonuses usually lack in quality compared to tossups and I partially agree. To change things up, are people interested in allowing one "lame" per team per game for this set? In case you didn't know, a lame is when a team can skip a bonus after the lead-in because they think they will do poorly on it or whatever other reason. The other option is that the bonuses be of the same topic as the tossup (i.e. "related bonuses" ala LISTORY or JAKOB). The bonuses would be of the same general category such as music or sports but would probably not be of the same topic. For example, if you answered a question on the Detroit Lions, don't expect a NFL bonus but an NBA bonus wouldn't be unheard of. This prevents teams that can only get things at the end or after a neg on a certain category from being able to dodge that category on the bonus. As of right now, I'm probably going to just write 20 bonuses but let me know either in the comments or via email if either idea sounds fun. This set is supposed to be a relaxing trash event where some players might show some knowledge of really stupid shit, so I'm trying to cater to the trash-playing audience here.

Edit: There will be power and maybe super power depending on how silly some of the leadins are.

[Car]

This is where I begin the campaign to include motorsport (in all forms) in the overarching category of "Sports".

There are lots of sports.

[ErikC]

The first set was great, looking forward to a Canadian mirror of this.

[Progcon]

This is where I begin the campaign to include motorsport (in all forms) in the overarching category of "Sports".

There are lots of sports.

There will be motor sports. I agree that they don't come up as much as they should for how popular they are. I think it's because Formula One is more popular in Europe than America and quizbowl's demographics don't seem to be the same people who watch NASCAR.

[Progcon]

Is there any interest in a Skype mirror of this sometime in either July or August? Format can be either doubles, triples or quads to accommodate the tossup/bonus format and I'd need some readers obviously. Payment will be 5 dollars per player and this tournament is completely open.

[Cheynem]

This set was kind of an improvement from last year, which is good. There are still some "problems" (I put this in quotation marks because some people might not find them as problems) like an insanely high proportion of questions were on Internet memes and culture (like even the stuff not directly on memes uses a ton of clues on memes), questions that just get to the point way too fast turning into a "do you know what this is?", and a few rushed questions on things I was unclear why there needed to be tossups on. This set could have used another look-over, removing some of the worst/offensive ideas and making sure difficulty was consistent.

[ErikC]

like an insanely high proportion of questions were on Internet memes and culture (like even the stuff not directly on memes uses a ton of clues on memes)

You won't find me complaining about this, especially when some sets have little or none of it.

[Cheynem]

Yeah, I mean, to each his own. I was just pointing out that the distro shouldn't be taken at face value--there's way more Internetiana and memes than you might expect (including a pretty downright offensive one that was a very bad idea to tossup).

[ErikC]

Yeah, I mean, to each his own. I was just pointing out that the distro shouldn't be taken at face value--there's way more Internetiana and memes than you might expect (including a pretty downright offensive one that was a very bad idea to tossup).

I wasn't thinking about the distro, but you're definitely right that way. I generally don't like mixing clues from different mediums that well either with some exceptions.

Can you PM which tossup you thought was a bad idea? I'm curious because I've always been cautious about my own writing and after the controversy of TTiaC I'm even more adamant to avoid it.

[Guile Island]

I'd consider playing this on Skype if I have a free day/weekend.