History Obscenity - March 7, 2015 @ McMaster

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Senator_Jay
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History Obscenity - March 7, 2015 @ McMaster

Post by Senator_Jay »

Hey everyone, just wanted to let yall know that I'm currently writing a side event to be played sometime this spring in the vein of Geography Monstrosity that I am calling History Obscenity, a very hard tournament (beyond CO History, for the most part) intended for history aficionados and masochists alike. It will be paired with MacVanity, which will run on Mar. 7, 2015. A posting about said tournament will be made in the near future.

This side event is meant to shed some light on subjects that have a place in the history books, but often do not get asked about due to their tangential or non-Eurocentric nature. For example, if you've never heard of Pope Formosus, or cannot name one of the earlier Three Kingdoms of Korea, then this is not for you. I am hoping that *most* if not *all* of the answers should be answerable to at least *some* people out there, and that *most* quizbowlers with at least some experience should have at least heard of, or could reasonably create a response to, *most* of these things. Not all questions will follow my vexation format (re: Interstellar Alcohol), but some will, so be warned. This is intended for fun, and I'll be happy if at least 10 people opt to play this. Whether those 10 people enjoy it or not is irrelevant to me, however.

Here are the specs so far:

8 Packets (dropped two packets since last post)
10 Tossups/Packet
10-12 Lines/Tossup (shortened since last post)
(so far, each pack has taken about 30-60min to play for non-history folk who have been play-testing)

Distribution of Packets:

1. Warmup (general history) COMPLETE
2. Anglocentric COMPLETE
3. Latin Americacentric COMPLETE
4. Eurocentric COMPLETE
5. Asiacentric COMPLETE
6. Africacentric - COMPLETE
7. Pacificocentric - IN PROGRESS
8. Finals -

*For now I am omitting the Ancient World and Modern World packets for the sake of sanity. Given how long these packets may take to play, I think 8 rounds of this should be sufficient. 80 tossups should take at least a couple hours to play through.

If you are interested in either mirroring or playing this in the near future, please let me know, by posting here and/or emailing me at [email protected]

Thanks for listening!
Last edited by Senator_Jay on Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:07 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Jay Misuk
McMaster University, 2009, 2010, 2016
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MEd. (Educational Linguistics) MSc. (CogSciLing), Hon. BA (Linguistics), BA (History), BEd. (History, Geography, Music, Math, Soc. Sci, Law, Latin)

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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Important Bird Area »

Beyond CO History, you say? Count me in.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

If the questions look like these and have vague clues designed to frustrate players, rather than just being very difficult, I think I will sit this one out.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Mike Bentley »

As fun as it is to write super long tossups on crazy hard subjects, this tournament would be more enjoyable for everyone playing it if you kept the tossups to a sensible length. As I learned reading Gaddis 2, even with a good field it can get pretty tiresome when you're reading packet after packet of 10 or 11 line tossups on really challenging answers. If they were 8 line tossups on these things it goes over a lot better.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Senator_Jay »

Thanks, will try to edit what I have and see if I can contain them.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

I will play this. I expect to super-power everything.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

This sounds like a good time. That said, I have the same reservations as Matt, and would encourage you to actually pick answers that people have a chance of answering unambiguously, instead of having an entire tournament of things that are either impossibly hard or things that are designed to "vex" the player (which sounds extremely worrying).

Also, I sincerely hope that Oceania and Asia aren't being given identical weight in this tournament...
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by RexSueciae »

Remind me when this is about to happen and I'll do my best to turn out for this.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by CaseyB »

When and where will this take place?
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by t-bar »

Do you intend to charge people money to play this? I don't see any indication for yea or nay in the original announcement, or if yea what the fee per person will be.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Furthermore, I suggest that collapsing the 10 region-"centric" packets of 10 tossups each into five packets of 20 tossups each, each having two questions from each region, will be a more enjoyable experience for most people.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

I'm also curious as to what you're doing for 20 questions on the history of Oceania if you're not just mining New Zealand, Hawaii, and Australia really deep or creating random-ass-islands bowl. I sincerely hope "history of Micronesia" is not an answerline again, too.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Harpie's Feather Duster »

I will play this if it happens in the Midwest and:
1) It's reasonably priced
2) People have determined that it's not batshit insane and/or unplayable
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Senator_Jay »

Thank you all for your suggestions, they are duly noted (although may not be followed-through on). I'd still like to try to complete a 10-tossup pack that is Oceania-centric, or perhaps it may need to become a general "Island-centric" that would therefore include such places as Indonesia, Japan, and beyond.

As for when it will be played, again, hoping for March/Aprilish, depends when I finish, and if I can get the Mac people to complete our (in-development) guerrila-esque vanity tournament, that I would like to run with it.

As for cost, I would like to think that for a tournament that would take about 2-4hrs to play, that about $15-20 would be reasonable; my intention being that that fee would be divided between McMaster Quizbowl, the host institution (if there are mirrors), and the remainder to a charity (I'm thinking McMaster Children's Hospital).
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Also, to echo MattJax: If this is meant to be run as a tournament or other competitive singles/doubles/teams event, it really doesn't make much sense to run as anything but a straight shootout if you have a bunch of theme packets, since the game results are going to be heavily biased by what the particular packet focuses on (i.e. were I to hypothetically play Matt, I'd probably be way better off doing so on the Asia round than the Ancient World round).
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by minusfive »

I am looking forward to playing this: I can vouch that Jay has a very broad knowledge (even of Oceanic history, which is often very cool) and am looking forward to failing miserably at answering things as well as learning stuff.
I also understand that this tournament will be making a contribution/donation to charity, so that's another reason to play.
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Re: History Obscenity - March or April 2015?

Post by Emperor Pupienus »

I would be interested in playing this tournament and expect to not know a majority of the answers!
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Re: History Obscenity - March 7, 2015 @ McMaster

Post by Peter13 »

Thanks for everyone for coming out. The final cumulative scores were as follows:

Adam 45, Erik 35, Peter 90, Paul 105, and Eric 180.
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