The Quizbowl Resource Center

Fort Osage will return with the 4th incarnation of its Novice Set for the 2018-19 season. Some changes in the distribution for this year will occur:

4/4 History/Social Studies
4/4 Literature
4/3 Science
3/3 Geography
2/2 Fine Arts
2/2 Religion/Mythology
1/1 Math/Computer Science
1/1 Current Events
1/1 Trash

Note: each packet will have 22 powermarked tossups/20 bonuses (either H/SS or Literature will have one less bonus per packet, and we try to even it out). We returned Science to 4 tossups per round, as is commonplace. Math is non-calculation and we included Computer Science in that distribution since it has become commonplace as well. There will be 12 rounds this year, as opposed to 11 the past 3 incarnations. Sub-distributions will generally follow past form, and questions will run 5-7 lines long (we shoot for 6 lines). If you are interested in mirroring this set, it will be $10 per team in attendance at your tournament/event. Thanks, Josh Malecki

Mirrors:

Cavalier Classic IV, Chillicothe,OH: Oct. 6th
Steele Mem. Invit. II, Honaker, VA: Oct. 13th
Brookfield (OH) Fall Gathering: Oct. 20th
Host (FORKAST): Nov. 1st (Half-set- 6 rounds)
Lawrence County (AL): Nov. 10th
Brookwood Invit.(GA): Nov. 17th
Host (FORKAST II): Jan. 17th (Second half - Rds. 7-12)
Missouri JV State (Helias HS): Mar. 9
Liberty Half-Trash (NV): Mar. 23

Set is all edited and ready for play!! Good luck this weekend to the teams at Chillicothe!!

The stats for the 2018 Cavalier Classic. https://stats.neg5.org/t/BkEPKtB5m/cava ... -standings

We'd like to use part of your set for our JV division of the NE In The Know league (metro Columbus, Ohio).

Good afternoon,

I would be interested in using your questions for our tournament on Nov. 17, if possible. We are in Atlanta, GA and we have used them before.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

FortOsageScholarBowl wrote: ↑Thu Oct 04, 2018 10:44 pm Set is all edited and ready for play!!

Were the sets checked thoroughly? I won't get into question content obviously, but there were still glaring typos and lack of alternate acceptable answers or prompts. I get it's a lot of work to write a complete set and I appreciate the effort, but after three incarnations of average/below average reception to your sets, making sure that the typos were kept in check and proofreading and play testing the packets should have been a high priority. Trying to decipher the sentences as I'm reading is not very fun and I'm sure the players weren't having fun watching their moderators fumble over words or taking awkward pauses to figure out what the questions were asking for.

If I disregard the typos, I would say that the set was solid and an improvement over the previous FONS sets, even if some power marks were generous (which is okay for a set intended for novices). I did like the effort to introduce different answer lines, but there were a few that fell completely flat. Seeing an unpolished product was the most disappointing aspect for me about FONS IV as a moderator.

I played this set at the Georgia mirror (BISB), and while I don't regret the experience there were some issues that affected my overall enjoyment. Many of the problems from previous iterations of the set continued to plague FONS IV, from typos to gimmicky answer lines. The pet categories of the writers (namely geography) tended to encroach into other areas, making the advertised distribution feel dishonest at the least. Difficulty control seemed nonexistent as tossups appropriate for a middle-school set got sandwiched between answer lines inaccessible to most novices. As a self-proclaimed "lit player", it annoyed me how many literature tossups felt reverse pyramidal, listing the most important details (e.g. the protagonist of the book) early before rambling about the plot.

Of course, my opinion could be skewed by the equally questionable decision to run this set at a competitive varsity tournament, which given the intended difficulty was probably not the right decision. Your mileage may vary.

The final mirror for this was played on March 23. If anyone would like to use the set for practice or anything else, please let me know in the next week or so. Otherwise, I will release it to quizbowlpackets.com. Details will follow shortly thereafter about Version 5 for next school year.

I'd like to commend Coach Malecki for his commitment to ignoring community input and continuously churning out set after set in spite of repeatedly being told its existence is a net negative to the community. Kudos to you!

Are you planning on bringing on any outside help to deal with the consistent quality and difficulty problems that have plagued every iteration of this set?