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Discuss Tricon 2.5 here.

Cody is banned from writing for the next version of this tournament.

"this was indeed tricon" - only necessary discussion of this tournament

For people who wrote for Tricon:
I understand it's fun to include some zany stuff, and that this tournament is free, but you're still creating something other human beings are going to be subjected to. This can be a whole lot of fun - and indeed some tossups were - but more often it was overwhelmed by 12-line questions on the weird or unanswerable (and not in the good way).

In particular, Mr. Gupta, despite what I was assured were fervent proclamations on your part that you'd learned from the terrible reception of your packet last year, there was once again a healthy amount of bizarre and unanswerable shit in your contribution. Please stop doing this.

In fairness, many aspects of this year's distribution - to use a technical industry term - sucked the big one. Guess what, things SUCKED in Europe during the dark ages. There was not a lot of good art produced while people were dodging plague rats and fleeing from barbarian hordes (who themselves, really, are almost certainly not interesting enough to warrant a whole category). I suggest we move somewhat away from the origin of Tricon's distribution in the name of creating a more enjoyable event. Specifically, let's replace the "side tournaments" that were actually just terrible ideas various quizbowl idiots posted in the midst of their inane rantings with cool things that could result in hilarity and/or education. Meanwhile, we can keep the flagship testaments to Tricon's better origins, like the hats tournament.

For people who are Cody Voight:
Stop being Cody Voight.

DumbJaques wrote: In particular, Mr. Gupta, despite what I was assured were fervent proclamations on your part that you'd learned from the terrible reception of your packet last year, there was once again a healthy amount of bizarre and unanswerable shit in your contribution. Please stop doing this.

Hey now, I also contributed to the distribution of bizarre and unanswerable shit! Don't give Auroni all the credit.

DumbJaques wrote: In particular, Mr. Gupta, despite what I was assured were fervent proclamations on your part that you'd learned from the terrible reception of your packet last year, there was once again a healthy amount of bizarre and unanswerable shit in your contribution. Please stop doing this.

Fair enough. I'm sending a version of our packet for BABIES to future mirrors.

I don't know if we got Mrs. Gupta's "babies" packet or not, but it was still really really hard.

Look, I don't mind playing really really hard packets, but playing really really hard 35 tossup, 12-line question packets gets grating. Writers should use more restraint on this.

I completely agree with Chris Ray that aspects of the distribution sucked balls. Some writers found creative ways to go about it, others (understandably) threw up their hands and cranked out generic tossups on barbarians and Renaissance art or what have you. These were not overly fun for me. Since this year's distro ignored the idea of "unfinished side events," I think we should just settle on a distro that tries to be the most entertaining and accessible.

I actually found Cody's packet to be enormously entertaining, but it was out of place of course at an event like this. As a bonus trash packet, it was well done.

Frankly, I'm of the opinion that Tricon has sort of run its course with 2.5 editions already mocking side events past, present, unannounced, and future; the concept isn't inherently fun enough that a version of it has to happen next year or every year, and the issues with people Not Getting It won't go away. Some version of "guerrilla, hard, wacky packets that are actually fun and/or funny, with mega-powers" can certainly recur, though -- I'd suggest shorter rounds, like 24 or 25 tossups, and a distribution that hews much closer to the ACF distribution. Perhaps a mix-and-match, where there's a list of 24 questions by category and 24 funny things which could be done in any category, and packet authors get to choose how to allocate?

Yeah, the main problems were that some categories were just too difficult to write fun tossups on and that tossup length was variable. As long as tossups are limited to 6-8 lines and certain categories are broadened to allow for more creativity, the tournament should continue. And also, don't include mashups or at least give some warning beforehand.

What were the answerlines that were particularly hard in our packet (we're allowed to discuss those here, right?)? We replaced a few of the more ridiculous questions. Also, one of our tossups was posted in the comments of someone's status, without asking our permission and before the set was clear; is this something that matters to anyone?

I guess you could replace that tossup, but this is really not a very serious event, so I wouldn't sweat it.

Cody "subverting [the distribution] to prove a point and inflict misery on everyone else is not [great]" Voight, your packet sucked, and so do you.

Also, the "Kirk Jing being murdered" part of the distribution was not really funny (this is a separate issue from it being in incredibly poor taste). I mean, yeah, the first question you hear on that is kind of almost vaguely amusing: "ha ha man, that guy sucks wouldn't it be funny if serial killers killed him instead of other people", but by the ninth question, it really gets droll.

Concur with Tejas that non-conventional questions like mashups should be heralded by something like "Warning: this question is a mashup" or similar.

Excelsior (smack) wrote:Cody "subverting [the distribution] to prove a point and inflict misery on everyone else is not [great]" Voight, your packet sucked, and so do you.

Says the person who wouldn't know if something was fun -- or funny -- if it slapped him in the face!

I read through the questions. I probably would not have enjoyed playing as much, but I sure did enjoy writing.

something similarly dumb wrote:"this was indeed tricon" - only necessary discussion of this tournament

I liked that question which was about whether or not Itzhak Hirsch was jewish.