The Quizbowl Resource Center

You've heard/seen the rumours...now brace yourselves! McMaster is pleased to announce MacVanity, a largely house-written hybrid-style semi-guerrilla vanity tournament to be played at McMaster on March 7, 2015!!! This tournament is intended as an introduction to writing for some of our club's members, and as such, it will run with a policy of "player beware". We shall attempt to edit the packets somewhat, provided they get completed in time to allow that. This tournament is also intended to (hopefully) start a new trend: in exchange for subjecting players to a somewhat dubious VETO-style tournament, McMaster Quizbowl will donate a portion of the proceeds to the McMaster Children's Hospital (depending on the amount earned, approximately 40-50%).

As well as employing a variety of house-written vanity packets, we have had offers from various eager Canadian quizbowlers to submit packets towards this noble cause. That being said, if you feel the urge to create a vanity pack for potential use in this tournament, or are interested in playing, here is the distribution:

1/1 History
1/1 Science
1/1 Literature
1/1 RMP
1/1 Fine Arts
1/1 Geography
1/1 Soc Sci
1/1 TV/Cinema
1/1 Music (non-classical)
1/1 AltMedia (comics, video games, etc.)
1/1 Current Events
1/1 Sports
1/1 Meta (very likely Canadian in nature)
8-9/8-9 Whatever your heart desires

Total: 21/21

Details about tournament:

Date: Mar. 7, 2015
Location: McMaster University (likely MUSC, TBD)
Teams: Open, no minimum
Cost: $80/team (minimum: $40)
Discounts: -$5 Buzzers
-$5 Laptops
-$5 Shorthanded per person
-$5 Distance (per 400km travelled)
-$10 Packet Submission

This tournament will be followed the day of by the playing of History Obscenity for those brave souls willing to try it. A portion of the proceeds from that side event will also go towards the McMaster Children's Hospital.

If anyone for some reason would like to mirror this (perhaps to help contribute to our charitable donation), please email either myself ([email protected]) or the club ([email protected]).

Thanks for listening!

I don't understand why this on the same day as the Ontario provincials. This splits staff for provincials and players for this tournament.

We don't really have the time or resources to hold it on another day, and according to Leslie, Ben has said it would be ok for us to do this on that date. It's not intended as an attack on Ontario Provincials, it's intended to get this thing happening before exams, while we have staff, and while we can easily get rooms and whatnot.

I am coming to this and will have one, possibly two, packets written for it.

Carleton will be overjoyed to send a team to this tournament, which will undoubtedly be the best of the year. Our packet is already well into production.

Would it be inconvenient to switch this with History Obscenity? I really want to play this, but I have an unditchable engagement on the 7th. If not, that's fine--I'm working on a packet for this either way. x)

Masked Canadian History Bandit wrote:I don't understand why this on the same day as the Ontario provincials. This splits staff for provincials and players for this tournament.

McMaster did ask for "permission" before this announcement. There is an understanding that this event is not serious enough to draw too much away from Eastern Ontario (compared to the MUT/Stimpy double-bill later in March), and the Lisgar team also has a staffing commitment which includes some competent alumni. The main issue is whether there will be enough buzzers to avoid BuzzBoxBowl.

That being said, I cannot endorse high schools playing in this; they should be at provincials...

I unfortunately already have a prior engagement in Ottawa that day, but I heartily encourage everyone to attend (if for no other reason than to encourage the novice writers and donate money to the Children's Hospital, which is at the moment fighting some pretty serious battles to ensure vaccination and to require parental participation in chemotherapy for children with cancer).
While it's regrettable that the announcement was made so late (it happens), hopefully those unable to attend on that date can get a copy of the questions for a donation/fee.

I have the good sense to live for QuizBowl and QuizBowl alone, and hence will be in attendance here. [At least one] Packet to come :)

I've got a couple of questions. First, what will be the difficulty of the academic parts? Second, when do you need packets by? We'd like to submit one, but I want to make sure that it's actually feasible to do so. Especially considering that nobody currently at Western has ever written a packet.

In response to difficulty: It's wildly variable. From packets I've heard so far, they are generally reasonable (ACF Fall-Regionals at most), with some outliers (if you're familiar with my packet-writing, then use that as a gauge). As for due date, we're hoping by Feb. 25. We'll need time to look over the packets and do some quick editing (it'll generally be somewhat guerrilla-style though), and with a double-tournament weekend coming up, it'll be tight for time. If you need a couple extra days, let me know in advance with some sort of good reason, and we can try to accommodate.

On a secondary note, I'm glad to see all the support for this tournament!

Senator_Jay wrote:In response to difficulty: It's wildly variable. From packets I've heard so far, they are generally reasonable (ACF Fall-Regionals at most), with some outliers (if you're familiar with my packet-writing, then use that as a gauge).

Senator_Jay wrote:This tournament is intended as an introduction to writing for some of our club's members,

I have a sense that the goal of introducing new players to the process of writing well/responsibly is somewhat at odds with letting difficulty go completely unchecked and unstandardized across a question set.

The Western packet writing attempt didn't really get anywhere. It is possible to play without submitting a packet, isn't it?

Yes, it is possible; this is an entirely open tournament. Like the *dreaded* VETO, cept without the mandatory packet-writing constraint.

As far as I know, there are going to be three Waterloo teams coming to this.

I am looking for teammates for this.

This tournament is going to be fantastic, mostly because of the pack written by Huma Zafar, with contributions from me :P
I regret that I won't be able to attend.

No image posting in announcement threads, please -mgmt

Ok, so we're three days away from MacVanity...and from the sounds of it, the field is looking fairly limited at this time. If teams could please confirm with me who is in fact coming, that would be great. It would also be great to get packets from people (including from our own club...). Here's the field update (to the best of my knowledge at the current time)

Waterloo x3-5
Freelancers?
Maybe a Mac house team?

This is for a good cause, and will be a good time, please register!!!

Do we have a location/start time for this?

Yes, sorry about that.

Location: Kenneth Taylor Hall (KTH) (if you park in Lot E, behind the student center, it's just up the stairs and to the left in the Arts Quad)

Time: #9am, meaning be at Mac by 9ish, and hopefully we can get started by 9:30. We're hoping to have 5-7 teams (preferably an odd number), and with 12-13 packets scheduled to be in ASAP, we will likely play at least 10 rounds. Should be done by 4ish, I'd imagine.

I would like to thank all the teams for coming out today and hope you all had fun playing MacVanity. I think there was something there for every kind of quizbowler. 'Nicholas Cage' beat '[team name excised]' in the final. Aayush was the top scorer over the course of the tournament with 55 points per game going into the final.

Hey, the original game report and tournament database entry had a team name that is not appropriate for a public quizbowl database or these forums. I have changed the reports and edited the post to remove the name. The stats are available here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... all_games/

This is the college parts of the boards, and pretty much anything goes in terms of language and subject matter. Even so, this crossed the line. Don't play under wildly inappropriate team names, and don't post stat reports containing such names.