OCTAVIAN - A Classics Tournament
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2017 6:28 pm
This is a preliminary announcement for OCTAVIAN (Oli's Classical Tournament About Various Interesting Ancient Nuggets)
This will be a tossup-only tournament written by me. I plan currently on 12 packets of 24 tossups, power-marked, of about 8-9 lines. I aim for the answerlines to be about 1/2 that could come up at Regular, 1/4 at Nats, 1/4 at Opens.
The distribution as currently planned (and I expect there may well be alterations to this once I have finished plotting out all the answerlines)
History 15 - subdivided (again, provisionally):
1 Pre-800BC
2 Archaic (800-480BC)
2 Classical (480-323BC)
2 Hellenistic (323-146BC)
2 Roman Republic (~300 to 31BC)
2 Principate (31BC to AD 284)
2 Dominate (284-565)
3 Greek Literature
3 Roman Literature
2 RMPSS
2 Visual Fine Arts
1 Linguistics/Epigraphy/Paleography and similar.
Notes on the above - the above temporal boundaries will not be hard and fast, such as the cross-over between the Hellenistic and the Roman Republic. There will of course be common link tossups on names, tossups on places that cover broader swathes of time and so on.
Along with the split by period, I will also be attempting to ensure a reasonably broad range of geographic distribution and not just Greco-Roman, though often in relation to one of the two cultures. There will be both specifically archaeological tossups, as well as material clues included in the other history where feasible.
Literature and the RMPSS distro obviously have some major cross-over - my aim is for some myths that come up in the literature to be clued closely from the texts (i.e. important lines that character says in the tragedy for example, while others will be more narrative based "Heracles wiped out another endangered species in this mythical land" etc). Similarly I will treat works such as Plato's dialogues as philosophy or as literature. This will be somewhat experimental, and I am very interested to see how this plays.
VFA will include Sculpture, Architecture, Pottery, Mosaics, Painting etc (if any distro gets expanded to the detriment of any other, this is probably the most likely)
The final 1 per packet will cover everything from important inscriptions and papyri, through the development of alphabets, to vowel changes.
I have currently filled out about half the preliminary answerlines, and I do not foresee much difficulty in doing the rest. In terms of writing and completion date, once I become unemployed come May 4th/5th, I will then have several weeks without much else to distract me. Once I have got into the swing (or not) or writing, I hope I will be able to give a reasonable indication of when I will finish the set, but I like to believe at the moment it would be ready before the end of June.
This will be a tossup-only tournament written by me. I plan currently on 12 packets of 24 tossups, power-marked, of about 8-9 lines. I aim for the answerlines to be about 1/2 that could come up at Regular, 1/4 at Nats, 1/4 at Opens.
The distribution as currently planned (and I expect there may well be alterations to this once I have finished plotting out all the answerlines)
History 15 - subdivided (again, provisionally):
1 Pre-800BC
2 Archaic (800-480BC)
2 Classical (480-323BC)
2 Hellenistic (323-146BC)
2 Roman Republic (~300 to 31BC)
2 Principate (31BC to AD 284)
2 Dominate (284-565)
3 Greek Literature
3 Roman Literature
2 RMPSS
2 Visual Fine Arts
1 Linguistics/Epigraphy/Paleography and similar.
Notes on the above - the above temporal boundaries will not be hard and fast, such as the cross-over between the Hellenistic and the Roman Republic. There will of course be common link tossups on names, tossups on places that cover broader swathes of time and so on.
Along with the split by period, I will also be attempting to ensure a reasonably broad range of geographic distribution and not just Greco-Roman, though often in relation to one of the two cultures. There will be both specifically archaeological tossups, as well as material clues included in the other history where feasible.
Literature and the RMPSS distro obviously have some major cross-over - my aim is for some myths that come up in the literature to be clued closely from the texts (i.e. important lines that character says in the tragedy for example, while others will be more narrative based "Heracles wiped out another endangered species in this mythical land" etc). Similarly I will treat works such as Plato's dialogues as philosophy or as literature. This will be somewhat experimental, and I am very interested to see how this plays.
VFA will include Sculpture, Architecture, Pottery, Mosaics, Painting etc (if any distro gets expanded to the detriment of any other, this is probably the most likely)
The final 1 per packet will cover everything from important inscriptions and papyri, through the development of alphabets, to vowel changes.
I have currently filled out about half the preliminary answerlines, and I do not foresee much difficulty in doing the rest. In terms of writing and completion date, once I become unemployed come May 4th/5th, I will then have several weeks without much else to distract me. Once I have got into the swing (or not) or writing, I hope I will be able to give a reasonable indication of when I will finish the set, but I like to believe at the moment it would be ready before the end of June.
