MUSES II (Summer 2020)

[Illinois Admin]

Hello everyone, I am pleased to announce MUSES II, the sequel to last years MUSES. This set will have a similar distro to last year's version, with somewhat major tweaks to improve playability. The set will still consist of 10-12 packets of 20 tossups with paired 2 part bonuses. However, instead of aiming for an easy part and a hard part for our bonuses, we will aim for a medium part and a hard part. The set will also have powers, but unlike last year's version, there will not be superpowers. The set will still be open level and will still be very whimsical. We will be charging $10 per player for mirrors of this event. If you are interested in mirroring this set, please email me at bamclai2 AT utexas.edu

The writing team for this set will consist of Mitch McCullar, Iain Carpenter, Bradley McLain, Jaskaran Singh, Tyler Vaughan, Evan Suttell, Ethan Ashbrook, Raul Passement and Tim Cho. We are aiming to have the set done by Summer of 2020 (with a more specific date TBD).

This year's distribution will be as such:
2 Calliope
-.66 Ancient Epics
-.66 Modern Epics
-.66 Epic Film
2 Clio
-1 Ancient Greco-Roman History
-1 Ancient non-Greco-Roman History
2 Euterpe
-1 Classical Music
-.5 "Other" Art Music
-.5 Pop Music
2 Urania
-1 Science
-.5 Ancient Astronomy
-.5 Pop Culture/Cultural Depictions of Astronomy
2 Polyhymnia
-1 Ancient Hymns/Prayers/Musical Rituals
-1 Non-Ancient Hymns/Prayers/Musical Rituals
2 Thalia
-.8 pre-1900 Comedy Literature (including drama, novels, and short stories)
-.8 post-1900 Comedy Literature (including drama, novels, and short stories)
-.4 Other Comedy (including stand up, sketch, and film)
2 Melpomene
-.8 pre-1900 Tragic Literature (including drama, novels, and short stories)
-.8 post-1900 Tragic Literature (including drama, novels, and short stories)
-.4 Other Tragedy (primarily film)
2 Erato
-1 Love Poetry
-1 "Other Emotion" Poetry
2 Terpsichore
-1 Western Art Dance
-.5 "World" Dance
-.5 Pop Culture
2 Mythology
-1 Greco-Roman
-1 Other Near-East/Greater Mediteranean Mythology (may include religious narrative content and a small amount of other mythologies)


Additionally each category may contain "thought" type content as appropriate (eg literary criticism, philosophy, social science, historiography, and mythography). Like last year's version, categories will be interpreted as loosely as needed to keep the set playable and fun.

We will be incorporating the feedback we received on the previous edition of MUSES and will aim at leveling out the bonus difficulty more and will do more playtesting to ensure that confusing wording and answerlines get caught.

EDIT: a few updates to distro, namely fixing ratio in epics and reverting myth distro back to the previous MUSES distro

[justinfrench1728]

2 Polyhymnia
-1 Ancient Hymns/Prayers/Musical Rituals
-1 Non-Ancient Hymns/Prayers/Musical Rituals

Are there really enough hymns for a second set with this many hymns?

[Cheynem]

Aside from the unwelcome introduction of "novels," this looks very enjoyable.

[Illinois Admin]

2 Polyhymnia
-1 Ancient Hymns/Prayers/Musical Rituals
-1 Non-Ancient Hymns/Prayers/Musical Rituals

Are there really enough hymns for a second set with this many hymns?

We are expanding our hymns to include more prayers, sacred texts, and chants than we did the first time in order to maintain playability. There will still be plenty of true hymn content so for those of you who enjoyed the hymns the first time around, do not despair!

Aside from the unwelcome introduction of "novels," this looks very enjoyable.

Fear not, the focus of the tragedy and comedy will still be drama! The novels and short stories have been added to give a bit of flexibility to include some of our personal favorite comedic/tragic literature as well as to increase the amount of creative common links we can (reasonably) do.

[Mike Bentley]

Looking forward to this, although I wonder if you're wasting a lot of effort by producing 12 packets with bonuses. That's an awful lot for something most likely to be run as a summer side event. I suspect most of your mirrors will do no more than 8 packets, with others closer to 6.

[Cheynem]

MORE PACKETS, MO MONEY

[Illinois Admin]

We will be writing at least 10 packets in order to ensure that UIUC can run a full tournament with finals at the 2020 iteration of Side Event Weekend. Once we have more written and have a better idea of when we will be finishing I will update with how many packets we are going to have for sure.

[Mike Bentley]

Looking forward to this, although I wonder if you're wasting a lot of effort by producing 12 packets with bonuses. That's an awful lot for something most likely to be run as a summer side event. I suspect most of your mirrors will do no more than 8 packets, with others closer to 6.

Actually what I strongly suspect will happen is that a lot of mirrors will just ignore the bonuses and play more packets.

[Illinois Admin]

Just an update, we are setting the completion deadline as no later than July 18th. We are also no longer reserving the set for the Illinois Side Event Weekend (although it may still end up being mirrored there) and are opening it to be mirrored any side event weekend type events, Chicago Open, and/or any other events I am forgetting.