Hip-Hop Tournament

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Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by ryandillon »

This is a preliminary announcement for a hip-hop tournament that I'm in the process of writing.

It will be finished and edited by the end of December and it'll be ready to play by ICT, though I'll probably end up hosting it at the HSNCT in order to draw a bigger field.

Each packet will consist of 20 8-10 line tossups (with 15 point powers and 20 point superpowers) and 20 bonuses with 3 tiebreaker tossups per packet. The tournament will comprise of 5 prelim rounds and 3 playoff rounds. The 5 prelim rounds will be of the same difficulty, with the playoff rounds increasing in difficulty from round to round. There will also be a "Big Punisher" All-Star round more difficult than the final playoff round where two 4-man teams made up of the top scorers from the prelims will face off against each other.

Teams can be made up of up to four people, and the entry fee will be $5 per person. Members of the first place team will receive a hip-hop album of my choosing.

If anyone has any ideas of stuff that I can/should do differently with regard to how many packets I should be writing, let me know.

EDIT: Forgot to put my distribution.

2/2 Pre-1990
5/5 1990-1999
5/5 2000-2010
3/3 2010-present
5/5 From the 4 categories above

There will probably be some stuff that isn't strictly hip-hop, but will have hip-hop related clues. An example would be Elton John, which could include clues from the live rendition of "Stan," "Ghetto Gospel," as well as clues about his solo, non-hip-hop work, or Marvin Gaye, which could include references to stuff like "Marvin Gaye and Chardonnay" by Big Sean or songs that sample his work.
Last edited by ryandillon on Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Muriel Axon »

Might I suggest upping the pre-1990 part of the distribution a little? 2/2 seems like a rather meager slice for a lot of really important stuff, especially since the 5/5 for the three categories above seems to exclude pre-1990.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

I enjoy history much more than the next guy, but I'd prefer to see this tournament focus on hip-hop from eras when the people likely to play it were actually alive and listening to music.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Black-throated Antshrike »

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:I enjoy history much more than the next guy, but I'd prefer to see this tournament focus on hip-hop from eras when the people likely to play it were actually alive and listening to music.
I actually listen to more rap from the 90s more than anything else primarily. I think that people listen to pretty much all time periods of rap, the same as say rock.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by btressler »

ryandillon wrote:though I'll probably end up hosting it at the HSNCT in order to draw a bigger field.
This year in a 10-round tossup-only tournament on Saturday night, the final was after midnight and the hotel staff was very interested in kicking us out of the meeting rounds.

You might want to keep that in mind, as I imagine 8 full packets will go longer.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Muriel Axon »

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:I enjoy history much more than the next guy, but I'd prefer to see this tournament focus on hip-hop from eras when the people likely to play it were actually alive and listening to music.
Keep in mind that Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and N.W.A., among other hip-hop groups that people still listen to, all released some of their most famous music in the 1980s. Obviously it's Ryan's choice about what he wants to do with his tournament, but I think it would be cool to see the first decade of hip-hop to get equal representation (3/3) with the last three or four years.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by marnold »

Whenever this is I'm, perhaps obviously, playing.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Rompimientos del Centauro »

Yes. Yes please.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by ryandillon »

The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:Might I suggest upping the pre-1990 part of the distribution a little? 2/2 seems like a rather meager slice for a lot of really important stuff, especially since the 5/5 for the three categories above seems to exclude pre-1990.
Sorry, meant to say four categories above, pre-1990 is definitely included in that 5/5.
Bad Boy Bill wrote:his year in a 10-round tossup-only tournament on Saturday night, the final was after midnight and the hotel staff was very interested in kicking us out of the meeting rounds.

You might want to keep that in mind, as I imagine 8 full packets will go longer.
Yeah, that's true. I'm probably still going to write them all in case I, or someone running a mirror, am able to use them all in a logistically sound way. Also, would people prefer there to be bonuses? Or would people rather just do straight tossups?
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

I want to play this, of course.

I'd rather see more packets of just tossups than fewer packets with bonuses, but that's just me. I also agree that I'd rather see more pre-1990 stuff, but it's possible to do that with the ones you've set aside as choice.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by ryandillon »

Plan Rubber wrote: I'd rather see more packets of just tossups than fewer packets with bonuses, but that's just me. I also agree that I'd rather see more pre-1990 stuff, but it's possible to do that with the ones you've set aside as choice.
I feel similarly on the packet thing, but I guess lots of these side events end up having no bonuses and I thought that having bonuses could be a cool thing, especially with the amount of different stuff you can ask about within the genre. And the rationale behind the 5/5 my choice is that I felt that it was kind of impossible for me to come up with a distribution for something like this, but at the same time, I wanted to have a bit of structure, which is why I mapped things out for 15 of the distro.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by ryandillon »

After thinking about it some more and talking to more people, I think that I'm going to make this tossups only. I'm going to write 8 rounds: 5 prelims and 3 playoffs. The prelims will all be of the same difficulty, and the playoff rounds will see a difficulty increase from the prelims as well as increased difficulty from playoff round to playoff round.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Muriel Axon »

ryandillon wrote:And the rationale behind the 5/5 my choice is that I felt that it was kind of impossible for me to come up with a distribution for something like this, but at the same time, I wanted to have a bit of structure, which is why I mapped things out for 15 of the distro.
The 5/5 also gives you more flexibility in case you want to write questions that bridge multiple decades.

I think that if the 5/5 also includes pre-1990, that's probably fine, and I retract my statements from earlier posts.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by jmannor2 »

I am really excited for this.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Angry Babies in Love »

Swag. I am so in.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by The Infanta »

YES. In.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by 49-Mile Scenic Drive »

This sounds glorious, assuming I'm at HSNCT, ICT or wherever it's hosted this year I'll definitely play this. Otherwise I'll be hoping some other place around here will mirror it. Either way I'll need teammates
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by DumbJaques »

49-Mile Scenic Drive wrote:This sounds glorious, assuming I'm at HSNCT, ICT or wherever it's hosted this year I'll definitely play this. Otherwise I'll be hoping some other place around here will mirror it. Either way I'll need teammates
The most likely mirror site for a tournament with nearly 200 tossups about hip-hop that's announced 10 months in advance is probably a frozen lake in Hell; however, if this tournament's nigh-inevitable cancellation is instead supplanted by one of those "here's a couple packets' worth of what I wrote" posts, it might actually be viable as an HSNCT/ICT side event. Though it would be roughly 1000 times better as something to do after a random tournament, ideally in the presence of lots of alcohol and Arun Chonai.

Alternatively, please execute this event as promised, as I know we'd all enjoy seeing a bunch of kids at HSNCT try to explain to their coaches why they were up until 2 am the night before nationals playing a rap tournament.

EDIT:
If this tournament instead ends up being 200/0 on Andre Nickatina, I withdraw all criticism.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by ryandillon »

DumbJaques wrote:
49-Mile Scenic Drive wrote:This sounds glorious, assuming I'm at HSNCT, ICT or wherever it's hosted this year I'll definitely play this. Otherwise I'll be hoping some other place around here will mirror it. Either way I'll need teammates
The most likely mirror site for a tournament with nearly 200 tossups about hip-hop that's announced 10 months in advance is probably a frozen lake in Hell; however, if this tournament's nigh-inevitable cancellation is instead supplanted by one of those "here's a couple packets' worth of what I wrote" posts, it might actually be viable as an HSNCT/ICT side event. Though it would be roughly 1000 times better as something to do after a random tournament, ideally in the presence of lots of alcohol and Arun Chonai.

Alternatively, please execute this event as promised, as I know we'd all enjoy seeing a bunch of kids at HSNCT try to explain to their coaches why they were up until 2 am the night before nationals playing a rap tournament.

EDIT:
If this tournament instead ends up being 200/0 on Andre Nickatina, I withdraw all criticism.
So far, I'm about halfway done with hashing out the answer-lines and organizing them into rounds, and I'm planning on finishing that next week after my midterms are finished. I'm going to write as time permits during the rest of the term, but the tossups will probably not be done being written until after Christmas break, then I'll play test them with some people a few times over and have a final copy ready to be ran sometime in February or March. This is still happening. If people don't want it at the HSNCT or would rather have it somewhere else too, I'm open to anybody's advice on that.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by jmannor2 »

ryandillon wrote: This is still happening.
Awesome.
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Re: Hip-Hop Tournament

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

ryandillon wrote:If people don't want it at the HSNCT or would rather have it somewhere else too, I'm open to anybody's advice on that.
If you're cool with high schoolers playing this, I would definitely be interested in playing this set somewhere (preferably in Atlanta considering Loyola's trash set was pretty good this past HSNCT, as well as the fact Atlanta is one of the more fitting places to play said hip-hop tournament).

Regarding how late this year's trash side event ran at HSNCT, I remember having to coalesce with all of the other teams in the hallway and having to wait a while before round one actually started because it seemed like registering a team was pretty relaxed. I know there was a spreadsheet you could have registered on but it seemed like there ended up being more teams than what was on the sheet, resulting in delays getting the tournament off. I think the DBZ event coinciding with the trash event may have also contributed to there being some uncertainty who'd sign up and perhaps a scarcity of readers. In short, I think some of the time strains we faced this May could be alleviated with a more formal registration process and an earlier start.
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