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Puget Sound Hot Potato--variations


WeightMan

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This thread is meant to be a discussion point for variations on the game currently in progress that might be workable.

 

One suggestion that one of the Kingons came up with would be keep away. There are several ways this could work, but primarily a team would get points as long as the game piece was in a cache in their territory.

 

Any other ideas out there?

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It was broached before but I think it's a good idea.

 

A one day fast-paced Hot Potato game.

 

Two teams, multiple potatoes, many blight times, 24 hours (probably less).

 

Teams of equal numbers are out in the field. A team captain is on the internet (at home or wireless). At break of dawn potatoes locations are released. Move the potatoes as quickly as possible. Use phones/FRS radios to communicate with team members. As soon as one is placed it's logged by the captain.

 

Probably need a ref/scorekeeper as well to announce blight times and keep track of scores during the day.

 

Then dinner at Red Robin (in honor of TravisL) at the end of the day. Losers pay.

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It was broached before but I think it's a good idea.

 

A one day fast-paced Hot Potato game.

 

Two teams, multiple potatoes, many blight times, 24 hours (probably less).

 

Teams of equal numbers are out in the field. A team captain is on the internet (at home or wireless). At break of dawn potatoes locations are released. Move the potatoes as quickly as possible. Use phones/FRS radios to communicate with team members. As soon as one is placed it's logged by the captain.

 

Probably need a ref/scorekeeper as well to announce blight times and keep track of scores during the day.

 

Then dinner at Red Robin (in honor of TravisL) at the end of the day. Losers pay.

This would definitely rock, especially if played 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on a long June day.

 

18 hours, 20 blights, 6 potatoes... great oogly moogly that'd be a blast.

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I was thinking about this just a few weeks ago, trying to figure out how to get a new version of it going. The Jester just brought the topic up on the GeocachingWA mailing list, so I'm cross-posting here.

 

After the last hot potato game, there was interest in doing a one-day, sunrise to sunset hot potato game, with blights and all that. One person on each team, the "general", would be at some base station fielding cell phone calls, directing his team where to place the potato, and logging the potato's placement. Multiple potatoes moving would make this even more of a challenge.

 

The part that would make this lame, and that I can't figure out how to prevent, would be if someone from Team A dropped the potato in a cache, and when someone from Team B comes to pick it up, the Team A player just follows them to the next cache. One not-so-fun workaround, I guess, is to have a half dozen Team B players arrive at the potato cache, and to conceal who picked it up, so that the Team A player doesn't know who to follow. Then it becomes a numbers race -- who can have the most vehicles at the cache site when Team B arrives to pick it up.

 

I also wouldn't want to do anything to promote speedy, reckless, evasive, or unsafe driving. If the Team B player with the potato is being pursued, the instinct would be to try to lose the car tailing him. Bad idea.

 

For those of you who didn't know about the last hot potato game, see the potato's TB page and the event's forum discussion.

 

If I were to organize Hot Potato 4, it'd have to take place some time after the Wenatchee CM.

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The part that would make this lame, and that I can't figure out how to prevent, would be if someone from Team A dropped the potato in a cache, and when someone from Team B comes to pick it up, the Team A player just follows them to the next cache.

I would think this problem could be solved with two easy solutions:

 

1) Enough potatoes where it just doesn't make sense to stay at a cache and wait for the other team

 

2) Player integrity and a strict rule saying no following or potato watching

 

This isn't a contest for a million dollars or a Moun10Bike coin. Just for fun.

 

Even with all the issues we had in previous games no one purposefully broke the rules. Everyone played within the rules, they just tested the boundaries of the rules.

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I don't see why not. You're welcome to be on my team!

 

OT:

 

I think one "new" rule to instigate would be to not hide the TB in another gadget.

 

The other thing I would suggest is to run this over a weekend when everybody's cell minutes would be free.

Edited by TotemLake
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I have been doing some thinking (I know that sounds improbable, but bear with me on this) and have a few thoughts to share.

 

Assuming we do the limited time game that Travis mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

The game starts with several spuds hidden in temporarily neutral caches (or perhaps an equal number in each territory). There is a definite time set for the spuds to be announced as dropped. Assuming that is a Saturday, there is a definite time set for suspension of the game later on Saturday. The game is suspended in place at that time. The game resumes Sunday morning at the same time as it started on Saturday. If spuds have been picked up by the end of the game on Saturday they may be placed that day, but not dropped into the caches until the given time on Sunday. There is also a set time on Sunday for the game to end with a post game dinner that evening. Perhaps Friday night could see a pre game dinner as well.

 

Each team sets up a sock puppet account for their dispatcher. That dispatcher grabs bugs and drops bugs. To cut back on some email traffic all movements are noted as notes on the bug's page and not actually logged into the cache. That will eliminate the cache owner getting bunches of bug drop notes. As soon as a team member retrieves a spud the dispatcher is notified and the bug is grabbed. When the team member places the spud in a cache the dispatcher notes on the bug page that the spud is in a particular cache.

 

One problem with the weekend is that the server was very slow last Sunday and that could cause problems if that occurs during the game.

 

One question that needs to be answered is do all spuds have the same blight times or are blight times set separately for each spud. Also how many blights will there be. I would suggest separate times for each spud and something like 6 or 8 blights per each. Perhaps even more.

 

The dates need to be known at least two weeks ahead of the dates to allow team to organize.

 

Just some thoughts on the game.

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These are some great suggestions, WeightMan.

 

One more idea. Because these potatoes would be limited use TB's -- only for one day -- and (as you suggest) they wouldn't be officially logged into caches, would we really need to use official TB's? We could just as easily use this forum, one thread per potato. This would also be less likely to run into server issues; historically, the Groundspeak.com forums don't seem to suffer under the same load issues as frequently as geocaching.com.

 

If we don't use official TB's, we can make the potatoes small enough to fit in most micros. Having them toothpick size to fit in Bisons might be problematic from the "can't find the potato in the container" issue, but a small paper keychain fob would fit in most containers.

 

I like the two-day idea.

 

Did the boundaries work well for everyone last time?

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For a limited time event like we are talking the boundaries probably should be limited as well. Too big an area means lots more gas being burned. Also the northern and southern boundaries of the combined area were hardly used. If you look at the map of the bug for the last time, I doubt too many caches were more than about ten miles into each county.

 

I like the idea of posting in forum threads. That way we don't need to have the sock puppet accounts and there would be no problem with switching dispatchers during the competition.

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Wouldn't it be better to set up a Yahoo group for it? Assuming doing so wouldn't start up another flare up with the current yahoo group. :D

 

Do we have to have 2 areas? Can't it be setup so that you have to move it a certain distance but you can place it anywhere within the big boundary? No northern and southern areas.

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I was assuming a total playing field of a strip about 20 miles wide centered on the Pierce/King County boundary. The Kingons getting points from the time they place a bug in Pierce County and the Piercing Headaches getting points from the time they place a bug in King County. Blights would count against the team with the spud in their county. Each spud would give out 60 points per hour for the duration of playing time. No points awarded over night. We might want to consider one point per hour with the time rounded off. That might eliminate some of the time pressure which would encourage people to drive faster than allowed by law. We might also impose a team penalty for a speeding ticket. The number of points for a blight hitting should be significant based on the number of points per hour. It should not be so large that the blights dominate the game. The last game was over once one team had been hit too many times. The holding and placing points were roughly even with just a slight advantage to the Kingons until the last pick up by the Piercing Headaches.

 

I would also propose that the only restriction on a cacher handling a spud be that once a spud is placed in another county only cachers on that county team may pick it up. We probably should place a restriction on caches. Perhaps any particular cache could only be used once each day.

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Add strategy to the game by making it so the player that dropped off the TB can't touch it for 2 moves. That is, each team has to move it once more before the same player could touch that TB again. Penalty pionts for illegal movement by that player.

 

So how do you keep track? Each post in the forum would be:

 

TB dropped by Username at Cache number/name.

 

Time posted on the forum will serve as the official time.

 

Question: Do we care if it gets posted the TB was picked up?

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Question: Do we care if it gets posted the TB was picked up?

I think we do, to count the time in the cache/territory. And we need a 'judge' that's online to keep score. Hmm, that sparks the idea of NOT having the scoring done real-time, but the teams just keep moving bugs until the time limit is hit. All timestamps & blights are then calculated and the score is posted.

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While I thing we should record the time the TB is picked up, points go from the time it is dropped. Each team will likely have the score tallied as they go. It might be best to hold the blight score until the game is over. Perhaps just announce the blights at the end of each day.

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One of the drawbacks is the delay. I've seen a delay in posting to the Yahoo! group from a few minutes to several hours. I'd suggest doing this 'in real time' via a chat program. This would work since what we are talking about is a one day type event with someone one on each team acting as a 'home base' of sorts logging all the activity for their team.

 

The Yahoo groups offer a passable Chat program that could be used to communicate but I'd suggest we use IRC instead. Many of us that were involved in the past versions of the game are already familiar with irc and there are many java applets that work well for anyone who doesn't have an IRC program like those of us who live on irc. :ph34r:

 

We could set up a few channels for the game. A private channel for each team and one for everyone and the Judge(s). This would also allow spectators to be able to watch the action in a matter of speaking.

 

The judge(s) scoring the game would need to make sure they have a chat program and have it set to log. (not a big deal) This will time stamp all entries in the log and provide something that can be made available to everyone at the end of the day.

Edited by Wander Lost
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