[HPforGrownups] Re: CHAPTER DISCUSSION PS/SS 10, THE HALLOWEEN

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 188350

Carol responds:
> Baseball is the only sport, aside from volleyball, that I can understand and the only one that I enjoy watching. Go, Yankees! Quidditch would bore me to tears even though the rules are extremely simple. I'd feel as it the Chasers and other players were just filling in time till a Seeker caught the Snitch, ending and in most cases winning the game. I'm sure someone will remind me that the points determining the House Quidditch champion team are cumulative, so the Chasers' points do matter, but that wouldn't make me any more interested in a sport that's simultaneously dangerous and, IMO, boring.
>   

Bart:
    Actually, the rules of Quidditch appear to be far more 
straightforward than many other sports, although we don't learn much 
about the rules on fouls, penalties, and time-outs, but, frankly, I'm 
hard-pressed to find a spectator sport that has more complex rules than 
baseball (although cricket probably comes in second).

    Given that (and I believe this group has had this discussion before, 
but it's probably a good idea to bring it up again every couple of 
years), I also agree that the scoring system is all off, even given the 
cumulative nature of the game (certainly, in Hogwarts, the games are too 
far apart to make the early games interesting, and note that the world 
championship is a single game). As I have mentioned at some time or 
other, I used to be involved in game design (mostly non-computer); part 
of what I did was analysis of proposed rule systems, looking for 
"glitches" (places where the rules were unbalanced). And, frankly, if 
someone were to hand me Quidditch, I would have definitely found the 
Seeker's role to be too much of an unbalancing factor.

     If I were doing an analysis, these would be my major recommendations.

    1) Get rid of the excess zeroes (all points are multiples of 10): 
That's for pinball/video games, not for sports. It's unnecessary chrome 
(a game term for aspects of a game which have nothing to do with who 
wins or loses but make it more interesting; for example, in chess, 
naming pieces after figures in a kingdom is "chrome"). In story note: in 
the HP series, the 10x points were used because of their relative effect 
on school points (which, one may note, get less and less valuable as the 
series went on). But that could be handled through a conversion factor, 
as in, "Every point in Quidditch adss 10 points to the house score, so 
be sure as to score as many as possible!" said Percy.

    2) Games are either singular or cumulative. If they are cumulative, 
then games should be played as a series BETWEEN THE SAME TEAMS. In a 
setting like Hogwarts, for example, there should be at least twice as 
many games, preferably 3 times as many. Let's consider an effective 
school year of 36 weeks. Currently, there's a game every 6 weeks; if 
there were one every other week, that would make a more sensible idea of 
"series". But there's a problem here. The WW just doesn't have a big 
enough population to sustain such regular playing. At Hogwarts, just 
getting together 4 competent teams together is problematic, with only 
about 60-70 students in a house.

    3) The point score for catching the Snitch is excessive. In general, 
the only time a team will lose after catching the Snitch is if the team 
is completely outclassed by the competition. At best, and within the 
spirit of the game, a good Seeker should be able to overcome a slightly 
inferior team (just as, in baseball, a great pitcher can make up for a 
slightly inferior team, but not a completely outclassed one). I'd 
recommend halving it; playtesting with 7(0) points for capturing the 
Snitch (playtesting is a game design term for the designer(s) observing 
a game being played, with the proviso that the designer(s) can make any 
alterations they like along the way, including stopping the game and 
starting from ground zero. From the players' point of view, the object 
is to see if the game works, not to win).

    Bart