September Buccaneer Bowl results

Thanks as always to everyone who showed up, and I hope you had a great time! MonoChrome was nice and relatively lag-free. Here are your results:

First Place: The Triviators (Lotus Ceriano, Starla Gurbux, Mako Kungfu, Alanna Robbiani)

Second Place: Trumpton Trivials (Cully Andel, Liriel Garnet, Maelstrom Janus, AnaMaria Quintessa)

Third Place: Zen & The Koans (Rhea Neiro, Juke Badger, Hilda Static, Sal Zulaman)

Fourth Place (tie): Oh, Boomcirceschism (Chaddington Boomhauer, Circe Falta, Honey Potez, JoshuaStephen Schism)

Fourth Place (tie): Frivolous Corsairs (Rain Ninetails, Olmstead Fanshaw, Lou Netizen)

Sixth Place: Schadenfreude (Billy2Times Krams, Luce Portland, Devin Velinov, Becki Verne)

Seventh Place: Voracious Viridians (Leyna Brandenburg, Cygnoir Blanc, Rach Borkotron, Browman Griffith)

There were a few surprises in addition to the last-minute change of venue. The third place team, Zen & the Koans, are a brand new team (though a couple of their members have played on other teams in previous months) and won one of the five rounds. The Triviators' margin of victory was slimmer than during their other winning games, and the Trumpton Trivials attained their highest spot in the standings since their victory last January.

There was an eighth team, a pickup team, but one of the members (someone I had not seen previously at any trivia events and who said at the beginning that it was late for her in her time zone) disappeared in the middle of the game. Unfortunately, it seems that pickup teams are often fragile like that, lacking the team spirit and cohesion that a lot of the consistent teams have. Occasionally, they do end up with a strong roster and do well, but those seem to be more the exception than the rule.

One of the reasons we put the pre-game hour into effect was so that new teams would have time to get settled, get to know each other, pick a team name, friend each other so they can have a conference IM active, and so forth, but this doesn't work when new people are still only arriving or only deciding to play at 9:59. Of course, some people do leave because something comes up or because they get frustrated by the level of competition (apparently even when I warn new players that it is very competitive, they don't realize exactly what that means and think I think they're not smart or something). The former can't always be anticipated, but what I want to curb is abandonments that could have been helped. I don't want people to continue getting left in a lurch.

Beginning next month, team formation is going to have to close at 9:45am and rosters announced at 10:00am on the dot. Teams that preregistered, of course, can still get there at 10, but if your team is incomplete or if you don't have one, you must. come. early. (Thank you to Vandy Spargel, who, even though she ended up not being able to stay anyway, came early enough that we were about to place her on an incomplete team.) I have to emphasize, this doesn't mean arriving at 9:45 if you don't have a team, since it takes more than 59 seconds to form one. It means coming early enough so you know exactly who you're playing with by 9:45 and you can use the next fifteen minutes to find out your teammates' strengths and weaknesses, come up with a team name and identity, choose a captain, and get a group IM working.

This is also so that Thorn and Lillian can get their spreadsheets organized and printed out before the game begins. They start asking me two nights before the game for team lists: there is no such thing as too early to preregister. Even if you don't want to come early for yourselves, please come early for the sake of our awesome scorekeepers.

I'll announce the date of the October game as soon as we've decided on one.

P.S. I love all of you who come month after month. Thanks for continuing to make this a successful event!

News: MMtrivia... new events this week

Billy @ Metal Shop

This Monday, May 18, saw a good turnout for the first trivia event held at rock club the Metal Shop. Billy2Times Krams will be hosting trivia there Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:00 to 8:00pm. Monday nights, he'll be bringing music to the masses in question form, while the Wednesday format consists of pop culture-heavy general knowledge. Other nights of the week, the Metal Shop hosts rock music and dancing.

Owners Vegas Ember and JH Fall recently moved the year-old Metal Shop to its current location on Sundance Isle sim. The move brings along two welcome changes. One is the new trivia, of course, but according to the proprietors, the other is less lag, which is something everyone can love. Billy kicked off his event by dealing out L$30/20 prizes for first and second place on Monday, though they will typically be L$20/10 for a slate of twenty-five questions.


Lou @ [MonoChrome]

Little Lou Netizen makes big by taking on Saturdays at [MonoChrome] from 12:00 to 1:00pm. She'll be dealing out L$50 per answer for each of twenty questions at her opening gig on May 23. The questions will be general knowledge, with varying difficulty levels. She'll have some gimmes and some stumpers. Word on the street is she'll be building this event up to be something unique and original, so support her on the first day so you can see how it evolves.


Lette @ The Grotto

I've been invited to host a themed trivia event for custom build and prefab store Culture Cannibals as they add a line of caskets to their stock of household items. The trivia will focus on vampires and the occult, with 40 questions at L$25 each, plus some fabulous store giveaway bonus prizes, including a sarcophagus modeled after one from the Medici Chapel of the Princes in Florence. If I can twist some of your arms to join me, it will be a super, fun event!

The Specs:
=> Host: Billy2Times Krams
=> Times: 6:00 to 8:00pm Mondays and Wednesdays
=> Location: The Metal Shop, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sundance%20Isle/239/196/24
=> Prizes: 25 questions, L$20 and L$10 for first and second place

=> Host: Lou Netizen
=> Times: 12:00 to 1:00pm Saturdays
=> Location: [MonoChrome], http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dysis%20Isle/118/28/757
=> Prizes: 20 questions, L$50 each

=> Host: Lette Ponnier
=> Times: 1:00 to 3:00pm Saturday, May 23 only
=> Location: The Grotto, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Melioria/77/77/28
=> Prizes: 40 questions, L$25 each, plus store products

News: [MonoChrome] Grand Opening

Ten days old and already boasting a following of colorful (and colourful) characters, [MonoChrome] (the brackets are part of the name) is the brainchild of Jez Oh, Sinnamon Sands, and Mandy Ash, late of the recently departed Club Cherri Red. The lounge that has sprung up in the wake of Cherri Red's closure is a different sort of hang-out spot entirely. As Jez puts it, [MonoChrome] is meant to be not about lights and noise and dancers but about the people who attend the events. "We provide the canvas, you provide the color," reads their tag line. From what I've been able to see so far, however, the gray-pallet [MonoChrome] generates plenty of color from within, as well.

Although Sinn hosted a well-attended inaugural trivia event two weekends ago, the official grand opening will take place this Saturday, May 9. [MonoChrome]'s management plans to host not only trivia but also live music in the space as the club develops. Appropriately, Saturday's schedule thus includes a sandwiching of trivia in between two live acts. Folk/pop soloist AM Moonites kicks the event off at 1:00pm SLT, while singer/songwriter AMFORTE Clarity caps it by performing at 3:00. Sinn takes the stage between 2:00 and 3:00 for a helping of her Survey Says game.

Jez Oh

For those new to this format, Survey Says echoes the long-running game show Family Feud, which asks contestants to guess survey results about topics such as "Foods that are blue" or "Things you don't want to break while you're using them." In the Second Life version, Sinn announces the category, and players spam the chat with answers for sixty seconds. Once she calls time, she sifts through the spam to find the players who guessed each of the survey answers first. Winners receive linden dollars equivalent to the number of respondents who gave each answer. The categories and answers are taken from the show itself, which provides an interesting variety of questions, as the program has been running almost continuously since 1976.

Those who have already visited [MonoChrome] probably don't need me to urge them to come again. Those who haven't should put the Grand Opening event on their calendars for Saturday. Some of the lounge's finer details seem to have gone over well with its early patrons. Most importantly, the building -- a fully enclosed skybox that is nonetheless claustrophobe-friendly on account of its multi-tiered architecture -- was designed with lag minimization in mind. While shooting photos in the space, I turned my graphics up to Ultra and found the camera movement to remain completely lag-free. Whether this will be true with forty avatars on the premises is yet to be determined, but the color schemers have certainly done the best they can.

Sinnamon Sands

Less commonplace than an effort to curb lag is their effort to curb chat spam as well. At [MonoChrome], they "promise not to spam you with notecards and landmarks and group invites upon your arrival," but in return, they also ask patrons "not to spam us and your fellow guests with noisy or text-intensive ASCII gestures" (according to a draft of the club's Statement of Principles). Brief gestures are tolerated in moderation, but this request to keep the communication channels relatively free of canned sound files and excess textiness is consistent with [MonoChrome]'s goal to focus on the character of the people, who are trusted to provide a "higher level of discourse" without the assistance of semi-automated and repetitive gesturing.

If the events that have already taken place at [MonoChrome] are any indication, an afternoon of trivia can be upbeat and sociable on the basis of the company and their wit and conversation. In the future, the staff at the club plan to host more parties and live music events, as well as a broader range of trivia games. Jez will still DJ with with fabulous cover song playlists. This weekend's lineup should provide a good sampling, so try to find a moment to drop in and check it out.

Specs:
=> Time: Saturday, May 9, 1:00-4:00pm SLT
1:00-2:00pm AM Moonites performs
2:00-3:00pm Survey Says trivia
3:00-4:00pm AMFORTE Clarity performs
=> Location: [MonoChrome], http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dysis%20Isle/118/28/757
=> Host: Sinnamon Sands
=> Prizes: Eight questions, L$100 available for each, divided among multiple winners