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!