What is a Draft Game?

You, optionally with a partner, will sign up and randomly receive a slot in the draft order. Each time it is your turn, you will draft one item -- in this case, a country (UN member state). You can't draft the same country as someone else. Once the draft is complete, players and spectators (bona fide POG members) will vote for whoever's total selections are best.

What is the theme for this draft?

You will be setting up an imaginary food festival which begins the evening before a four-day holiday weekend. Visitors will pay a single entry fee to get access to unlimited food and beverage for the entire weekend. Each country that you draft will receive a tent in the festival grounds. Several qualified native (and multilingual) cooks will prepare a variety of dishes that are commonly associated with their country. This may include breakfast items, main courses, sides, desserts, cocktails, and anything else that you can think of. All native fruits and other ingredients will be available. Beer, wine, coffee, tea, etc may be imported as well if it's culturally significant. The quality of the facilities will be adequate for all types of cooking, and the food will be similar to that of an above-average restaurant in the native country. (Extra charges apply for premium-brand alcohol. Sorry.) Portions will be small so that visitors can sample as much as possible. As the event manager, you may discuss your ideas with the cooks, but ultimately they are free to make their own decisions about how to best represent their countries. Generic entertainment will be provided so that people stay throughout the duration of the festival.

How do I win?

You must convince other people to vote for your festival as the one that they would most like to have in their hometown. (With the demographics of this forum, you might struggle to convince people to go to a festival full of American, Canadian, and British cuisine. Just food for thought.) If you sign up for this game, you are expected to post a writeup for each individual selection at the time that you make it, or at least by the end of the day. At the end of the draft you are expected to make a final writeup which ties together all of your selections. You'll want to convince people that not only will you have good food, but also that the different offerings complement each other. You are not limited in the arguments that you make: you can use your own judgement about which foods and drinks qualify as "commonly associated" with your countries. However, you don't have direct control over the cooks who will be doing the actual preparations, so voters may be wary of players who stretch the limits, and they will be allowed to share those feelings in the thread prior to the voting.

What are the rules and other details?

All of the rules (or at least most of them) are open to debate. To kick things off, I'll start with the following proposals:

• Size: 10 players with 8 rounds (80 total selections out of 193 possibilities)
• Draft Order: Snake (ABABABAB - top to bottom, bottom to top, repeat). If people think that #1 in the order has too big of an advantage, then we can do ABBABABA, but my instinct is that it's not necessary for this game.
• Research: Allowed and encouraged. (How else will you include pictures in your writeups? Hint hint.)
• Trades: You are allowed to trade future picks as well as countries you've already drafted. It's allowable to end up with a different number of total picks as a result. (Variety is the spice of life.) You are allowed to discuss trades by private message or in the draft thread. It is assumed that all trades are being made in good faith. Voters may be unimpressed if two friends make a clearly lopsided deal.
• Time limits: I don't remember what is standard. Let's say a six hour clock, and each player can also set a fixed six hour sleep period where it pauses for them. Each player's sleep period would be posted in the OP for quick reference. (Is that too complicated?) If the clock runs out, you are skipped. You don't lose your pick, and you can make it as soon as you return, but someone behind you may draft the country you had in mind. To prevent this from happening, send your pick by private message to the person behind you so that they may post it for you if you know that you will not be around when it's likely to be your turn. You're expected to be ready when it is your turn as much as possible to keep the game moving along. If you have a partner, your team is expected to make a selection when either member comes online.
• Voting: All players are required to submit a ballot. To avoid ethical dilemmas, players will omit themselves on their own ballot. Spectators may vote. It is not permissible for players to contact non-players to ask them to vote, or to try in any way to influence the voting by any means other than through posts in the draft thread. Votes from spectators will only be counted if they are from bona fide POG members, at the discretion of the game mod. To vote, rank each entry (except your own) from best to worst. Assuming 10 players, first place will receive 9 points and each subsequent place will receive one point fewer. Voting will be done by private message and ballots will remain private. Players are expected to vote in good faith rather than try to sabotage the strongest competitors.
• Undrafted countries: Players and spectators may not mention any countries yet to be drafted. This includes conversations made by private message to discuss trades. Granted, we have a closed set of possible draft items, so this is less of a concern than in most draft games, but I think it's best to keep the rule in place anyway.
• Placeholder: Because I probably didn't remember everything.

Who is in charge?

My intention is to run this game myself as a non-player. That could change if the game needs an additional player.

How do I sign up?

Post in this thread to sign up, and please also comment on any aspects of the rules and setup that you have thoughts on.

in, depending on when it runs

although I wish there was a way to break countries down by region, when appropriate -- UNDRAFTED and UNDRAFTED and UNDRAFTED and UNDRAFTED have so many types of regional food within their borders that vary so wildly that it's hard to pinpoint a particular cuisine as representing the whole country except in an overly reductive way

and I was sort of hoping there would be additional categories like restaurant or city or iconic dish

but this is def cool

in. this sounds like a cool idea.

seems well thought out as well. only things that might need additional clarification are deadlines for the voting phase, and what if any limitations you want to place on convincing the voters against other offerings instead of for your own.

in

i'll pretty much always be in for a draft. if i'm not in your draft, you know it's a terrible draft.

i like the idea of possibly breaking up some countries. i happily leave it up to soah.

You may safely assume that each country's menu will be large enough to include a sufficient variety, and your cooks will know how to prepare food from each region of their country. You do get to make suggestions to them, and they will try to accommodate reasonable requests, so in your writeups you can feel free to tout as many different items as you see fit. The festival runs for four and a half days and portions will be small, so if you draft a country with many unique offerings you can certainly make the argument in your final writeup that patrons spend a disproportionate amount of their time at that country's tent.

I'll think about additional categories, but offhand I'm not sure of anything that I think would integrate well with this. If we get a lot of players then I imagine it would be necessary to add something else.

We'll figure out the voting phase when we get there.

In your final writeup you'll make the case for your own festival, but aside from that you're free to argue as you see fit.

Almost certainly in.

In that case, I hope I get a top three pick, because UNDRAFTED, UNDRAFTED, and UNDRAFTED are head-and-shoulders above in terms of value.

In

This sounds fun. Would partner if anyone wants.

Personally I was thinking that this would be a draft where the winner will be the one who makes the best non-obvious choices and writes well about them. If most others agree with your assessment then we can change to the modified snake order. (I don't remember what to call it.)


btw, I wrote in the OP that we would be using UN member states for this, but I think I want to change it to Wikipedia's list of sovereign states. It wasn't my intention to have there be inhabited areas which are undraftable, especially ones as populous as UNDRAFTED, UNDRAFTED, and UNDRAFTED.


We're at six people now. When it hits ten I'll allow some time for additional discussion about the setup and potential partnerships (you can still add a teammate after we start as well). Then we'll kick things off once everything looks set. The clock won't run on the first day so that no one gets taken by surprise.

sigh

I may have to out this draft; I lost my iPhone last week (which is frustrating for reasons I detailed in the single-day werewolf thread), and my replacement phone doesn't have the 2p2 app now that it's activated, despite having it yesterday when i restored from backup

since the 2p2 app is the only way i can use the forums by phone without tearing my hair out, and since the 2p2 app is no longer available for download, my participation in these forums while not at my laptop or work computer will be curtailed down to virtually nothing

and since a hugely disproportionate percent of my activity here comes when i'm not at my laptop or work computer, that could put a damper on things

we'll see

Can't speak for everyone, but I'd rather have a slower draft with Gad as participant than a faster one without him.

Since there isn't a demand for more than the 10 players originally envisioned, or calls for more than 80 total picks, we could probably lengthen the clock while still completing the game in a reasonable amount of time.

I'm going to try out Tapatalk anyway to see if it's gotten measurably better, so hopefully this won't be much of an issue

gad,

can't you just pm a list of picks to soah? you probably don't need to be around much to fully participate

where would the fun in that be?

jesus christ people. when you're pick is coming up, and you're unavailable, that's when you pm soah.

then when you can sit at your computer, you read the thread and type up vitriol about how much everyone's picks suck.

fun

Mrs well named is going to be my partner. I'm excited about this

Can't wait! Yum!

It bothers me that the W in well named is lowercase and the W in Mrs. Well named is uppercase.

Yeah me too lol. What can ya do?

there goes my strategy to pick up gaul late

That joke went over my head

i'm not sure, but i have a vague memory of you marrying an older woman? someone so old that they thought gaul was still a country

jokes you have to explain are always the best

It's okay, filthy. I understood.