Table after Round 2:





Round 3

Mexican Standoff Arena - KGB v CIA
Cold War Theatre - MIB v MI6



New players are welcome and encouraged to join by posting in this thread

Duplicate idea is awesome, only problem is that it makes cheating way easier. Obviously teams could be cheating in this format as well, but it would at least require a conspiracy.

Not to mention it would be pretty easy for a player to accidentally spoil themselves. We've already had players almost guess for the wrong team - pretty easy to open the wrong thread.

I think 95%+ of POGers are honest but I hate for even the implication of cheating to be out there. I can't take the trivia games completely seriously because of it.

As is my wont, I was spending a good portion of last night not sleeping, and instead thinking about random things.

It occurred to me that clue giving and playing sheep have a certain skill set overlap. In both games you need to get in the mind of other players, and focus on the simplest, level 1 associations between things.

Clue giving is almost like reverse sheep. You have "answers" (the words) in front you, and you need to think of a "question" (clue) to yield those answers.

Spy mastering is Jeopardy style sheep!

I was looking at some old jeopardy sheeps recently. Will be doing one soon

As far as cheating goes, there are a bunch of games that you could easily cheat for and people generally don't

To avoid accidental cheating I would say that you should put the names in the thread title for those who can go in there and if someone still manages to accidentally cheat then they need to self ban themselves for the round. If the spymaster accidentally cheats then it's gg.

Why not just say: Federal Bureau of Investigation as your clue instead of FBI?

in?

That is fine as a proper noun. The problem is with using different parts of a proper noun as clues, instead of using it as a whole.

You will be joining the KGB

Your first assignment is already in progress in the Mexican Standoff Arena (teammates listed at top of linked page)

Does anyone have mod power to change the thread title..

It would be nice if "Rules" was in the title..

I'm up for R4 spymastering for MI6 when the time comes.

I think that would be against us (MIB), In the Mexican Standoff Arena thread.

If our R4 game starts after 7PM sever time today I can be spymaster for for MIB. If it starts earlier, someone else can and should go.

I would need some help/reminder on how to get the game board and how to update it.

Table after Round 3:





Round 4

Mexican Standoff Arena - MI6 v MIB
Cold War Theatre - CIA v KGB



New players are welcome and encouraged to join by posting in this thread

Can everyone playing please read these (I blacked out a part not relevant to forum play):






Some of the gray areas have been addressed and clarified in this thread and in the two game threads, such as rhyming not allowed (but it should be noted that it is only not allowed as the main association between the two words).

I would happily allow rhymes in future games if that's what most people want, but lets stick to what we have been doing for this tournament to avoid any more confusion.

Table after Round 4:





Round 5

Mexican Standoff Arena - CIA v MIB
Cold War Theatre - KGB v MI6

New players are welcome and encouraged to join by posting in this thread

Table after Round 5:





Round 6

Mexican Standoff Arena - MIB v KGB
Cold War Theatre - MI6 v CIA



After round 6, 1st will play 2nd in the grand final, and 3rd will play 4th in the third place playoff.

The final and playoff will be first to win two rounds, with 1st and 3rd place starting round 1 as red, round 2 as blue and round 3 as red. 1st and 3rd place teams (spymasters) will have the option after seeing the board in round 1 and/or round 3 of changing to blue for that round.

Table after Round 6:




In a cruel twist of fate, MI6 loses out to CIA on head-to-head points (4-3).


Final

Mexican Standoff Arena - MIB v CIA

3rd Place Playoff

Cold War Theatre - MI6 v KGB




The final and playoff will be first to win two rounds



As teams MIB and MI6 finished 1st and 3rd respectively, they will start each round as follows:

Round 1 Red
Round 2 Blue
Round 3 Red (If no team has two wins at this point)


In rounds 1 and/or 3 the RED spymaster has the option to swap to blue for that round. He/she can do this by clearly indicating his/her intention in the game thread, instead of posting the first clue.



***************************************
Important rules update:

For the remainder of this competition, multi-word proper nouns are restricted to the following:

• Place names
• People/characters

I feel forced to do this due to the confusion in some games.

When using a proper noun, the words you are linking must actually relate to the proper noun itself, NOT the individual words in the proper noun title, or something else by the same name as the proper noun.

For example, Jean Claude Van Damme is perfectly acceptable as a clue for Belgium, muscles and kick. It is NOT acceptable for beaver, truck, clawed, trousers or other connotations that have nothing to do with the specific person Jean Claude Van Damme.
***************************************

Have fun!

Spurs. Two suggestions for your consideration.

1) Have the opposing spymaster as the only person who can challenge the legality of a clue. This would make sense, as he/she can see both the clue and the full board.

2) Perhaps the ruling for a confirmed illegal clue (not a suspected, or potential illegal clue) should be forfeiture.

Having caused fiasco #1 myself, I'd like to think there is a reasonable penalty remedy. However, what has been "seen" cant be "unseen," and we all know that in both games where illegal clues came into play, the rest of the game was tainted.

If people knew that forfeiture was at stake, there would be a greater onus to read and fully understand the rules, and an increased likelihood that one spymaster would check with the other spymaster prior to posting any questionable clue.

Just something to consider. Not to make the game more competitive, but to just terminate it before the inevitable fireworks begin.

Of course people would need to know that the clue must be illegal (not just suspected as being illegal). Having the opposing spymaster as the only person who can challenge a clue would help with respect to things getting heated when a "suspected" illegal clue appears.

Don't have to go with forfeiture, just go with rule book where other team gets to color in one word of their choosing.

The reason we didn't before is this is a new game so people are still learning the rules

The problem with that in this current format is:

What if the other spymaster is offline for like 3 hours, and

1) An illegal clue is given
2) Words are then guessed and verified
3) Spymaster comes back and...

I still don't understand the reason (other than sheer pussification) that we dropped the "team flips over one of their own words" part of the original game rules.

Ideally, if in doubt, one spymaster PMs the other with the exact clue and intended words that are linked to it. The other spymaster can then give the OK before anyone else sees anything. It can be decided between them, or if necessary a third uninvolved party, all out of the thread. So no spew whatsoever. This has happened in a couple of situations already that I know of, and nobody complained obviously.

With regards to the punishment, the leniency is to encourage new players and get everyone on the same page and having fun. Once everybody has played a few games, and we hash out the rules how we like them (which I think we have been doing), then the original game punishment (autopass + other team getting a word of their choice revealed) is probably appropriate for most cases.

I have tried to be fair in judgements. Now that we are at the stage where everyone has played as spymaster, any punishment is more likely to be on the heavier side.

Great! This is good. If not forfeiting, then the penalizing team should lose a ton of win equity, and this looks like it would accomplish that.

Yes, that could happen. But sometimes there is nobody on the other team monitoring the board anyway, and play continues. If it did occur as you said, and let's suppose red scored 2 words off an illegal clue, ...once the blue spymaster was back on line and could verify that the clue was in fact illegal, then blue could turn 2 of their own + a penalty word, and it is their turn... Kind of fixes that. Whatever red gained illegally, blue gets the same +1.

Just thinking it keeps all communication between just the spymasters and perhaps a neutral party, and there would then be no need or reason for in-thread discussion or speculation on the "intent" of any given clue.. you just PM your spymaster and let him/her deal with it.. and everyone just checks out until they sort it out.

gg all - really enjoyed the tourney.

Thanks a lot to spurs for putting this together!

+1 thanks for all your work Spurs, and for all your patience...!!!

Thanks spurs! GGs all