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Season 4 Arena Games pre-draft discussion


薔薇語

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I don't know if there is going to be a Season 4.

 

Or, let me rephrase: I don't know if I'll be the one to run a Season 4. It's a lot of work. I would love to play, in fact, and help out someone else if they will run it, but I'm just not sure I'm ready to do it yet myself.

 

Volunteers?

The Lord Commissioner as just another player? I can hardly conceive of such a thing! What's next, the Broncos actually winning a Super Bowl?!

 

(Um, Logan, you DO know what generally happens to cops when they wind up in prison, right! :bmk: Just sayin'.)

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So the core mechanic in matches is: each manager spends points, there's a popular vote, and an RNG element; high accumulation wins.

 

Points come from a base initial allotment, occasional trivia quizzes, and ___? Fiction, innuendo, cash bribery?

 

Initial draft, then periodic free agent offerings. Rosters of half a dozen or so?

 

Matches several days a week, with an initial season to build up standings. And a postseason? concurrent? single-elimination tournament ending in some sort of championship.

 

Matches have a sort of theme, site, environment, or something, which may provide a couple freebie points to one or both combatants.

 

What have I left out?

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A few observations from previous seasons, if I may presume.
 

So the core mechanic in matches is: each manager spends points, there's a popular vote, and an RNG element; high accumulation wins.

 
 
a. Each manager spends points, although there has always been a cap as to how many points one may spend (15 in Season I, 12 in Season II, 10 in Season III, as I recall).
 
b. The popular vote is pretty straightforward.
 
c. The Random Number Generator was a d12 in Seasons I and II, and 3d6 in Season III.  Personally, I prefer the 3d6. I expect that I am not alone in this opinion, as the d12 was often regarded as a spiteful, arbitrary little [redacted], but I can offer no proof.  

 

Points come from a base initial allotment, occasional trivia quizzes, and ___? Fiction, innuendo, cash bribery?

 
 
The initial allotment came from the manager's draft picks, based on meeting certain character criteria (Fr'ex, bonus points for female, non-Caucasian, published before / after a certain date, having a certain color in their name, foci meeting certain requirements, etc.).
 
Trivia quizzes were used to bolster points in Seasons I and II. This led to certain players--those with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of comic book history and trivia, especially--amassing huge point totals, while others who hadn't read comics in decades (or ever) scrambling to get three or four points here and there. This was replaced in Season III by a Homework system, where any player who was willing and able to invest the time and effort could earn bonus points. In both cases, these opportunities were offered most (but not all) weeks.
 
Oh, and in Season I (and maybe Season II), a player could earn bonus points be winning all five matches in a week. It only happened once or twice, as I recall. (Against me in Season I, I know for sure.)
 
 

Initial draft, then periodic free agent offerings. Rosters of half a dozen or so?

 
 
Rosters so far have been 8 each season. Returning players have been allowed to keep one returning character (or two, if they had leftover points to spend from the previous season). New players, or players opting not to keep any characters from the previous season, made up Round 1.  Round 2 then proceeded  in reverse order of finish from the previous season, With new players picking first, followed by returning players who didn't make the playoffs, continuing until the returning champion made the last pick.  Round 3 was then in reverse order of Round 2, and rounds 4-8 continued in repeating serpentine fashion. The defending champ would make the last pick of the draft.

 

Each round of the draft would have a theme. The first round was usually Open; following rounds would have themes like Girl Power (female characters only), 80s Night (characters must have been introduced in the 1980s), Color of Victory (character names must include a color), Amalgam (don't ever do this one again), and so on. We can probably compile a list of the various draft themes that have been used, if you're interested.

 

The only real provision for character selection after the draft was for characters who lost a match by 20+ points and were considered 'rebooted'. These characters were selected randomly from a previously published list of C- and D-listers. Having such a character on your roster was NOT considered a good thing, although Squirrel Girl and Captain Carrot did all right. 

 

 

Matches several days a week, with an initial season to build up standings. And a postseason? concurrent? single-elimination tournament ending in some sort of championship.

 
 
Matches have traditionally been held Monday through Friday.  In Seasons I and II, The same two players would face each other for the entire week, with the first player to win 3 matches taking the week.  Standings were based on weeks won, with individual match victories as a tiebreaker.  In Season III, a new format was introduced where players would face someone new each day in a rotating schedule. Each player ended up facing each other player a total of four times. While it was undoubtedly more work for the Lord Commissioner, I greatly prefer this setup.
 
At the end of the regular season, the Top Four teams in the standings faced off in a single elimination tournament, in a 1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3 format.  In Seasons I and II, this was Best of Five series, meaning the first to win three matches advanced. In Season III, this was changed to a Best of Three series (and all three series went the full three matches). The winner of the tournament was declared the season champion (Hermit in Seasons I and II, Lady Pariah in Season III).
 
 

Matches have a sort of theme, site, environment, or something, which may provide a couple freebie points to one or both combatants.

 

 

A location was specified for each match, and there were usually (but not always) bonuses for certain characters based on the location. Fr'ex, non-flyers received  +3 or +4 in the Cargo Plane, characters without Resistant Defenses got +1 in Otford Manor, characters without appropriate Life Support got +1 or +2 in the Cave of the Crystals, the iceberg, and the interplanetary junkyard, and so forth. Some locations, like the Redwood Forest, offered no bonuses and were considered true neutral ground.  This is probably where the Mud Wrasslin' thing would come into play.

 

In Season II especially, most matches had themes in addition to their special locations. These themes would limit shich characters could be played that day.  For example, we had things like Ladies Night (female characters only), Powerless Peril (no superpowers or super tech), Naked Aggression (no equipment [or clothes!]), Tag Team, and so on.  I personally felt that having a theme every single day was a little too restrictive, but two or three times a week would have been fine. (Nobody actually asked me, of course.)

 

Anyway, that's what I know/remember.  Take it for what it's worth.

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I second; as an added bonus they are both splendiferous sages of comic book lore (never too early to start sucking up).

You're hilarious, my friend. Truth is, I haven't read comics regularly in over 20 years. I gave up collecting comics just after Marvel's "Fall of the Mutants" and never really picked it back up. (The fact that I wasn't really reading comics at all for two years after that probably contributed to it.) Any comic book reading I do these days is thanks to the library, which means by definition they're out of date. And, oddly enough, I've never really read much DC and practically no Indy comics.

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  • 2 months later...

Here's an idea I'm batting about to help determine eligible characters: no fliers. If a character can fly, they're automatically out. My reasoning is thus: for all of the characters that need to be ruled on, this will give an easy black & white line. It takes out a lot of good characters, too, but really elevates a lot of street level types.

 

The exception would be if a character can easily remove their flying device and go without, say a Legion flight ring, then they might be allowed.

 

Thoughts?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here's an idea I'm batting about to help determine eligible characters: no fliers. If a character can fly, they're automatically out. My reasoning is thus: for all of the characters that need to be ruled on, this will give an easy black & white line. It takes out a lot of good characters, too, but really elevates a lot of street level types.

 

The exception would be if a character can easily remove their flying device and go without, say a Legion flight ring, then they might be allowed.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

So, would Foxbat be eligible, since his 'Flight' is just Gliding?

 

Asking for a friend. :winkgrin:

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