By Popular Demand Starting up

Instructions

You know what? This blog needs a contest or a game again. I'm not ready to run a PBeM game like Diplo (yet), and I'm not going to resurrect Caption contests like I ran on Consimworld-- they are fun, but I think they've run their course with me. I am, however, quite willing to run something once a week called BY POPULAR DEMAND. This game, invented by Ryk Downes, is a favorite with British PBM zines and is, I think, derived from an earlier radio show.

The rules are dirt simple, require NO extensive negotiation with anyone, and only require players to email or PM me SIX SINGLE WORDS.

Here's how you play:

This is a simple game for any number of players who may join in at any time. It normally runs over a number of turns predetermined by the GM.

Standard Game

Each turn the GM lists 6 categories and an initial letter. All you have to do is find something that fits the category and begins with the initial letter; you will score points equal to the number of people who offer the same answer as you. The winner is the person with the most points at the end (after a predetermined number of turns).

Example:

GM names categories (in this example, which I copied from another game in progress, the GM is not using the FIRST LETTER option. I will use that for our games here, because it adds a little challenge)

1 Internet Something found on the Internet.

2 Uses Something you could use a computer for - other than browse the Internet

3 CPU chip Name a Central Processing Unit (CPU) chip.

4 Component Name a computer part - other than the CPU.

5 Languages Name of a computer programming language.


Players send in (secretly) their choices

Category 1 gets Porn 7, Website 4, Web pages 2, E-mail 1, Games 1, Information 1, Messages 1, Sex 1, Shopping 1, Web 1.


seven people got seven points, four people got four points, two people got two points, etc.


Category 2 gets E-mail 7, Word processing 5, Games 4, Zine production 2, Adjudicate games 1, Writing letters 1.


seven people got seven points, five people got five points, four people got four points, etc.


Category 3 gets Intel Pentium 7, Intel 4, Intel Pentium III 3, Intel Pentium IV 2, Bert 1, Intel Pentium 100 1, Microchip 1, Power Mac G4 1.


you know the scoring by now...


and Category 4: Hard drive 7, Mouse 5, Keyboard 4, Monitor 2, CD ROM 1, Modem 1.


and Category 5: C 5, Java 4, Basic 3, C++ 3, Fortran 2, DOS 1, HTML 1, Visual Basic 1.



The game, as played here, will run for ten rounds. You can play or not play every week, come in and/or leave, miss a deadline, it's okay. Your final score really is dependant on how close you align your answers to everyone else, and that can be quite variable.

Obviously, you can't post your answers here as a comment. Sharing answers offline, I needn't say but will anyway, spoils the whole nature of the game itself.

Communicating answers to me

So I'll choose Fridays (all day) as the day you send in your topic answers-- this is probably a slow pace to play this game with (three days is generous) but given the problems we had making deadlines with DIPLO, not unwarranted. You can send responses via email (hotspur@rocketmail.com), personal message on Consimworld, personal message on Boardgamegeek (hotspur) Yahoo messenger (hotspur.rm) or SKYPE (misternizz). There will always be six categories. I will run this game for TEN ROUNDS (10, 10, 10!) and then score. Sunday or Monday I'll post the Score for the round and the answers everyone came up with. I will post the score both here and on Consimworld.

Ready? Next post is the Categories for ROUND 1.

Variant rules for By Popular Demand