Rockin' Robin

Scott Hardie | February 4, 2016
Here's announcing Rock Block's tournament for spring 2016, inspired by Bobby Day's classic oldie. Players will compete in a double-round-robin tournament, with each player facing each opponent twice. Whoever racks up the most victories will earn a gift-card prize, and there are several goodies available to everyone who participates.

This tournament will be played live! All Rock Block players, current and former and not yet joined, are invited to get on Funeratic at the same time and play together, with optional participation in a live video chat during the tournament. It's my hope that by playing this way, for a couple of hours on something like a Saturday morning, that we'll be able to lure a few former or occasional players into the mix who wouldn't otherwise be able to keep up with a month-long tournament. The video chat should be lots of fun for those able and interested to join it. :-)

Since there are so few of us playing, we can coordinate to find a day and time that would be convenient for us all. So I ask:
1) Who wants to play?
2) Is Saturday morning a convenient time for you, and if not, what other times would work?
3) How does Saturday February 27 look for you?

Chris Lemler | February 4, 2016
Im in. I usually am off on Saturday

Steve West | February 4, 2016
I'm good for Saturdays in general but not the morning of 2/27. Afternoon or evening is okay. Any other Saturday morning is good for me.

Chris Lemler | February 4, 2016
Steve am I gonna get another beating from you again in this tournament.....lol.....oh wait it's gonna happen if I like it or not :)

Aaron Shurtleff | February 4, 2016
I will certainly try, but my schedule is all over the place lately. Most any weekend is as good as another, outside of mid-March.

Scott Hardie | February 4, 2016
Let's consider the morning of 2/20 or the afternoon of 2/27 then. Who else is in?

Justin Woods | February 4, 2016
I am good for the 2/27 afternoon as well.

Scott Hardie | February 6, 2016
I'm now busy on the morning of 2/20.

We're looking primarily at the afternoon of 2/27, or maybe a morning in early March.

Scott Hardie | February 21, 2016
On second thought, a proper signup mechanism that clearly delineates who's going to play from who's not is probably the best way to go, so that we don't start the tournament sitting around waiting for late arrivers who aren't coming. If you plan to play in "Rockin' Robin," please sign up now in the Registration section of the page. I'm psyched for this!

Chris Lemler | February 21, 2016
Scott what if only three players sign up for the tourney how will that work out?

Scott Hardie | February 22, 2016
We'll need at least five people signed up by midday on 12/27. If we don't get that many, we'll just cancel instead.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 22, 2016
Midday on 12/27? Plenty of time!!

;)

Chris Lemler | February 22, 2016
I like playing RB it's always fun to play in these tourneys

Scott Hardie | February 23, 2016
D'oh - midday on 2/27 of course. :-)

Aaron Shurtleff | February 24, 2016
Here's hoping I don't forget to come back and play! :D

Question: If you already have Bobby Day, will you get a second copy?

Scott Hardie | February 24, 2016
Yes. There will soon be an achievement to collect duplicates of artists, so a second Bobby Day will help with that.

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
If you're joining the video conference:

- Please plug in your headphones before connecting. If you hear a loud echoing screech, that's the feedback loop that someone caused by not using headphones. :-(

- The link is on the tournament page, at the bottom of the first section of the page, just below "discuss this tournament."

- My wireless router is junk and tends to drop my connection. If I disappear, I'll be back in a couple of minutes.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
I'm here, but I am opting out of videoconference. Been a wee bit sick, so I am fully unwashed and gross, and no one wants to see that.

Also, I may take random "breaks", but I'll come back when I can.

This ends the TMI portion of your day! Good luck everyone!!

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
Haha nice. :-) Feel better soon.

Who else is here?

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Wait! This is my chance to win five concerts in 24 hours! I can screw that up, I just KNOW it!

Maybe a concert in 15 minutes, if we don't go to Overtime too much...

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
Yes, I'd like to see someone unlock the "win a concert in 15 minutes" achievement today. That's a tough one.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Well, if I can't get it, I'm sure I'll help someone else do so!!

Does no one have it unlocked?

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
I should have set up a chat room for this in addition to the video conference. TC makes for a poor chat room.

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
Chris? Steve? Are you ready?

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
I think it'll be OK. The only thing a chat room might have would be emojis, and I think we can survive the lack of emojis!

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
I can start our concerts, Aaron (you vs me, me vs you), but I'd prefer to give Joanna and Justin as much time as we can.

If anybody needs to be done and offline by a certain time, please let me know. I have plans tonight myself but I doubt this will take that long. In fact, once we really start playing, I doubt this will take more than an hour.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
I'm in no hurry. And I don't think Chris or Steve are here anyways yet (as far as I know).

Justin Woods | February 27, 2016
He is here and working the issue. Sorry again for the delay. I can try with my iPhone. :)

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Whoa! I got distracted for a minute there. Checked an old article in Other Discussions Started by Scott Hardie, and it led to a 404 page on Gamespot, and their 404 page has a mini-dungeon crawler! That was interesting, although, the game was not much of a game. Just wandering through a random maze/dungeon and picking up treasure chests with randomly named loot.

However, I did play four levels, so that shows where I am...

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
Thanks for the update! It seems like it's just the three of us at the moment, so I haven't started any concerts yet. I'm standing by to hear that more people are on and ready to play.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
It was an article about a Phantom gaming system made in Longboat Key(?). I think the discussion was titled the Phantom Menace, if anyone wants to waste their time. :P

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
That is pretty neat. :-) You can go to "gamespot.com/404" to find it, or any non-existing url at that domain really. Good find, Aaron.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Is anyone else here yet? Just checking!

Justin Woods | February 27, 2016
I am online now and in the video conference.

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
Justin just joined the video conference. Joanna should be online in a few minutes.

Still no sign of Chris or Steve. :-(

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Steve wins all the Tournaments anyways! ;)

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
We're probably going to play in a few minutes with a set of Aaron/Joanna/Justin/Scott.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Woo! I have a shot at 20 ranks instead of 10!!

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
So. Many. Concerts! lol

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
Dang, I submitted just after my concert vs Justin timed out. Remember to play within 15 minutes, not 15 minutes and 5 seconds. :-)

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
So far, so mediocre for me! 50/50 might not win it for me...

Steve West | February 27, 2016
So hard to keep track of so many!!!

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Pro Tip: If you look at the timed out concerts against Chris, they will populate as wins for you.

Not much of a tip, but...

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Oddly enough, I got the five wins in 24 hours, but not the 15 minute finish. Too many matches at once, so they went too long. Oh well. Try try again!

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
Chris just got home and online right as his concerts were timing out. :-( I'll still count him as a participant so he qualifies for the prizes.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
:( That stinks. Sorry, man.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Dangit, Steve! You'll never get to use that rule you unlock for winning a tournament if you don't let anyone else win a tournament!!! lol

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
So, if I beat Steve (ha ha), would that make Steve #1, Scott and Joanna tied for second, and Justin and I tied for third? Could I get 30 ranks??

Scott Hardie | February 27, 2016
I'm afraid that I have to get going now. I thought my plans were at 6pm, but they're at 5pm and I'm late. D'oh. :-(

This was fun! I do think there are a few ways that we can improve on it in the future.

Late tonight or first thing tomorrow, I'll post some followup comments and issue the remaining prizes.

Good luck in that last concert, Aaron & Steve.

Thanks for playing, everybody! :-D

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Thanks for all that you do, Scott!!

Steve West | February 27, 2016
Unbelievable. I got a job assigned by "She Who Must Be Obeyed" at a very inopportune time but managed to get it done and join in. I can't believe how this turned out.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 27, 2016
Congratulations, Steve!!

Scott Hardie | February 28, 2016
Congrats, Steve! Another impressive win! My thanks to everybody who played. I have a bunch of stuff to say about this.

First, a recap for the record (you can see the concert log elsewhere; this is more about how it all went down):
- Through midday, Justin kept us apprised of delays on his end with an ISP tech fixing his Internet service.
- At 2pm, I joined the video conference, and Aaron started talking with me on TC. We asked who else was around and got no answer. We agreed to wait, and played a couple of regular concerts to pass the time.
- Around 3pm, Justin made it into the video conference, and said that Joanna was soon to join too. I asked again on TC who could make it, and sent Facebook messages and text messages to Chris and Steve.
- Joanna joined the video conference around 3:20pm. The three of us stayed on for the rest of the tournament. It was good talking to you both again! :-)
- Around 3:45pm, we said we've waited long enough and started playing. I activated the Chris/Justin/Joanna/Scott concerts first, then the Chris/Steve concerts. The timing worked out for Steve, who managed to get online just as his were starting. But it turned out to be a disaster for Chris, who got home and got online just as his concerts were all timing out. Huge bummer. :-(
- We rushed through the tournament. The 15-minute time limit required hurrying, and several concerts timed out due to lack of attention.
- When the dust settled around 5:20pm, Steve had won the most concerts and thus the tournament.

Overall, this was a great event! The concerts were fun, watching different players challenge each other for the lead score was fun, and talking to you all (on camera or on TC) was really fun. We will absolutely do this again sometime, perhaps May or June.

A few things we'll do differently when we play live again:
- Move the date if we learn in advance someone can't make it. Chris was away due to a disc golf tournament; had I known sooner, I would have postponed our thing. (We couldn't have predicted Steve's last-minute job assignment.)
- Set up a clear deadline to get online, by which time we cancel/postpone if not enough people have shown up. Also, establish a clear way to indicate that you're online and ready to play, so we're not left wondering.
- Maybe set up a text chat room in addition to or instead of the video chat. TC is not great for chatting. On the other hand, at least it has a record, and you can subscribe to it.
- Stagger the concerts so they don't all play at once. That was my original plan, but we got such a late start and my evening plans were coming up fast, so I made a snap decision to double up. As Joanna and Justin and I discussed, it's really hard to keep track of the strategies with this many concerts happening simultaneously, and errors become inevitable.
- Extend the timeout deadline. My thinking with 15 minutes had been that if someone isn't available or goes offline, we're not left sitting around for the next hour waiting for them; 15 minutes seemed like an acceptable amount of time to wait for a timeout. But with so many concerts happening at once, this short time limit forced us to rush and not think through our moves, which can be a virtue if that's the point, but it wasn't. 30 minutes would have been preferable.

One other thing that I screwed up, sorry: My original plan for the tiebreaker had been a second round (or more if necessary) between the tied players. I removed this part of the plan, but some of the prize text still referred to it, and referred to tied players sharing the ranks, with "tied players" defined as most wins across rounds rather than the revised tiebreaker rules that I added later (most defeated opponents). I didn't mean it this way in the final version of the tournament, but leaving that text in is my mistake and I'll stick with it. This means ten more artists each for me, Justin, and Aaron, since Joanna and I "tied" for second place rather than her getting second place alone and pushing me to third.

On the bright side, I think the double-round-robin format was just about perfect: Not very complicated, and just the right number of face-offs for live play. We will probably revisit it again in the future, though not right away.

I hope everybody else had a great time! Sorry again that you got screwed by the timing, Chris. :-( If anyone else has suggestions for improvements or other comments, please of course share. Thanks for being a part of this!

Final outcome:
- Steve won 9 concerts, and gets the gift card, trophy, 50 ranks, and Bobby Day.
- Joanna won 6 concerts against 5 opponents, and gets 40 ranks and Bobby Day.
- I won 6 concerts against 4 opponents, and get 40 ranks and Bobby Day.
- Justin won 5 concerts, and gets 30 ranks and Bobby Day.
- Aaron won 4 concerts, and gets 20 ranks and Bobby Day.
- We're counting Chris as participating since he showed up right at the last moment. He also gets 10 ranks and Bobby Day.
We all had Overtime already, so no gain there.

Some new rules were unlocked, too:
- Aaron won his 50th concert, and won five concerts in 24 hours, earning two new play rules.
- Joanna won five concerts in 24 hours, and five consecutive concerts, earning a new play rule and new trade rule.
- Justin earned several more wins and is now just one shy of his 100th, which will earn him a new play rule.
Congrats!

Scott Hardie | February 28, 2016
As you ponder how to spend those ranks of new artists, don't forget that your label hints at which artists to collect in order to unlock more themes, down at the bottom of the Themes tab.