January 9 2002 RussCon Report

News

Meta Party Game Evening's Soundtrack

THE CD THEME METAGAME

This metagame is Russ' CD theme game, except everyone can potentially participate in making themes.

Basically, when you win a game, you add a CD and make a new set of CDs with a new theme. Everyone then tries to guess the themes.

Initially, Russ will choose a set of three CDs that share a common theme (say A, B, and C) and put them in the CD player on shuffle play. He'll put the CD cases in a row in the usual place:

A B C

Whenever a game is complete, the winner may choose to add a CD to the player and the corresponding CD case to the row of cases. If the winner can't or doesn't want to, the runner-up may, and so forth - tied players should share the task or decide amongst themselves. Feel free to bring CDs from home if you like!

Each new CD should share a common theme with the two CDs to its left. For an example, D, E, and F have been added to the right of the row of cases, one at a time:

A B C D E F

There are four sets of three CDs: ABC, BCD, CDE, and DEF, each with a common theme. The theme and its composer's Russcon name should be written on a scrap business card or piece of paper and placed inside the just-added CD case.

[Notes on the CD player: If the CD player is full, you can use the "Exchange" feature to replace a previous CD with your own without stopping play. Ask if you need help with this feature. Also, try and keep the CDs in order in the player - the first 3 CDs will be in slots 1, 2, and 3 - put the next two in slots 5 and 6, then the next one in slot 1, and so forth.]

Before you leave, look at the row of cases and write your guesses for the themes on a scrap business card or piece of paper. Be sure to label your guesses with your Russcon name.

The metagame scores as follows:

1) Each essentially correct guess of a theme scores one metapoint.

2) The composer of each theme scores bonus metapoints equal to half of the number of right guesses or half of the number of wrong guesses, whichever is *smaller* (rounding down). In other words, you want about half of the guessers to get it right. Group choices (by tied winners) split the points evenly.

3) You may not guess your own theme(s). Put "no guess" or "composer" or somesuch.

Ties are broken by whoever guessed the most themes, then by who composed the most themes, then by random draw.

(Credit where credit is due: this metagame was partly inspired by Dan's "Thematic Mischief" metagame of 10/22/01.)

To see what the themes were for each successive overlapping trio of CDs, hover your mouse over the images to see the alt-tags:

	RussW composed Sea Biscuit guessed
	BobR composed Matt guessed
	Matt composed BobR guessed
	Matt composed BobR, Sea Biscuit, RussW guessed
	RussW composed Sea Biscuit guessed
	RussW composed Sea Biscuit guessed
	MarkY composed

All the themes were guess right by at least one player except for MarkY's. Only "P" bands was guessed right by all players. Sea Biscuit guessed 4 of the 7 themes correctly, neatly beating Matt (1), BobR (2), and myself (1) (who were the only others who guessed). So Sea Biscuit is next week's Meta Party Devil and will design the Meta Game. I suggest something involving Stephensons Rocket.

Rank ratings:
 1.0000 Ben (3 games played)     
 0.8125 JeffF (4)
 0.4286 JP (3)
 0.4000 Whindy (3)
 0.3636 Marty (4)
 0.3333 JimG (3)
 0.2222 Whendy (4)
 0.2000 Dan (1)
 0.1250 RussW (4)
 0.0588 Matt (4)
 0.0000 MarkY (4)
 0.0000 RussD (2)
 0.0000 Daniel (3)
-0.2500 Robby (3)
-0.5000 JonathanC (3)
-0.5455 BobR (3)
-0.8889 Clayton (2)
-1.0000 Zach (3)
-1.0000 Jerrie (1)
-1.0000 PJ (2)
-1.0000 William (3)

New Win ratings:
 1.0000 Ben (3)
 0.5625 JeffF (4)
 0.4375 RussW (4)
 0.3333 JimG (3)
 0.1176 Matt (4)
 0.1111 Whendy (4)
 0.0909 Marty (4)
 0.0000 Whindy (3)
 0.0000 MarkY (4)
 0.0000 BobR (3)
-0.1250 Robby (3)
-0.2000 Dan (1)
-0.2143 JP (3)
-0.2143 JonathanC (3)
-0.2222 Clayton (2)
-0.2500 RussD (2)
-0.3000 Daniel (3)
-0.4000 Zach (3)
-1.0000 Jerrie (1)
-1.0000 PJ (2)
-1.0000 William (3)