fumanstan

Ok, since the Sheep games have spread to the other forums on DVDTalk it looks like the original sub forum has been thoroughly ignored. I figure i'd try my hand at this, but could use some thoughts on running the game since I've played in plenty but i'm kind of afraid of tallying up all the answers, let alone finding time to do them in a fun way like The Bus or JasonF and Jeremy.

I'll try and do about 20 questions, and could use some suggestions. I have a few in mind, but any ideas would be great from you guys.

I'll do both Sheep and Reverse questions.

There will be multipliers, but I don't want to make huge ones like 4x or 5x. Those always seem too ridiculous to me, but you can argue in favor of them if you want and maybe the people will win out.

No equalizers. Why? Fuck them, that's why!

There will be some PC game related questions. I'm a PC guy, so damn it they should belong somewhere.

Trying to decide on a Google/Wiki penalty, and maybe a more basic Unique bonus. Since it's my first time trying to run one, I don't want to get too complicated with the scoring. For those that have ran them, any suggestions on the easy ways to tally up scores would be great.

And we'll see how many people enter... the VG games have always been pretty steady as far as entries, so we'll see how many are interested. I'll try and get all the questions up by the end of the week, depending on how much time I have. Discuss!

fumanstan

Oh, and fuck Goldeneye.

Liver&Onions

Screw JasonF, it's Jeremy who does them with the bus.

Cheaters should be flogged.

fumanstan

There, included Jeremy.

I guess that's a no on using Google? I'll enjoy having some more difficult questions then.

The Bus

If you don't include 5× multipliers, sometimes the winner is know once there are 2 or 3 rounds left.

Tarantino

I think it should be an 'all Goldeneye' round.

Liver&Onions

Someone should put a Tarantino Sheep together for Other.

fumanstan

Yeah, but I've always thought it was better to reward someone that has played well all game with the win then to let someone shoot up 5 places based on a single question at the end of the game. While it can make things more interesting at the end, I hate the large swing.

If anyone else prefers the large multiplier, I don't mind adding it. What say the people?

No. 5 point penalty

orangecrush

I prefer multipliers as they make the game much more interesting. I will try to think of a few questions and PM you.

fumanstan

Cool I've come up with about 20 questions now, but some are kind of weak. I'm trying to be a bit more creative with these.

orangecrush

PM sent. No Goldeneye or Halo questions from me

JasonF

I like the big multipliers at the end for exactly the reason the Bus said.

I like allowing Googling, but you and I may be the only people, since nobody else includes Googling in their games. I think the penalty progression I used (1 point for the first Google, 2 for the second, 4 for the third, 8 for the fourth, etc.) makes Googling a "Break Glass in Case of Emergency" option without being a crutch.

However, I would recommend that if you go with a uniqueness bonus that Googlers be ineligible. It's too easy to decide to take the one point penalty in order to look up some obscure video game from 1994 that nobody remembers.

As a data point, I will tell you that 13 out of 30 players Googled in the current round of Politics Sheep.

As for PC questions, I heartily welcome them -- but be careful. If you're too open-ended, then everybody gives a different answer and winds up with the same score, which is no fun. Of course, you get the opposite problem if there are too few choices -- almost everyone picks the same one, and anyone who misses it is knocked out of the game (see the Rolling Stones question in the latest Music Sheep for an example).

maxfisher

I like when the games have a 'google for a penalty' option and think it would be especially helpful when we're mixing console, handheld and PC games. For example, if there's a sheep question that all PS2 owners will nail, the handful of players unfamiliar with the console and its library can get utterly raped, even moreso if there's a multiplier. I think the -1/-2/-3/-... scheme might be a little too forgiving, but maybe doing something like having a google option where you automatically get 50% of a sheep answer or 150% of a reverse sheep. That might help people from getting totally knocked out of the running by one or two questions on unfamiliar topics, while still rewarding those with the knowledge in their heads.

fumanstan

Cool, the people have spoken and i'll use larger multipliers. Good point about uniques versus googling. I'll try and decide which to use, but i'm learning towards keeping Googling.

Don't worry about open ended questions, my questions are set up so there's generally a decent number of answers and a lot of them that i'm working on are geared towards very specific topics.

fumanstan

Also, do you guys do anything specific to make it easier when scoring?

pinata242

Thank god. I miss VG Sheep, but I'm too lazy to run one myself.

The Bus

Spreadsheets.

fumanstan

That was always my excuse too, but it's been so long I might as well try. Forgive me if the results come out terribly

JasonF

"How the sausage is made" information below. Reader beware.

When I ran Comic Book Sheep, I threw everything into a Google Docs spreadsheet. I then wrote up the entire results ahead of time. For each round, I pasted the scores for the previous round, then went through and counted "One ... two ... three ... four Superman answers, so let me add four points to those four players." It was a colossal pain in the ass, and thank God there was only one challenge.

For Politics Sheep, I've got a monster spreadsheet set up with a bunch of tabs. Tab one is the questions down column one, with the players names in columns two through whatever, with their answers in the cells where the rows and columns intersect. This is basically what I did last time. Tab two is a working sheet where I have all the players listed, their assigned number (more on this in a moment), their score on each question, their cumulative score, and their ranking. Tabs three through whatever are a separate tab for each question, where I list each player's assigned number, their name, their score on their question, and their answer for the question.

Each player's assigned number corresponds to the column they are in on the first page. This way, I can always sort each sheet back into that order, which facilitates copying data from one sheet to another.

So basically, what I do is for a particular question (say Q1), I copy that row into the column on the sheet for that question (one thing I learned in putting this together is that Excel has a transpose function that lets you paste a row into a column or vice versa). I then go through and "normalize" the responses -- so if 3 people said "Halo" and 2 people said "Halo: Combat Evolved" and 1 person said "The original Halo," I change them all so they say the same thing. I then sort by the answer column, count up the answers, and fill in the points (in this case, assigning 6 points to all the Halo answers).

When it's time to post the results, I will cut and paste the player's names from this sheet to list the results. I will then resort by assigned number and copy and paste the scores into the master scorecard (Tab 2). The formulas will automatically update everyone's cumulative score and ranking; I will resort by ranking, copy and paste the rankings, names, and scores into a post, then resort back into assigned number order.

I know this must sounds incredibly complicated, but most of it is cut and paste

The Bus did this by combining tabs three through the end into a single tab, but I found it easier to split it into separate tabs.

Once Politics Sheep is done, I'll be happy to send you a copy of my spreadsheet so you can see how I did this.

The other thing I've done is I spent the last few days gathering images and loading them into my Photobucket account. They are all organized into subdirectories by question so that I can quickly pull the pictures I need as I post the results.

fumanstan

Whoa, thanks for the run down. I'd love to see that spreadsheet when you're done. I wanted to plan ahead as much as I could too, getting pictures and tallying up the scores as I can beforehand before starting the answer part. I figure the most fun for people is watching the individual answers come out, so I wanted to do my best by getting them out there as quickly as possible.

More ideas for questions are coming to me, so I think i'll have this out by tomorrow night or Friday morning.

Michael Corvin

You can't avoid Google. People are going to use it and lie about doing it, especially if you are going to hit PC gaming hard on a forum that is mostly console gaming.

After all these variations on Sheep, I'm very curious how one would turn out if there were only a dozen questions for Sheep and then the same exact twelve questions for Reverse Sheep.

fumanstan

Don't worry, there really aren't that many PC questions I have jotted down and the ones I do have *should* be fairly basic. I've scribbled down like 25 questions, and I'm going to narrow it down.

I thought we did a round where we did Sheep and then Reverse with the same questions?

EDIT: Yeah, the last Video Game one from Jeremy was like that. I might go that route. Haven't decided.

Tracer Bullet

Tabs... why didn't I think of tabs...

orangecrush

We did that once. JasonF and I were the only ones "smart" enough to put the same answer for every question (there was a bonus for each matching answer). As I recall, that strategy didn't work out to well for me.

Michael Corvin

Why don't I remember that round?