Well done, Martin. Glad to have you on board. The consumer, indeed, appreciates the illusion of choice.
I hesitate to accept your nomination of custardchuk. Last I recall, you nominated him to act as your proxy in Toronto, and we all remember how that turned out...
My good friend custardchuk, last I heard, is busy traveling SE Asia in search of ladyboys. This idle pastime shouldn't distract him overmuch from taking part in the 2010 MotBB, but it may preclude his ability to organize.
I was planning on soapboxing once all the nominations are in, but I think you're right; might as well campaign before the voting starts.
I have enjoyed tweaking the tournament format each year, and I promise anything but the "more standard tournament" alluded to by Martin, though I doubt that anything I have to offer will rival Martin's format in terms of complexity. I would, however, like to nominate myself to provide "colorful post-match commentary" should Martin run this year's MotBB. I have more experience than anyone, in this regard.
Like Martin, I do not think Roshambull is the way to go for this year's MotBB (in deference to James, he should feel free to offer the 2010 MotBB "Captain" status of his "Pros vs Joes" promotion. Also, as a point of order, the MotBB is still an online fantasy RPS tournament, and is not officially sanctioned or endorsed by the World RPS Society.)
More specifically, I plan to put a few different tournament formats to a vote by the competitors. Among my current thoughts are the following:
- "Battle of the Scripts" : Each competitor submits a script (or scripts) to use against other opponents. Use of specific scripts vs specific opponents is encouraged.
- "All vs One" : All competitors play against a single mystery "celebrity" RPS player. If a competitor loses a throw, he or she is eliminated. Contest continues until there is only one player left standing (not counting the "celebrity" player...I already have someone in mind, and no, it's not me.)
- "Telepathic RPS" : Let's take things off-line. The Midnight Rider's final 16 appearance at the World's this year proves that Telepathic RPS is a reality. Each competitor will compete in real time via telepathic uplink (or can submit a script telepathically, if preferred.) This format would make heavy use of the lessons learned from my short-lived
RPS Broadcast! production. I will be using a Thetamax 3.1 Broadband Telepathic Router (3.1 resolves some of the temporal phasing issues, and is, so I hear, the dominant platform of the future due to a pre-emptive strike against VPS in 2019.) The tournament will be optimized for the Firestem (tm) Astral browser, but will work on most platforms. This is actually my preferred format, but I will bend to the will of the competitors, if they favor me to run the event this year.
Like Martin, I plan on offering a valuable RPS prize, most likely something out-of-print, or several somethings. Winner may have to pay cost of shipping.
So that's about it. Nominations will run for a week, then we'll see what we have.