OT: The FOFC Historical Date Draft

[Mustang]

Maple Leafs usually runs these type of things, but to give him a break I'll try my hand at one. I know there are alot of history type buffs out there so, hopefully this will appeal to them. If it is a miserable failure, I'll let Maple Leafs have the future fun in running his draft and I'll crawl back into the corner. :) Credit to Maple Leafs also for the rules.



Welcome to the FOFC Historical Date Draft

How to play:

If you want to play, PM me. Some time tomorrow, I'll randomly select ten players. (And by "random", I mean pretty much random...) The draft will be conducted via the forum, in this thread. When it's your turn to draft, you post, ideally with a brief note about the reason for your choice. If you won't be around, you PM someone else your picks in advance to keep things moving. The draft is a serpentine draft, which is a fancy way of saying that the order reverses each round. Draft order will be determined randomly before we start.


How to win:

The fun here comes more from the draft itself than from actually winning, but just in case it matters: Once the draft is done, we'll hold a vote and let FOFC choose the winner. Hopefully there will be some interesting side discussions on why a date or event was significant. Some will be obvious, but others more obscure.

The teams:

You will draft a "team" of twelve dates filling once from each of the following categories and having ONE date in each month.

Categories are -

Sports
Military Event
Natural Disaster
Entertainment (Non-fiction)
Scientific Event
Fictional Event (Date appearing in ficitional material)
Television Moment
Politics
Birthday/Death
19th Century
Pre-17th century Europe
Potluck


- If there is an event that spans days, you must pick one day.
- All events must be historical proven to have occured on the date you provide or the consensus must be that they occured on said date. No fictional dates other than the fictional category.

An example on the fictional event would be July 3rd, Aliens attack in 'Independence Day'.

Optional: Any date picked can not have a date picked either 1 day behind or 1 day ahead. If someone picks Jan 31st, Jan 30th and Feb 1st are out of play. Everything is in the same 'year' so, December 31st wouldn't eliminate Jan 1st

(I'd like to do this to limit the field of dates more like a real draft since it would account for around 20 dates in a month as opposed to 10 but, I'll leave it up to the people playing if they want this or not)


A few notes:
The draft is open to everyone -- observers are welcome. Discussion of picks is encouraged.

In general, it's considered very poor form to suggest picks during the draft -- the equivalent of being the guy who doesn't play poker but sits at the rail and shouts out to get attention. However, it will happen. If you're the sort of person who thinks you'd be really, really bothered by this, do yourself a favor and don't play.

In order for the draft to be fun, it has to move quickly. That means that if you will not be checking the forums frequently, you should send an advance list of picks to a partipant or observer to choose for you. If you are not willing to send a list for your picks to keep the draft moving, you should not sign up to play. Players who cause delays in the draft will be replaced.

If someone makes an invalid pick, the commish (me) will explain why the pick doesn't work and that team will pick again. However, if other teams have already made their picks, those picks will count (in order to avoid having to redo stretches of the draft). So if you try to get tricky with your picks and get burned, don't blame me.

Want to play?
PM me. Draft will start sometime in the next 48 hours.

[Mustang]

Slow join rate.. must be because of Columbus day. :p

[sabotai]

I love the concept and will follow this. I doubt I'd have the time to participate, though.

[Barkeep49]

I was just lamenting yesterday the lack of more drafts and this is one I'd like, though I'd have preferred Historical Figures. But I'm in.

[Neon_Chaos]

I know, BK. Seems like you have some sort of telepathic ability to convey your thoughts over to the forums. ;)

Sent PM. Oh man. Where do you go with #1 though?

Are we talking about world-altering events, or just a specific country (US)?

[wade moore]

If this drags and you don't get enough people I'll participate, but this isn't my strength and my time on the boards can be spotty during work... but I love these drafts and would participate if you have trouble getting enough...

[Lathum]

If this drags and you don't get enough people I'll participate, but this isn't my strength and my time on the boards can be spotty during work... but I love these drafts and would participate if you have trouble getting enough...

+1

[Mustang]

Are we talking about world-altering events, or just a specific country (US)?

One of the cats is Pre-17th century Europe so, not limited to the US. ;)

Doesn't have to be world altering events or date. My guess is that alot of dates will be recognizable for what they are but, I figure there might be a few oddball cases through in along the way. (Hence the fictional date one)

[Mustang]

Take the first 10 so far

1. Larry McG421
2. Buccaneer
3. Neon Chaos
4. Mustang
5. Barkeep
6. Radii
7. Treadwell
8. Path 12
9. Maple Leafs
10. NTNDeacon

Alts (?)

Lathum
Wade Moore

[ntndeacon]

I will play if there is still room.

[Mustang]

I will play if there is still room.

Yep, last spot filled.

I'll post the actual draft thread here shortly.

[Mustang]

If someone could go here -


hxxp://random.org/sform.html and create a set from 1-10.

[larrymcg421]

Here is your sequence:

8
7
10
9
1
5
2
6
4
3

[Radii]

I didn't really think a lot about the day before/day after rule, but looking at it now... we have 12 categories, 10 teams, 120 total picks. Isn't that rule going to become extremely limiting extremely quickly? With the exception of Jan 1/Jan Dec 31, every pick eliminates 3 days, I understand the intent is to make that part of the strategy but i wonder if there's just going to be a massive amount of major world events that get left out and we end up more likely to have a random sampling of crap that we could find that happened on X day b/c it was about all that was left in the last few rounds?

[Maple Leafs]

I didn't really think a lot about the day before/day after rule, but looking at it now... we have 12 categories, 10 teams, 120 total picks. Isn't that rule going to become extremely limiting extremely quickly? With the exception of Jan 1/Jan Dec 31, every pick eliminates 3 days, I understand the intent is to make that part of the strategy but i wonder if there's just going to be a massive amount of major world events that get left out and we end up more likely to have a random sampling of crap that we could find that happened on X day b/c it was about all that was left in the last few rounds?
That should be the part that makes it fun.

Besides, I'm sure that with a few thousand years of recorded history to choose from, we can manage to find something worthwhile for any day.

[Radii]

Yeah, I don't really have a problem with it if everyone else is cool with it, other than imagining that the judging is going to be "WTF how could you leave out this event". I just hadn't really thought through how limiting it will get towards the end.

[Mustang]

That should be the part that makes it fun.

Besides, I'm sure that with a few thousand years of recorded history to choose from, we can manage to find something worthwhile for any day.

What Maples Leafs said. It will only eliminate about 11 days a month from consideration. I'd think there are enough events/dates/years out there still.

[Mustang]

"WTF how could you leave out this event".

Of course, if someone takes a date on X date but, there was a bigger event on X + 1 or X - 1, I'm sure someone will call them out. :)