[Hunt03] Re: 2004 MIT Mystery Hunt

[Mike Selinker <selinker comcast net>]

I'm certainly open to hearing Eric explain what he meant again, but I had
Mark's reaction as well. Well, not the outrage part, because I'm not as
invested in the hunt. Mostly I would prefer that people work toward making
an event that encourages new-player participation under a banner of
fairness, which I think the hunt currently most manifestly does not. (I
definitely thank Eric for including me, especially when he didn't know if I
would support his position.)

On another subject, some people weren't clear on how someone might design 
an
event that allows for unlimited team size, but makes it harder for larger
teams. Here's an analogy: Imagine a three-legged race, where one person's
right leg is tied another's left leg. That requires some coordination, but
is hardly impossible. Now imagine a three-person, four-legged team in that
race. That sounds vastly harder. Eventually, as team size increases, the
larger teams are reduced to slow, Rockettes-like movement, while the much
more nimble two-person team races ahead.

In a game like this that requires coordination of players, the larger teams
will be much harder to coordinate. Eventually they'll break into smaller
teams DURING the event. Of course, if a team can field more subteams than
another, it still has an advantage in an environment where lots of
challenges are released at once. So a second step must occur: The hunt
masters must dole out the challenges one at a time, on a regular schedule,
ranking teams by how quickly they achieve each challenge.

Suddenly, in the name of fairness, you have a very different event. Maybe
some people will like it better, maybe some won't. But here's the 
summation:
You don't have to do any of this if you just limit team size, and level the
playing field. When you have team limits, you can do anything you want, and
the situation is fair and approachable for everyone.

I understand a lot of people don't want to do that. That's cool. But if you
care that the hunt is fair, you have to pull either the warp-the-hunt lever
or the team-limit lever, or you'll get the 90-person winning team again. If
the hunt has to un-invite me to become fair, that's just fine with me.

Mike Selinker (Slik)