Quizmaster Report 1.0

Introduction

Hello there Quizards,

I hope everyone is doing well.

With the Great Jedi War officially over, I wanted to start spreading the word about trivia’s return and my plans for our little community. Those of you actively following in #trivia likely have seen some thoughts, but let’s make it official with a report. Let’s start off with why I took this role.

Nostalgia & Community

There’s an incredibly deep sense of nostalgia I get from hosting trivia within the club.

Way back in the mIRC days I'd log on to the club's channels specifically for the trivia events on Saturdays after the clan meetings. I would argue this is one of several reasons how I became hooked onto the club and serves an important function for bringing our members together outside of their clan channels. Because even though there’s intense competition and known trivia terrorists (y’all know who…) you have to deal with, we all share a longing for nerding out about our favourite fandoms, subjects, and facts.

On top of this, I do host trivia in the real world. My business hosts a regular monthly trivia night and through this I have learned about the kind of community it can develop. We’ve had the same six teams showing up regularly since Covid and for a long time now it’s been less about the free drinks and more about the community we’ve developed together. I’d like to foster this with the club’s trivia community as well, though I’ve yet to figure out how we can introduce team trivia - it is something I’m working on.

So long as you all keep it civil, I intend to keep delivering on covering a wide range of topics. I also intend to maximize opportunities for credits & XP. But first, an update on the schedule.

A New Schedule

Initially, when I signed up for this role, I had planned to maintain the current Sunday & Wednesday schedule and expand out from there.

However, when we plan - the force laughs.

As is tradition, when I get a new position something breaks. Soon after I started, it seems the trivia bot’s scheduling feature decided to act up. At the moment, we haven’t figured out what the issue is that is preventing me from scheduling sessions…so it’s required me to be available to manually start things.

This is limiting, as my schedule won’t allow evening weekday trivia during the summer months. However, should we fix the issue, I will look at a return for a weekday session. Otherwise, it will need to wait until I’m available again after harvest.

In the meantime, this issue has let me introduce a regular schedule as follows:

Saturdays @ 1pm EST - A legacy time that historically has been good for our European friends while also being good for our North American members. Since bringing this time back as a regular event we have seen the crowd size hover around 40 members so I will be continuing with this time.

Sundays @ 5pm EST - A familiar time that has also been performing well for crowd sizes, likewise it will continue as a regular time.

Monthly Container

Along with a newly set schedule, the return of trivia has come with a monthly container. This is being run to incentivize folks to join the community as well as encourage continuing participation from our wonderful Quizard community.

An Upcoming Change: In August, the points awarded from the sub-competitions will be increased to more placements. During the GJW, I enjoyed seeing how the weekly cluster races were run similar to a Grand Prix/Mariokart style placement so, as with all good ideas, I plan to steal this and incorporate it as my own. This means there are more opportunities for those outside the top 3.

Tier 4 vs Tier 2

A question has been asked:

Why have some of the sessions been different tiers?

Blame the bird <3

Not all trivia is created equal, at least under the eyes of the club. If it’s DB-focused, it will be run as tier 2. If it’s non-DB focused, then it will be tier 4. There has been, and hopefully will again be, opportunities for tier 1 sessions but this is a rarity. I will do my best to bring in as many DB-focused events as possible so we can rake up as many credits & XP as possible....that might mean we have to struggle together through some awkward parts of our history.

Correction: An earlier version referenced the wrong activity tiers, this has been corrected and we will make sure future trivia sessions reflect the correct activity tiers. Thanks Arch!

I Want Your Input

In my experience, successful trivia can only exist with good input from the community. That means let me know what’s fun, what sucks, and what you want to see. Remember, you also have the opportunity to organize and get some of that sweet organizational XP.

So I’ve created several forms that you can submit your thoughts to:

Quizmaster Feedback Form - please use this for your general feedback on trivia.

Quizmaster: Topic Submission - this is your opportunity to submit a topic to be hosted by the Quizmaster, you can also submit a couple questions to potentially be used. If you have more than a couple questions, I encourage you to email or DM me so we can get you the organizing credit you deserve.

Quizmaster: Minutiae Questions - Do you have only 1 question and the topic is not enough for a whole trivia session? Good news, everyone! There’s a style of trivia that serves this, you may have heard it as Trivia Potpourri or Goulash Trivia. These are trivia sessions with a mixture of various subjects that do not connect to each other or have enough substance to be a session in their own right. I intend to run these highlight varied sessions at the end of each month to find out who is the Minutiae Master.

In Closing

Thanks for checking out this report and learning more about the Quizard community. If you made it this far and still haven’t joined our channel, go into your discord -> click channels & roles -> checkoff the Quizard role.

Should you have difficulties with this, feel free to DM me and I’ll help you out.

Questions Coming…join us Saturday!