IRON DM General Discussion

[el-remmen]

I think the hard part will be figuring out how to give the contestants time-limits while being flexible about start times. How do we give people a 48 hour limit (say) but allow them to start at a different time than the other contestants? That has been solved for Iron DM with the negotiating we've done on head-to-head matches, but it might be harder with a big free-for-all (which I like).

Unless we drop the 48-hour time-limits. The fairest scenario I can imagine would be to make the contests go from Friday to Sunday and the Judging go from Tuesday to Thursday. Weekly Rounds. Limit to Six, I think.

I think the time limit should just be a week and there be a word-limit and people can work on it as little or as much as they want in a week (or less). This way entries could be posted over the course of week (giving the audience and judges a chance to read them as they are released) - but no one needs to worry about a specific 48 hour period in that week.

If ingredients are posted on Monday evening, the entries should be posted by the following Sunday evening (or to be fairer to people, Monday morning).

Edit to add: This longer time period will also help to mitigate time-zone discrepancies.

 

[Rune]

A month and a half seems like a long time to maintain momentum.

But, then again, I may not be the target audience for this kind of thing; I don’t really like the long-form reality-tv competition shows that seem to be providing the structural inspiration.

Don’t get me wrong – I see the value of keeping contestants in it for the duration. I just think a month and a half might pretty difficult to organize. And/or recruit for.

 

[Wicht]

I seem to be in the minority with the week thing.
The consensus seems to be about 5 initial rounds of 1 week and then a final 6th round?

Edit: Though I see that Rune agrees with me that 6 weeks makes the momentum thing harder.

Edit 2: Maybe 6 rounds of 5 days each?

Edit 3: Also, does the ability to know ahead of time what the topics/catagories will be not make some difference? Especially with the last two, as once you have been given the penultimate topic, you then also know the final topic and half your ingredients.

 

[el-remmen]

Another thing I am noting from my archiving work: apparently paragraph breaks were invented in 2004 or later

 

[el-remmen]

I seem to be in the minority with the week thing.
The consensus seems to be about 5 initial rounds of 1 week and then a final 6th round?

Edit: Though I see that Rune agrees with me that 6 weeks makes the momentum thing harder.

Edit 2: Maybe 6 rounds of 5 days each?

Once you go to 5 days, you might as well make it a week, because weekends (or the equivalent of weekend for those with non-standard schedules) can be as hard for some folks as weekdays are for others. Something about the weekly schedule works for me and might help with momentum when you know (Ingredients each Monday), as opposed to monday, then sunday, then friday, then wednesday, etc. . .

 

[Rune]

I seem to be in the minority with the week thing.
The consensus seems to be about 5 initial rounds of 1 week and then a final 6th round?

Edit: Though I see that Rune agrees with me that 6 weeks makes the momentum thing harder.

Edit 2: Maybe 6 rounds of 5 days each?

Edit 3: Also, does the ability to know ahead of time what the topics/catagories will be not make some difference? Especially with the last two, as once you have been given the penultimate topic, you then also know the final topic and half your ingredients.

I like the week-long time limit idea for all kinds of logistical reasons. Fewer rounds would seem the way to go, here. But, with a full week to work on them, each week can have more than one expectation/category/challenge.

If the word-limit is based on category, categories can be assigned to a given week that roughly total a standard number. Something like 1000 words of limit across the week’s challenges.

 

[Wicht]

Behold the wonders of group brainstorming!

Two categories a week, for three weeks would work beautifully.

 

[el-remmen]

Behold the wonders of group brainstorming!

Two categories a week, for three weeks would work beautifully.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying contestants have a choice or they work on two?

 

[Wicht]

Can you elaborate? Are you saying contestants have a choice or they work on two?

Work on two. But with only a 1000 words total expected a week, that is still a lot of flexible time and in truth, most of these catagories are not going to be that hard.

I think its a good idea. But I could be wrong.

 

[Rune]

Can you elaborate? Are you saying contestants have a choice or they work on two?

I was suggesting that they are given a number of challenges to complete within the week that have a combined total of word-limits in the 1000 range. Or 1500, or whatever.

That could be as few as 1, but for most weeks, it would probably be 2. The contestants would manage their time between the week’s challenges as they see fit.

Edit: This suggestion was specifically meant to reconcile the week-limits with a truncated schedule and a 6-ish challenge competition.