The World As It Is - Winter 2021

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Mike Bentley
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The World As It Is - Winter 2021

Post by Mike Bentley »

I'm pleased to announce The World As It Is, a tossup and bonus general-subject open tournament that covers topics from 1990 until the present day. The closest equivalent to this tournament is Modern World, although this tournament will hopefully avoid most of the aspects that people did not like about that tournament. The target difficulty for the tournament is around pre-nationals level although I suspect some subjects may play a little harder than others given the time period. A good number of tossup answer lines (if not the clues in them) will be something that could come up at ACF Winter.

I'm editing this tournament with help from Nick Jensen. Will Alston has also made some contributions.

This tournament is sponsored by PACE, with my portion of the mirror fees ($40 per team) being donated to PACE. Note that although PACE is sponsoring this tournament, we do not necessarily plan on running it with the NSC. There will also not be any PACE members beyond those listed in this post involved in the production of this set.

Mirrors:

I'm planning on one main Discord mirror in January or February 2021. Before that, I'd like to play test the questions over a few nights. If you're interested in playtesting, email me at [email protected].

Distribution:

Each 20/20 packet (11 in total) will have the following distribution:

3/3 Literature (1.5/1.5 Long Fiction, 1/1 Non-Fiction, 0.5/0.5 other)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 Asian, 1/1 Euro/African/Latin American, 1/1 Other)
3/3 Arts (a little less than 1/1 Film and TV, a little less than 1/1 art and pop music, a bit more than 1/1 other)
3/3 Science (1/1 Academic, 1/1 Technology, 1/1 Culture - these last two are similar to what you'd see in one of my tech tournaments)
2/2 Geography
1/1 Business and Law
2/2 Social Science and Philosophy (weighted much more towards SS than Philosophy)
2/2 Misc.

While the tournament goes back to 1990, most of the answer and clues will shade more toward the present day.

If you want a flavor of the types of current event questions to expect in this tournament, take a look at the current events questions I've written the past couple of NSCs and that Will has written for sets such as Sun God. And the questions on more recent topics from tournaments like The Human Use of Human Beings. For the literature distribution, we’re taking some inspiration from the lit questions in Will Nediger’s excellent Scattegories sets and the treatment of recent authors in It’s Lit.
Last edited by Mike Bentley on Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:21 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: The World As It Is - Fall 2020

Post by Mike Bentley »

I'm postponing this tournament to Fall 2020 to focus on editing the 2020 NSC. It will still be an open tournament--hopefully something that can slot into the Fall open slot. I'm still looking for a few more contributors. If you're interested, e-mail me at [email protected].
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Re: The World As It Is - Fall 2020

Post by Mike Bentley »

Nick Jensen has joined the writing team for this tournament.
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Re: The World As It Is - Fall 2020

Post by Mike Bentley »

We're upping the packets in this tournament to 14. Still shooting for this to be the traditional Fall Open for 2020.
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Re: The World As It Is - Fall 2020

Post by Mike Bentley »

Given the other open events that will potentially be delayed into the Fall, it's likely that this tournament will get postponed until Spring or Summer 2021 so as to not overcrowd the schedule. I'll make that decision once I get a better sense of when tournaments like Chicago Open and ACF Nationals are happening.

If this tournament is delayed, there's an off chance I may squeeze in another tech tournament similar to The Human Use of Human Beings in the summer or fall (perhaps with an eye to being mainly played over Discord, but we'll see how the world is by then).
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Re: The World As It Is - Fall 2020

Post by maharhar17 »

Mike Bentley wrote: Fri Mar 13, 2020 4:39 pm If this tournament is delayed, there's an off chance I may squeeze in another tech tournament similar to The Human Use of Human Beings in the summer or fall (perhaps with an eye to being mainly played over Discord, but we'll see how the world is by then).
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Re: The World As It Is - Winter 2021

Post by Mike Bentley »

Hi everyone, this much-delayed tournament is finally getting close to completion. It's about 95% written and 60% edited. There will be 11 packets of 20/20. There is an 875 character cap on tossups and 750 character cap on bonuses. The majority of questions are written by either myself or Nick Jensen, with a few contributions from Will Alston. "Nats minus" is still probably the best way to think about this tournament's difficulty, but each packet will have many accessible tossup answer lines.

I'm planning on hosting this as an open tournament over Discord in January or February. I'll post a date poll and a sign-up sheet after Thanksgiving when I get a sense of how much remains to be edited. In between now and the tournament I'd also like to do some playtesting. Email me at [email protected] if you're interested.

Let me also add a quick disclaimer: the title of this tournament is intentionally a bit pompous. The idea that a handful of people are going to present "the world as it is" in an 11 packet quizbowl tournament is preposterous. We've tried to ask about a wide range of topics but I'm certain you're going to see the biases of Nick, Will and me in this set. Hopefully this set will inspire other writing teams to write their own take on a Modern World tournament.
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Re: The World As It Is - Winter 2021

Post by The Stately Rhododendron »

I am a FREE AGENT for this tournament. I know much of this world.
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Re: The World As It Is - Winter 2021

Post by Mike Bentley »

There's now a private discussion forum.
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