[OOC] Feedback for the Outplay Organizers

[Aethera]

Greetings! We've tried some new things this year, both in terms of which game systems we attempted to run and how we went about running it. There's already been a good deal of feedback about the round zero (application) process this year, and rather than having to search for it later, I think it's worth taking the time to set aside a place for feedback as it comes in. And it will help us all if this thread is open now, rather than waiting until the end of the competition when people have forgotten half of what they were commenting on previously.

Feel free to discuss such feedback in The Stands OOC thread, but when you feel you've come to your opinion and discussed it with others to better understand the wider picture, please post it here. I'd prefer most of the discussion happen over there so everyone is in on it. Even dissenting opinions help you form your own.

Some suggestions for commentary (to be updated as the competition progresses):

• Round 0: Anonymous Apps - anonymity (yay/nay), process, Q&A through a third party (Aethera), secret ballot voting (one vote, X votes each,

  Originally Posted by Birched

  Approval Voting:
  Each voter selects a subset of the candidates (where the empty set means the voter abstains) and the candidate(s) with the most votes wins.
  Approval voting has been extensively discussed by Steven Brams and Peter Fishburn (Brams and Fishburn 2007; Brams 2008). See, also, the recent collection of articles devoted to approval voting (Laslier and Sanver 2010).
  
  Approval voting forces voters to think about the decision problem differently: They are asked to determine which candidates they approve of rather than determining the relative ranking of the candidates. That is, the voter is asked which candidates are above a certain “threshold of acceptance”. (See Brams and Sanver 2009, for examples of voting procedures that ask voters to both select a set of of candidates that they approve and to (linearly) rank the candidates.)

  approval voting).

I expect there will be some feedback that will get immediately incorporated into the Outplay plan, and some that will get bandied back and forth but never really decided upon. I cannot promise that your opinions will change anything immediately, but I can promise that this thread will get read and discussed.

For myself, I'm inclined to think that if we continue anonymous apps, it would be better if the DMs were contacted directly with questions. This is predicated upon the hope that we will have DMs separate from judges, and thus the DMs don't need to be kept in the dark about who is playing whom. This would also streamline the fact-checking process, as well, as DMs could simply keep a record of all rulings and provide a single block of text for judges to check against. Campaign IDs failed me early on, but there might be ways to include it later.

Some General Trends I'm Seeing (and Comments):

• Anonymity: Generally liked, even if the RPXP/glory is delayed till secret tags are removed.
• Process: seemed smooth. Sounds good to me!
• 3rd Party Q&A: If this changes, it would be dependent upon having enough judges that the GMs are not voting. Otherwise, it'd stay as it was to preserve anonymity.
• Secret Ballot Voting: I'm hearing at least 3 votes, some comments for ranked as well as unranked. (Other suggestions were 3-8 votes.)
• Any system-specific feedback will be reviewed by the GM and judges during the planning phase next year, if not sooner.

[GhostlyDaemon]

As much as this is my first Outplay, I'd like to think I can give some input

Anonymity: Definitely a yay, it was a nice surprise to see what the other contestants had created in a big reveal, very dramatic!
Third Party: Fantastic idea, definitely upholds the anonymity of applications too, providing Aethera is happy to continue to be the middle man! if not, DMs being directly asked questions, providing they abstain from the voting, etc would also work just as well!
Ballot Voting: I think perhaps the 3 votes each is a good road to head down, maybe with a ranking of those 3 votes?

[Neqq]

I like the way this year's competition round 0 was run.

Voting: Anywhere between 3-8 votes would give a more representative selection.

D&D 5e: Might get more apps if you allow for one magic item of uncommon rarity (with DM approval). I know D&D 5e is low magic item flavoured but you need to balance it with Outplay flavour. With this rule tweak, I would've applied for the D&D 5e bracket.

[Caecielien]

My two cents:

• Round 0 anonymity - yes!
• Process - seemed smooth from my perspective. Great job from the organizer(s)!
• 3rd party Q&A - I would like to see the anonymity maintained. So perhaps a dedicated Outplay-Q&A-GM, or the DM(s) forgo rnd-0 voting.
• Votes - I would like to see increased to 3.

[JonnyGulliver]

2¢: Should the full forums be anonymous?
-- It deprives people of the chance to cheer others on
-- Admiring and emulating another style is how one could grow their own style
-- And what about all that sweet, sweet RPXP people are missing out on?
-- Privatized, this competition lacks that arena play-style. Where's the Glory?

[Blackfyre]

My feedback

• anonymous voting plus voting from the judges seems like a good solution to me
• I think 3 votes per player would lead to a more diversified field of results
• while I'd love to read the other threads (and I'll hopefully find the time to do so later) I get why access to them is restricted for other participants during the active round
• to get a bit more feedback for applications than RL may allow all the judges to give, the voters could leave anonymous comments to the apps they chose to vote for

[DAquilina]

If we do multiple votes in the future (which I think is a good idea), I would definitely suggest unranked.

[Avner]

Round 0 Feedback on Feedback for next year.

The judges are already swamped and putting in a lot of their time into this proccess so it is probablly not feasible to ask for even more of that time to write out constructive feedback for each of the apps coming in. Especially if they have 15+ Apps to judge.

The new Round 0 method of voting however is great for this. We could have the following format for each vote that would allow the participants to at least garner some feedback from the contestants.

Outplay Voting Ballot NAME: Character: What You Really Liked about the Application: What could be improved upon: (Optional) Please provide constructive criticism you would like to offer any of the other contestants:

As always I appreciate all the time Aethera, the judges, and all the DMs are putting in to this! Not to mention everyone else who has contributed behind the scenes in preparation. Thank you!

[thargent]

I'm going to voice my agreement with the "anonymity and feedback with public votes" crowd.

[Blackfyre]

I've got some more feedback, in this case regarding the feedback:

First off, thank you to the judges for taking the time to read through all our posts and forming an opinion about our work!

I still have to say that I preferred last years format of providing open feedback to all the participants (after round 0) and am not a fan at all of secreted feedback. We can learn just as much from feedback for others as we can from the one for our own posts.

[Rolzup]

I did like that last year that we had the option -- and I can't remember if it was right away or only later -- to un-secret the feedback we were given.

[Aethera]

Blackfyre, Rolzup -- would it be enough if I asked permission to unsecret comments later? I myself have provided public feedback, but the other judges have done as they saw fit. For learning purposes, I could unsecret some of it once a player okays it. I can also discuss with the judges the pros/cons of public feedback, but that may or may not go in your favor.

[GhostlyDaemon]

personally, I'm not 100% with the idea of public feedback for Round 1 - if a player okays it, then sure thing but I would want my feedback to remain secret

[Rolzup]

Originally Posted by Aethera

Blackfyre, Rolzup -- would it be enough if I asked permission to unsecret comments later? I myself have provided public feedback, but the other judges have done as they saw fit. For learning purposes, I could unsecret some of it once a player okays it. I can also discuss with the judges the pros/cons of public feedback, but that may or may not go in your favor.

That would be fine, yes. And of course, Daemon, this should remain entirely optional!

[wodine]

I think the feedback should be public, Outplay is a competition after all and I think competitors and spectators alike deserve to know why certain people moved on and others didn't.

I think in the future public feedback should be a stipulation in the rules, so people can't complain; they'd know what they were signing up for.