Discussion: Quidditch-Orienteering!!!

The first ever (at least to my knowledge) game of Quidditch-Orienteering will be this Sunday at 9am at Prospect Hill in Waltham, MA! Quidditch-O is a game that combines orienteering, stealth, and strategy into a sophisticated capture-the-flag game.

I hope you can come join us!

Do you have to bring your own broomstick?

Care to explain the rules so the rest of us can play too?

Sadly without magic, we thought broomsticks would be more of a hindrance than a help. The Beaters do get to carry foam pool noodles to tag people with, though :-).

The goal of the game is to collect as many streamers as possible and bring them to the Start/Finish area within the time limit. The basic set-up is a Score-O with multiple streamers at each control. There will be two teams, each with some combination of Chasers, Beaters, Keepers, and a Snitch. A protected Start/Finish area will have a box for each team to put their controls.

* The Chasers - The goal of the Chasers is to collect streamers from the controls and avoid getting caught by the Beaters.
* The Beaters - The goal of the Beaters is to tag Chasers carrying controls because when they do, they get half the controls the Chaser is carrying.
* The Keepers - The Keepers guard controls by hiding and then catching an unsuspecting Chaser at the control to get half the Chaser's streamers.
* The Snitch - The goal of the Snitch is to not get caught by the other team while completing several shorter Score-Os.

The complete rules are available here for anyone that wants to read them.

The rules are likely to be revised based on the outcome of the trial games on August 9. Since the game has never been played before, it's unclear whether the system is balanced. We'll post revisions!

I must say, I absolutely love this idea :) Would be keen to play if I was about 8 thousand miles closer in proximity.
Keen to hear how it goes!

What a blast! Wish I were on the other coast to give it a shot.

I can only imagine what the West Pointers would turn an idea like this into...I have a sneaking suspicion that paintball would be involved, though!

Have fun - great idea!

sounds fun!

Sounds more than a little like vampire-O which we've played on a few junior camps across the years. The vampires carry water balloons to tag their victims with!

Wouldn't being able to fend off vampires with "holy" water balloons make more sense?

you guys are too much :) But I would love to join you and play when I return home. Although I have to admit, it sounds like the Chasers will have a hard time getting around without being tagged all the time. Are there Keepers guarding all the controls?

We aren't entirely sure what the most appropriate ratio of players is, but we envisioned using the JK Rowling prescribed numbers: 3 chasers, 2 beaters, 1 Keeper, 1 Snitch. As the teams get even larger, we imagined most of the additional players would be chasers. We figured Keepers would be good positions for "muggles" (non-orienteers) as they require less orienteering - you go to 1 control and camp out for a while.

For our test games on Sunday, Ross is going to be a snitch for one of the games, and we're a little concerned that no one will catch him. I guess we'll see; it's certainly advantageous to have one of your fastest runners as Snitch.

There are obvious possibilities if you equip a group of 2n people with paintball guns, but I think that general class of games would be best described as "paintball-O" or quite possibly "hazing."

This sounds great.

The keeper has it easy though, and the chaser will find it hard to get past the keeper. Why not have the keeper guarding 3 controls that are close in proximity, like in harry potter.

Post maps and pictures if you can because it sounds fun.

Keep in mind that there will only be 1 or possibly 2 Keepers and a ton of controls. (We are currently planning 106 streamers at 53 controls for one game and 120 streamers at 30 controls for the other for Sunday.) So, yeah if a Chaser goes to a control that a Keeper is guarding, and the Chaser doesn't see the Keeper at the control, the Chaser will get tagged. However, if the Chaser sees the Keeper, this is a Score-O, so the Chaser just moves on to a different control.

Having the Keeper guarding 3 controls in close proximity is an interesting idea for sure! We'll have to think about the logistics of it...

We are hoping each person will get tagged by either a Keeper or Beater a couple of times during the game. It keeps the adrenaline flowing and makes things more fun :-). Unless the Beaters are INCREDIBLY fast and also sort of clairvoyant, though I would be surprised if Chasers are getting tagged all the time. Considering that the Beaters won't have a tremendously good idea of which controls the Chasers are going for, they will have to work to find people in the woods!

I wish this event could be televised (or whatever the Harry Potter equivalent technology is.)

The most consistent idea with Harry Potter is to have the Keeper guarding three scoring boxes, where chasers would return the streamers. I spent a while thinking about this format, but I couldn't find a general method of making this feasible and competitive.

What we're trying to allow is a game in which people of varying speed can effectively compete and everyone has an approximately equal opportunity to contribute to the success of the team.

Why not GPS track the thing?

Is the GPS tracking supposed to help the Keeper logistics in some way or is this instead of televising? Either way, since many of the people playing in this first game don't own GPS trackers, it will make things difficult. If we could get a hold of enough GPS trackers and/or a group of people who all own GPS trackers to play the game sometime, it would probably be pretty fun to watch the GPS tracks later!

Kind of like a high speed Marauder's Map.

It would be really fun if everyone was wearing GPS trackers that were sending information back to spectators in real time. Then it would be a true Marauder's Map!

and people wonder why orienteering has a nerdy reputation......

I always assumed that orienteering had a nerdy reputation because it's basically a nerdy sport. Are there fewer nerds in Australian orienteering? My very small n of Australian runners that I know plays very well into that stereotype.

I'm just glad that the sport attracts the kind of people that will put 20 plus hours ( probably a considerable underestimate) into putting on an event that is lighthearted and non-competitive because it sounds fun.

Who said Quidditch-O was non-competitive? My understanding of the teams at present indicates that I will be chasing you around Prospect Hill with a bat, Ross. (Please don't injure yourself!)

Is it that orienteering is nerdy, or is it the number of MIT folks involved??

At any rate - are there photos????

Some photos were taken, but unfortunately most of them were taken before or after the event, not during the action. We learned much about the current design of rules and positions, and we will revise the rules based on everyone's observations at the events. Lori will be posting the photos and revised rules soon.

In general, everyone had a great time, and we're very excited and grateful so many people decided to try this novel (and crazy-sounding) activity.

There are a number of events in the foreseeable future planned, both in the Boston area and in conjunction with other meets. If you are interested in setting a Quidditch-O competition, please consult with Lori. Notes specifically for event directors will be made available in the near future.

Excellent. Don't forget to consider the lessons gleaned here: http://collegequidditch.com/

For one, copyright sensitivity is important.

this looks deadly...

cant wait to see the photos.... and try it out

Mike Sandstrom played quidditch during his freshman year at Vassar.

We played some awesome games yesterday! We had 11 people show up, and everyone seems to be up for doing it again! We are planning some more events in the future for anyone that wants to show up. There will likely be a couple of rule changes based on what we learned, so for those of you that are interested in putting on your own events, stay tuned. Here's our map.



Game 1 was confined to the area north of the pink line, and Game 2 was confined to the area south of the pink line. Both games were a lot of fun, but the control density of Game 2 was better!

Here's an example of Snitch course.



And here's an example of a Snitch.



Jenny aka Madame Hooch counting the gazillions of streamers we brought in. As she pointed out, it looks like we are starting a streamer fire :-).



The participants!



Thanks to everyone that came out! It was tons of fun, and I can't wait to play again!

Wow... thats a lot of controls...

Too many??

Keep in mind that we played two games with those controls, but even still we definitely had more controls than we needed out there. Judging by what happened, I think the control density of the southern half was about right, but we should have done each game in probably about half the area and, thus, half the controls, which would match up well with the numbers of controls the Chasers were bringing in. This would also have the positive effect of increasing interaction between the various players.

It was fun to participate in the world's premiere of Quidditch-O and I'm looking forward to doing that again. Big thanks to all people who devoted so much of their time for this event!

ye... that seems to make more sense