Is there such thing as 'fantasy fantasy'?

[CrackedChair]

So I heard on a forum members signature that they had a 'Fantasy Fantasy Team'.

I know there's a GITP shirt with some knights in an office discussing their Fantasy Fantasy teams and such, but is it actually a thing in the forums?

[An Enemy Spy]

Don't have clue how that would work. The whole point of fantasy sports is that you don't know how your players are going to do when you pick them out. Fantasy characters are mostly all set in stone, and the ones that aren't don't all update at the same time.

[tomandtish]

Yeah, an Enemy Spy is right. I started one in my signature as a joke, but there's not really a way to make it work with Fantasy novels.

You might make it work with comics, but even then you'd have to put some very specific guidelines because of the varying number of comics characters show up in.

For example, any character can only use one comic to pull their monthly stats from (otherwise your Wolverines and Batmans have a huge advantage).

[CrackedChair]

Ah, ok.

Even with stats set in stone, Fantasy figures, I can most certainly see something like a Fantasy Fantasy here on GITP. Could we...?

[tomandtish]

Ah, ok.

Even with stats set in stone, Fantasy figures, I can most certainly see something like a Fantasy Fantasy here on GITP. Could we...?

Again, to make it work you have to have Fantasy characters (or characters in any format) where you don't know how they are going to perform in their next appearance, AND that they'll have an equivalent number of appearances with the other characters I'm up against.

Look at Fantasy Football for comparison. I may know how my players did last year, and may base my picking on them (Gronk, Brady, Bell, etc.).

But I don't know how they are going to do this season. I may have projections, but until they play the upcoming games I have no definite answer.

I do know that they have the opportunity* to play in 16 games, of which anywhere from 12-15 will make up my regular fantasy season, and the teams I am up against will have the exact same number of games.

*Obviously injury, etc. may play a factor in this, but at the start of the season it is still the same number of games for every one (or at least you know in advance that it isn't). You can't say that with fantasy characters.

And doing it with stats set in stone defeats the purpose, because as soon as you define the scoring it's simply selecting the players that you know score the most points, and you already know that. Which characters kill the most opponents? Which characters succeed in their quests? All those things have been determined. It's no longer making predictive selections, it's strictly down to who wins the best picks.

[CrackedChair]

Again, to make it work you have to have Fantasy characters (or characters in any format) where you don't know how they are going to perform in their next appearance, AND that they'll have an equivalent number of appearances with the other characters I'm up against.

Look at Fantasy Football for comparison. I may know how my players did last year, and may base my picking on them (Gronk, Brady, Bell, etc.).

But I don't know how they are going to do this season. I may have projections, but until they play the upcoming games I have no definite answer.

I do know that they have the opportunity* to play in 16 games, of which anywhere from 12-15 will make up my regular fantasy season, and the teams I am up against will have the exact same number of games.

*Obviously injury, etc. may play a factor in this, but at the start of the season it is still the same number of games for every one (or at least you know in advance that it isn't). You can't say that with fantasy characters.

And doing it with stats set in stone defeats the purpose, because as soon as you define the scoring it's simply selecting the players that you know score the most points, and you already know that. Which characters kill the most opponents? Which characters succeed in their quests? All those things have been determined. It's no longer making predictive selections, it's strictly down to who wins the best picks.

Well, darn. Guess that threw a wrench into my plans.

But still, thanks for explaining to me. Now time for me to make a (hypothetical) Fantasy Fantasy team.

[tomandtish]

Not at all. And again, you MIGHT be able to do this with comics. They have a monthly format, so if you put some rules in place you could (in theory) make it work.

The biggest rule would be limiting appearances. Probably limit every character to their title comic (or defining what that is).

[Aedilred]

So I heard on a forum members signature that they had a 'Fantasy Fantasy Team'.

I know there's a GITP shirt with some knights in an office discussing their Fantasy Fantasy teams and such, but is it actually a thing in the forums?

The one I know about (and was involved in) was a fantasy Blood Bowl league. For those not aware, Blood Bowl is a fictional sport roughly based on American Football, in a fantasy setting. What happened there was that we picked our teams, and did the management between games, switching players in and out and so forth, but had no control over what happened on the pitch, with those being simmed in the computer game version as AI v. AI. It was more interactive than real-life fantasy leagues, as players were able to manage the players between matches rather than just pick which ones they thought would do best and see what happened, but it worked very well for the most part, although was rather a time imposition on the league commissioner.

What would have been amusing is if someone had set up a fantasy league based on our fantasy league, where people were picking players from across the teams with no input into management. Triple fantasy!

Other than the time problem the difficulty is, as suggested, in how to run the matches themselves so that there is an element of complexity but the players themselves aren't involved. The Blood Bowl league worked because there was a video game available with a AI-v-AI option, but in the absence of that it's tricky to arrange. And that's in a situation where you're dealing with something that is basically a sport, and so relatively easy to map to RL fantasy leagues. Taking it out more widely to encompass traditional fantasy stories, or comic books or the like, would be tricky because of the need to come up with a scoring system, not to mention the "knowing what's going to happen" business. I suppose with ongoing fantasy series like A Song of Ice and Fire you could run a dead pool, though. But the habit of characters having fakeout deaths or coming back to life would make that trickier.

[tomandtish]

I suppose with ongoing fantasy series like A Song of Ice and Fire you could run a dead pool, though. But the habit of characters having fakeout deaths or coming back to life would make that trickier.

But you still have the problem of uneven releases. SoIaF hasn't had a release since 2011 (and isn't going to until 2018 at this point). Some authors release a book a year, some every two years, and some much further apart.

Honestly, if I were doing this I'd be taking my characters from some of the less well-known Kindle Unlimited authors who are putting out 4-5 books a year. You'd be racking up huge points because of quantity.

[Scarlet Knight]

I see 2 ways of having a Fantasy fantasy team.

The first is based on Game of Thrones. You draft characters and get points for kills, nudity, and lose major points if your character dies. So the scene where Daenerys setting fire to the tent , killing so many Dothraki, and walking out nude would be the equivalent of a pitcher throwing a perfect game.


The second is based on Big bang Theory. You draft fantasy characters and get points if one of the cast members mentions them, wears related clothing, or buys an item related to them. Big bonus points if an actor who played them appears on the show.

[tomandtish]

These ideas both have some potential.


I see 2 ways of having a Fantasy fantasy team.

The first is based on Game of Thrones. You draft characters and get points for kills, nudity, and lose major points if your character dies. So the scene where Daenerys setting fire to the tent , killing so many Dothraki, and walking out nude would be the equivalent of a pitcher throwing a perfect game.

The idea works in theory, although your teams aren't going to be as big as a normal Fantasy team would be. You'll have to accept that some characters aren't in as many episodes as others (total episode count so far: Tyrion - 55, Cersei - 53, Jon and Daenerys - 50, etc.). How do we score large scale killings that a person is responsible for where we may not have a body count (the tent example above or Cersei destroying the Great Sept)?

There's some promise here though. You could also make this work with a group of closely related shows (CW's DC shows for instance).



The second is based on Big bang Theory. You draft fantasy characters and get points if one of the cast members mentions them, wears related clothing, or buys an item related to them. Big bonus points if an actor who played them appears on the show.

This could certainly work. Kind of like a drinking game except for points. It would be more a case of mostly low-scoring matches with the occasional big score when an episode develops a plot point around something that would require one character's name to be said a lot. Spock would probably be top draft pick every year (Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock - if they still do that).

[Aedilred]

Watch the unannounced Game of Thrones spoilers please, guys!

[Xyril]

Watch the unannounced Game of Thrones spoilers please, guys!

To anyone who hasn't caught up on GoT, don't worry, that wasn't a spoiler but rather an allusion to a particularly niche piece of adult fan fiction.

[2D8HP]

To anyone who hasn't caught up on GoT, don't worry, that wasn't a spoiler but rather an allusion to a particularly niche piece of adult fan fiction.


:confused:

Someone felt that GoT doesn't provide enough "fan-service"?

[ThurlRavenscrof]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COpInULUsAAuV5F.jpg

[JBPuffin]

Well, darn. Guess that threw a wrench into my plans.

But still, thanks for explaining to me. Now time for me to make a (hypothetical) Fantasy Fantasy team.

Don't lose hope - dice and random number generators exist, after all. Statistics in football are based on actual performance, which is exactly the opposite of how RPGs work; writing up character sheets for various characters and having a program simulate combats could achieve the same result from the opposite direction.