"What do you think of quidditch?" Topic

Or however it's spelled. …

The Harry Potter game played by wizzards on broomsticks.

Let me see if I get it right…
A bunch of guys do all the hard work, accumulating points through skill and force, and at the last minute a skinny little runt who has been hanging on the edges, Flashman like, can swoop in at the last minute and win the whole thing, regardless of the score. Is that about right?

Got it in one

Yep. It, like many other things in the world of mug glens, is unfair and probably rigged by the power brokers not even in the game.

Two words. Plot device.

Plot distraction that fills many tedious pages.

Goals score 10 points
Catching the snitch scores 50 points and ends the game

So if the +50 doesn't put you in the lead, don't catch the snitch!

Catching the snitch scores 150 points.

Snitches get stitches! Jes' sayin'

Winston thinks it is a plot distraction, which to some degree it is, but Hogwarts is just a copy of any English Public School. Rowling has to make Potter a "Hero", and while he can't be a muscle-bound jock, he has to excel in the School Sport. So Quidditch had to have a rule that allows Potter to be a sporting hero, but at the same time be a bit nerdy. This is why the Snitch is a plot device. I actually suspect Rowling came up with the Snitch thing first (because of what Harry has to do in one of the rooms in the Philosopher's Stone), and came up with the rest afterward because a game where people have to hunt down a flying, golden golf-ball would be a trifle boring.

Actually, it's a really good victory point system for wargaming – having one objective that significantly (but not totally) overbalances the rest of the VP system. It keeps players working a two part strategy (as the means of the objectives are very different) and creates a shift in the timbre (dramatic tension) of the game if the VP delta gets close to the overbalancing objective.

The only problem I had with it was the 150 points compared to the sum and pattern of the 10 pointers in a typical game. If you routinely expected 70 or 80 goals and it was typical to be eight to ten goals ahead, then the 150 points works.

Yeah, but a dragon really wouldn't heat a goblin.

BTW here is the link to the US Quidditch Cup tournament. link

My Aggies are still in it!

It may be a really good victory point system for wargaming, but as a sport it sucks.

Well, if you don't like it, why are you reading a book written for young teens? It is a plot device just like a y other plot device in any other book. And this one is for kids.

Just saying.

And why does Sam keep pestering that guy to eat green eggs and ham? Don't even get me started on a fish out of water.

I'm a huge fan of Rowling's work on the HP series, but I've always thought she didn't quite think the snitch rules through, but tossed out "150" points to be a cool-sounding arbitrarily high number. She later had to go through considerable effort to make catching the snitch a ploy that sometimes doesn't produce instant victory.

Of course, there's one additional effect no one considers: a game of quidditch cannot end until the snitch is caught, which more than allows for the standard goals to exceed the value of a caught snitch, given a long enough game. All one has to do is score 16 goals!

"A bunch of guys do all the hard work, accumulating points through skill and force"

I think you are making very liberal use of "skill" and "hard work".

The ONLY thing worse than the movie version of the sport? The REAL sport, where they hop around on broomsticks pretending to fly….well…futbol is worse, I admit.

Any sport where Harry Potter is a physical specimen and top athlete is NOT a sport.

Then again, the NFL is on track to make quidditch look like Rollerball….

That's right,Smokey, we need more head cases in the NFL,not less.

The points disparity in Quidditch reminded me of Magic: "Here comes my Total Invicibility Card!"

If I wanted to play a sport from a movie,it would be this:

youtu.be/QHKyepF0Tzc

Makes more sense than baseball.

I'll stick with 43-man Squamish! (how many recognize that?)

My twin daughters play Qudditch in college. They run around holding a broom. They have loads of fun.

In the movie, the rules don't work. In the muggle sport, grabbing the snitch(a player running around with a flag football ribbon) ends the game and gets you 30 points. Works pretty well. The 150 point book version is stupid.

I remember that one,Scott. Mad Magazine from way back.

She learned the lesson, "take six pages to describe something that should take place in one", very well from the "King" of blather, his heinous, Stephen….

Go ahead and accuse me of envy, I will plead guilty….