The Room of Knowledge: Trivia

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Introduction

Have you always been a fan of learning new (and interesting) things? Have you always wanted to show off your vast knowledge on one or more topics? Have you always liked competition? If you answered yes to all of those questions, then do not wait any longer, because the Trivia room offers all of these things in one! Whenever be it sports, science, history, or anything, anyone is free to join in our fun of displaying knowledge about anything! After all, in our room, you learn something new everyday!

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While learning new things in Trivia is one of the room's major aspects, Trivia is also a gaming room, which means that the learning happens with, obviously, playing. This part will deal with covering the games that are played the most and make up the room today. What a better way than learning while playing?

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Trivia Tracker

Trivia Tracker (known shortly as TT) is the game that we play the most, being played mainly when nothing is being hosted / played. The main rules are pretty simple: one user will have the ''Baton Pass'' (known shortly as BP), which allows them to ask one question by using the bold formatting. After the question is successfully bolded (and thus asked), other users can attempt to answer the question simply by posting possible answers in the chat. Once someone gives a correct answer, the current BP holder will use the ~yes command to give the BP to the first one that gave a correct answer. The new BP holder now can either ask a question as well or, if they do not wish to ask a question, give the BP away by using the ~openbp command (or ~bpopen). When it's opened, another user can grab it by typing ''me'' or ''bp'' to ask a question instead of the original BP holder. There's no need to ''sign up'' to play; all you have to do is just start playing along! Although in the past TT was handled completely by the roomauth, today a major role, the handling of the game, is now done by our Room Bot Jeopard-E, developed and maintained by Room Owner Struchni, which tracks the current state of the BP, maintains our leaderboard, and aids Voices and Drivers when hosting minigames.

However, because of TT's general nature, there are many rules and clauses that forbid the asking of specific types of questions, as well as certain types of answers. An example of a rule would be that questions about Pokémon Showdown! and Smogon are not allowed, while an example of a clause would be the ambiguous type clause, which states that Silvally, Arceus, Hidden Power, and anything that can be multiple types is deemed to be the base one, unless stated otherwise. If a question breaks a rule or is otherwise deemed problematic by a roomauth, the question will result in being vetoed. When a question is vetoed, it means it's not valid and the asker cannot give the BP to anyone. The first thing to know about the vetos is that they are not a punishment! Vetos are simply our way to indicate that something went wrong with the question. It happens to everyone, even roomauths, so don't worry if you get vetoed! If you get vetoed, you just have to attempt to ask a new question or open the BP. We have a website that has all the rules and clauses you will need, so if you plan on paying a visit, be sure to read them!

As stated earlier, Trivia is also a gaming room, which means it's accompanied by a point-based leaderboard. The point system works like this: if you answer a question correctly, successfully ask one, and ~yes someone, you get 2 points. If you decide to open the BP instead, you don't win points. If you grab an opened BP, ask a question, and ~yes successfully, you win solely 1 point. At the end of the 15-days cycle, the 5 users with most points are declared the winners and will be featured in our roomintro until the end of the next cycle!

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Scripted Official Games

Trivia could be divided in 2 different periods: pre-TT period and this current one (post-TT). During pre-TT, scripted official games were played 24/7, but now they are played every 4 hours. When it's time to host one, a roomauth will take the BP and will start the signups. Users that want to play can use the command /trivia join to join. The game generally starts 5 minutes after the signups are opened. Do not worry if you miss the signups phase! You can join even when the game has started!

Unlike TT, our officials rely on a script (hence its name) that was developed by Global and former Room Moderator Morfent. Today, the script is maintained by Room Moderator moo. Both of those guys have contributed a lot to the script, and it wouldn't be in its current state if they weren't here!

Once the game starts, the script will periodically give questions that players can answer with the command /ta. Be careful to not post answers in chat, as that is punishable! However, the way the game is going to work depends on which one of our 3 game modes was picked. These are the following game modes:

• - Timer: The one that is played the most. The question is posted for a limited time and players have to answer it before time is up. The faster someone answers correctly, the more points they will get, with points ranging from 1 to 5.
• - First: A question is posted and there is still a timer for it. However, as soon as someone answers it correctly, the answering period ends immediately, which means only the 1st person gets points. Every correct answer is 5 points, regardless of how fast it was answered.
• - Number: Similar to Timer, players answer the given question and win 1-5 points. However, how many points every player gets is determined by how many players have gotten the question right; The less players that get the question correctly, the more points will be given. Keeping momentum is key to winning this!

One important thing to note about the script is that it does accept typos, but that depends on the correct answer's original spelling; if the answer is 6 letters long or more, the script will allow 2 typos. Any less than that, it requires perfect spelling.

Questions in the script are divided into the following 4 categories:

• - Pokémon : Self explanatory, anything about Pokémon.
• - Arts & Entertainment: This category covers questions related to art and anything that is meant to entertain people in some way. Popular types of questions topics in this category are movies, actors, video games (excluding Pokémon), books with entertainment purposes, and others.
• - Science & Geography: Self explanatory again, this category covers scientific disciplines such as chemistry, physics, maths, geography (obviously), science fiction books, and others.
• - Society & Humanities: If a question doesn't fit any of the categories above, it very likely fits this one. This category mostly deals with social sciences, history (including mythology), food, religion, and others.

"What are these categories for?" you might ask. Well, sometimes an auth can host a mono-category official—for example, mono-Pokémon. In that case, only questions classified as "Pokémon" will show up.

The winner of the scripted official games is the one that reaches the scorecap. There are 3 different ones: Short (20), Medium (35), and Long (50). Winners of officials get points (depending on the scorecap) that are added to the overall ladder: 3 points for Short, 4 for Medium, and 5 for Long.

Now, you might be wondering, "who makes those wonderful questions?". Who maintains order and balance for these games? Perhaps the roomauth? Well, if you did ask yourself that, then the answer is no. First of all, everything done with the questions happens in our subroom, Question Workshop. While the Trivia roomauth is responsible for TT, Question Workshop itself has a dedicated staff team that is responsible for the maintance, enforcing, and policymaking for these questions, as well as fixing errors in these questions. If you were to join the subroom, you would very likely notice the modchat +, which allows only Voices in the subroom to talk, or if you were to do /roomauth QW, you'd notice our dozens of voices in there. In order to become voiced (and thus capable of speaking there) you must first audition by PMing a Room Moderator or Room Owner of QW with 12 possible questions. If your audition is deemed good enough, you will be Voiced and be able to submit most of the questions you auditioned with, as well any other questions you could think of! When you submit a question, it will eventually be either accepted or rejected by a Room Moderator or Room Owner. If needed, they can point out errors you made in the question so you can avoid doing them in future.

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Trivia Tracker Blitz

At this point of the article, you should know the basics of TT and how it works. This is important, as Trivia Tracker Blitz (known shortly just as Blitz) is based around TT. Unlike the scripted official games, Blitz isn't hosted on a real schedule, but whenever an auth feels like it. A roomauth that wants to host will take the BP and will give the users 5 minutes to read the rules and prepare themselves before starting. You do not signup for this!

After it's time to start (typically 5 minutes after announcement) the host will notify the players that the tossup question is incoming. Tossup questions are the one the host asks, rather than the player. During tossup questions, spelling clause (which means perfect spelling) applies, meaning typoed answers are never correct. Once the host asks the tossup question, other users can attempt to answer it. Whoever first answers it correctly will get the BP with the ~yes command. Now, "isn't this just TT but with spelling clause from the host?" you might ask. At this point, yes it is, although there's more to this! The one that gets the BP has only 1 minute to ask their question! Furthermore, Pokémon category questions (e.g. This is the Anteater Pokémon) and capital questions (e.g. This is the capital of Mongolia) can only be asked by the host! There's also the 2/5 clause, along with the other rules and clauses, which forbids the asking of more than 2 questions from the same topic within 5 questions. However, there's still more to this: even though askers have only 1 minute to ask their question, the question must also be answered within 1 minute! If the asker's / question's time runs out or the question gets vetoed, the host will do ~no and later claim the BP for themselves. The timed out / vetoed user loses the points they won and the host will ask another tossup question. Now, ''How do I win this?'' you might be wondering. Well basically, there will be a scorecap (typically 8 or 6 in ''turbo'' versions). Every time a user gets a question and successfully ~yes someone, they win 2 points. Once a user reaches the given scorecap, they become a ''finalist''. Typically, Blitz games have 4 (or 3 in the turbo versions) finalists. Once someone becomes a finalist, the host will take the BP and will ask another tossup question. Pretty much like how the game works generally, but now the finalist(s) is/are not allowed to participate.

Once there are enough finalists, the host will put a modchat + and will voice all non-auth finalists. Finals work almost the same way as normal Blitz, except that only the finalists are allowed to participate, and the scorecap is longer than in the last phase (typically 10). However, almost always, Blitz finals are hosted with some (bizarre) twist, such as "All questions' answers must be Pokémon, but you need to answer with the Pokémon next in the national Pokédex." In this case, if the question's answer is Bulbasaur, the users must say Ivysaur in order to be correct! The proccess is the same as normal Blitz. Once one of the finalists reaches the scorecap, they are declared the winner of this game. There's no real prize to winning this, although sometimes room staff allows the winner to choose the next room poll.

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Trivia Duel

Unlike Blitz, this game requires you to sign up. Typically, doing /me in is generally what a host would want from users if they want to join, although that's not always the case. Once the signups phase is over, the host will put modchat+ and every non-auth player will be promoted. A player will be picked on random with the usage of !pick command and they will challenge another player. The host will do then !pick Pokémon, ae, sh, sg in order to decide the category (the abbreviations match the categories used during scripted official games). Once the category is picked, the host will ask a question that corresponds to the category. Whoever of the players answers first correctly survives and the other is eliminated from the game!

Although 1v1 is a common way to play this, some hosts like to introduce more than this format—for example, 1v1v1, where one player challenges 2 players and the winner eliminates the other 2 players. Not only that, but some hosts also add in a pick option that lets you pick 2 different participants to fight while you yourself don't fight at all! The winner of this game is the last standing player.

This format itself has inspired other variations that are existing minigames today. An example of that would be Titanomachy, where regular users can only challenge roomauths and vice versa with the winner being the last standing "team."

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Trivia Dodgeball

Just like Duel, this game will begin with a signup period. The signups phase is the same as Duel. Once signups are over, the host will split the players into 2 different teams and each team will be assigned one captain. After this process, a category is picked and captains choose a player from their team to send for this round. Whoever of the players gets the question correctly eliminates the other. This continues on until one of the teams knocks out the other team entirely!

There also exists a somewhat strange variant of Trivia Dodgeball, called Trivia Team Traitor. In this version, the captain concept is scrapped and every round, 2-4 players from each team are sent for the question. Whoever gets it first sends their teammate(s) to the opposite team. This continues on until only 1 player is left on one team, in which case they are declared winner!

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Prime Minister

In this game, players have to yet again sign up. Once signups are over, the host will put modchat, but, unlike all other games, no one will be promoted. Instead, the host will ask a question and will give a limited time for the players to answer it in the host's PMs. The ones that get the question correctly in time advance to the next round, while the ones that don't are eliminated. This continues on until 1 player remains or all of them get eliminated (although the round can be redone if a lot of players die), although a possible twist where anyone that passes after [X] round is winner exists!

There are other minigames that exist within our room, so if you want to learn more, come join Trivia!

On a general note, even though we have many minigames, users are still free to submit potential minigame ideas they have. Who knows, it might get accepted and made into its own game! Furthermore, regular users that show knowledge of rules and ask good, varied questions might be given the ability to host minigames (when supervised by a Driver+) as well!

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Get Out There!

Whenever you want to share an interesting fact, either via just posting in chat or by making it as a valid question, or learn something interesting, come pay a visit to the room! We always enjoy seeing interesting facts, and as our room description says, "Learn something new every day!"

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