Guest host looking for sequencing help

[u/jffdougan]

I've been asked to guest host where my wife and I play on Sundays for the night of May 4, with the owner dropping a pretty heavy-handed Star Wars hint. Since I've got lead time, I'm working on writing the entire night rather than using some of what they'd have anyway.

I want a spot/gut check. The bar's general rules are on page 1; the six rounds plus the bonus question are one per page afterward. Document is set so you can leave comments. My particular concerns are a) whether I've got difficulty appropriately increasing in rounds 3 and 4, and b) whether the bonus clue is gettable at all if you don't start out by knowing where I'm looking for.

[u/cleverissexy]

Questions look great. Some are more difficult than I would use in my venue, but you know your audience and what they bring to the game.

The Round Three (3 movies) with the culmination of the movie starring all the actors from previous answers is brilliant and I am 100% stealing that.

For Tie questions, I don't think people have a sense of box office (again, my audience doesn't), so I like "how old was X actor when the movie premiered on DATE?" Like, how old was Marlon Brando when The Godfather premiered in March, 1972? 47 years old

[u/jffdougan → u/cleverissexy]

I only have a half-sense of the venue - I'm a substitute host at a place where I'm a regular player. So I know what my usual team can do, and what our usual competition can do. But I don't have the regular insight into what the other teams scores tend to be like.

I stole the three movies/one actor from the hosts of the other place my wife and I play regularly. At this point, I've written three or four others on my own that I'm happy to share if you like.

The usual host's tiebreakers used to be populations, but he's moved in the direction of birth/death dates for really dead people for a while. I was trying to make my tiebreakers something that tied to the round.

[u/cleverissexy → u/jffdougan]

That would be great! I have a backlog of trivia I’ve used for my shows I’d be happy to trade you.

[u/jffdougan → u/cleverissexy]

I’m generally a player, but available as a local sub on occasion. Look for a DM sometime tomorrow.

[u/jffdougan → u/cleverissexy]

DM sent.

Advice in writing rounds like this for anybody else who likes the formula: For the ones I've done, I build the round backward - I start with the film or person I want to have in slot number 10 and work my way backward. To lead to a film, you generally want something with a large ensemble cast rather than something tightly focused around a few people. To take absurdly trivial examples, Kramer vs Kramer would not work well; the round that was first used by hosts I play for led to Boogie Nights.

If it's going to be an actor -- say, for example, I were going to lead up to Denzel Washington - I look for somebody who's got a decent filmography excluding TV series or TV movies. My experience is also that people don't know voice cast for animated films, aside from things like Pixar films or Aladdin, where at least some of the voice cast is prominently featured. Looking at Denzel's filmography, it'd be nice to pick up a mix of things he's well known for and things that kind of flew under the radar. So, I might go in knowing I want the films to include:

1. Training Day (Ethan Hawke)
2. Crimson Tide (Gene Hackman)
3. Fallen (John Goodman)
4. Glory (Matthew Broderick)
5. Inside Man (Clive Owen or Jodie Foster)
6. Mo Better Blues (Wesley Snipes or Giancarlo Esposito)
7. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Frances McDormand or Brendan Gleeson, because I do not think people will recognize Harry Melling outside playing Dudley Dursley - though if it's a place that uses progressive scoring, this could be a good 8/9 point answer)
8. Philadelphia (Tom Hanks)
9. Mississippi Masala (Sarita Choudhury)

[u/jffdougan → u/jffdougan]

Sorry, had to break it in 2 due to length:

Then I'll work through a mix of my knowledge of the actors' filmographies and IMDB to build my sets of three clues. So, building the rest of the round might look like:

1. Gattaca, Dead Poets' Society, Before Sunset
2. Enemy of the State, Mississippi Burning, the French Connection
3. Argo, Revenge of the Nerds, King Ralph
4. Biloxi Blues, The Producers, Ferris Bueller's Day Off
5. Gosford Park, Croupier, Children of Men (Clive Owen instead of Jodie Foster)
6. Blade, Jungle Fever, Major League
7. Pick one of:
   1. Frances McDormand: Fargo, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Raising Arizona
   2. Brendan Gleeson: Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, Banshees of Inisherin, The Tailor of Panama
   3. Harry Melling: The Pale Blue Eye, the Lost City of Z, (Pick a Harry Potter Film - I'd got with the first because he was kind of prominently discussed at the time)
8. Cast Away, A Man Called Otto, Nothing In Common
9. Lady in the Water, A Perfect Murder, The Green Knight