The 5th Tournament of the SRS has begun!

I am pleased to announce that the Fifth Tournament of the Sanguine Ribbon Society has started!

Participants, please review the updated official rules. Aside from minor clarifications, I have added a tournament cut-off date (Aug 15) and the maximum allowed number of lethal sparring bouts (14), and slightly increased the rewards. I have also added a roster page that conveniently lists all of the 27 participants along with their profile links and their most recent leaderboard stats. You can use this page to quickly add participants to your contacts list, and to get a sense of their skill levels when deciding to issue or accept sparring challenges.

Remember, you are responsible for listing any opponents that you spar with on the official 5th Tournament Log page, along with any points you receive. The outcome of any lethal sparring bouts for the tournament can also be used to update your leaderboard entry (although it has no bearing on your standing in the tournament). If you have any questions or encounter any issues, please do not hesitate to contact me by PM, by replying here, or in-game.

I hope everyone enjoys the tournament. Note that it will continue to run through this year’s mayoral election, so by all means feel free to settle your political differences like civilised ladies/gentlemen/etc of Fallen London: with polite duels to the (temporary) death. :dagger:

Quickly popping by to thank you for organizing this!
Want to mention that I won’t be available until Sunday or Monday; on the road with limited access to the Neath.
Few mentions now:
Add forum, Reddit and/or Discord username for better communication between participants
Visit the game from this link when you are defeated so you can accept heals. Logging in won’t redirect the user to the page though and I haven’t tested this yet!

Link
htps://www.fallenlondon.com/messages

Sorry for robot like message; mobile.
edited by Skinnyman on 7/5/2019

I appear to have made a mistake here: I thought that indicating I was “Active” meant I was included in the tournament. I don’t suppose it is too late to add my name?

[quote= Saklad]I appear to have made a mistake here: I thought that indicating I was “Active” meant I was included in the tournament. I don’t suppose it is too late to add my name?[/quote]Saklad5, I’ve added you to the roster and tournament log, so you’re in.

Any additional entries will have to wait until the next tournament, as that would increase the number of lethal sparring bouts participants need to complete and would therefore require revisions to the official rules.

The Fifth Tournament has commenced, and the news-rats are on the streets to gather tales for a special Duellists’ Edition of the Most Singular Magazine! Not least because the Magazine’s own senior editor, the Jaunty Mystic, is an entrant in this glorious event of genteel murder. The Magazine invites Sanguine Ribbon duellists and spectators alike to speak with the Mystic – who solemnly swears not to knife you during the interview – to be featured in this upcoming paper.

In other words - I’m back at my Editor’s desk and happy to write a RP-style headline and little snippet for your Fallen London player character. See this thread for examples that I’ve written for other players. Either PM me (Taranlei) in-game or through the forums. You don’t have to be in the tournament to request a headline, anyone is welcome.

If you’re in the Tournament and want a headline about your exploits, feel free to send me as much or little as you want: weapons/clothing, location of duel, how you won/lost. I won’t include other players’ characters/account names unless it’s with their permission. You don’t have to challenge me to get a headline – although you’re welcome to try. ;)

If you’ve already received a headline from me, feel free to request a new one for your new adventures!

ETA – My thanks to James Sinclair for prompting me to revive my Newspaper. Redditors are welcome to advertise this on the subreddit too; I don’t have an account.

I missed the signups? Damn it all, I was quite looking forward to this.

Teach me to look away for a few weeks…

[quote=Tsar Koschei]I missed the signups? Damn it all, I was quite looking forward to this.

Teach me to look away for a few weeks…[/quote]You’ve given me an idea, though. I’ll either add a new page to the SRS spreadsheet or a new column to the leaderboard, where members can indicate their interest in the next tournament. Then I can send out in-game notification letters to everyone on the list when signups are open for the next event.

At least there’s some upside to my misfortune. That does indeed sound like a very good idea, thank you!

Could you log the First City Coins I get from the tournament as a donation, and just keep them? It’s not like I really need them for anything, and I’d probably just send them back eventually anyway.

On a related note, the prizes seem a bit excessive. After all, you can only give thirty at a time. You should at least limit the participation prize to 30 First City Coins. Even that feels excessive, really.

By the way, do you want some help distributing prizes? It seems impractical to have one person distributing so many Surprise Packages. You could maintain a public spreadsheet of undistributed prizes, and let other people fulfill them as another form of donation.

I would also recommend for participants to keep their wounds level above 3. This way, the winner can send healing tinctures before the duel is decided.

There isn’t really an expectation to offer healing immediately, is there? You’re supposed to request it from one of the support volunteers (potentially during the duel itself, if your opponent volunteered).

Honestly, I feel like losing a duel should actually move your location to “A boat trip”, rather than just setting Wounds to 8. It’d make way more sense, since winning a duel involves literally seeing the loser die in front of you.

The only reason I bother avoiding the intended outcome is to save my Horsehead Amulets. Failbetter never got around to adding an option to not use them like they once said they would, even though they could just add a new branch to the “Must” storylet. Heck, they already implement the Noman that way.

On that note, I think “Must” storylets should be triggered when choosing a branch, not when fetching available storylets. Fetching the game state should never change anything. The existing approach is a source of numerous bugs and exploits, tolerated by players only because of certain obnoxious consequences (in particular, the “Criminal Record” quality) that can be thus avoided.
edited by Saklad5 on 7/12/2019

[quote= Saklad]There isn’t really an expectation to offer healing immediately, is there? You’re supposed to request it from one of the support volunteers (potentially during the duel itself, if your opponent volunteered).[/quote]Well, there is a need if you don’t want to lose amulets when you lose as an attacker. To receive healing, you need wounds above 3 to eligible for it.

[quote= Saklad]Honestly, I feel like losing a duel should actually move your location to “A boat trip”, rather than just setting Wounds to 8. It’d make way more sense, since winning a duel involves literally seeing the loser die in front of you.

The only reason I bother avoiding the intended outcome is to save my Horsehead Amulets. [/quote]Agree! I think I was increasing my SotC and pushed my wounds above 8 while forgetting about the Amulets. ~10 of them from hard earned stack were gone! :(

[quote= Saklad]On that note, I think “Must” storylets should be triggered when choosing a branch, not when fetching available storylets. Fetching the game state should never change anything. The existing approach is a source of numerous bugs and exploits, tolerated by players only because of certain obnoxious consequences (in particular, the “Criminal Record” quality) that can be thus avoided.[/quote]Hahahaha, yes, but… well, we all did such a thing! We are doing it in the tournament right now! :D

[quote= Saklad]Could you log the First City Coins I get from the tournament as a donation, and just keep them? It’s not like I really need them for anything, and I’d probably just send them back eventually anyway.[/quote]Ok, will do. Thanks!

[quote= Saklad]On a related note, the prizes seem a bit excessive. After all, you can only give thirty at a time. You should at least limit the participation prize to 30 First City Coins. Even that feels excessive, really.[/quote]Generous donations have left the SRS treasury overflowing. We currently have 4,590 First City Coins! The prize amounts are calculated so that there will be enough to cover expenses even if everyone completes all 14 bouts. However, that is very unlikely. Based on the previous tournament, I expect around 30-40% of participants to do so, which should end up costing roughly half of what’s currently in the Treasury, assuming the winners accept the cash prizes.

Regarding the participation prize, along with the badge it’s supposed to be an incentive for participants to continue even if there’s a clear winner (especially if that winner has already completed all of their bouts). Previous participants commented that there wasn’t much point in continuing to duel after that, but now they have at least a small reason to. I could give away just 30 coins for full participation, but I want to actually do something with all the money that’s been so generously donated.

It is a bit annoying that one can only give away 30 First City Coins at a time, but I’m an endgame player who has finished every major grind except the Heptagoat, so I have plenty of actions to spare.

[quote= Saklad]By the way, do you want some help distributing prizes? It seems impractical to have one person distributing so many Surprise Packages. You could maintain a public spreadsheet of undistributed prizes, and let other people fulfill them as another form of donation.[/quote]I’ll see how it goes doing it myself this time, but if it ends up taking too long then I’ll think about setting up something like that. You’re welcome to send congratulatory gifts to other participants, of course (especially one or more gifts of rats to the Wooden Spoon award winner).

I just found myself in the dreaded &quotSomething convulses violently against your chest&quot storylet, so it seems like I may have to kiss my last Horsehead Amulet goodbye.
For a moment, I thought I might be able to avoid it by waiting for Time, the Healer (due in a couple of hours). This was because the API seemed to be saying that the branch had a Wounds requirement of 8. Unfortunately, I was actually just misreading the traffic: the storylet has that requirement, and I’m already in it. Lowering Wounds below 8 will do nothing.

And yes, I engage in this as well, but only because of an even bigger annoyance. Ideally, players wouldn’t be able to dodge ‘Must’ storylets (or alter the game state in any way by fetching storylets, which is rather stupid in my opinion), but would be able to go straight to the Boatman without spending a Horsehead Amulet.
edited by Saklad5 on 7/17/2019

Hello. I am looking for Lethal Sparring partners. I dont really care if i lose or win, just want to retrain my Dangerous to 200 really fast. Feel free to invite me or write PM.
https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/Waterpls
edited by Waterpls on 7/24/2019

It seems like I’m destined to have fewer than necessary Lethal Sparring Bouts. I have two sparring bouts left, and after I finish the current one there will be no other participants that have one bout left. It seems unlikely that I’ll be able to challenge anyone before the end of the day.

The 5th tournament has concluded! I will make an official announcement tomorrow containing the final scores.

Big congratulations to the winner, whom I will not announce so as not to spoil Sinclair’s fun. (It’s not me. That would be rather self-effacing, wouldn’t it?)