You surprise me. The rules are not that long and the scoring procedure is very simple (see rule 1).
The Rules:
You pick 13 celebrities whom you predict will die within the calendar year. If any of your celebrities dies, you score 100 points minus their age at death. Whoever has the most points at the end of the year wins.
All picks must be time- and date-stamped by midnight Chicago time, Dec. 31st, 2008. (That’s U.S. Central time, which is six hours behind Greenwich.)
Valid picks are not:
a. already dead
b. a fictional character
c. non-human
d. under age 18 at death
e. a registered member of the SDMB
f. political prisoners.
You can pick people who are 100 or more years old but you won’t score points for them.
If we are uncertain about the celebrity’s age at death, we will go by the higher age (lower score).
Your picks must specify a name: listing “anybody from [the cast of your most hated TV show or boy band]” as a pick will be ignored.
Persons under sentence of death will be valid for scoring points only if they die by means other than official execution.
Any poster who kills or otherwise contributes to the death of any celebrity mentioned in this thread is disqualified. It’s just a game, people. The only exceptions to this rule would be deaths caused by those posters serving as members of the police or armed forces of any country, in the line of duty.
Editing your choices: be careful! You can make changes to your list before the end of the year, but it has to be clear which names are your final choices. You may submit one or more “alternates” with your list in the event that one of your picks dies during December 2008, or submit an alternate after the death of the original pick, as long as this is posted by Dec 31, 2008. If you do not submit a name, I will submit the rest. You can have no more than 13 picks. If you pick more than 13, or if any of your picks is otherwise invalid, I may ask for clarification. Otherwise, I will submit the first 13 names on your list. Do me a favor: check twice, post once.
I would guess so, but I inherited the rule (I inherited them all - the proposed change in this thread is the first time I have looked at changing anything). Maybe Little Nemo knows.
I actually picked Saddam after he was captured, because I was sure someone would try to off the old bastard while he was on trial. AFAIK, there were two attempts to assasinate him that didn’t go very far.
It wasn’t originally political prisoners. The rule was that you couldn’t pick a prisoner under death sentence - or at least you got no points unless he died by means other than execution.
My reasoning was that it would otherwise be too easy to just do an online search for a bunch of deathrow prisoners in some place like China or Iran or Texas and fill up your list. As a bonus, most death row prisoners are relatively young. Even if half your picks got last minute reprieves, you’d probably get at least a couple hundred points.
So we have a mystery rule. Interesting, as we already have the death sentence issue covered.
There’s always a bunch of loonie toons people around screaming how they are political prisoners. And I’m sure some genuinely are. I wonder if this might cause some problems. What if some human rights activist gets popped trying to escape house arrest. Isn’t there some woman in Burma who’s kind of in peril like that?
Aha! Here 'tis. It was Captain Lance Murdoch’s idea: 11/10/04, post #669 of the 2004 game thread. We were kicking around ideas for improving the rules and he said:
“…I do have one other thing. We might need a little rule addition for next year. I think we should prohibit the picking of people who were abducted in Iraq this year. This is tantamount to being on death row. Someone could conceivably fill their list with people like the Allawis and Margaret Hassan and then watch the points pile up as each one is murdered.”
(I don’t know how to do that “link to a single post from another thread” thing.)
question: would an athlete in a major sport (e.g., NFL) be considered a celebrity, if they play or played in the game? would they need to be a “major” player (e.g., Walter Payton) or an an offensive lineman with relative obscurity work (e.g., Stan Walters - likely only known to Philadelphia fans)?
would the fact that an ex-NFL player (who was not a “major” player) now has a degenerative condition factor in?
Assuming these are questions about how I would rule on someone who is known to be sick.
Yes.
Well, apart from the fact that we could argue that no NFL players are “celebrities” in most of the world, I would say that anyone who played on an NFL team counts, especially someone who played 122 consecutive games.
Does that count for former sports figures? I’ve had Art Donovan (Baltimore Colts) on my list for a couple of years. I don’t know that his death would make front page national news, but it would certainly be the lead story here in Baltimore, and would most likely make ESPN’s news.
He would count. When in doubt, the onus would be to allow someone. I am purely looking to eliminate those people who are unknown until they get sick and then do something such as a sponsored walk across the country, or their cancer-blog gets some publicity. And people who may make a special-interest story in the newspaper.
Here are some examples that I would not allow next year:
