In various Harry Potter threads, the ridiculousness of Quidditch has been commented upon. Quidditch places far too much importance on the Seeker. Let’s see if maybe we can rewrite the rules of Quidditch to make it seem like a legitimate sport.
Caveat: let’s try and not make it just flying soccer.
My suggestion: the types of balls and team positions remain the same. Chasers try to throw the Quaffle into the goal (and can we only have one goal? the whole three goals thing is silly) and Keepers try to stop them. Meanwhile, Beaters try to keep the Bludgers from attacking their team’s Chasers. But why don’t we make Quidditch a timed game, like soccer? The Snitch can be released at certain intervals during the game, and if a Seeker catches the Snitch during this interval, it gives his/her team an additional goal or two.
But I’m not that creative. Anyone have better ideas?
I like the notion of the snitch, but make it worth, say 50 points, not 150, and it doesn’t end the game. What it does is end that section of play–once the snitch is caught, the teams resume starting positions and play starts over, with the non-catching snitch team in possession of the quaffle. (much like a soccer goal or a touchdown).
Game lasts for 3 hours or until night falls or Dementors attack.
We had a thread about this a while back in which I argued that the rules make more sense if you suppose that back when Quidditch was first started the broom technology* was more primitive, and as a result the Snitch was much harder to catch. Remember the references to matches that lasted for days or weeks? If the Snitch was hard enough to catch that matches lasted that long, then huge point totals would add up making the 150 points for the Snitch much less likely to guarantee victory, and allowing for the strategic decision NOT to catch the Snitch if your team is too far behind.
The solution is to modernize how evasive the Snitch is to match current broom technology* and restore the original pace of the game.
Why not JUST have the snitch end the game? No extra points, this would allow the seeker to be more about judging when to catch the snitch (when your team has more points or to minimize a point deficit during a losing game) and when to go crazy heading off the other seeker just so he DOESN’T get it.
Edit: Or have three snitches running around, different colors and sizes or something, one grants points but doesn’t end the game, one ends the game but doesn’t grant points, and one is the “traditional” Golden Snitch but has been made harder to catch.
Hmm… had another idea. You could make the snitch like a Quaffle that only the seeker can handle, in other words it works as usual BUT there’s a time limit on the game AND you have to score a goal with it to work with no passing allowed (again, only seekers can handle it), not an easy feat in the least since everyone will be playing “smear the seeker on the floor” if you’re going for the goal with it. This would justify the extra points.
Keep the Snitch in. The Seeker can use the Snitch to cast telekinesis on the Quaffle. The Snitch tries frantically to escape for five minutes, and then (if still held) *teleports *away and can be caught again. So there’s potentially a large scoring benefit to possessing the Snitch, but it takes real skill and concentration to take full advantage. The game runs to a time limit.
I rather like the idea that catching the snitch adds no points to your own score, but subtracts points from the opponents-it would allow seekers to make a major difference, particularly when the scores are close, but if catching the snitch only deducted 1-3 goals worth of points, it wouldn’t marginalize the Quaffle handlers.
Weird, I was just thinking about making the exact same OP.
Oooh, the famous Not-so-Sudden-Death Overtime.
Anyway, before anything else, can we start off by knocking the useless zero off of the scores? One point for a goal. This isn’t tennis people. I mean, if we were going for the quirky scoring system (like the quirky wizard monetary system) then why not go whole hog (uh, whole skrewt) and make goals worth 13 1/2 points?
I like having the snitch end the game, and be worth enough to swing a close game, but only a close game. How much to make it worth depends on how many goals are scored in a typical game. I’d hope for 5-10 goals per game per team: enough that each one is dramatic and important, but enough that one fluke goal doesn’t doom a team. In that case, I’d think the snitch would be worth about 2 goals.
We could add even more strategy to catching the snitch if overall standings in the league are not based just on games won. I think the idea would be to create situations where the team that’s behind (by more than a snitch-score) has some reasons for catching the snitch, if they think they’re not going to catch up. Ideally, the standings calculation wouldn’t encourage a team that’s way ahead to avoid snitching out in order to keep piling up the scores, cause that’s boring.
Here’s an idea: the winning team always gets 2 points in the standings; the losing team gets a partial point, based on their score divided by the winner’s score. So for a 10-6 game, the winner gets two points in the standings, while the loser gets 0.6 points.
Another TV-friendly idea is to have the snitch end not the game, but the period. I’d say three periods, but hockey already took that, so we’ll probably go with five. Allows even more reason for the trailing team to snitch out (in the first four periods anyway), and strategy in doing so (stop the other team’s momentum, etc.)
In the books, how often does a game of Quidditch actually get won by capturing the snitch? I was under the impression that Harry Potter accomplishing that goal was a bit of a miracle; it’s normally much harder and it’s an indication of just how awesome Harry is that he manages it first time out.
The easiest fix is to have catching the snitch end the game, but with no points associated with it. Depending on if your team was up or down, you’d need your seeker to play offensively or defensively.
You and delphica are bang on. Either have the Snitch count for no points, or better yet have it count for 15.
What this means is that the Seekers must not only track and find the Snitch, but are likely to have to make a strategic decision as to what to do when it’s spotted - or to even allow anyone to know they’ve spotted it.
Suppose you’re H. Potter, playing for Gryffindor, and Slytherin’s winning the match 90-60. With a 15-point catch you cause your team to lose, so you can’t catch it; on the other hand, you cannot simply leave the Snitch alone and allow for the possibility D. Malfoy, Slytherin’s seeker, will catch it. That gives the Seeker and his team an interesting tactical dilemma; do you pretend to not know where it is, or even try to fake your opponent into thinking it is somewhere it is not? Or do you cover the Snitch and try to block your opponent until such time as the score’s more advantageous? If you do choose to cover it do you do a close cover, physically blocking the opposing Seeker, or just hang in the general vicinity and keep an eye on it?
The other thing that Rowling never explored (but that isn’t technically against any rule mentioned in the books) is that other positions could assist the Seeker. Depending on the game situation, score, and momentum, it might be advantageous for a team to have other players assist in finding the Snitch. They may not be allowed to catch it but they can find it and assist the Seeker in grabbing it. If you’re leading 110-30, it would make sense to have a Chaser break off and help the Seeker, while the rest of the team pulls back into a prevent defense; you’re not likely to give up eight goals in the time it takes TWO people to find the Snitch. And of course the other team would then have to decide whether they wanted to press home the man advantage to score goals, or whether it would be safer to break off one of their own Chasers or Beaters to help their own Seeker shield the Snitch from being caught.
I prefer giving the Snitch 15 points in value rather than none because it assigns just enough value to it to surpass a deficit of one goal, but not enough to make up two.
I don’t think so. The ridiculous things about the magic world were made to look ridiculous; Quidditch is presented as a serious enterprise and a big part of Harry Potter’s life. I just think Rowling doesn’t really understand sports and didn’t put a lot of thought into it.
Heck, y’all should watch a movie called The Blood of Heroes about a post-apocalyptic bloodsport played by “Juggers”. In it, teams of five square off, with four members carrying weapons and the unarmed and agile fifth, the “Qwik”, being the only one allowed to touch the “ball”, the skull of a freshly-killed dog, in an effort to get it down the pitch and impale it on the enemy team’s spike for the win.
That, and different snitches are used at different levels of play. Harry is really good for a high schooler, so he can catch an academic-regulation Snitch quickly. But he’s still nowhere near professional level, like Krum is, and he wouldn’t stand a chance catching a World Cup snitch.
Note that even Krum, who’s clearly far, far better at Seeking than Harry is (by Harry’s own admission) still takes long enough to find the Snitch that the other team can rack up more than a Snitch’s worth of Quaffle goals first.
The one change that I would make is to make the Snitch points not be a multiple of the Quaffle points: Change it to, say, 145 points, or 155. That way, you never have to worry about ties.
Watch it, hell, I’ve played it! Granted, we used a nerf ball carved like a dog skull and only SCA legal weapons and armour, but its a fairly regular an popular sport in my medieval reenactment group - We call it “Dogball” in our kingdom The rules are here: http://www.grimfells.net/events/bohrules.html
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On topic, I say keep the three goals in Quidditch - it makes the keeper have to be more then a lump blocking a hole - they have to be dexterous and skillful at flying. The real problem with Quidditch is the seeker/snitch - I agree with making the Snitch worth less points, maybe even none, but do think it should be the “end game” signifier.
The point of Quidditch is that it lets Harry be the hero in every game.
I like RickJay’s change to have the snitch worth only 15 points. It eliminates ties, the chasers and keepers will actually play a large part in determining the outcome and it introduces strategic depth to the seeker position.
- We call it “Dogball” in our kingdom