Game Showdown

[clemon79]

Of course, you can also have the PYL front-end but not have it be actually random, too.

I am curious to know why you think this would be a good idea at all.

[Joe Mello]

Dr. Malcolm, I never said it was, just that you could.

[clemon79]

Dr. Malcolm, I never said it was, just that you could.

In the same spirit, you seem to be spending a lot of time wondering if you could do something and not so much about if you should.

[Peter Sarrett]

I considered making Press Your Luck faux-random, but didn't want to go that route.  Instead, I'm considering using it as a finale, assigning spins based on # of main game wins in the previous rounds, and using each team's overall score as their starting bank.  But I suspect that without the big stakes of a real game show, Press Your Luck kinda falls flat.

[Sodboy13]

Depends on the crowd. I've hosted several game show nights, and Press Your Luck is a staple. It's a fun, flashy, low-brain game that carries an immense nostalgia factor. If you're playing with more of a pub quiz crowd, then yeah, you can shelve it. But if it's more casual, you might be surprised how well it goes over. Hearing one of my wife's friends say 'Oh my God, it's like I'm home sick in grade school and watching USA all afternoon" was an awesome payoff last time.

[Loogaroo]

The experience that we had running the Game Show Machine for a convention a few years back is that you don't want to create a whole bunch of front games and bonus rounds - especially ones that require props - and have it so that any one game could show up at any time. Either a game gets randomly picked that you're not prepared for, or you write a bunch of questions and lug a bunch of extraneous equipment to the event despite the very real chance it never comes into play.

A simple itinerary of games for a given "episode" is just fine. After all, if your players don't know what's coming up, it doesn't really matter whether it's chosen randomly or if it's predetermined.