Thudmeistership

There are at least 4. BeckyO (of this forum) won the first Thud Tournament at the Cunning Artificers in Wincanton Somerset in 2002. SANEALex (also of this parish ) won the tournament there the next year, having only narrowly lost the year before.

We held the first International Thud Tournament on this website last year and it was won by Palm. Each of the folk who have won a Thud Tournament are crowned Thudmeister, a title that stands in perpetuity; one doesn't surrender it the next time to someone else the way lesser tournaments (like, say, Wimbledon! ) do.

We plan to host another tournament early in the Springtime and crown another Thudmeister then. Note: tournaments are limited to Guild members only and the sign-up deadline will be only around a couple of months away and approaching soon.

There is one other Thudmeister whom we know as the Grand Thudmeister; the archetypal Thudmeister of all. A fellow named Trevor Truran, who possesses a certain skill with mathematics and a penchant for game theory invented the game Thud around 2000/2001. He has his own dedicated page on the site here.

Indeed, and well -said! One of the things the site does is provide a way to demonstrate both of those and to test the shininess of the skills in open contest. We hope to see many from the forum playing in the next tournament

shouldn't there be a rank of thudmeistership not for winning tournaments because coming third in one tournament can be harder than comming first in another depending on the candidature but rather as a reward title given out but a "council" of fellow thudmeistroes (to differentiate) in order to reward a) playing skill and form not necessarily victory and contributions to the community and dedication to the game.

Hmmm, I respect the sentiment of the idea and it's a good one. The thing about councils is we have experience with subjective criteria that have been the death of many a good forum and there tends to be a bit of that with some Discworld communities. Dewi has published a work of analysis of similar things elsewhere on the forum.

If there's one thing that (as we understand it from very close sources) PTerry hates, it's a cabal, or a mafia, of a self-appointed (or pseudo-offically appointed back in the mists of time) group that "decides" who is worthy and who isn't. We would like to avoid that at all costs as we, sadly, don't have Samuel Vimes to watch the watchers so we need to keep things as neutrally quantifiable as possible hence the meritocracy. This isn't our site; it's your site and we get to run it as long as you lot enjoy yourselves and we provide a good site to do so. If we get too uppity we can get our license snatched away quick-like thus we have to be Vetinari-like in balancing the desires of the many against what the technology can deliver and when but do so without prejudice.

For this reason we want to keep the game as meritocratic as possible, whilst creating as much opportunity to participate in the community for those (like me! ) who aren't that good at game play.

Have a look at the threads about "Cities/Settlements" (here, here and here) for an idea of some of the plans for 2007 and how folk can get involved in a lot of ways. Artists can open their own galleries within their city, people can open shops to sell stuff, know-how, graphics for the game, etc. Thud Academies will be there with tutoring by Thudmeisters, and so forth; all in all a complete virtual social economy for folks to get their teeth into and interact in ways not yet seen on a Discworld site.

I'm sure more of the new folk that have joined recently have great ideas they would love to contribute so feel free to re-open those old threads. if Ponder's closed one I'll reopen it

Anyway, I hope that makes sense. I'll be being told off by the Druids for trying to beat the Brothers Karamazov in word count again...  

Well it is obviously going to be me because im the best at thud ever!! mwhahaha...

*goes off to practice*

Angua

Well in that case then probably it would be simpler to be a defacto "thudmeistro" by being an upstanding memeber of the thud community and being thus respected by ones peers. thanks Lee

i think that how you conduct yourself and if you enjoy yourself then it doesn't really matter.i'm here to have fun,and so i shall

and Curie, Einstein and Pasteur had fun doing what they loved (except Einstein who had to flee germany and was screwed over by the anericans) but they were rewarded none the less.

exactly,and einstein failed science in high school,so even if you lose at thud,there's still hope

This comment has been moved here.

good idea whoever moved that one

wow,you're so modest,why don't we leave this arguement out of this forum eh?