This Bowl Goes to Eleven

Second Life's monthly team trivia event, the Buccaneer Bowl, normally takes place towards the end of each month, but owing to a major U.S. holiday at the end of November, the eleventh Buccaneer Bowl took place in the middle of the month. And this time around, instead of cramming everyone on a ship somewhere, the fantabulous Jez Oh built a special purpose "marooned" venue for the event: picture Stonehenge coupled with a pirate camp and you get the idea. I loved the setting, in part because it provided opportunities for the teams to kinda gather in three dimensions instead of two: me and the rest of the Trivial Corsairs camped out on top on of the "henges" for the Bowl. After all, in SL everyone can fly! And if you can fly, wouldn't you park your butt on top of Stonehenge?

Trivia players assembled at the Buccaneer Bowl 11 venue by Jez Oh; photo by Lillian Shippe.

This also had the nifty effect of making me the tallest player at the entire game! See the super cool black spec standing on top of one of the henges? That's me!

Once again, the Bowl was ably conducted by Thornton Writer, Lillian Shippe, and Lette Ponnier. The last few months they've conducted a team-building session the hour before the game to get everyone matched up, and that seems to have paid off great dividends: the games start smoothly, run smoothly, and everyone seems to have a great time. The Bucky Crew have also introduced new bonus question formats, one modeled on Outburst( where an entire team has to come up with a certain number of correct answers within a time frame) and another called a "Lightning Bonus" where the team has to answer a series of eight rapidfire questions spaced 15 seconds apart—if the team gets five correct, they win the bonus.

Trivial Corsairs in November: Nia Jinx, me, Lebn Bucyk, and Captain Rain Ninetails

Sadly, the altitude of the "henge" probably got to my head: some days answers to trivia questions seem to fall into my lap, but during the Buccaneer Bowl they pretty much landed to the left and right of me: the Corsairs managed an eighth place finish this time around. I'd had high hopes for the game, since seasonal disruptions meant several of the teams were operating at reduced or altered capacity, and the Corsairs (for once!) had all our original crew: Rain, Nia, Lebn, and me. It didn't work out that we walked away with the game, but it was still a fun time and it was great to hang with the "original crew" for a while.


It's hard for me to believe the Buccaneer Bowl has been running for nearly a year; I'm pleased to have played even a very minor role by participating in the events, and I hope it becomes—continues to be—a long-running SL tradition.