Dear Minnows!
I apologise for being one day late with this announcement. Sometimes life outside of Steem intervenes in one’s plans and posting schedule. Sometimes tiredness and stress kick-in and take all the energy from writing up and posting new posts. In short: life happens. Well, anyhow, here’s the official announcement:
What an amazing first season it has been!! I enjoyed a lot myself – and I hope that it was fun for all the participants and observers too.
And the winners are…
The first prize – 50% of the Prize Pool – goes to the last swimming minnow, 
The second prize – 30% of the Prize Pool – always goes to the one minnow who got eliminated by the season’s largest minnow in the last face-off, no matter their final weight. In this case that minnow was 
The remaining share of the Prize Pool, 20%, gets divided between the minnows with the largest weight, aside from the top two winners above. This season we have only one minnow to grab the third prize: 
The Prize Pool is exactly half of all the SBD payouts of all the season’s posts (the season’s registration/announcement post plus all the round). It excludes this post’s payout, which will be counted towards the Season 2 Prize Pool. I roughly calculated the size of the Prize Pool to be about 6 SBD. This might change, however, if the season’s posts receive more upvotes until they reach the end of their payouts periods. So, if you want to increase the reward that the above three players will receive, go ahead and upvote the season’s post on my blog.
I will update this post with the exact numbers of the Prize Pool size and the three prizes, once all the rounds receive payout. I am keeping track of them in the same spreadsheet that I used for the game, in case if you want to check the numbers for yourself.
I am making a small tweak to how the Season 2 will proceed: now the players have an option to write their face-off stories themselves! If you are interested in writing your own narrative, please reply with
ENTER S2 STORY-MODE in the comments below. Of course, you will still have to respect the dice roll; that is, your story shouldn’t contradict the actual outcome of the face-off you are narrating. It should also respect the fantasy setting of the game (a sea full of hungry minnows). You have full creative freedom within this set of parameters.
If you want your personal feeding journey to be narrated by me, like I did in the first season, then simply reply with ENTER S2, when registering for the new season in the comments below.
I want to remind you all, that this game is open to all my followers. If you want to register, make sure you are a follower of mine. Otherwise you won’t be entered as a player, even if you try to register (without following).
The rest of the rules remain unchanged, take a look:
THE RULES
The Goal
The goal of the game is to survive as long as possible, by eating up other minnows and gaining weight in the process. The last surviving minnow (the one with the largest weight) will be the contest’s ultimate winner
All minnows start with the same weight of 50 g (~0.11 lbs) at the start of each season.
The first round of every game season will go live two days after the registration post (this post). So, for example, the first round of Season 2 will be posted on Sunday. All registered players will be pitted against each other in randomly created pairs, with a designated Player 1 and Player 2 in each pair. If there’s an odd one out, that player will automatically proceed to the next round, but without gaining any weight. The pairs will be revealed by me in the comments to the Round’s main post. Once again: the players in each pair will be picked randomly, using a random name picker web tool. So it’s all about luck.
Feeding, Survival, Elimination
If the two players have unequal weights, the larger minnow will eat up the smaller minnow. The victim’s weight will be added to the winner’s weight and the winner will then proceed to the next round. For example:
Player 1, who is a 50 g minnow,
VS
Player 2, who is a 100 g minnow.
Player 2 eliminates Player 1 and their weight is now 150 g. Simple enough, right? Once again, all minnows have the same weight of 50 g at the start of a season.
If both players in a pair have the same weight, then I’ll roll the dice. Numbers 1 and 3 on the dice will mean that the Player 1 survives, eliminates Player 2, gains their weight, and proceeds to the next round. Numbers 2 and 4 will indicate the reverse outcome for Player 2 and Player 1. Numbers 5 and 6 will mean that both players survive the encounter and proceed to the next round without gaining any extra weight.
Likewise, if there’s one unmatched player left without a fellow minnow to confront in any given round, that player will automatically proceed to the next round without gaining any extra weight.
Once the outcome has been decided in each pair, the episode’s post will be updated with lists of the perished minnows, the surviving minnows, and the latter’s new weights. It will be easy to have an overview of the episode’s results without having to browse through all the individual comments.
Next round will see all pairs formed anew – again, randomly – from the surviving minnows of the past episode. New rounds will be published once a day, until there’s only one minnow left in the game.
Winners and Prizes
Since I’ll have to do quite a bit of administration for this game, I’ll be keeping 50% of the SBD payouts as my ‘game master’s salary’. I hope it sounds fair to you (please leave a comment, if it doesn’t). The remaining 50% will go into the prize pool. The good news here is that half of all the SBD payouts, from the registration post (this post) and all the daily episodes will go towards the prize pool. Neat, eh? ;) Thus the minnows remaining in the game will have a strong incentive to upvote each episode, in order to increase their potential prizes.
50% of the Prize Pool will go towards the one last swimming minnow with the largest weight. 30% of the Prize Pool will go to the minnow eliminated by the season’s winner in the final round. The remaining 20% of the Prize Pool will be shared by the minnows with the largest weight, aside from the top two winners mentioned above.
The prizes will be paid out once all the posts have received their author rewards, meaning 7 days after the final round has been posted. The results will be announced in a separate post, which will double as a registration for the next season (this very post you are reading here).
Questions? Suggestions? Objections?
Please raise your criticism, pose your questions, and make suggestions for improving the game in the comments below. I will be happy to clarify the game mechanics, if needed. And, if you are happy with the rules as they are, go ahead and register by including ENTER S2 (or ENTER S2 STORY-MODE, if you want to narrate your own story) in your comment below.
I hope that Season 2 will see even more participation, even more fun, and even greater prizes than the first one!!
