Same feeling I get from watching a good hockey game that ends up being a shootout. Only worse, like if the first penalty and following goal results in a won game. In the first period.
It might be because I was young when I read Harry Potter, but the whole series was magical for me exactly because of stuff like this.
Just ending the game would have been a good way to implement the snitch, tbh. It would have more strategy, more reasons to block the other seeker when you’re behind. If there really had to be extra points, it should have been worth 10 points or something.
Yeah that’s the reason quidditch is a dumb fucking sport. You can be wiping the floor with the other team, but if their guy gets lucky and catches the parking lot frog, it’s all for nothing. They’ve won despite having played an objectively much worse game.
Yeah, I usually go down this same thought process every time I re-read the books. I usually end up at, “Yup, she went out of her way to avoid Quidditch by using feebler and feebler excuses every book.” It’s a shame, because it really could have wound up an exciting part of the series if it was more thought out.
It was worth 150 points. The equivalent of 15 goals. Do you mean 100 points and re-release it and continue playing?
Rowling, although a great storyteller, is no system analyst. Take her magic system for example. “Accio Invisibility Cloak!” Boom, Harry’s standing there in plain sight and you’ve got his cloak.
Accio doesn’t work on the Deathly Hallows or Horcruxes, so that would not have summoned the Cloak of Invisibility.
Well we don’t really know, since Accio works on wands, but I would call that a sensible house rule.
Are his glasses part of him? I’m gonna say no, I’d go for his glasses.
Underpants. Especially if you have the high ground.
See I’m just not sure how accio works, like wouldn’t you need to really know exactly what pair of undies he’s wearing? Whereas, if they think Potter’s sneaking around in the Invisibility Cloak, they would know he’s got to be wearing his glasses. And considering they were always getting broken and re-mended, I don’t think he has back-ups.
They explain in the game, HL, that when you accio people, you are actually accioing their clothes.
Or it was levioso? I don’t really remember
For sure, I’m just saying that if you can’t see him under the Cloak, you don’t know what clothes he’s wearing. But you know he’s got his glasses on.
Interesting idea. What about “accio” someones boots to trip them
Yeah, that should work as long as you can see the boots. My worry with the Invisibility Cloak is not knowing what pair of shoes he’s wearing at the time and accidentally accio-ing his boots from under his bed as he sneaks right past in his slippies.
Fair game to snatch the visually impaired boy’s glasses!
And if he is wearing them wiel hiding under the invisibility cloak… well then you get both!
I call hax
sudo Accio Invisibility Cloak
Well, that surely would work. There is no going around sudo.
“Accio Harry’s socks!”
Accio Dobby’s sock would be more cruel than Crucio.
They literally try this against Harry in book 7 and it doesn’t work because Harry’s cloak is special (it’s one of the deathly hollows)
Ok fine, then my point is still made if the cloak has to be exception for this not to work.
Oh, there’s tons of holes in the magic system, no denying it. It’s used more of a plot device to set up certain scenarios than as a cohesive system (polyjuice potion, liquid luck, unbreakable vows, etc). Which, for a kids/YA series I don’t have a problem with
“Oh no, I caught the snitch when we were 160 points behind” said no one ever except for that one time in the books and even then it just makes zero fucking sense.
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Actually that happened twice, once at the world cup where it made zero sense and once at Hogwarts, where it did make sense, because even though Gryffindor lost catching the snitch kept them in the house cup which is based off point differential
It just leads to such utterly contrived scenarios where the winning team isn’t the one who catches the snitch. If it was something like 30 points and didn’t end the game and you could catch it multiple times it would be better I think. It would be interesting to see team compositions that vary. Maybe some teams forgo scoring with the quaffle and focus only on scoring with snitch catches.
The game doesn’t end until the snitch is caught.
In a league situation in the event of the same number of wins, the largest points difference comes first.
I.e. it is strategically useful to end a losing game as quickly as possible.
except that the golden snitch doesnt mean you win. it means you get 150 points and the match ends. sure, that often leads to a win unless the enemy has a 150 point lead, but still.
Also, apparently in the school cup the overall score seems to be counted to overall results - not just win/loss. Isn’t there a point when Harry needs to make sure he only catches the Snitch if they are in a lead by at least certain ammount of points to win the cup? One could assume this applies to leagues as well.
Not that it balances things much, but it does give a bit of nuance.
I do remember there was a game were they grab the snitch and STILL lost, because the other side was 10 points ahead
Yeah, everyone likes to point to that as a reason why the snitch isn’t completely broken. But all it does is show that Victor Krum is a moron who can’t trust his teammates to score literally 20 points.
That was a weird one and I never got why anyone would do this. On a World Cup finale no less
That kind of system makes so much more sense if the games are for a set amount of time. Otherwise, what’s to stop two teams from dragging a game out to ensure they both surpass whoever is in the lead?
Either way, while the match only ending if the snitch is caught is a great concept, it probably shouldn’t be worth fifteen goals worth of points. Fifty points, or even just thirty, for the snitch would add more strategy to the game since it might be best to deny the other team the snitch without catching it yourself if the other team is ahead.
Counter point :- (not to do with American sports – they are ridiculous)
imagine you’re watching a quidditch game where one side has an overwhelmingly good set of chasers. I mean unbelievably good. Far better than the other side. Within five minutes they are 50 points up, and another 30 minutes later they are 250 points up. There is literally no chance of the other side catching them.
Do you really want to sit and watch that? It’s like the Brazil - Germany game. After a while you would just be “Stop – you are hurting them too much. It’s getting embarrassing and we are all now going to leave because even the home team wants you to stop”
At least with the snitch it means there is a chance that it’ll be evened out.
Another counter point: it’s a book for children.
And another again: “In episode 2F09 when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone…”
I’m sorry, but I hate this excuse. Bad writing is bad writing. Hand-waving away something that just straight-up doesn’t make sense because it’s “for children” is lazy. Also, saying a 30-second throwaway gag on a show-within-a-show is the same as the thousands of pages of YA lore in the series Rowling spent over a decade writing is obviously a false equivalency.
It’s worse than that though. The parking lot frog adds a huge, but not impossible, score to your team if you catch it AND it instantly ends the game.
So even if one team is absolutely crushing the other, it’s not actually going to even things out unless it is in a very specific range of uneven matches.
Being so overwhelmingly outclassed makes a neat sort of metagame about preventing the parking lot frog from being caught. Though the frog is apparently hard enough to catch even once that defending it is sort of besides the point. Even if the frog hunt suddenly has a second dynamic, it’s still taking place pretty much completely outside of the view of the audience.
Turns out she wasn’t great at designing an actual game. Among other things…
The snitch isn’t completely out of view of the audience though. And I think that’s kind of the point. The audience can see every fight between seekers for the snitch. This happens at the world cup, and at the matches between Slytherin and Gryffindor in the books. A good set of chasers and beaters can be countered by a good seeker and a good keeper.
Ya I’m curious Lil M @[email protected] about how you imagine the typical seeker flight paths in context of the stadium, obviously no “wrong” answer :)
I’m being a bit hyperbolic, but I seem to recall them describing the snitch as ‘basically invisible’ and the players flying under the bleachers and into the stratosphere in pursuit of it. Those might be exceptions, maybe the frog only sometimes wanders out into the parking lot.
Conversely, literally every other game becomes meaningless. Catching the snitch gains SO many points. You could literally just play defense and snitch support, and never try and score.
Remember you also have to catch the snitch to end the game. Otherwise it would just go forever
so … at least one vote for pro-frog
If you’ve ever played Killer Queen Black, the snail mechanic reminds me a lot of the golden snitch. It is kind of fun to have something that you might not have most players paying attention to become a pivotal component of gameplay. Kind of like stealing bases in baseball. But as an actual sport it’s kind of dumb, I agree about it just being a kids book, don’t think about it too hard.
Man I wish this game’s servers were still around.
My local arcade has a cabinet and it’s amazing.
Statistically smallish chance it’s Emporium SF on Divisadero
(Or OG Chicago Emporium) but maybe just the little local spot?!
Disagree, the snail is just a core part of the game that is always there and you need to pay attention to it. It’s not a sudden random event like catching an elusive critter
What are you disagreeing with? The golden snitch, as it is, is a core part of Quiddich in that the game literally requires it to be caught to end. In KQB that is not the case. I was more mentioning that while playing, a whole other mechanic can go on. If you think of Killer Queen Black as a snail-riding game, then there are times where the game can end suddenly from queens dying too much, or berries being collected.
Jus that it’s better design because more clearly connected to the rest of the gameplay process. It’s something anyone can do, and always available as an option to focus on. Rather than a guy wandering around hoping to find the snitch
It’s a metaphor that most people fight about the wrong things in life. They should know better because they saw somebody win before, but they ignore it.
To quote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
Just. Buy. A. Clock.
I think the movies in particular do a poor job showing how hard the snitch is supposed to be to catch. Games literally went on for days according to the books because the seekers weren’t pro-level generational talents like Harry.
Wasn’t there also at least one famus game that went on for a few years.
Doesn’t that kinda enforce the point that the rule/function is stupid?
No because they need a way to end the game
Time limit is a solution, but it’s not the only one. Time limit would change the game so much.
Do you want basketball on broomsticks or Quidditch?
In Quidditch, you can have a strategy of never scoring a goal but just playing keep away until your team catches the snitch. It’s risky but could be a strategy.
Time limit would be the better team scoring a couple goals and playing keepaway.
You could add shot clocks…
I think she was always shooting for ‘surreal’. She was pretty successful at it in many WW aspects, but it seems she missed the mark on a few subjects, especially sports and competition.
Imagine if he could actually see!
It’d work better if he only caught it once, like if it were a one in a million it’d balance better and represent the “hope against all odds” kinda device that i thought it was. But Harry catching the bloody thing every third game ruins it.
Harry catches the snitch almost EVERY game. I think the only game he ever played where he didn’t catch it was one where he was attacked by dementors and fell off his broom.
If i was the opposing captain, I’d have half the team just fucking with harry. We’d call him “the git who lived” out of pure resentment for his talent.
Now that I’ve coined the term, I can’t believe Fred and George never called him that.
It would work if it was just an end timer, not deciding the game. So it’s at a semi random moment when the game can end and scores are final.
Iirc a game of quidditch doesn’t end until the snitch is caught. I believe one game lasted months
Really, I thought they were timed or something? I thought catching the snitch ended the game, but was not the only thing that could end the game?
Adding also that canonically there have been games where the snitch is caught but that team still loses.
They actually say a game once went for months because nobody caught it, and they had to keep switching players out to sleep. Which now that I think about it, how did they not have players on the bench…
Well that’s just silly. I’ll keep my head cannon in place, lol.
What the hell’s the point of everything else in the game then? I thought people were scoring points and stuff. Why isn’t everyone just going after the golden snitch?
That’s the point of the post.
If everyone was trying to get the snitch on team a, team b would just get constant empty net goals and rack up a huge lead.
Since you still get 10 points per goal, if you can get a 16 goal lead on the opposing team, then you can win even if the snitch is caught by the opposing team. So not leaving an empty goal + having to deal with the bludgers (which can attack your seeker) then you suddenly don’t have as much resources for the snitch.
Additionally the game can be ended by mutual agreement between the teams, so a blowout in scoring can result in an effective surrender/resignation of the other team.
It’s actually an interesting mechanic when you think it through, since it means a pretty delicate balance of team resources need to be spent between seeking/assisting the seeker, defending, and having the ability to score in the case that the other team focuses too heavily on the snitch.
Delicate my ass. Put two chasers on defense, a chaser on snitch finding duty, and a beater dedicated entirely to hospitalizing the opposing seeker. The 3 on defense just need to park their asses in the goals, and as long as you either find the snitch first or concuss the other seeker, you win. Your second beater can move as necessary.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that there are minutia rules in place that would prevent or discourage disengaging play.
Similar to icing rules or offsides in hockey and soccer, or how players can’t enter the crease without the puck in hockey, goaltending rules in basketball, or pass interference and holding in American football.
Every sport is filled with rules like that in order to encourage dynamic and engaging play and I’m willing to bet we don’t know those rules for the same reason nobody poops it’s boring and not relevant to the story.
Besides you can counter that play by running a light defense and heavy attack on the opposing seeker, since defending against one chaser will be significantly easier, or having the seeker come off of snitch duty in a power play like scenario, making a 4 man offense with both beaters attacking the chasers acting as defenders (who would get demolished since they parked at the goal, keepers can’t get hit, but the chasers are just psuedo keepers in this scenario), that would allow you to dunk on the now hamstrung opposing team.
I think every sport seems stupid or broken until you put tweaks on the rules.
Edit: I just saw your play involved no offense, which means the entire opposing team’s offense can attack the goal as a counter, effectively making a 6 (or 7 if the keeper gets involved and they go open net) v 4, which makes it incredibly likely that the attacking team can just massively out score the opposing team, so your team would either have to draw back, or get extremely lucky and catch the snitch before the score snowballs. It could be an effective strategy, but it would for sure make you lose games against teams that have a stronger focus on scoring vs seeking.
Because then Harry isnt the constant hero saving everyone all the time.
it would be fine if the snitch gave maybe 50 points instead of 150. Then a significantly better team could push their opponents to end the game to safe face, or get them to try to regain points before being back in race to win.
I believe one game lasted months
Ah, so a typical match of tennis
Imagine if they were trying to catch the frog on the court though
A court that was like ten times bigger, everyone’s flying, tackling is legal if not encouraged, and there’s two people on each team who are there to play dodgeball with bocci balls, not basketball
Yeah, but that’s the exciting bit. I don’t mind the idea of catching the Snitch as a means of ending the game, even with a marginal point reward. In a close game, this creates an incentive for a behind-but-gaining team to deliberately delay catching the Snitch until they are within range of a win. But - as written - the game is just the “Harry Potter Is The Hero” microcosm. Nothing anyone else does seems to matter.
Incidentally, this is replicated in the worst parts of the series. The early books give the supporting cast a huge role to play in solving the school mystery, thwarting the villains, and improving the school. Latter books - particularly as you get into the Horcruxes (tell me you’ve played D&D without telling me you’ve played D&D, Rowling) - make so much of the supporting cast irrelevant bordering on disposable. By the last book, Rowling is just knocking off side characters casually.
The unexciting part is that the obvious best strategy would be to ignore the regular part of quidditch and just focus entirely on helping their seeker get the snitch and shutting down the opposing seeker.
Iirc you can’t interfere with the seekers, plus if you don’t defend and play, the other team just scores more than 150 points and wins when your team gets the snitch.
1 goal is 10 points
1 snitch is 150 points
You’re going to leave your goals unguarded? No, you’ll have a goalie.
You’re going to let the other beaters just bash bludgers at your team? No, you’ll have your own beaters.
Best you could do is pull your chasers to help catch the snitch.
You’ll give up your entire offense and defense
So can my 3 chasers score 15 times against your goalie trying to guard 3 rings by themselves before your 4 seakers can catch a snitch. My seeker could even catch the snitch or just play snitch D.
I’d put my money on the 3 chasers
Best strategy would be to have 4 chasers and rotate one out every once in a while to search for the snitch. But being able to score 10 points going 4v3 would be powerful
My 10 year old just got his hands on the monsters book for d&d from the library. He was reading it today and pointing out how much Harry Potter monsters and characters which his sister loves, are based on d&d.
The frog:
hop… hop… hop… 🐸Harry:
SECTUMSEMPRA! 🪄
It should be a lot harder to catch, and particular about sending a player to deny the other team any chance of retrieving it
