Tales from the Jugular

"Smell the Glove"--Our Staff Challenge Game!
Scavenger Hunt / Media Capture Game Created for Our Own Amusement

"Check your email and Smell the Glove, fool!"

That was the text I received from fellow Maximum Metal scribe, Eric C, one Saturday morning around this time last year. It all started out simple enough with a throwaway pic of me with my arm around the Chick-fil-A restaurant cow that is in front most stores. Eric decided we needed to turn that into a full-blown metal/comics/wrestling, hybrid scavenger hunt/media capture game. He called it the "Smell the Glove Challenge" which comes from This is Spinal Tap, a movie which I consistently harass him to see. What metalhead worth his horns hasn't seen that film!

After a few back and forth texts, we fleshed out the rules and theming of the game. In order to personalize it, we each thought up challenges that, at least, loosely applied to the interests of the other person. Style of challenges and difficulty levels were kept similar for each person's set.

So, with that written...on to the game!

THE RULES

-- 20 challenges for each competitor.

-- Challenges are picture or video based.

-- Some challenges have specific instructions.

-- Challenges can only be won ONE TIME with NO repeated wins for competitors or opponents.

-- Each challenge submission is rated: 1-Half Assed, 2-Average, 3-Excelled (Any dispute of points awarded will go to 3rd party arbitration...ie: Max Metal vote.)

-- During the initial month, each competitor can only capture points via challenges issued by the opponent.

-- At the start of the next month, all challenges left uncaptured are free for any competitor to capture.

-- Winner is declared once all challenges are captured or one competitor is declared a winner by winning enough points to secure victory. In that scenario the loser wouldn't be able to capture enough points to make up the deficit needed to win.

-- Winner gets to mail a glove of any scents/odors to the loser. Loser must smell the glove while on all fours and video the shame.




Now that we had the rules setup, we went about making the challenges figuring in the basic idea of minimal harm to the environment and other people, since this is supposed to be more fun than hooliganism. With 20 to do worth a max of 3 points each, we both began with a possible 60 out of 120 total points. Here's what we came up with:


CHALLENGES





RESULTS

Because of the even point split of 60 each, a tie could happen. So, you'd want to play your best assuming the other player would as well. Realistically looking over those, you don't need to be a mathematician to understand that some would be fairly difficult without decent levels of planning (pic of wrestler Sheamus in town), timing (arm around cosplayer), resources (Hop Zombie Beer), and embarrassment (McDonald's Happy Meal at Burger King). Getting a win would require doing all the ones you could and prepping to get the open challenges as fast as you could before the other player.

So, who won???

In a fully lopsided victory, Frank scores 56 points soundly defeating Eric with only 12 points!

Here's the breakdown of scoring with color coding to show who grabbed who's challenges:



And as they say--no picture, no proof. So, here's some stills from the challenge. We hope some of you create your own and share with us!




















FINAL WORD




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