"Plot device, Mr. Frodo, plot device."
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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This is what happens when an author designs a sport where the protagonist is the single most important player.
Specifically, when a hack of an author designs a sport.
The thing is, the seeds of something great are right there.
Ditch the stupid seeker role, and you have a game that's both entertaining and narratively useful.
Harry could have learned how to be a team player, and eventually a leader.
Instead Rowling wanted Harry to be super special boy in the laziest way possible.
It's honestly hilarious how much being the seeker isolates Harry from the rest of the team. He doesn't have any team plays besides the occasional interaction with the beaters. It would have been so much more interesting if the position were removed, the game lasted a set amount of time, and Harry was a chaser.
You don't have to ditch it, just make it so it's not a guaranteed win under normal circumstances. Make it so the snitch isn't released until a certain amount of time has passed, or points have been scored. And instead of having it be worth a ton of points, have it be worth a small enough amount that it could make a difference in a close game but not the only deciding factor. Then it's a strategic position. A position that requires timing instead of just speed.
Just make it so that catching the snitch ends the game. As in, the scores from either side get fixed. This way the losing team would have an incentive to stop the winning team from getting it, but themselves wouldn't be interested in doing so. It's not game breaking, just another angle.
The mechanic of catching the snitch immediately ending the game is a pretty good one, and there's several ways you could go about it.
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Adds no points to either side: you want to catch it when your team is up, but if you find it when your team is down, you want to misdirect the other team's Seeker
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Adds a small number of points to your side: you want to catch it when your team is within striking distance of a win
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Adds a small number of points to the opposite side: you only want to catch it when your team is up significanty
My favorite would be a random or rotating points penalty. Like say every 3 minutes the points given to each side upon grabbing the snitch is randomized. It still allows for that stupid main character syndrome special boy causing the win thing, but it doesn't completely break the strategy of the game.
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As I recall the story, Rowling designed that feature of the game specifically to annoy her sport-loving husband. It's a feature of a fictional sport designed in spite. So really, it performs it's function admirably...
She does seem to be mainly powered by spite.
Doesnt that diminish the world building? I know it did for me. As an adult, I cant appreciate HP the same way I did as a kid. I can still appreciate Lotr just fine, as an example. She should have put her differences aside for a better story, but shes not better than that anyway.
What world building? Rowling' wizarding world is the epitome of nothing makes sense and can only be explained by "a wizard did it".
Hogwarts was built in the 10th century, but uses far more modern Muggle technology for their sewage and sanitary system rather than some established form of teleportation/relocation.
The economy is a joke as they use fixed exchange rates between gold and silver can be abused for arbitrage trades with the Muggle world. It can only be explained by all wizards and witches stopping their primary education as ten-year-olds but even then it would take only one to figure it out and break the system.
Why on earth use owls to carry letters and packages? The practicality of using owls over other birds aside, why not use established instant transportation methods like the floo network? The only explanation we get is that the floo network and apparition are blocked in Hogwarts but does this one school dictate the rules for the entire world? And even then, wouldn't it be easier to set up a post office in an exempted area or just outside Hogwarts?
I could go on as there are countless other flaws and then just as many again once you consider the implications of the time turner. Having a sport with nonsense rules is one of the lesser issues when the world is inherently broken
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I respect that, but I hate the fans who love it, it’s like they have never played or watched anything competitive before.
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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.
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?
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Just let Dumbledore divide the points between the teams like for the house cup. Totally fair.
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To quote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
Just. Buy. A. Clock.
"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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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.
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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.
so ... at least one vote for pro-frog
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
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...
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It would differ from town to town - more southern games would feature a lubed hog, in Philly they have to catch a chicken, in Florida they have to seduce a gator, etc.
All the drunk Florida fans at the tailgate will be seducing gators anyway.
Seems unfair on the ref to have to sort them out.
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.
Iirc a game of quidditch doesn't end until the snitch is caught. I believe one game lasted months
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I thought this was exactly the point, they make fun of the muggles but it's their society which is completely bonkers
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.
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.
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