The Order of the Sources

As I mentioned, there are two racks of books, 46 or more, on a wheeled cart. The higher shelf has smaller books and the lower shelf has larger books. Oversized books are lain on the right of the cart.

One question per source.

One fact is that there are fewer large books than small books. And the small books are thinner. However, there is a wild card: two filing cabinet drawers full of printouts of chronologies printed from the internet. For some games, this will mean far more sources on the lower shelf.

Before I bore you to death . . . .

The books are put together in some sort of order, which isn't exact or scientific, but is intended to allow for some pattern to the questions. I don't like to have sports, music or entertainment questions directly after one another. If the year has a particular fact that dominates it (1963: the Kennedy assassination; 1964: the British invasion) and so it is likely that there will be multiple questions about the year, I like to keep those questions, and thus those sources, separated. And I like to put those questions in something of a chronological order. In an 1815 game, questions about Napoleon and Waterloo will give some sense of the direction of the year: escape from Waterloo, turning of the troops sent to capture him, gathering a force, marching north, fighting the battle, abdication, capture, sailing to St. Helena. You can box yourself in with a source when you don't do this; you can also box yourself in when a later source has nothing but something you've already used (in which case I sometimes cheat and take something from the source I already used).

I honestly can't tell you the "big event" of 1911, however, so as we work on that game in here, there's nothing that will obviously come to mind. Although I am pretty sure that being Emperor of China was not a growth industry.