The season's over so I'm bringing back up the idea of a Walking Dead Dead Pool that a couple co-workers and I did this past half season as a suggestion and to get ideas on how to make it better.
Recap- three of us drafted from a pool of 15 "good guys", 5 characters per team. We ran it skins game style, every episode was $1 into the pot, if somebody lost a character they'd take the pot and it would reset.
The good- Having a vested interest in who dies was cool while not detracting from the show, and it gave us more water cooler talk (I went way shticky coming up with rediculous ways one of my characters would randomly die in the next episode, like how Carol's domestic abuse reveals were leading up to her ultimately suicide bombing the hospital to stop the "domestic abuse" going on there). That drawn out "is Eugene dead?" cliffhanger was great because of this pool.
The bad- we only had 2 wins in 8 episodes (Bob ep. 3, Beth ep. 8) so 75% of the time we had no result. Ultimately it lead to a big win with Beth which was fun, but would have liked a little more action.
We're going to re-draft again in February (might allow 1 keeper each from our current squads) and throw Preacher, Noah, and Morgan into the pool. I'd like to have some kind of side wagers to keep things interesting because people just don't die very often, like how during a skins game they'll throw in the occassional "longest drive" or "closest to the hole" type competition, but not coming up with any ideas on how to do this.
(I'll also be consulting this thread when the draft comes up so if you think you know who will be next to die, tell me. And I'm in if we do an FBG WDDP..)
I like this idea. Might I suggest as potential side-bets:
1. Most zombie kills in an episode/half-season/season - not sure how best to track this, but I imagine it would change the draft a decent bit. If I'm drafting a "who's going to die" pool, then I'm going with Preacher, Noah, Eugene, Tara....less "established" characters. But if I win something due to # of kills, I'm going with Daryl, Michonne, or Rick, even though they are very very likely not to die. You end up with team balance, and Rick may not be last picked in this format.
2. Which character is first to find X item. X could be something desirable (big can of pudding, bottle of booze, toilet paper, pack of smokes), something ominous (field of freshly killed walkers signifying a rival group that may be close), a new weapon (new meaning not used before in the show, such as a mace or meat cleaver), memento that reminds the group of their previous life or a lost group member (RV = Dale, stash of pills = Merle). You could get really outlandish with what X is, or make it something simple so there's a decent chance at a win each week.
3. Consider splitting the pot if one main group member kills another. Bob's owner gets the entire pot since he died by walker bite, but Lizzie Borden's (sorry, forgot her real name) owner has to pay Carol's owner a portion of their winnings.
I'll post any more I think of, but these are what popped in my head to start.