(01-27-2017, 01:51 PM)Maril Wrote: It has always struck me as somewhat odd that things are so divided - is it because it's somehow too unfair to mix things? Why not go for it anyways?
I can answer this one as it pertains to the Grindstone: It was to explained to me when I asked similar questions that at the onset of the game's launch, a lot of roleplay styled itself towards super flashy mega-powerful mages and magic types. The Grindstone was partially created to give people not on that scale a place to hang out and meet other people of that same level of power.
To chime in on the OP questions and concerns (also, everyone else did a great job giving the kind of advice I'm probably about to repeat!):
1) Theme and rules
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid
When it comes to fighting tournaments, you don't need to do a whole of work to justify it existing. Fight Club in the book/movie started as two guys (technically!) fighting each other. Others witnessed it and wanted in, and things grew. You could do something that simple: An FC wants to give their war division some more practice against new people, so a freely-joined tournament started up. You could wink at the meta and just explain it as never being able to make one of the other events so you're starting your own. War games, practice, King of the Iron Fist manipulation stuff: Sky's the limit.
Rules, though, should be as simple as you can possibly express them without people needing to keep track on a napkin of what happened. I actually wish we could streamline the Grindstone rules a little bit so we could pare down what's frequently a 3+ hour event but I'm slow to adjust tradition. The "trouble" with comparing attack and defense rolls is that sometimes the game wants to see two people fight for an hour and hold up an entire leg of the competition. I know a couple twists on the formula are in play: Spellguard features 2-on-2 fighting where one person is rolling team defense and the other is rolling team offense. The Gin Mill is testing a system where you roll at the start to determine the winner, and then you just write out the result for the next several minutes, with an emphasis on Cool over Mechanic. I wondered if there'd be some room to just do blackjack styled hands: You both roll once, highest gets the advantage that round, best-of-seven rolls kind of thing.
My advice would be that whatever you decide, you want people paying attention to the event itself, not the mechanics under the hood. Immersion (and fun) breaker possibilities. Just ask anyone who's ever tried to Grapple something in a D&D game.
2) Rules
Covered!
3) Management:
Hoo boy. I've mentioned a lot to people who've asked that running a successful event is a little bit like being a stage manager during a play production: You're working hard to make sure that the people in attendance are blissfully unaware of the commotion and panic and various bits of crisis that are happening behind the curtains.
Having people to rely on is key. Key. KEEEEEY. There's a ton of stuff to track during a combat event, up to and including
people's posts
their rolls
linkshell/party/fc communication
the various tells you'll be getting
people winning
tending to people who've lost
trying not to ignore anyone who tries to talk to you ICly
or OOCly
linkshells you have that AREN'T a part of the event
answering questions
directing traffic
The way I've learned to handle that is to outsource as much shit as I can to everyone I've got helping (and I'm incredibly lucky to have volunteers and offers every week from people). Depending on how many people you have turn up to fight, don't be afraid to turn your event into brackets: The Grindstone is basically 4 miniature tournaments every week on account of not wanting to crush the chat log by keeping everyone in one area. Split up what you've got if you must.
If you've got fighting, that means you'll have wounded. Be prepared for people to take damage beyond what would be expected to be "reasonable" in a semi-friendly setting, and if you can have a medical staff on hand to help give some additional RP to those bounced from the mechanical side of the tournament, that's great and fun. The big warning here, though, is that it's also very easy to take those volunteers for granted by expecting them to just be healbots. That destroys morale and should be avoided where it can. I've found gratuitous thankfulness helps a bit, as does never making demands for people to do anything specific.
Some generic advice: Start on time. Be flexible if people arrive late (especially if you have odd numbers that can make a tournament lopsided) but when you say "we begin at this time" you'll want to hold to that. Event organizers will feel bad for leaving people out who showed up late, but my mantra for this is "Run your event for the people who are present, not for who is absent." If you've got a dozen people in line ready to go, you're now weighing 1-2 stragglers' attendance against the dozen excited people who showed up before the opening bells.
This is kind of slapdash after a long morning of driving, so if you've got any specific questions feel free to hit me up. As mentioned though, the other folks in the thread did a good job of answering.
![[Image: yEROfKO.png]](http://i.imgur.com/yEROfKO.png)
