Megabyte
07-23-2005, 03:12 PM
Yes, its time for another of these. (DUN DUN DUH)
Tournies that are done properly take a LOT of work. Most people out there think that if they make a post saying "I W@NT 2 rUn a T0URN3Y" in a thread then show up in game, that its gonna happen. They simply don't realize that (realistically) not everyone can run a proper tourney. Either from lack of organziation skills, dedication, or time available. You're going to need to set aside a good several hours to get it setup, several more to run the show (or more if your tourney goes over multiple days), and several more again to list out the matches, send out prizes, and get info from participants.
This is a listing of much of what you'll need to properly run a tourney. This shouldn't be taken as a complete end-all-guide. Each tourney is different in both style and its needs. This should simply be see as a basic handbook for people who are looking to run a tourney and NOT have it be "canclled" or to have only 3 noobs participating it, but actually want to pull off a fun and successful tourney with a good number of participants.
EDIT: This is NOT a guide for how to run a league (thanks for the pm asking about that). While a regular league would have a lot of similarities to a tourney, its basically a continuous work load of a tourney and a LOT of organization. RGL was a good example. LOTS of work and frusteration. I'd go so far to say that its simply too much work for any one person alone to handle. If you have questions about running a league after reading this, my first reccomendation is to NOT do so. If your really dead set upon it however, consult with our mods who have some experience in the matter.
Outside additions are welcome, and I'll likely be editing this in the future to make it more complete and to include new info.
What you'll need:
Rules - Clear, concise, and complete rules. EVERYTHING should be explained out. How opponents will be matched up, what sort of units are allowed, how many players will be in the tourney. Spell it all out. While no list of rules is every 100% foolproof and covers everything, you want to get as much of it in there as you can. This will help prevent problems in the future.
There are a wide variety of standard rule sets available these days. You should be actively researching these to see if you want to adopt them for your own tourny, or at the least to get some ideas.
Leaders - Depending on how the tourney will run, you'll need either someone in or out of game to organize the matches and result. Largely, this will be you, the person running the tourney. But sometimes you need help. Be sure to designate these people early on and let them know what they will be doing. You should include these volunteer's name in the rules ;)
Timing - Timing is everything. Would it be better to have the matches meet at 8pm on a Thurs, or 4am on a Monday. Don't put your matches in an awkward time slot if you want real open participation, and make sure you put the time down in the ORIGINAL rules. Don't add it in later. People should know right away when they sign in for it what time they'll have to be playing. That way they can plan ahead for it, and they have a lot less excuse room later on if they didn't show or dropped out.
Participants - Guess what, you need people! This is actually the hardest thing to get it seems for most tournies out there. People are flakes (you are, admit it!). So, how to get them to join in? Well, make sure you adhere to the above guidlines of course. Organization helps encourage players to stick with it. Most people will bail on a tourny if they think the person running it is unorganized, an idiot, or a flake themselves. Aside from that, keep it fun for the participants (duh). Don't run your tourny like a POW camp.
Prizes (?) - OK, I suppose this one isn't really a huge necessity. Lots of people will claim "for the love of the game" stuff and all that. Personally, I like to see prizes of some sort. TANGIBLE prizes. Being able to join some clan, or something else equally lame, is NOT a prize most people will be interested in. T-shirts are cool, free month of gold, little things is all you need. I know, money is often tight, but really, its touches like this that make a tourney successful and memorable.
Edit: 10/20/05
Scheduling - A good way to officialize and announce your tourney would be to list it in the TAO *calendar* (http://www.tacticsarena.com/forum/calendar.php)
This allows you to set the specifics for you Tourney date and make it so anyone who wants to see it just has to click the calendar page. This also allows a single resource for players to look up multiple tourney dates and schedules.
TAL Certification
With the revival of the TAL, you should seek to get your tourney certification. This means it can fit into the standard league and helps encourage active participants to play multiple tournies.
See here for information regarding the TAL. (http://tacticsarena.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33619)
Running the Tourney Itself
OK! You got some people, got yourself organized, now its time for the tourney! Here's some guidelines to keep it runnin smoothe.
Stick to the Rules - Changing the rules on the fly is bad. VERY bad. People will get annoyed, and learn to loathe you. Stick to the original plan. If its not as cool as you hoped, run another tourney later with some alteration. DO NOT change your current tourney, especially once its under way.
Leadership competence - Leaders should be impartial. This is a must. No exception. If your showing favortism, get the hell out of the tourney. It'll piss people off, and make everyone involved have a lot of drama. None of that is helpful to making a tourney run smoothely.
Along with that, or maybe even a bit against it, leaders should be flexible. Pair up people who's partners didn't show, give rulings on controversial matches (with the idea of always adhereing to your original rules of course), rule on DC's. They should make sure each match ends with a clear winner, and that there's no questionable activity.
Screenshots - Along with that last statment there, GET SCREENSHOTS OF EVERY SINGLE MATCH!!! The participants should ALWAYS give a screenshot (or two) of the match's conclusion. This will guarentee there is no deception and cheating going on. In fact, I think its an excellent and brilliant idea to put that into the rules. If you do not have a screenshot of the match, you don't get credited with the win.
Timing - OK, you had your original start time, stick with it. Don't change it. Changing the time of your tournie will cause confusion amongst the participants, and slow down the tourney itself. Have a clear time when people are supposed to play and be done by. Also have a clear time when you will announce the winner. My personal reccomendation is to do it all in a single day, preferably in a single time slot. Faster is better. People lose interest if tournies take several days (weeks), and it becomes more complicated for the participants if they have to be one at specific times for multiple days to participate. Keep it simple, and keep it fast. Have the tourney start and be completed within 12 hours ideally.
After the Tourney
Congrats, Congolences, and match stats- Give out some congrats to all who won. Be sure to list how the match lineups went. This is important. Believe it or not, nobody is 100% trustworthy. I'm not gonna play in a tourney all day without knowing how all the matchups went. I want to see who won each match. So be sure to give all the info. If you adhered to the above guidelines, there should be no discrepencies with this.
Giv them their prize - Cough it up :p Seriously, I've been in a few tournies (in and out of TAO) where the person running it "mysteriously" dissapears afterwards and the winner didn't get their prize. That REALLY sucks and REALLY pisses off the participants (especially the winner ;) ). So, do it, and make it go as quickly as possible. If its a gold account win, get it upgraded for them in a day or so from the winner announcement. If its a more tangible prize, like a t-shirt or something, get their info and get it mailed ASAP.
Find out their thoughts - Likely, you'll want to run another tourney sometime. So get the thoughts of the participants, and ideas they have. Its important to keep trying to improve upon your tournies to make each one better than the last. If they didn't like something about yours, you should find out, and be sure not to do that again.
Hopefully, going through this will help people setup more organized tournies. Yes, it appears to be a lot of commen sense, but its the organization of that sense which is crucial. Tournies should be run in and organized and impartial manner. That way, everyone can have fun with whats important, playing the game.
Tournies that are done properly take a LOT of work. Most people out there think that if they make a post saying "I W@NT 2 rUn a T0URN3Y" in a thread then show up in game, that its gonna happen. They simply don't realize that (realistically) not everyone can run a proper tourney. Either from lack of organziation skills, dedication, or time available. You're going to need to set aside a good several hours to get it setup, several more to run the show (or more if your tourney goes over multiple days), and several more again to list out the matches, send out prizes, and get info from participants.
This is a listing of much of what you'll need to properly run a tourney. This shouldn't be taken as a complete end-all-guide. Each tourney is different in both style and its needs. This should simply be see as a basic handbook for people who are looking to run a tourney and NOT have it be "canclled" or to have only 3 noobs participating it, but actually want to pull off a fun and successful tourney with a good number of participants.
EDIT: This is NOT a guide for how to run a league (thanks for the pm asking about that). While a regular league would have a lot of similarities to a tourney, its basically a continuous work load of a tourney and a LOT of organization. RGL was a good example. LOTS of work and frusteration. I'd go so far to say that its simply too much work for any one person alone to handle. If you have questions about running a league after reading this, my first reccomendation is to NOT do so. If your really dead set upon it however, consult with our mods who have some experience in the matter.
Outside additions are welcome, and I'll likely be editing this in the future to make it more complete and to include new info.
What you'll need:
Rules - Clear, concise, and complete rules. EVERYTHING should be explained out. How opponents will be matched up, what sort of units are allowed, how many players will be in the tourney. Spell it all out. While no list of rules is every 100% foolproof and covers everything, you want to get as much of it in there as you can. This will help prevent problems in the future.
There are a wide variety of standard rule sets available these days. You should be actively researching these to see if you want to adopt them for your own tourny, or at the least to get some ideas.
Leaders - Depending on how the tourney will run, you'll need either someone in or out of game to organize the matches and result. Largely, this will be you, the person running the tourney. But sometimes you need help. Be sure to designate these people early on and let them know what they will be doing. You should include these volunteer's name in the rules ;)
Timing - Timing is everything. Would it be better to have the matches meet at 8pm on a Thurs, or 4am on a Monday. Don't put your matches in an awkward time slot if you want real open participation, and make sure you put the time down in the ORIGINAL rules. Don't add it in later. People should know right away when they sign in for it what time they'll have to be playing. That way they can plan ahead for it, and they have a lot less excuse room later on if they didn't show or dropped out.
Participants - Guess what, you need people! This is actually the hardest thing to get it seems for most tournies out there. People are flakes (you are, admit it!). So, how to get them to join in? Well, make sure you adhere to the above guidlines of course. Organization helps encourage players to stick with it. Most people will bail on a tourny if they think the person running it is unorganized, an idiot, or a flake themselves. Aside from that, keep it fun for the participants (duh). Don't run your tourny like a POW camp.
Prizes (?) - OK, I suppose this one isn't really a huge necessity. Lots of people will claim "for the love of the game" stuff and all that. Personally, I like to see prizes of some sort. TANGIBLE prizes. Being able to join some clan, or something else equally lame, is NOT a prize most people will be interested in. T-shirts are cool, free month of gold, little things is all you need. I know, money is often tight, but really, its touches like this that make a tourney successful and memorable.
Edit: 10/20/05
Scheduling - A good way to officialize and announce your tourney would be to list it in the TAO *calendar* (http://www.tacticsarena.com/forum/calendar.php)
This allows you to set the specifics for you Tourney date and make it so anyone who wants to see it just has to click the calendar page. This also allows a single resource for players to look up multiple tourney dates and schedules.
TAL Certification
With the revival of the TAL, you should seek to get your tourney certification. This means it can fit into the standard league and helps encourage active participants to play multiple tournies.
See here for information regarding the TAL. (http://tacticsarena.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33619)
Running the Tourney Itself
OK! You got some people, got yourself organized, now its time for the tourney! Here's some guidelines to keep it runnin smoothe.
Stick to the Rules - Changing the rules on the fly is bad. VERY bad. People will get annoyed, and learn to loathe you. Stick to the original plan. If its not as cool as you hoped, run another tourney later with some alteration. DO NOT change your current tourney, especially once its under way.
Leadership competence - Leaders should be impartial. This is a must. No exception. If your showing favortism, get the hell out of the tourney. It'll piss people off, and make everyone involved have a lot of drama. None of that is helpful to making a tourney run smoothely.
Along with that, or maybe even a bit against it, leaders should be flexible. Pair up people who's partners didn't show, give rulings on controversial matches (with the idea of always adhereing to your original rules of course), rule on DC's. They should make sure each match ends with a clear winner, and that there's no questionable activity.
Screenshots - Along with that last statment there, GET SCREENSHOTS OF EVERY SINGLE MATCH!!! The participants should ALWAYS give a screenshot (or two) of the match's conclusion. This will guarentee there is no deception and cheating going on. In fact, I think its an excellent and brilliant idea to put that into the rules. If you do not have a screenshot of the match, you don't get credited with the win.
Timing - OK, you had your original start time, stick with it. Don't change it. Changing the time of your tournie will cause confusion amongst the participants, and slow down the tourney itself. Have a clear time when people are supposed to play and be done by. Also have a clear time when you will announce the winner. My personal reccomendation is to do it all in a single day, preferably in a single time slot. Faster is better. People lose interest if tournies take several days (weeks), and it becomes more complicated for the participants if they have to be one at specific times for multiple days to participate. Keep it simple, and keep it fast. Have the tourney start and be completed within 12 hours ideally.
After the Tourney
Congrats, Congolences, and match stats- Give out some congrats to all who won. Be sure to list how the match lineups went. This is important. Believe it or not, nobody is 100% trustworthy. I'm not gonna play in a tourney all day without knowing how all the matchups went. I want to see who won each match. So be sure to give all the info. If you adhered to the above guidelines, there should be no discrepencies with this.
Giv them their prize - Cough it up :p Seriously, I've been in a few tournies (in and out of TAO) where the person running it "mysteriously" dissapears afterwards and the winner didn't get their prize. That REALLY sucks and REALLY pisses off the participants (especially the winner ;) ). So, do it, and make it go as quickly as possible. If its a gold account win, get it upgraded for them in a day or so from the winner announcement. If its a more tangible prize, like a t-shirt or something, get their info and get it mailed ASAP.
Find out their thoughts - Likely, you'll want to run another tourney sometime. So get the thoughts of the participants, and ideas they have. Its important to keep trying to improve upon your tournies to make each one better than the last. If they didn't like something about yours, you should find out, and be sure not to do that again.
Hopefully, going through this will help people setup more organized tournies. Yes, it appears to be a lot of commen sense, but its the organization of that sense which is crucial. Tournies should be run in and organized and impartial manner. That way, everyone can have fun with whats important, playing the game.