Tournament Organising Thread, As requested Options

[GT]

Ok I shut down the other thread as it was getting off topic and didn't need to go any further down that line.

As requested this topic is for posting of information relevant to running tournaments.

When enough information is collated I will edit the content and make it a sticky so that all those budding TO's can garner what they need without having to dredge through extra posts to get to the nuggets.

Cheers,

GT

[Bishop]

I've only run 1 event so I consider myself a noob TO.
Anyway, to start the thread off this is what I did:

Research - Plan - Advertise

Research:
- Research the format e.g. one or two day (often something you’d like to participate in is a good start…it keeps the enthusiasm levels high)
- Research the army point size versus number of games. Poll your peers, post in online forums, ask other TO’s etc.
- Research a date. Don’t have it clashing with another local event…but if it does, see if you can work ‘with’ the other event rather than against each other perhaps sharing venue costs etc. Try and work in to public holidays or around exam times etc.
- Research a venue. Wargaming clubs are often only too happy to assist a budding TO run an event. They can often assist with insurance, terrain etc and seeing as it’s for the betterment of the game and brings others to ‘their’ clubrooms will often assist for little or no financial return…especially if you can run it in conjunction with a normal club day for them. Look at cost-free venue alternatives like Police Citizen Youth Clubs, Community Centres, Scout Halls, Sport Clubrooms, Local Fire Stations etc a lot of these places have rooms available to the community…they just don’t advertise them. I knew of a Bowling Club in Sydney (think Crackerjack) that was happy to let out their main hall at no cost on a Sunday for a T-dance/ Dance Party. They HAD to be open for their members to have a beer at the bar but the main hall was vacant. Too funny…lots of barbie dolls wearing very little and muscle boys in shorts mixing with the grey-blue rinse set in the foyer. I digress…and probably show my age.
- Research costs. Including but not limited to: Printing, Stationery, Prizes, Advertising, Insurance, Venue, and Terrain/Tables etc. Work out what your breakeven cost would be versus the attendance cost e.g. 20 players @ x dollars = break even, 15 players @ x+5 dollars = breakeven, 25 players @ x-5 dollars = breakeven etc. Then add a couple of dollars to the fee to ensure you are covered.
- Research other successful events. Find out why they are successful and emulate them.
- Research and know your limitations. If you are a shocking planner, get someone else who isn't to assist you. If you have shocking time management skills, get someone else who doesn't to assist you. If you have very little spare time, get someone else who has more to assist you. If you are shocking procrastinator, don't even think about running an event..."I was gonna" is going to let everyone down, lest of all yourself.
- Lastly, before getting in to the next stage, ask yourself wether you and your loved ones can afford the time it will take for you to plan and run an event. Be honest with yourself. Be honest with them. After all, for most of us, this is only a hobby. If you still have the enthusiasm to do this and you also have a green light from those that matter most in your life...GO HARD!

Plan:
- Plan absolutely everything down to the last nut and bolt.
- Document everything so you don’t forget anything.
- Run your plan past other TO’s and ask them for advice.
- Diarise your plan and set points against dates for specific parts of your plan that need to be covered off running up to the event. Then ensure that it happens.
- Keep a close eye on your budget.
- Practice the games and format you are planning to run and fine-tune it.
- Trial run the venue for layout etc.
- Enlist a small, realiable team to help with various aspects of the event including on-the-day responsibilities.


Advertise:
- Ask for expressions of interest. If you’ve prepared well then ask players to pre-pay.
- Be very open about what you are attempting to do. Hide nothing.
- Advise via advertising what your minimum cut-off is to hold the event. Then let everyone know when you’ve reached this target and you are pressing on for more attendees to make it bigger and better for all
- Use word-of-mouth to get the message out there.
- Enlist others who have expressed an interest to assist spreading the word.
- Enlist other TO’s to let their personal inner sanctum of connections know about the event.
- Post teaser threads in online forums.
- Advertise at the local hobby supplier.

Cheers
Mark

[stryder]

Not sure if this is something to add, but maybe a "by location" resources available, etc.

ie, I'd be happy to help with tables, scenery (ie, 8+ tables worth) for a tournament past the blue mountains within a reasonable distance (3-4 hours) to Dubbo. Or with anything else required.

[chunky04]

Might as well put my two cents in here.

I started a Blood Bowl tournaments thats run for two years now and has gotten 30-40 players each time. This has never happened outside of Cancon for BB, so we must have done something right

First thing I think needs to be done is there are some important questions to consider regarding your objectives for the event.

The very first questions you need to answer are your own expectations for the event. What is the minimum sized event you'd be happy to run? What sort of niche do you believe you can fill.

When I decided to run a Blood Bowl tournament, there were only 3 per year in NSW/ACT, and all of them occurred during a convention. I was aware through my travels through other systems that many gamers enjoy Blood Bowl, so I thought there was a niche to run an independant Blood Bowl event that would enable some of the gamers who concentrate on other games to have a crack at it. I also thought BB hadn't yet received the sort of professional treatment and organisation of tournaments like Dogcon, and that tourneys were not marketed very well outside of the fairly small dedicated BB community.

At the same time, a mate of mine from online moved over here from the UK, where the BB tourney scene is far more developed, and used a vastly different ruleset to that used over here. We also believed using this ruleset would help establish as a good tourney, as they contained a number of inherent advantages for tournament play.

With this in mind, we decided that 20 people was a reasonable minimum expectation for the event, so all of our budgeting and research revolved around that figure.

BTW, I'll digress for a moment to highlight a niche well done. IMO the Fortunes of War event last year was probably the best I've seen in terms of an innovative niche event. There have been plenty of WHFB tournaments attempt to play with scenarios and such with little success (in fact they are often seen in a very negative light), but by going to great lengths to provide suitable reasons for this variation, Fortunes turned what was generally a negative into a massive positive. Scenarios tacked on to a competetive battle tourney were a no-no, but as part of a cohesive effort at a storyline based tournament where it made perfect sense for scenarios to be used and where they were handled in a logical fashion to go with the storyline, they worked extremely well.

Next we needed to find a suitable venue. We decided we wanted a licenced venue to encourage the social vibe we were after, so that immediately narrowed down our options a great deal. We also wanted the tournament to be quite accessible, so availability of public transport was important.

While we looked at a number of options, I remember Earlwood-Bardwell Park RSL that was used for WAU one year had been right next to a train station, was a good venue, and had reasonable parking, so when I ran into Erin at Leviathan, I asked him about how much it cost. This turned out to be far superior to any other licenced venue we'd found to that point, so we contacted the club to confirm price, and to organise to have a look at the venue. We found that the venue had both the appropriate amount of room (would be enough room to spread out, and also had 22 trestle tables, which should be able to fit two games a piece, so could cater to up to 80 entrants - far more than we were anticipating.

BB has an advantage over organising WHFB tourneys in that it simply requires a lot less space - this makes the overheads considerably lower, and the logistics much easier, since we don't have to acquire and transport tables and terrain.

With the venue set, we just needed a decently designed website and rule set and we could start the main part of the process. Fortunately my cohort was a dab hand at these things and had most of them complete by the time the venue was finalised.

Once we had these things in hand, it was time to take it to the punters. I cannot stress the importance of having these things set before making the event public for a first time event, especially if its an independant event. By having dates, locations and rules set, you will look like you know what you are doing and people will be much more likely to take your event seriously.

By all means do consult with others about the rules and such for your event, but this should all be handled well in advance of the event, to the point where they should be complete once you announce the event. Other things to keep in mind is that you will cop criticism of your rules. Try and respond to this in a constructive and calm manner, as blowing your top over minor issues will give you and your event a poor image. This doesn't mean rolling over, if you believe in your rules and have given your explanations for them and someone still disagrees, let them. A good examples of this is Brads stance with regards to using 6th ed for MOAB. Ultimately there were a lot of pros and cons for either side of that discussion, but in the end, a decision was made, the reasons were given, and the response left up to the punters. Though a number of people were particular scathing and snide about the decision, brad mostly (maybe completely?) resisted the temptation to return fire, choosing to let the event speak for itself rather than going off half-cocked and coming out looking like a twat. This can be a very difficult thing for some of us to do.

By far the biggest factor in the success of our tournament was the effort put into promoting it. We were extremely active within the Blood Bowl community and with trying to attract those outside of the BB community.

There were a number of key aspects of this:

- Try and encourage people to commit to your event early. People who have their money down are far more likely to play than people who don't. People with money down are also far more likely to encourage others to attend, whether directly or indirectly. It also helps you out as the organiser if people are paid a lot earlier and you know you have a sound platform to work off financially rather than worrying about whether the tournament will go ahead.

- Ensure your own tournament website is kept up to date and has continual activity. Having a who's coming page to show who has already stated they are coming (and who has paid as well) is a very simple and effective method to do this. Furthermore, you tend to find the more people you have, the more people will want to come along.

- Be active in all the various forums relevant to the punters for your tournament. In our case, this was not just WAU, but also a number of BB forums. Try to keep discussion going so that you appear in the front summary page more often. The occasional bump is OK, but if you're forum post contains little else it won't be effective.

- Take opportunities to speak directly to a number of people - go to conventions, clubs etc and talk to the people there.

- Identify "key players" and make personal efforts to secure their attendance. What I mean by key players is people that are likely to bring along other people if they come along. Most gaming groups generally have one motivated person, who will generally be the organiser of most things amongst that group. If you can get him to come along, he will quite likely drag some of his mates along too. In some cases, its as simple as him being the only one in the group with a car!

These are the things needed to get a successful first time event. This is what you need to get players through the door. The success of future events depends just as much on how you run this one however.

Timing is the biggest issue to face in running a tournament. Having a realistic timeframe for games is one of the most important requirements, and IMO should be weighted to about 80% in terms of the slowest players. This should be a timeframe even those slower can bring themselves in to, without rushing anyone, and hopefully without there being excessive downtime for the faster players.

Get your scoring method down pat! Try and practice with it so you can both iron out any bugs in the system, and become fairly adept at its use to limit any potential delays.

Think about what, if any, extras would be suitable. Extras vary a hell of a lot, but can make a big difference to a tourney experience. Things like state of origin, international or interclub games after a days play, poker games, or just board games or general drinking all will enhance a tourney given the appropriate audience.

That'll do for now, but I'll probably make another post on the differences between a first run and an established event.

[Saxon]

OK
where can we get overlord from to actual run the swiss chess system?
does anyone know if you can download it from anywhere?

[GT]

In the Hobby Section here on WAU is all the info you need:

http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showforum=88

Cheers,

GT

[Saxon]

excellent GT - I was looking under the tournament section
you're a good mate despite what people say about you!

[mikecro]

Yeah, that GT is a good lad

Just a question on public liability insurance - how would a TO organise this, how much does it cost, what should they look out for etc

[GT]

I have found that most venues who hire out space for tournaments have public liability insurance and it's included in the cost of hiring the venue.

In Brisbane the Queensland Gamers Guild Inc (QGG) offer services to people wishing to run tournaments, and one of them is insurance coverage.

Cheers,

GT