Running a Tournament: ANUCON2011 part 2 – Players Pack

 

Photos from http://www.alvin.teh.net.au/photography

ANUCON2011 Players Pack

Okay, so here’s part 2, following on from last week’s mid week post, where I rant about the Player’s Pack – probably the thing which gives me the most headaches after advertising.

Why do I find the Player’s Pack so annoying to put together? Well, it’s because of the sheer number of things that should be in it…

Basic Details

Firstly, all the basic details need to be there. Date, time, cost, how to get into contact with me (as TO), what’s included. Forget any of these, and players won’t know how to register or when to turn up!

Army Lists

When army lists are due. How to submit them. What format to submit them in, even though you inevitably get at least one person who doesn’t read. Which leads me to…

Army List and Modelling Restrictions

What you can’t take in your army. How your army will be marked. What counts as inappropriate modelling (not WYSIWYG? Counts-As? Proxies? Definitions of all of the above?).

Scoring

Breakdown of overall points into battle, sports, comp, and painting (us gamers down here in Oz still use the “soft” scores, and ANUCON in particular is a “friendly” tournament). Exactly what you’ll need to do to get the marks for each of the categories, so there’s no arguing on the day.

Scenarios

Probably a list of scenarios, at least the basic details, so people know what to expect (are your scenarios much different from the standard rulebook missions? If so, are they playtested?). I hold back details on secondary missions so there still is an element of uncertainty, but the main ones are all heavily based upon the standard rulebook missions.

Schedule

The schedule you hope to adhere to over the tournament, including how long rounds are and so on. The most important part of this is the start and end times at this stage, so hopefully everyone turns up on time!

Prizes

A list of what prizes everyone will be competing for. This is so they know what to expect, and they can decide if they want to try in particular for anything. Also, makes it clear what you’re awarding prizes for!

He'll burn through the player's pack in no time.

The most annoying thing is though…

… that when you’ve made a mistake, everyone will tell you about it! 😀

The Conclusion

Well, I’m not really sure what the point of this blog post was, apart from to list everything that’s in the player’s pack which you could have just read yourselves. In the end though, maybe an 18-pager (including title, contents, and advertising at the back) is possibly a bit big for a player’s pack, and people don’t read the whole thing. However, I’d rather make a complete player’s pack for people to read if they want, so that the vast majority of possible questions you’ll get about the tournament (“Can I take this army? Do I have to have painted models? How many games are there? When is it?” are just some of the ones I’ve gotten in the past), you can just point to the player’s pack and be done with it.

Also, it stops the problem of you giving different answers because you’ve forgotten something. Not that that’s happened to me in the past…

2 thoughts on “Running a Tournament: ANUCON2011 part 2 – Players Pack

  1. Pingback: ANUCON2011: Sponsor Change | Luke's Short Gaming Blog

  2. Pingback: Running a Tournament: ANUCON2011 Part 4 – Food! | Luke's Short Gaming Blog

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