Bazalonia
29-10-2006, 09:09
Introduction
With many sporting tournaments being held in the NSverse both Ns-Wide and Region wide the time for a guide to hosting a NS Sport has come. Whether a sport has a real-life counter-part or if it is a fictional sport does not matter all require the same level of detail and dedication to the sport to be able to effectively host a tournament.
Some examples of Sports that have been known to have tournaments run in NationStates include:
* Soccer/Football
* Baseball
* Cycling
* Cricket
* Kleptochase
* And many others...
While Most of these have real-life counter-parts such as World Cup for a number of Sports and Tour de France for Cycling there exist sports such as Kleptochase that only exist in NationStates. And so no matter whether the sport is real or fictional this guide is for you.
Requirements for Hosting a Sporting Tournament
There are a number of things that you need to think of and questions you need to answer before someone should even consider hosting a Sport Event.
Skills
It is well known that some people are just plain better at certain things compared to others, so how are you going to handle this for your tournament? There are 3 possible ways to handle this, these are...
1. Multi-skilled Sporting
2. Generic Sporting Skill
3. Un-skilled Sporting
Whatever method of skilling you use for the tournament your scorinator will have to be able to accomodate the skills and you will require a formula based on the mechanics of the sport to translate the skills into points or times as appropriate for the sport. Please note in edition to skill there needs to be involved a level of randomness involved, You need to determine the balance between the skill(s) and the randomness.
Multi-skilled Sporting
This occurs when a number of factors combine to determine how well some one, or some team, performs in a sporting event compared to other competition. An algorithm is used to combine all these individual skills with a random factor to generate the final result of the match. Some multi-skilled Sporting examples include:
* Tour De Qazox
* Vilitan Surf Tour and...
* Kleptochase - However, despite that each "chaser", or competitor, in Kleptochase has 4 skill categories only one is used depending on the type of chase being completed. And so has elements of both Multi-skilling and Generic Sporting Skill
Generally each competitor in a multi-skilled tournament when they join get to assign various points to each skill. The number of points to assign may be the result of a ranking system and may need to be assigned every tournament or may be continued on from a previous tournament.
Generic Sporting Skill
This occurs when a tournament uses a system of a single number to represent how good or poor a team is, this is generally fairly easy as you only have one skill to combine with a random number to generate the final result. Some examples of Generic Sporting Skill tournaments include:
* World Cup (of soccer/football)
* Cup of Harmony
* AOCAF
* Olympics
* Ylompic
A team or competitor is usually assigned a standard skill level when joining, whether that is 0 or something else. A totally new tournament that has no team that has a skill benefit over the other is classified as a Non-Skilled Sporting tournament
Non-Skilled Sporting
This occurs when there are no pre-existing skill points assigned to any team, this usually happens for a new tournament that is un-related to any other tournament, whether or not there are already tournaments of the same sport. Only randomness is considered when generating the scores for these types of tournaments.
All tournaments at one points started out as un-skilled but in their second iteration become Generic Sporting Skilled, there are very few Multi-skilled sports that have ever been Non-skilled. However there is one Perrenial Non-Skilled Sporting event. It is called the Baptism of Fire. A tournament that is considered in the ranking system used in World Cup Committee (WCC) sanctioned events like the World Cup and Cup of Harmony. Despite being a repeated tournament all participants are unranked, compared to each other.
Format
There are a number of aspects to format
1. Stages
2. Competitors
3. Fixtures
These combine to form the overakk structure and format of the tournament and need to be told to the participants before the first Match/game or heat is done.
Stages
First of all we need to define what a stage is, it is pretty much a section of a tournament that adheres to a set of rules about how competitors play each other. There are mant types, some of the more common types...
* Group
* Knockout
* Heats
* Group finals
Group
A Group is where 1 competitor plays against all other competitors in their group, usually 1 leg where the competitors play against each other once in the group at a neutral location or where each competitor plays each other competitor in their group twice one at a home venue and one away venue. If such things as home/away bonuses exist for the sport.
A number of top teams of each group after a group stage is completed usually go onto a knockout round. Some times to the number of groups you may have to run some sort of play-off matches to ensure that an exponent of 2(2,4,8,16,32,64,etc...) progress to the knock-out.
Each match that a competitor wins, draws and loses gives them an opportunity to build up points, the more points the better the team and more likely you are to move on, though on occasion there is the possibility of points being equal between 2 teams, one of which should progress and the other should stop competing. That is where Tie-breakers come in. The Tie breakers can be anything that is statistically possible to determine from the matches and usually multiple tie-breakers need to be created just in case a situation arrises.
Knock-out
Knock-out stage may or may not precede a group stage. A knock-out stage has to produce a winner, if both competitors score the exact same amount of points/take the same time then a method of determining a winner has to be decided. This is either done as "extra-time" where a certain number of minutes are added for the team to score. Additional rules like "Golden-point" may be in-place but at the hosts discretion. Another option is for a re-match, the two competetitors battle it out again to see for a different result.
Heats
Heats are used when multiple (more than 2) competitors can compete at the same time or when only one competitor can compete at a time due to physical restrictions; examples of these are swiming, skiing, marathon, cycling, etc...
Usually in heats a number of competitors compete against each other and from all the heats the best X number of competitors goes through to a group final.
However in events such as cycling tours times from each heat (usually known as stages in cycling jargon) are added together and form the total time for the event. The winner of the tournament is the person with the quickest overall time. Though an individual may win a heat that does not mean they will win upcoming heats or the race.
Group Finals
Group Finals require heats the best X number of competitors from each Group Final progress to the next level of group finals until enough competitors have been whittled down to end up in one final group Final. The Winner of this final is the winner of the tournament.
Others
There are many other types of structures that you can use, the answer to the question should you use it? Well, You need your best judgement will it fit the mechanics of the game? do you like it? Do you know how it will work in terms of fixtures? If you can answer these questions then there is no technical reason why you should not be able to use it.
Competitors
There are many aspects to Competitors that contribute to the overall structure of a tournament.
First and foremost is the number of competitors; The number of competitors define how many competitors are in each group/heat and how many groups/heats there are. A tournament with 120 would very possible have 15 groups/heats of 8 competitors per group/heat. Where as a tournament of 32 might have 8 groups of 4 or vice versa.
The number of competitors might also require byes as in a competitor does not compete one time but does the next where someone else does not compete.
Fixtures
Fixtures, these are important. A fixture is who is competing against who else and where are they doing it at. Usually venues have no bearing on scoring a tournament but there are instances (eg The Vilitan Surf Tour) where venues do have an impact. The Most important thing is to know yourself and make sure the competitors know who will be facing who before they do it.
Scorinating
Scorinating, or Scorination, is the process of generating scores. There are a extreme number of ways this can be achieved. For instance, back in the early days of the NS World Cup (soccer/football) dice where used to score. However more sophisticated methods of scoring such as Programs or Spreadsheets are more common nowadays.
Behind every method of scorination is an algorithm, it is the alogorithm that is the most important thing that determines how good the scores are. This algorithm needs to take into account the type skills and how they affect the final score, they need to be able to support all the rules for sorting out a final winner should a match end in draw and it needs to be able to be told who competes against who.
You may need to create a scorinator or may already have an existing scorinator created by yourself or someone else, if you need to create a scorinator you need to have a good understanding of a method to run the algorithm (eg. Write a program to do it, use a spreadsheet or find some other way). As stated in Skills randomness is very important and finally how is it going to handle RP Bonuses. What are RP Bonuses? See the next section for an answer
Role-Playing Bonus
Usually to encourage activity in a tournament there is something called a RolePlaying Bonus (or RPB). An RPB is determined using pre-determined criteria and then added in a way that it improves the chances for the team that RPed against their opponent. Of course both teams can RP and so they can get the same and/or similiar bonuses, but how do you implement a RPB? There are 3 main ways
1. Alter the skill
2. Scorinator Field
3. You don't
Alter the Skill
This is the most common and very easy to accomplish as you don't need to have a scorinator that needs to worry about the RPB as that is your job. This can work with either Multi-skilled, Generic Skill sports or even non-skilled sports. Usually the RPB is more of a factor in non-skilled sports as that is the only way to get a benefit over an opponent.
While details of your criteria are usually not given out to the public, you need to know exactly how your RPB System will work before the tournament so that it is applied consistantly and fairly across the board.
Scorinator Fields
Some scorinators use the RP Bonus to modify the way the score is created above beyond what is acheived by skills. In this case a scorinator field is required and the most of the work is creating the algorithm then an implementation of the algorithm as it requires added complexity that if it was just altering the Skill. However once the scorinator has been set up there is not much to differentiate the running of a Scorinator Fielded RP bonus compared to a Alter the Skill style.
You don't
While fairly rare there are tournaments (such as the Aglukark-Cherry Ice Hockey Cup) that have no RP bonus at all. This, while being extremely easy is not in common use in NS.
Getting Started with Sign-ups
Sign-ups, you can't have a tournament without competitors the sign-ups are a crucial component to running a tournament. Some tournaments have already systems in place but others, if you are going to run your own you need to create your own sign-ups.
For Non-skilled Sports and for Generic Sports Skill tournaments you only have to require intention to compete as you would have the Generic Sports Skill values already waiting ready for their use. However Multi-Skilled Sports require the following things:
* Infortming competitors of how many points they can allocate
* Informing competitors how many skills there are and a basic desrciption of them
* Provding both valid and invalid samples for people to use as a base
Knowing how many people to expect to sign-up is an art that I have yet to know how to master. There are always people that you might expect to sign-up that don't and new people will sign up all the time. The real question is how large are you able to go?
The answer is mainly a personal one as well as a bit of a technical one. Can your scorinator support 100 competitors? but the main question is will I be able to handle all 100 competitors.
Closing Sign-ups is also an art-form of itself do you go for that 33rd player even though that will cause problems or just go to 32 and close up then? The question is really what do you think is best for you and your tournament.
During the Tournament
You have all the competitors you need having all the people you need to run the tournament. So what now?
First thing first create Thread(s) for people to post rosters (if applicable) and RP's as well as one for you to post the scores. For small tournaments it may just be easy enough to have all in one thread, or should rosters also be there to split one of the three off as a seperate thread. The decision is upto you but please consider past precedent. PArticularily if you are running a long standing tournament. And don't forget to link to the new threads from the sign-up thread.
Post Fixtures in an appropriate place either post the entire fixture list for the tournament on the first page of the RP thread and/or you could also post next day's fixtures in the score thread. Depends on what you want to do.
Make sure that people know of the format, particularily if you are using a non-standard format and should there be 2 or more stages than what the requirements are for progress through each stage are.
Consistancy is key, both dealing with RP's and with regularity of scoring the matches. To help you in aiding the RP counting process a tip I have is to use what is known as an RP cut-off. An RP Cut-off is a post in the RP thread by you stating that All RP's upto here from the previous cut-off post are included into the scorinating of the upcoming matches/competitions. It helps you with counting a large number of RP's as well as keeping your participants informed. You can use your judgement and include an RP after the cut-off but it has to be very close after the RP has been Cut-off and before actual scorination has taken place. If you do include a post after the RP Cut off make it clear in the Cut-off what RPs you have included.
Regular scorinating is important, knowing when to expect some scores keeps your participants happy. Should there be an incident where you will know you won't be able to score then post a message telling your people wy and give an estimate of when scorination will begin. If you cannot know beforehand then tell people what happened when you do score. Communication is very important.
Normally to allow participants to RP scores are usually generated ever 24 hours or so. Please scorinate about the same time each day giving the participants enough time to write and consider an RP.
After the Tournament
Should this tournament be one of a long series of tournaments there are a number of things that you need to do after the tournament that will make it easier.
Update skills, a system like the KPB System or other to improve a person base skills depending on their performance in previous tournaments is a good thing for you to do. However there is a chance that you might not have to worry about it. Let's use the Dragon Invitational created by Andossa Se Mitrin Vega as example. Considering it was a soccer/football tournament and many the competitors in it where the same as the competitors in the World Cup then it did not seem necessary for Andossa Se Mitrin Vega to have his own ranking system. Instead he used the World Cup system. So the ranking system including Skills are very important.
Another thing to consider is to give your competitors at least some breathing space before running another tournament. A week is absolute minimum before you try to run another attempt. But really as the host it is your choice. Well, not if it is something that has instituitional backing such as the World Cup and other related events.
With many sporting tournaments being held in the NSverse both Ns-Wide and Region wide the time for a guide to hosting a NS Sport has come. Whether a sport has a real-life counter-part or if it is a fictional sport does not matter all require the same level of detail and dedication to the sport to be able to effectively host a tournament.
Some examples of Sports that have been known to have tournaments run in NationStates include:
* Soccer/Football
* Baseball
* Cycling
* Cricket
* Kleptochase
* And many others...
While Most of these have real-life counter-parts such as World Cup for a number of Sports and Tour de France for Cycling there exist sports such as Kleptochase that only exist in NationStates. And so no matter whether the sport is real or fictional this guide is for you.
Requirements for Hosting a Sporting Tournament
There are a number of things that you need to think of and questions you need to answer before someone should even consider hosting a Sport Event.
Skills
It is well known that some people are just plain better at certain things compared to others, so how are you going to handle this for your tournament? There are 3 possible ways to handle this, these are...
1. Multi-skilled Sporting
2. Generic Sporting Skill
3. Un-skilled Sporting
Whatever method of skilling you use for the tournament your scorinator will have to be able to accomodate the skills and you will require a formula based on the mechanics of the sport to translate the skills into points or times as appropriate for the sport. Please note in edition to skill there needs to be involved a level of randomness involved, You need to determine the balance between the skill(s) and the randomness.
Multi-skilled Sporting
This occurs when a number of factors combine to determine how well some one, or some team, performs in a sporting event compared to other competition. An algorithm is used to combine all these individual skills with a random factor to generate the final result of the match. Some multi-skilled Sporting examples include:
* Tour De Qazox
* Vilitan Surf Tour and...
* Kleptochase - However, despite that each "chaser", or competitor, in Kleptochase has 4 skill categories only one is used depending on the type of chase being completed. And so has elements of both Multi-skilling and Generic Sporting Skill
Generally each competitor in a multi-skilled tournament when they join get to assign various points to each skill. The number of points to assign may be the result of a ranking system and may need to be assigned every tournament or may be continued on from a previous tournament.
Generic Sporting Skill
This occurs when a tournament uses a system of a single number to represent how good or poor a team is, this is generally fairly easy as you only have one skill to combine with a random number to generate the final result. Some examples of Generic Sporting Skill tournaments include:
* World Cup (of soccer/football)
* Cup of Harmony
* AOCAF
* Olympics
* Ylompic
A team or competitor is usually assigned a standard skill level when joining, whether that is 0 or something else. A totally new tournament that has no team that has a skill benefit over the other is classified as a Non-Skilled Sporting tournament
Non-Skilled Sporting
This occurs when there are no pre-existing skill points assigned to any team, this usually happens for a new tournament that is un-related to any other tournament, whether or not there are already tournaments of the same sport. Only randomness is considered when generating the scores for these types of tournaments.
All tournaments at one points started out as un-skilled but in their second iteration become Generic Sporting Skilled, there are very few Multi-skilled sports that have ever been Non-skilled. However there is one Perrenial Non-Skilled Sporting event. It is called the Baptism of Fire. A tournament that is considered in the ranking system used in World Cup Committee (WCC) sanctioned events like the World Cup and Cup of Harmony. Despite being a repeated tournament all participants are unranked, compared to each other.
Format
There are a number of aspects to format
1. Stages
2. Competitors
3. Fixtures
These combine to form the overakk structure and format of the tournament and need to be told to the participants before the first Match/game or heat is done.
Stages
First of all we need to define what a stage is, it is pretty much a section of a tournament that adheres to a set of rules about how competitors play each other. There are mant types, some of the more common types...
* Group
* Knockout
* Heats
* Group finals
Group
A Group is where 1 competitor plays against all other competitors in their group, usually 1 leg where the competitors play against each other once in the group at a neutral location or where each competitor plays each other competitor in their group twice one at a home venue and one away venue. If such things as home/away bonuses exist for the sport.
A number of top teams of each group after a group stage is completed usually go onto a knockout round. Some times to the number of groups you may have to run some sort of play-off matches to ensure that an exponent of 2(2,4,8,16,32,64,etc...) progress to the knock-out.
Each match that a competitor wins, draws and loses gives them an opportunity to build up points, the more points the better the team and more likely you are to move on, though on occasion there is the possibility of points being equal between 2 teams, one of which should progress and the other should stop competing. That is where Tie-breakers come in. The Tie breakers can be anything that is statistically possible to determine from the matches and usually multiple tie-breakers need to be created just in case a situation arrises.
Knock-out
Knock-out stage may or may not precede a group stage. A knock-out stage has to produce a winner, if both competitors score the exact same amount of points/take the same time then a method of determining a winner has to be decided. This is either done as "extra-time" where a certain number of minutes are added for the team to score. Additional rules like "Golden-point" may be in-place but at the hosts discretion. Another option is for a re-match, the two competetitors battle it out again to see for a different result.
Heats
Heats are used when multiple (more than 2) competitors can compete at the same time or when only one competitor can compete at a time due to physical restrictions; examples of these are swiming, skiing, marathon, cycling, etc...
Usually in heats a number of competitors compete against each other and from all the heats the best X number of competitors goes through to a group final.
However in events such as cycling tours times from each heat (usually known as stages in cycling jargon) are added together and form the total time for the event. The winner of the tournament is the person with the quickest overall time. Though an individual may win a heat that does not mean they will win upcoming heats or the race.
Group Finals
Group Finals require heats the best X number of competitors from each Group Final progress to the next level of group finals until enough competitors have been whittled down to end up in one final group Final. The Winner of this final is the winner of the tournament.
Others
There are many other types of structures that you can use, the answer to the question should you use it? Well, You need your best judgement will it fit the mechanics of the game? do you like it? Do you know how it will work in terms of fixtures? If you can answer these questions then there is no technical reason why you should not be able to use it.
Competitors
There are many aspects to Competitors that contribute to the overall structure of a tournament.
First and foremost is the number of competitors; The number of competitors define how many competitors are in each group/heat and how many groups/heats there are. A tournament with 120 would very possible have 15 groups/heats of 8 competitors per group/heat. Where as a tournament of 32 might have 8 groups of 4 or vice versa.
The number of competitors might also require byes as in a competitor does not compete one time but does the next where someone else does not compete.
Fixtures
Fixtures, these are important. A fixture is who is competing against who else and where are they doing it at. Usually venues have no bearing on scoring a tournament but there are instances (eg The Vilitan Surf Tour) where venues do have an impact. The Most important thing is to know yourself and make sure the competitors know who will be facing who before they do it.
Scorinating
Scorinating, or Scorination, is the process of generating scores. There are a extreme number of ways this can be achieved. For instance, back in the early days of the NS World Cup (soccer/football) dice where used to score. However more sophisticated methods of scoring such as Programs or Spreadsheets are more common nowadays.
Behind every method of scorination is an algorithm, it is the alogorithm that is the most important thing that determines how good the scores are. This algorithm needs to take into account the type skills and how they affect the final score, they need to be able to support all the rules for sorting out a final winner should a match end in draw and it needs to be able to be told who competes against who.
You may need to create a scorinator or may already have an existing scorinator created by yourself or someone else, if you need to create a scorinator you need to have a good understanding of a method to run the algorithm (eg. Write a program to do it, use a spreadsheet or find some other way). As stated in Skills randomness is very important and finally how is it going to handle RP Bonuses. What are RP Bonuses? See the next section for an answer
Role-Playing Bonus
Usually to encourage activity in a tournament there is something called a RolePlaying Bonus (or RPB). An RPB is determined using pre-determined criteria and then added in a way that it improves the chances for the team that RPed against their opponent. Of course both teams can RP and so they can get the same and/or similiar bonuses, but how do you implement a RPB? There are 3 main ways
1. Alter the skill
2. Scorinator Field
3. You don't
Alter the Skill
This is the most common and very easy to accomplish as you don't need to have a scorinator that needs to worry about the RPB as that is your job. This can work with either Multi-skilled, Generic Skill sports or even non-skilled sports. Usually the RPB is more of a factor in non-skilled sports as that is the only way to get a benefit over an opponent.
While details of your criteria are usually not given out to the public, you need to know exactly how your RPB System will work before the tournament so that it is applied consistantly and fairly across the board.
Scorinator Fields
Some scorinators use the RP Bonus to modify the way the score is created above beyond what is acheived by skills. In this case a scorinator field is required and the most of the work is creating the algorithm then an implementation of the algorithm as it requires added complexity that if it was just altering the Skill. However once the scorinator has been set up there is not much to differentiate the running of a Scorinator Fielded RP bonus compared to a Alter the Skill style.
You don't
While fairly rare there are tournaments (such as the Aglukark-Cherry Ice Hockey Cup) that have no RP bonus at all. This, while being extremely easy is not in common use in NS.
Getting Started with Sign-ups
Sign-ups, you can't have a tournament without competitors the sign-ups are a crucial component to running a tournament. Some tournaments have already systems in place but others, if you are going to run your own you need to create your own sign-ups.
For Non-skilled Sports and for Generic Sports Skill tournaments you only have to require intention to compete as you would have the Generic Sports Skill values already waiting ready for their use. However Multi-Skilled Sports require the following things:
* Infortming competitors of how many points they can allocate
* Informing competitors how many skills there are and a basic desrciption of them
* Provding both valid and invalid samples for people to use as a base
Knowing how many people to expect to sign-up is an art that I have yet to know how to master. There are always people that you might expect to sign-up that don't and new people will sign up all the time. The real question is how large are you able to go?
The answer is mainly a personal one as well as a bit of a technical one. Can your scorinator support 100 competitors? but the main question is will I be able to handle all 100 competitors.
Closing Sign-ups is also an art-form of itself do you go for that 33rd player even though that will cause problems or just go to 32 and close up then? The question is really what do you think is best for you and your tournament.
During the Tournament
You have all the competitors you need having all the people you need to run the tournament. So what now?
First thing first create Thread(s) for people to post rosters (if applicable) and RP's as well as one for you to post the scores. For small tournaments it may just be easy enough to have all in one thread, or should rosters also be there to split one of the three off as a seperate thread. The decision is upto you but please consider past precedent. PArticularily if you are running a long standing tournament. And don't forget to link to the new threads from the sign-up thread.
Post Fixtures in an appropriate place either post the entire fixture list for the tournament on the first page of the RP thread and/or you could also post next day's fixtures in the score thread. Depends on what you want to do.
Make sure that people know of the format, particularily if you are using a non-standard format and should there be 2 or more stages than what the requirements are for progress through each stage are.
Consistancy is key, both dealing with RP's and with regularity of scoring the matches. To help you in aiding the RP counting process a tip I have is to use what is known as an RP cut-off. An RP Cut-off is a post in the RP thread by you stating that All RP's upto here from the previous cut-off post are included into the scorinating of the upcoming matches/competitions. It helps you with counting a large number of RP's as well as keeping your participants informed. You can use your judgement and include an RP after the cut-off but it has to be very close after the RP has been Cut-off and before actual scorination has taken place. If you do include a post after the RP Cut off make it clear in the Cut-off what RPs you have included.
Regular scorinating is important, knowing when to expect some scores keeps your participants happy. Should there be an incident where you will know you won't be able to score then post a message telling your people wy and give an estimate of when scorination will begin. If you cannot know beforehand then tell people what happened when you do score. Communication is very important.
Normally to allow participants to RP scores are usually generated ever 24 hours or so. Please scorinate about the same time each day giving the participants enough time to write and consider an RP.
After the Tournament
Should this tournament be one of a long series of tournaments there are a number of things that you need to do after the tournament that will make it easier.
Update skills, a system like the KPB System or other to improve a person base skills depending on their performance in previous tournaments is a good thing for you to do. However there is a chance that you might not have to worry about it. Let's use the Dragon Invitational created by Andossa Se Mitrin Vega as example. Considering it was a soccer/football tournament and many the competitors in it where the same as the competitors in the World Cup then it did not seem necessary for Andossa Se Mitrin Vega to have his own ranking system. Instead he used the World Cup system. So the ranking system including Skills are very important.
Another thing to consider is to give your competitors at least some breathing space before running another tournament. A week is absolute minimum before you try to run another attempt. But really as the host it is your choice. Well, not if it is something that has instituitional backing such as the World Cup and other related events.