Tourney
N. A structured competition. Also called a tournament.
Tourneys can be either Arts and Sciences or fighting competitions. Examples of some regularly-held tourneys are Olympiad, Crown Quals, Weaponmaster and Dragonmaster. Examples of tourneys which were once popular in Amtgard, but are less common today, are the Plunder Tourney and Pun Tourney.
Twice a reign
Typically a Kingdom level fighting tournament is held once every three months in each kingdom; Warmaster and Weaponmaster.
How to
By Squeak!
Running an amtgard tourney is much like running any other tourney, chaos embodied. No really, pretty much all you need are elimination brackets and some reeves. Make all clarifications ahead of time; it's usually good to have a meeting with your reeves before you start to make sure everybody is running with the same ideas. If you make any clarifications during the tourney, make sure, at the instant of clarification, that all reeves are notified. This way everybody is playing by the same rules. Depending on the number of people you have in the tourney, and the number of reeves availible, you may want to set up multiple list fields. Each list field should have at least two reeves. As you call up people on each field, you can then call who's up next or "on deck" to fight, that way they have a few minutes to get ready.
Single elimination: Most tournies are single elimination; these are easy to coordinate and run fairly quickly so you can have multiple events (ex. sword and shield, single sword, open class, florentine, etc.). You can run these with elimination brackets and a list of names (we usually like to mix them up in a hat or some other semblance of randomness). Two people fight, the winner goes on to the next round. If you come up odd at any point before the final round, a "bye" is pulled in to fight. The bye can be picked ahead of time and used multiple times, but is not actually a participant in the tourney. If the contestant wins they continue on; if the bye wins then the contestant is eliminated and the tourney proceeds.When you get to the final round, one of two scenarios can happen.
Scenario 1: The brackets all eliminate down to one happy tidy winner (yeah right). The loser of the final fight is second place. Then all you have to do is have one more fight for 3rd place between the losers two brackets back. Everything is simple and good.
Scenario 2: The brackets eliminate to an odd number. If you encounter this in a final round (3 people left) then you go to a round robin style. Each contestant fights every other contestant left. The one with the most wins, is first, etc. Its important to keep track of each fight in the round robin, since sometimes you'll have to go through more than once.
At the end of the tourney, the tourney records are tallied. If you have been accurate in your book keeping this should only take forever. Tally the kills for each contestant and he or she who killed the most wins the tourney. Orders of the warrior can be tallied by tracing the number of kills in a row along your elimination brackets. If someone wins an event and goes on to win in the next event, the kills are cumulative. When they die, the tally stops. This is where it becomes important to keep track of the order events were fought and wins/losses for round robins. Someone may win an event, but die in the round robin, thus breaking their winning streak. Always consult your corpora for specifics on orders of the warrior and be sure that you are following the guidlines. There are maximums for local groups, whereas kingdom wide tourneys may produce a warlord. If in doubt, ask your king or queen.
