Arts and Sciences

The Cultural Arts

Often referred to as A&S, the Arts and Sciences are the cultural aspect of Amtgard.

What are they?

Examples are crafts, armor-making, weapon-building, fine arts, and writing. Promoting A&S is one of the responsibilities of the Regent.

Art & Sciences Tourneys

A&S events include cultural tourneys of many kinds, such as Dragonmaster, and workshops. A&S competition is an important part of Crown Quals and Olympiad.

Some category examples:

• Accessory Entries; Court Accessories, Field (Or Fighting) Accessories.
• Armoring Entries; Bracers, Greaves, breats plates, Chain mail, Leather, Laminar,
• Artwork Entries; 2-D and 3-D.
• Banner Entires; Can be combined with Sewing, 2-D art, Passive construction, or Accessory.
• Bardic Performances; Singing, Oratory, Instrumental, Dance.
• Brewing Entries; Sometimes combined with cooking; Mead, Wines, beers. These do not have to Alcoholic.
• Cooking Entries; Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert, Vintner, and Writing.
• Construction Entries; Passive, Active.
• Garbing Entries; Fighting, Court, Other Outfits, Monster, Accessory, Favors, and Jewelry.
• Photography Entries; Usually combined with 2-D Art.
• Sewing Entries often combined with garbing entries, but can include Quilts, Banners, Tents, and Bags.
• Weapon Smithing; Sword, Shield, Polearms.
• Writing Entries; Factual, Fictional, Poetry, Publications

How to run an Arts and Sciences tourney

As an Arbiter, or the person who runs a tournament it is your job to advertise in advance, as much as reasonably possible. Most experienced entrants will plan their entries around the method on which the tourney will be judged. You must advertise the following; The date, the time sign ins will start, the time sign ins will end, what style of tourney you plan to have, a listing of the categories, and what is permissible to enter (for instance, the things you can enter in a quals cannot have received an award in a lower tourney and must have been finished in the last six months), any limits on number of entries or number per category, And how the entries will be scored.

Choose judges a head of time, and nail them down again two weeks prior to the tourney to make sure they are still available, or if you need to find replacements. Make sure that your judges understand that telling you that they can't make it is fine, but that they need to tell you.

Bring to the tourney extra paper, sign ins, and lots and lots of pens.

Judging Methods

There are three main scoring methods; Tourney style, Flood Style, Limited entry and Top three. These each of them have variations, but generally follow the same structure.

The most common style of Judging Arts and Sciences by a pool of the Thirteen Kingdoms is the 'Top Three' style. Basically each contestant is aloud to enter as many items into the tourney as they like, but only the top scores, or score, is taken from each category and awarded points. Sometimes in the over all scores extra points are granted for taking first or second place in category. Other times the numerical score is simply added and compared to that of all the other contestants to determine the over all winner.

Flood style was often used in the past but has generally fallen out of favor in the central Kingdoms.

Links

• Desert Winds Guide Lines
• [ Iron Mountains Guide Lines]

Styles of Tourney

Most Tourneys are judged on a 5 point scale.

Some listings for craft supplies and instruction can be found on the Amtgard Resources page. To read bout folks opinions of A&S tourneys or to write your own, check here