Tales from Origins -- The Rogue Trader Tournament, Part One

Posted by Ranillon on 28. July 2009 22:59

Origins lasts four days, but Sunday tends to be short and there is only at best time to run something quick.  As a consequence Saturday was the climax of our games – and fittingly enough it was a Rogue Trader Tournament.

The day started early (too much so for my usual tastes, but then again I wanted everything to go right).  It had to as we needed to put out terrain (it would have been too dangerous to leave the terrain out all night – it might not have been there in the morning), setup our table, organize all the paperwork, and so forth.  Fortunately, while I hadn’t run a tournament before I had certainly played in a lot, including GW Grand Tournaments.  As a result I made sure to make out copies of everything we would need, even special forms to help us keep track of points and determine the winner.  I even made sure to produce three separate, color-coded sheets for everyone to fill out with game results and sportsmanship scores.

Registration started at 9am and went to 10am.  The one fear I had in the run up to Origins was whether or not we would get enough people.  We had done everything we could think of to advertise, but this was our first year and thus we had no good (or even bad for that matter) reputation to attract potential players.  Add in the cost and the economy and I had visions of one or two participants showing up.  Fortunately, we ended up with sixteen.  It wasn’t as much as we could have gotten, but it was still more than enough to have a good tournament.

Things started more or less on time with everyone getting a random opponent to start off.  From there everyone would be partnered up with their next nearest competitor in terms of battle points.  I didn’t bother with using a tournament program given the relatively small amount of players (when we have the 100 man tournament within a few years then it’ll be necessary).  It wasn’t as hard as you might think as not everyone gets their results in at the same time and we made sure to provide enough time between games to account for possible hold ups.

A funny thing about running a tournament is that it doesn’t give you any gaming stories to tell after the fact.  No harrowing story about how I needed to roll three-sixes and no “I coulda been a contender” tales of woe about how I would have won “if only…”  Instead, as a tournament organizer you spend your time answering questions, making rulings, filling out forms, keeping an eye on things, and generally making sure everything goes somewhat according to plan.  I am pleased to say that we didn’t get any trouble makers – even when losing people kept their cool.  More than that it sure looked like everyone was having more or less a good time.  At least, that’s what you assume when you hear a lot of whoops and laughs.

One other thing you quickly learn about tournaments is that they are hard on the feet.  By the end of the day I was practically needing crutches.  What stinks is that was with inserts in the shoes.  I got to find a better solution for next year.

Anyway, the three games all went well without any significant problems save that we needed to alter a scenario rule that didn’t work as well as I had hoped (lesson:  You can’t over plan or overwork when it comes to tournament preparation).  It took me only fifteen minutes to figure out the winners, but we delayed the award ceremony until everyone got back (and, gratifyingly, every player was there).  Good thing too as I think at least a few were surprised by their wins.  A lot of congratulations and thank-yous came next with nary a complaint in sight.  The only downside to tournament being over is that then you have to clean everything up!

More to come...