Bloodbowl mentality - please read

[Vigfus]

Thanks everyone for their replies. It's been interesting to get the input from everyone.

At current it's given me a couple of ideas.

I'm currently thinking about having each tournament player rank the bloodbowl aspect of their games at the end of the tournament. With 5 games this would mean: game which was least fun gets a 1, most fun gets a 5. You have to rank them so no equal points allowed. Based on the points we'll calculate each coach's games. Coaches doing average get no extra points (or some points). Coaches which are below a limit either loose points or score none. Coaches going above the upper limit (ie fun to play against) get extra points.

In practice this means that people that consistently cause their opponents to not enjoy themselves get punished. Those that do get rewarded. We're still thinking on it, and I'll make sure it's posted before Brassbowl so people know what rule were posting.

[Old Man Draco]

I'm currently thinking about having each tournament player rank the bloodbowl aspect of their games at the end of the tournament. With 5 games this would mean: game which was least fun gets a 1, most fun gets a 5. You have to rank them so no equal points allowed. Based on the points we'll calculate each coach's games. Coaches doing average get no extra points (or some points). Coaches which are below a limit either loose points or score none. Coaches going above the upper limit (ie fun to play against) get extra points.

Hi Sjapie,

This has a downside. If I play 5 great games I really don't want to give a player just 1 point. Also, if you do this afterwards and you know who is at the top of the league, you can really influence the outcome of the endresult of the tournament.
I'm not sure this is the way to go to be honest.

[thechosengobbo]

I agree with Draco.


My own feeling on Sportsmanship are thus:
Warhammer tourneys need it. You can play some REAL bad guys there (I have a fair few stories, and I've only ever done one warhammer tourney before swearing off them).

BB tourneys? I think they're fine without. I have yet to play a bad player in my (admittedly limited) time playing.

However, if sportsmanship MUST be put in I'd stick with either a yellow red card system, run by the refs/organisers. OR I'd use one that allowed you to positively score opponents as well as negatively scoring them.

[duttydave]

I don't think that sportsmanship scores should count towards total tournament points.

I totally agree with the yellow/red card system. If someone is being a particular pain in the 'you know what' and enough people complain then that coach will be removed from the tournament.

[Vigfus]

I honestly don't see a problem with ranking your opponents. The points you're giving out to them really don't make that big difference. The only thing that is going to happen is that the players will get ranked according to the fun their opponents had playing them.

The question really is where to lay the upper and lower limits. This can be done a couple of ways. We could opt for an absolute value, such as 20 to score as a player that's fun to play against, or less than 8 for bad players. We could also opt for top 10%, so on a field of say 45 players, that means the 4 or 5 players with the highest sportsmanship points get extra points.

We could also divide the ranking scale up into sections. for instance.
top 10 5pts
10% - 30% 4pts
30% - 50% 3pts
50% - 70% 2pts
70% - 90% 1pts
Last 10% 0pts

There are many other configurations you can use to set this up, even one only punishing the bad players in two different rankings, effectively creating a red/yellow card system. Others possibilities are filtering out the highest score, the lowest score or both, meaning that you're taking the two average scores. There's many possiblities.

The thing is that the scores given by the individual players won't be of an influence as a whole. The reason for this is just that the ranking is converted into a points system and aren't directly any points given by the opponent, which is the main problem with the sportsmanship points given by players.

The real trick is coming up with a good system to value that input. We might also take sportsmanship only in account in cases of a tie. As an organiser I see absolutely no problem in this at all. Two players are tied after the final game, but one was fun to play against for everyone, and the other wasn't as enjoyable? I know who I'd like to give the prize to as an organiser. This is only another criteria than the one now used, which usually is most touchdowns, which in my opinion favours agility teams as these tend to score more. I would personally favour the sportsmanship as tiebreaker because it favours no team on account of it's playing style.

The point is that the system we're considering is making the message clear: we want people to enjoy themselves at our tournament. To the unsporting players that think they have the right to spoil others enjoyment because winning is all that counts, the message is clear: it isn't, and they will get punished.

[mepmuff]

As far as Im concerned it's an awareness issue. It shouldn't be about punishing and (to a lesser extent) rewarding. Bloodbowl games and tournament games in special have a competitive side to them. Some coaches don't care about that, some do so very much. Both can play eachother and have fun. What I'd like to see is an atmosphere where people feel ok about telling the guy opposite the table that they didn't like a certain aspect of that game. I'd expect nine coaches out of ten wouldnt even have realised they were less fun to play then they could've been.

[Lycos]

What I'd like to see is an atmosphere where people feel ok about telling the guy opposite the table that they didn't like a certain aspect of that game. I'd expect nine coaches out of ten wouldnt even have realised they were less fun to play then they could've been.

That is the answer. Or perhaps, even during the game? An environment where the two players can be honest and open is the best thing.

[brassman]

We're still discussing the sportsmanship and ranking your opponents issue, but my personal take on it is:

Ideally, you want a system where 'good' sportsmanship is the NORM, in other words being a good sport will NOT earn you extra points, its simply expected of you. On the other hand, being a bad sport WILL cost you points.

One way to implement that can indeed be a system where you rank your opponents after the last game. This does not necessarily have to be been as a 'punishment' system as it can - for example - then be used to award a 'most sporting opponent' special prize, AS WELL AS confirming possible troubleshooters.

But in the end, apart from whatever system we use, I have to agree with mepmuff, simply being frank with your opponent about their dodgy playstyle is already going to help immensly, especially if we - as the bloodbowl community - all support this idea.

[Warpstone]

However, if sportsmanship MUST be put in I'd stick with either a yellow red card system, run by the refs/organisers. OR I'd use one that allowed you to positively score opponents as well as negatively scoring them.

Just wondering, what would you Yellow Card beyond the obvious cheating, abusiveness incidents?

I think we're all on the same page regarding 9 out of 10 coaches being great guys to play against. A bad coach in a league can be dealt with rather straightforwardly by the commish and so you don't need any system to reinforce sportsmanship. But in a tourny... you really can possibly get all sorts.

As long as new or out of town coaches are coming to your tourny, the organizer really should put some attention towards clearly defining that sportsmanship is important before the kickoff. I think the actual mechanism to reinforce this doesn't matter (use points or even just an opening speech). Just make sure that everyone attending starts off on the same page so that it's clear to everybody when a bad apple is misbehaving and needs to be penalized or even removed.