Here are some words from our feared lead cat-herder, btw:
'VACC', on 10 Aug 2011 - 1:31 PM, said:
- Either have a schedule in mind, or make everyone think that you do. You should never be asking your guests what they want to do; you need to have a plan before they sit down and start to bullshit.
- When you get done with a round, imediately get moving towards the next. If you have 10 minutes of downtime as a host, the rest of the nerfers will end up with 15 - 20. If you give yourself 0 downtime, everyone else will stay in the 5-10 minute range.
- Have an agenda. Either a progression of fields, game types, or team groupings gives you a goal that you can work towards during the day. If you have multiple fields to play, think about which ones fit which game types, and how you can move through them in a logical and efficient manner. Think about what rounds are best run early in the day when everyone needs to warm up, and what rounds require more energy and should not be run last or right before lunch.
- Be flexible, but decisive. If most of your nerfers dislike a field or game, be willing to scrap it, but YOU make that decision, and YOU decide how to course correct. Don't let your war turn into a democracy. Good Nerf wars are benevolent dictatorships.
- A cohost is not a bad idea. Someone equally knowledgeable, and on the same page is a huge help when plans must be altered. Just don't let the command group grow into a commune, and make sure one person has the final say.
There are other things, but it all comes down to being a knowledgable and authoritative host.
Also, my own suggestions from previous wars:
- I'll spring for a box of water from Costco or Safeway or wherever. Dehydration is no fun, and Subway is too far away.
- We should have a goal of keeping rounds as short as possible, and as many people in play as possible - sitting out for extended periods is no fun.
- I propose we have an agenda of rounds. This will allow us to punt games that don't work for us for whatever reasons. We seem to play a limited subset of games, so we'll have to repeat them, at least in the agenda.
- An agenda isn't a schedule. Having a schedule of rounds is going to be off-the-rails very quickly. An agenda is "what comes next, whenever we're done with the current round."
- We should have a schedule, though. We'll just have the schedule fit between the rounds, especially if we keep them short. Let's have 11-11:15 be meet-n-greet, setup, trading, and setting up for the first round. What's a good time for lunch, 1PM? 12:30? In this case, Dayko can decide as we close in on that time whether or not to move it up a few minutes, or start a round and delay lunch for a few minutes.
- I'll print up a few copies of the rules summaries so everyone can be on the same page (literally) about the games.
- Each round should be <n> minutes or less. Maybe 10 minutes, but probably no more than 20. Up to Dayko to decide. This means each round needs to have a victory condition even if both teams are still on the field, such as "team with most people's lives left". Whichever war host is out (probably me >_< ) will announce the time on the minute starting at T-5 minutes and every minute thereafter. If no war host is out, or the round isn't an elimination round, I'll volunteer to drop out to do this.
- Let's plan to have 5 minutes downtime between rounds for re-gearing, trading/buying, team selection, whatever. Then, we can review the rules for the round if someone is unclear, though the rules writeup should cover that already.
- I suggest we always run Witch Doctor instead of Medic, and TDMZ instead of Team Deathmatch - more chance of people being active on the field.
- I'll bring a deck of index cards and we'll have everyone put their names on one. To choose teams, I'll shuffle them and deal out two piles. This will be the proposed teams, and then we will propose some trades if one side is seriously outgunned. This hopefully will be faster than selecting teams one-by-one.
- At the start, each of us create two headbands from the flagging tape, one of each color. That way, you just pocket whichever headband you're not using this round. We should standardize on headbands so everyone around you can see which team you're on, and we all know to look for headbands.
- I'll bring some nametags. It's up to you if you want to use them, and what you put on them. I'll put my real name, username @ NIC sites, and my email address on mine.
Edited by taerKitty, 27 August 2011 - 09:54 AM.
Fugly is a feature.