Tour de Rhy'Din

[Random McChanse]

So, I finish my daily fix of the Tour de France (just recently addicted, thanks to the 2004 DVD), and then an evil, twisted idea pops into my head: wouldn't it be cool to do a RoH version of the Tour, with tournaments from all three sports instead of bike races?

The way I think of it, an event like this could be great for the community for several reasons:

1) Introduce people who primarily duel DoS to the other two sports;
2) Utilize all of these places in RhyDin that we've created (like the Baronial Manors and Keeper Towers and other things on the map);
3a) Provide an outlet of training for callers so that they can call multiple sports
AND/OR
3b) Provide a testing environment for the Golem (see the DoS OOC if you're not acquainted with the bot);
4) Give us who are waiting for the fall season of TDL something to do besides dueling for rank;
and of course
5) See who's the best overall when all three sports are taken into account

And now, for an extended vision of this idea, although quite tentative, just so you who don't know about the Tour understand what I'm trying to suggest:

THE TOUR DE RHY'DIN


QUICK OVERVIEW

The Tour de Rhy'Din is a meta-tournament spread across 20 small tournaments, called 'stages'.

There are eight DoS stages, six DoF stages, and six DoM stages.

Duelers gain points based on their performance in stage duels, with bonus points awarded for shutouts, perfect shutouts, and placing in the top 4 for each stage.

These points are used to determine who gets to wear Jerseys, which are like titles to show who is currently at the top of the standings overall or in a particular sport. With permission, holders of Jerseys may make a sn with the prefix of the Jersey they currently hold, i.e. YELLOW, RED, GREEN, BLUE, or WHITE. A dueler can only hold one Jersey at a time, so if he/she qualifies for more than one, the unheld Jersey is given to the next highest in the standings for that Jersey.

The Yellow jersey goes to the dueler with the most points, period. Since duelers are allowed to bring their fancies from the official standings over to the Tour, there is also White jersey for the rookie duelist with the most points.

The Red, Green, and Blue jerseys go to the duelers who consistently finish highest in DoS, DoF, and DoM stages respectively, to allow duelers who specialize in one sport a chance to work for a title.

For each sport, there is a Team stage and a Special stage.

In Team stages, the duelers form into teams of five and duel each other TDL-style. The overall score of the team at the end of the stage is then added to each member's individual score.

Special stages are tournaments in which the rules or format are modified, and provide extra bonus points for finishing in the top 4.

At the end of the 20th stage, prizes may be awarded to the final holders of the Yellow, Red, Green, Blue, and White jerseys.


FORMAL RULES


THE STAGES

There are four types of stages:

Prologue: This is the first event in the Tour, designed to allow newcomers to adjust to dueling in all three sports without being overly penalized for their discomfort. The format is freeform; any duelist may challenge any other, with the stipulation that the challenged picks the sport dueled. To make things more interesting, there may be a system in which every participant is given a certain number of GC points at the start, and may wager them in these Prologue duels (with the amount det. by the challenger).

Regular: These stages are the meat of the Tour, involving tournaments run in each sport. The format for regular stages is a random, limited round robin, as explained below.

Team: Teams of five duelists face off in TDL format in a round-robin tournament; at the end of the stage, the total team score is added to the individual scores of each member. There is one team stage for each sport.

Special: There are three special stages, one for each sport, involving tournaments run under modified rules or formats unique to each stage. These stages are particularly special in that more bonus points are awarded to top finishers than in the regular stages, making these stages lucrative for Yellow jersey contenders and crucial for Red, Green, and Blue jersey contenders.

ORDER OF THE STAGES (This is so tentative I don't know how tentative it is it's so tentative)

Prologue: Annex
Stage 1: Dojo Darelir (F)
Stage 2: Old Temple Baronial Manor (S)
Stage 3: Tower of Air (M)
Stage 4: Dockside Baronial Manor (S)
Stage 5: Tower of Water (M)
Stage 6: Overlord Isle (STeam)
Stage 7: Tower of Earth (M)
Stage 8: Seaside Baronial Manor (S)
Stage 9: Battlefield Park (FTeam)
Stage 10: Old Market Baronial Manor (S)
Stage 11: The Marketplace (F)
Stage 12: Citadel of the Stars (MTeam)
Stage 13: Outback Roof (F)
Stage 14: Dragon's Gate Baronial Manor (S)
Stage 15: Tower of Fire (M)
Stage 16: New Haven Baronial Manor (S)
Stage 17: Red Orc Brewery (F)
Stage 18: Twilight Isle (MSpecial)
Stage 19: Outback (FSpecial)
Stage 20: Red Dragon Inn (SSpecial)

F = DoF stage
M = DoM stage
S = DoS stage
Team = Team stage
Special = Special stage

If you look at the map of Rhy'Din (in the Thoughts at Large section), you'll notice that the route follows a generally crescent pattern, going clockwise from the Dojo and ending at the RDI (not including the DoM stages, but they're in a different universe ) .

Note that the stages may not be actually held inside the Baronial manors or the Towers (depending on permission of the owners), but at least in the general area. Also note that the Battlefield Park manor is omitted only because there were enough DoS stages, and not enough DoF stages, and Battlefield Park has an important place in DoF history as it temporarily staged official duels. If Arane wants to host a DoF stage in her manor, all the better.


STAGE FORMATS

Regular
In regular stages, duels will be randomly assigned so that each dueler duels four other duelers in a single stage. The stage will run from either Sun-Tues or Thurs-Sat; Wed will always be a Rest Day. The assigned duels may be fought, with a Tour-approved caller adjudicating, at any time from 7 pm on the first day to 10 pm on the third. For the benefit of the spectators, a common time block will be set up with guaranteed Tour-approved callers present, and duelers are encouraged to duel during these time blocks.

If a duel fails to be recorded within the time period given, both duelists will receive a GC score of 0 for that duel.

The placement of the duelers in a regular stage is determined by, in this order:
1) Best WoL for the stage
2) GC points gained during the stage
3) Match Point Differential Per Duel (MPDPD) for the stage
4) Duel between tied duelers

Team
For the team stages, a full round robin will be used, and every team will duel every other team during the time period given (which is identical to the regular stage time period). The team score at the end of the stage will be added to each member's individual score.

If a team duel fails to be recorded within the time period, both teams will receive a score of 0 for that duel.

Special
The format of special stages depends on the particular stage, and will be revealed when the nature of the stage is.

TERMS OF DUELING

See section V of the TDL rules, with the addition of:

Duelers may use a maximum number of fancies/spells as per their rank as per the standing for each sport, though they must still abide by the limit of two fancies/spells more than their opponent.

POINTS

General Classification Points (YELLOW/WHITE):
GC points are gained in the same manner as match points are in TDL:

Each duel won: 5 points to dueler.
Each point scored within a duel: 1 point to dueler, to a maximum of 5 points.
Bonus points to dueler are awarded as follows:
- Shutout: 3 points to dueler.
- Five-round shutout: 5 points to dueler.
- Overtime* duel: 2 points to losing dueler, with a maximum of 6 points as their final score.
* - overtime duel: A duel which either
(a) lasts over fifteen rounds, or
(b) results in the loser scoring 5+ points.

The difference being that unlike TDL, these points are carried over from stage to stage and determine the wearer of the Yellow and White jerseys by the duelists with the highest GC score at the end of each stage.

Bonus Points (ALL)
Bonus points are awarded to the four highest finishers in each stage, and are added to the GC score of the duelers as follows:

Regular Stage
1st place: 5 points
2nd place: 3 points
3rd place: 2 points
4th place: 1 point

Special Stage
1st place: 7 points
2nd place: 5 points
3rd place: 3 points
4th place: 2 points

Furthermore, the standings for the Red, Green, and Blue jerseys rely exclusively on the number of bonus points each duelist has gained in the respective sport's stages.

Team Stage Points:
During the team stages, points are gained by the team in the same manner as standings points are gained in TDL:

Each duel won: 1 point
Match win: 4 points
Match sweep (5-0): 1 additional point

At the end of the stage, however, the total team score is added to the GC score of each member of the team.

Team Rankings:
In the Tour, teams are ranked by adding up the GC scores of their top two duelers in the GC standings, with the exception of Team stages in which the team score is added to the team ranking.

JERSEYS

YELLOW: The most prized jersey, worn by the best overall duelist in GC points

RED: The jersey worn by the best DoS duelist in the Tour, as determined by bonus points won in DoS stages

GREEN: The jersey worn by the best DoF duelist in the Tour, as det. by bonus points won in DoF stages

BLUE: The jersey worn by the best DoM duelist in the Tour, as det. by bonus points won in DoM stages

WHITE: The jersey worn by the best overall duelist in GC points who does not hold the highest WoL-based rank or higher in any of the three sports

If a dueler qualifies for more than one jersey, he/she must wear the highest-esteemed jersey, in this order:

YELLOW - RED/GREEN/BLUE - WHITE

and the next place down in the rankings for the unworn jersey will wear it for the next stage. For example, if a dueler qualifies for the Yellow and Green jerseys (a likely result of winning the first stage), then he/she will wear the Yellow, and the 2nd place dueler in the Green standings will wear the Green. Also, if the dueler qualifies for any combination of Red or Green or Blue, he/she gets the choice of jersey to wear and the remaining jersey(s) will go to the next place down.

I believe that covers everything I've considered while thinking about the idea tonight, though naturally I'm not sure if it's balanced or not. I'd love to hear the general opinion on this, and any questions/comments/suggestions/clarifications you wish to make I'd love to hear.

[Random McChanse]

Oh, I did forget something. Jersey ties.

If two duelers are tied for a jersey, then the jersey goes to the dueler with the most stage wins. If there is a tie here, then it goes to the most 2nd place finishes, then 3rd place finishes, 4th place, etc.

If the duelers are tied in ALL of their place finishes, then the Tour will spontaneously implode.





Well, that or they duel for it or something.

[Neo Eternity]

That sounds like a good idea.

Will all duelers be allowed to participate?

[Random McChanse]

Anyone who's on the standings of any of the three sports at the beginning of the Tour is allowed to participate.

Though I'm not sure what to do if someone's rank changes during the Tour itself; allow the person the extra fancy, or make them stick with the rank they started with. I'm inclined towards the former, but I'm worried about a case where the White jersey holder gets Warlord in DoS for example, and thus is forced to give up the White jersey.

[Anne]

I really like this idea, I hope it goes through!

[Vinny]

I like it. It's something different that takes into account all three sports, although I do have an observation. Expecting a person to be able to make 20 particular dates seems to be a little much. Even in TDL, it's extremely rare where two whole teams are able to make it on the same night. Usually, three or four duels get held on the default, and the rest are made up throughout the week. Also, assuming an average of one tournament a week is held, this'll last about 5 months, digging into the TDL schedule, and then there'll really be mass chaos. My suggestion, cut it down to 14 or so. 6 DoS, 4 DoF, 4 DoM, with a team tourny for each counted amongst those. That's the big sticky point that popped up in my mind when reading about it. I'm sure more will pop up, but I'd love to see this get off the ground.

Vinnymun

[Alais d Nitesong]

Who keeps the records? Are you expecting the callers to email this records keeper with their matches, and you will sort out who's participating and who's not?

I read it, the complexity factor troubles me, and TDL has already cut into the dueling, this would add more to the loss of players when right now we are seeking to increase participation.

How will this tie into growing our forum?

[Random McChanse]

1) As to keeping the records, currently that job falls to me. We're working on a way of automating the recording process into a webpage, but as of right now I don't know whether that will be finished before we are forced to start the Tour for timescale reasons.

As for the registration, the Prologue will act like a preregistration for the Tour (if you participate in it, then you're put into the Tour standings), as well as preliminary seeding. People who join after the Prologue will be required to contact me for inclusion in the Tour. Further details will be given as we approach the date that the Prologue will begin.

2) Speaking of timescale reasons, one of the primary goals I'm setting for the Tour is to keep it from crossing over into TDL season, because as Vinny said that would result in mass chaos. As I'm trying as much as possible to maintain the current structure of 20 stages, that means there will be two stages a week, one from Sun-Tues, and the other from Thurs-Sat.

During a stage there will be four duels that each participant is required to duel, so that makes for four duels spread across three days, with a rest day between every two stages. Also, though it is strongly encouraged for participants to duel during the common time block, they can duel at any time during the three days that they wish, so I don't feel that the schedule is too demanding, and it gets the Tour done in time.

3) As for expanding the forum, I feel that this would expand the forum greatly, with sufficient participation. It requires participants to duel in all three sports, which means that those who are less acquainted with other sports are exposed to them, which could lead to an increase in cross-sport participation.

Secondly, regular participation in the sports is strongly encouraged by the Tour, least of all because, unlike TDL where you have a rank separate from your rank in any of the three sports, your rank in each regular sport determines what extra fancies/spells you're allowed in that sport's stage.

And after some deliberation, I've decided that your fancies/spells during the Tour is based on your CURRENT rank, and not just the rank you had at the beginning of the Tour. Therefore, if you go up a rank in DoS for example, you get one more fancy to use during the DoS stages of the Tour. I feel this will lead to a much greater increase of duelers participating in the regular sports.

[Alais d Nitesong]

"3) As for expanding the forum, I feel that this would expand the forum greatly, with sufficient participation. It requires participants to duel in all three sports, which means that those who are less acquainted with other sports are exposed to them, which could lead to an increase in cross-sport participation. "


I don't believe this will draw in new people without finding a way to make it known outside the current players. You may get an increase during the Tour, but that remains only those who are already participating, and only for as long as the Tour lasts. Current players know about all 3 sports, and are "less familiar" with them by choice. They don't want to participate. So "expand the forum greatly" seems overstated.

Since ranks would be maintained, any new players, or older players who left for TDL and don't return until the start of that program will be at a disadvantage without their fancies.


Are you planning on using the bot to maintain these records? What "automation" are you referring to as a means to keep the standings? Since rank fancies are things you would like to keep, which I think is a good thing that TDL did not use, how will the automation recognize when a person goes up in rank? Question is asked because the other night we had a new duelist think that because he won 2 and lost 0, he went up in rank immediately. How will automation avoid this "instant" rank advancement, and wait for the published rank upgrades/downgrades?

I don't mean to sound like all my intention is, is to denigrate the idea. My purpose is to ask deeper questions rather than just "oh yeah, great idea". It's what I do for a living and is hard to turn off delving more deeply into the nuts and bolts of a process or activity.

[Rory Laurent]

For those of you concerned, if this does proceed, it will be an unofficial tournament at least from a DoS perspective. I have not spoken with Random about it so I'm guessing he never intended for it to be official. I recognize that there are many other areas that need to be concentrated on currently in DoS (including finding an assistant supervisor, the schedule, and the histories). Honestly, I'm not sure I understand the concept of this tournament but I know that we can't currently expend that sort of resources.

I will say, however, that this tournament cannot occur in the Arena/Annex during regular dueling hours as it would create too much confusion. Also, creative property of the baronial manors belongs to the individual barons. If, for example, Farek wished to burn down the dock, it would be entirely up to him as long as he posted it so that barons to come would know that there is no dock connected to the warehouse any longer. Therefore, if tournaments are to be hosted in/around the baronial manors, the approval of each of those players must be gained (and I'd like to be CC'd on that).

I don't want to discourage unoffical tournaments as these have been great for the game over the years. However, I'm not going to hurt the current game or allow for the creative rights of the players to be interefered with.

[Random McChanse]

Gonna be a lotta quotes on this one.

I don't believe this will draw in new people without finding a way to make it known outside the current players. You may get an increase during the Tour, but that remains only those who are already participating, and only for as long as the Tour lasts. Current players know about all 3 sports, and are "less familiar" with them by choice. They don't want to participate. So "expand the forum greatly" seems overstated.

When I responded to that, I thought you meant in terms of current players participating more across the sports, which is what I feel the Tour will help. I know people don't participate in the other sports by choice, but I think a significant part of the reason for that is from unfamiliarity with the other sports. For example, until very recently I didn't participate in DoF, because I was unfamiliar with the relatively complex DoF system, and was slightly intimidated at dueling officially without knowing really what I was doing. When I actually started dueling (in fact to become more acquainted with DoF before the Tour), I found that I rather enjoyed it. Maybe I'm the exception, but I think it might cause people who solely duel one sport to expand outward into the others.

In terms of getting people unacquainted with RoH in the first place to duel, well, it's not the nature of an unofficial event like this to do that. That's more of a job for the bot, if we can ever get it to run properly again.

And speaking of the bot, that's not what I meant when I said that we might automate the records. Bryan's been so busy lately that I haven't even been able to get in contact with him, and the bot would require so much alteration in order to work for the Tour (get it out of its current standings-parsing bug, add DoF and DoM functionality, get it to IM a chatroom, get it to put records up on a webpage, etc. etc.) that we couldn't possibly start it in time for it to be finished by the time TDL started. What I meant is something along the lines of how the TDL webpage is set up, with a template for callers to record duels and which automatically updates the standings accordingly.

how will the automation recognize when a person goes up in rank?

Thankfully, this is a relatively simple answer. All you need is a parsing function that parses the standings available online for each sport. Thus when the standings get updated, so do the Tour ranks.

The bot in fact does this already, but due to a really poor assumption by Bryan (he thought that people didn't use the same sns for different sports, the fool ) this causes the bot to crash every time it tries to start a duel, cuz it sees the same dueler in multiple standings and freaks out.

I have not spoken with Random about it so I'm guessing he never intended for it to be official.

Yup. Totally unofficial, does nothing for the official ranks, so if ya wanna improve your rank in a sport, do it officially. Actually, being unofficial means we can do things that wouldn't be allowed in official events. For example, the problem with the scarcity of callers who can call multiple sports has been discussed, and so since we're unofficial we can take callers who are able to call multiple sports but aren't cleared for it and let them call Tour stages in multiple sports. To avoid confusion, we'll probably give Tour callers the TOUR prefix or something of the like, so these unofficial callers are not confused with the official ones.

EDIT: And before anyone freaks out, only callers officially cleared for at least one sport will be accepted as TOUR callers.

I will say, however, that this tournament cannot occur in the Arena/Annex during regular dueling hours as it would create too much confusion.

TOUR prefixes for the unofficial callers would help this, and the current schedule has the Annex and Arena duels at least not during regular dueling hours in the first place. I do, however, think that the Outback duels will be during Outback times, so we'll have to deal with that at a later date.

Therefore, if tournaments are to be hosted in/around the baronial manors, the approval of each of those players must be gained (and I'd like to be CC'd on that).

The rules already state that the stages will only be held in the manors and towers themselves with the permission of their owners, as it is their creative property. Xenograg has already given permission for his Dojo to be used during the first stage (though for a sport that he doesn't participate in ), and Farek has already refused permission inside either Dockside or the Tower of Water, so we're going to be holding those stages in the immediate area.


Oh, and finally, in regard to the duelers who leave after TDL and don't return until the new season, since the Tour will be all but finished by the start of the new TDL season if all goes to plan, then they'll be missing the Tour entirely and the problem with missing fancies becomes moot.

[Alais d Nitesong]

Well, if the goal is not to increase membership and participation by new players, and there is no rank advancement for participation, and it's all unofficial......where's the incentive to play?

Why not put all this creative energy to work finding ways to attract new players?

What I see here is a lot of thought and creativity going into the same group of people, who play for the amount of time they desire to commit to the forum already. Why not shift focus to attracting new players?

[Random McChanse]

Well, here are a couple incentives:

1) Utilize all of these Rhy'Din locations that we've created through RP for something concrete, instead of stopping with 'there's a baronial manor there now' and perhaps a SL if the owner feels like it. The Tour would necessarily help to flesh out each of the locations it visits.

2) Give callers who don't currently have experience in calling the other sports some training, so if/when we decide to expand the number of sports a caller usually deals with (through calling tools that I've heard discussed in the bot thread), then callers will have a better understanding of what they're doing.

3) This does increase participation in a way, as newcomers who usually start out in DoS and don't migrate over to the other two for quite a while will get a jumpstart. The Tour would provide them with many opportunities to flesh out their matrices for the sports (and imho you need a full matrix in order to be able to duel properly), and since it's unofficial with no effect on the official standings it gives them valuable experience with the sports without penalizing them for a whole cycle if they lose a couple duels.

4) Finally, and the most important incentive imho, is that to my knowledge a tournament incorporating all three sports has never before been staged. Therefore, aside from comparing a dueler's ranks across the sports, which isn't exactly a precise measurement of overall skill (as the duelist could rank low in one sport simply because he/she doesn't duel as often there), we have an event that allows us to determine who's the best overall duelist, instead of who's the best duelist in each individual sport.

As to attracting new players for the forum, that's one of the main reasons I came up with the idea for the bot in the first place, to allow people to duel apart from the regular dueling hours without needing a third person to officiate, which is great for introducing people to RoH.

And don't think I'm not using this creative energy for attracting new people to the sport, I've got some major ideas I'm working on in that regard, but I'm not quite ready to discuss them publicly just yet.


P.S. Just wondering, I may be missing something, but do you know of any official or unofficial event (aside from the bot) that has occurred lately that was solely geared towards bringing in people who have never previously heard of RoH in? Most of the events look like they're drawing people who don't play that sport regularly in so that they might start to participate more in that sport, which is what I'm trying to accomplish on a larger scale with the Tour.

[Billy]

I see this being something like TDL and the tag team leagues of the past. Random doesn't want this sponsored by ROH and it doesn't need to be. It's something he and his group want to do, just like TDL is something TDL's administrators like to run.

If something like this were to happen during regular hours, it would be completely transparent to DoS or DoF or DoM. The callers wouldn't need to know they are calling a "tour" duel and the results could simply be stripped from the weekly results that are posted for each sport. The only way that could get sticky is, since the whole RP premise is that each stage is taking place in a different location, dueling a match in the Outback wouldn't make much sense RP wise. With that in mind, I would advise not taking duel results from ROH official dueling.

This does have some potential to cross breed interest between the forums, just as the World Dueling League did during the season it ran. There wasn't so much post-event interest in dueling the other sports, but there was pre-event interest as people tried to gain rank for the upcoming season. With the ranks changing throughout the season, that might provide more incentive for someone to continue dueling those other sports.

The incentive to play is there for those who want to take the game and put a little twist on it. It's the same reason we play TDL. And that's the reason I encourage things like this, to keep the game fresh for those who might grow bored with the same type of game. Does this help or hurt ROH? Well, that remains to be seen. TDL does draw away from ROH room counts, but it also helps re-energize some of the stalled out players.

A few suggestions though. I would shy away from having callers use a TOUR prefix and simply just post a list of callers on your website, much like how TDL does. I would probably also take some time to further refine the idea, the site and how you plan to implement some things before starting the tour, even if that means pushing it back to a few months after TDL ends. I wouldn't rush to beat TDL and leave holes that might make people shy away. And then spread it out so someone isn't scheduling 6 duels a week. One with TDL is hard enough sometimes.

I hope some people do jump on board and enjoy the game. I can say right away that I probably won't be in it since it's too much time for me give.

[Neo Eternity]

My simple 16-year old mind rejects the kind of complication that people are trying to put into this with incentives and stuff. The way I see it, there is one incentive to play above all others: For fun. That's why we came here in the first place, isn't it?