I. Introduction
As many of you are aware, one of the most important roles in the smash community is the role of the Tournament Organizer (TO). Without the TO, smash tournaments would not exist and the community would be unable to function. TOs are responsible for finding a suitable venue, advertising, set-up/clean-up, brackets, helping players with food, housing, and travel, rule decision and much, much more. Putting together a tournament is completely orchestrated by the TO, and the community is needed to help with this (providing set-ups, providing rule feedback, etc...). Because of this, TOs are not simply people who run tournaments, but people who also are responsible for bringing the community together and keeping it that way. In this guide I will go down into the specifics of your options as a TO, and help to provide you a framework for running a successful tournament.
1. The Community and You.
The first step to organizing successful tournaments does not come with finding a date, a venue, a ruleset, or anything along those lines. Instead, your first step is finding a community. This is not the general smash community you see on smashboards. Simply announcing a nation-wide smash event without any past relations to build upon will result in an unsuccessful event. What you must do is recognize your locale community on a personal scale. Simply knowing a bunch of people who play smash in the area is a great way to go about this. However, bringing them together to form your locale community won't happen out of the blue. As a TO it is your job to help build your local community from the ground up when a strong one is not present.
How to go about this? Fuel the competitive spirit of those players and help them to get to know one another. Thankfully, many smashers are already in contact with one another, but without any local tournaments, they likely won't see each other often. If you host a tournament from out of the blue, many will shy away for various reasons. “Are people even going to show up for it? I don't want to go to a tournament with six people.” “I've never heard of that venue before.” “I don't want to waste money, I'll just lose probably.” Are all examples of thoughts that might turn players off.
Instead, finding locale smashers, and helping to bridge the gaps between them is a great place to start. Holding a few small smashfests is a great way to start getting more and more people attached. Start by inviting some, and leaving it to them to invite more. Eventually you will find enough players that you know there is not a community. Also it helps their confidence as they will see and grow with the competition. Better yet, they will actually know who you are and where to go.
Luckily, most areas won't have to worry about building a community. Thanks to past melee players, it isn't hard to find the interest in the community. However, for those that need the extra step, this is where it should begin. Getting a community that is friendly and knowledgeable of each other is the best way to start. Even if you can't maintain smashfests yourself, always try to see if another member in the community can. It's your job to help keep them together.
2. What do you have?
So, you know there is interest and a community is starting to form. Great! Let's go ahead and book the venue and tell everyone and we're all set! Right? Well, not quite.
What you need to do next before going ahead and finding a venue, date, etc..., is to find out exactly what you have. You can't expect to hold a tournament if you simply have your parents' TV and your Wii. There's more to it than that.
Your first few tournaments will most likely be small. You are the head of your community, so you know best how many people would be likely to show up. This is what you need to gauge first. Are you going to have thirty people come? Or is it more likely going to be around fifteen? Once you've found the answer to this, you can then get a good estimate for what you are going to need spacing-wise as well as resource-wise.
Getting 10 set-ups is great! But with fifteen people you aren't going to be getting much out of them. Likewise holding a tournament for thirty people with 2 TVs isn't going to cut it.
A tournament with sixteen or less people is going to have around thirty matches played if you're doing double elimination. But when you get to around thirty players, you'll be looking at about sixty-two matches played with double elimination. Trying to get through all of those matches with only two TVs is going to likely force you to resort to single elimination. And the players would likely be dissatisfied with that.
So, you've now gotten a feel for how strong your community is. You think you have a good estimate for how many people are coming. You think you know how many set-ups you'll need.
Now: how are you going to go about getting those set-ups? For larger events that require a venue fee, most players won't mind lugging a TV around to get the fee waived. However, for smaller tournaments, people are much more reluctant to go about that. Begin by seeing how much you have. You have 2 TVs and 1 Wii? That's a good start. Know you need to figure out which people in your community would be willing to bring a TV or Wii to help you out. Don't try to push too many people, otherwise it'll become more of a chore. Instead, find out the minimum amount of set-ups you need, and try going for that. Will the person need a ride in order to get the TV there? Always keep yourself open for that, but also try to get another member of the community to help. You don't want to be arriving to the tournament five minutes late because you had to pick up someone and their TV.
So, you've got an idea about how you're going to go about getting your set-ups and you have an amount that will get the tournament done in an orderly fashion. Great! So you have the people and you have and idea for your equipment equipment, what is next on your agenda?
3. The Agenda
You need to now get an idea for how you are going to run this. Are you going to have it on a Friday? Saturday? Do you want it to start in the afternoon? Evening maybe? Are you going to need to have a lunch break? Are you going to have singles then doubles, double then singles? Will you have enough time for a side event? All of these questions are important, and if you have a good idea of your community, you'll be able to figure things out easier.
If your tournament is in the summer, Friday afternoons are much more likely option for a tournament than during the school time. If you live in a highly religious area, a late-night Saturday tournament might turn away any church goers. Is there a football game going on Friday night at the local high school or college? If so you might not want to have a conflict. All of these little things can influence a person's decision to make it out to your tournament.
So let's say you've decided on an afternoon event. Those coming won't expect it to take the whole day, and would like to come after lunch and leave before dinner. Here providing a food break can be omitted from your schedule. However if the tournament is one that will take up the evening, you might want to consider setting off a block of time so people can eat. The last thing you need are people complaining about being hungry in the middle of your event, asking if they can leave and come back, causing your event to be held up on them.
The next option to decide is which events you are going to run and in what order. Most of the time you will be able to run doubles first, followed by singles. However other options are possible based on the situation. Having the singles first can be anti-climactic for many, however if you fear time constraints may be an issue, players would much rather have doubles be rushed than singles. Having a side event schedule first is not a bright idea, as it can cause time problems for an event most won't take too seriously. Setting it at the end for those players still wanting to play some more allows for it to not slow down the rest of the tournament. If it gets canceled, players will understand. If you're forced to use two-stock for singles to speed things up, players will likely never come to an event hosted by you again.
Don't forget to leave a decent amount of time for registration! This allows players to come early to get in their money matches and friendlies, so you can avoid them clogging up TVs during the tournament. It also allows you time to make sure everything is going in order and making sure you don't have any mid-tournament disasters.
Here are some example timelines:
Example 1:
Saturday
12p-1p: Registration & Free Play
1p-2p: Doubles
2p-4p: Singles
4p-5p: Side Event & Free Play
Example 2:
Friday:
4p-5p: Registration & Free Play
5p-6p: Doubles
6p-6:30p: Food Break & Free Play
6:30p-8:30p: Singles
8:30p-9:30p: Side Event & Free Play
However. Don't forget that this is the schedule for the players, not the TO. The TO should have at least 30min before and after schedules for set-up and clean-up. Your day is longer as a TO. The players are arriving at registration time, not you.
So let's go over everything. You have the people ready to smash! You know what equipment you have! You know your timeframe! Now let's go to the venue and date!
4. The Date and Place.
Now here comes a tricky part. Where are you going to be holding all of this and when. If you are suspecting thirteen people, maybe your basement will work. But if you're counting on a larger number than that, I think you'd need to try something else.
So how do you get a venue? First always look at the options you have yourself before scouting around downtown. Are there any rooms in your high school/college/local library that you would be able to use for this event? If you suspect you can reserve a room at one of these places, go ahead and try! If not, search your town for other possible venues. Such as a church or small gaming store. Remember that we're on the small scale here, so going and renting out an expensive venue like the Indianapolis Convention Center probably isn't the best idea. When you do think you have a place, find out who exactly you need to talk to, and make sure to present yourself as professional as possible. If you go in and say you want to play video games with your friends, you probably won't be having an easy time. Make sure you sound confident, and are prepared. Also, once again, this is a small scale event, don't give in and spend a ton of money on the venue. No one will want to pay a venue fee for a small tournament.
So you've found the perfect venue for your event. It's easily accessible and offers enough space for your players and set-ups. You've gotten the address to the venue, as well as any other contact information to provide to your participants. You've even gotten them a nice map ready from the nearest major road to the event. This is going to be a great weekend!
Well, this weekend might be great, but it probably won't be from your smash tournament. When considering your date, make sure it is a decent time in advance. Giving people a week's notice isn't going to change any plans they have already made for themselves. Work out a date that will give you plenty of time to pass on the information as well as allow smashers to set off the date for the event. As mentioned before, make sure you aren't overlapping with something such as a local football game. Try to get as free of a date as possible. No need to rush this.
Okay, let's see what we've got now.
Community interest? Check.
Equipment? Check.
Schedule? Check.
Venue & Date? Check.
People? Check! Well, not exactly.
5. Advertising
Now of course, you've estimated the number of people you think are coming. But are they all actually coming? You can't depend on everyone to just show up because you've scheduled your event and told your friends. You need to do more than simply go by word-of-mouth, that's what you use for smashfests. First thing you want to do is of course target those who you know in your community. However, just sending them an IM with the place, date, and time probably won't win them over. You'll probably want a nice, long detailed thread with everything included to link them to. Having the address, contact, event schedule, ruleset, and anything else that you feel is important is the best way to have them know you are serious. And luckily, smashboards and allisbrawl are both great places to put this information. Not only will you have a nice, clean method of displaying it to your local community, but you may also attract a few extra faces that you didn't know were in the area before. If you're on a college campus, always feel free to make a catchy flier and hang them around, you might get even more people. But don't try to overdo it, you already have your plan for the turnout, don't stress yourself by getting thirty extra casuals to come when you aren't prepared.
6. Extra Tips
For local tournaments, you still have a lot more minor details to iron out, and all of them are important. One important thing is the price. No one wants to come to a small tournament with a 15$$ fee for singles and a venue fee of 5$$. Make sure you have everything reasonably priced. You shouldn't be trying to make a profit from this, and you shouldn't have been forced to spend a large sum of money to set this up. Thus there should be no venue fee and you shouldn't be taking any money from the pot unless absolutely necessary. Also make sure you don't charge too high of a price for the singles/doubles, you don't want people turned off by that at this small scale event.
Make sure you are familiar with the tio tournament organizer or tournament maker 2. Attempting to do brackets by hand can prove to be a hassle with little experience. Using the programs provided to you will always help. Spend some time learning how to use all of the features so you can have your tournament run as smoothly as possible. Avoid seeding at your first event, but for future events, keep your results and use them as seeding.
While it is your job to set up and arrange everything for the event, you don't have to go about it alone. Finding a friend who is willing to help your transport equipment and keep track of matches with you will also help ease your workload and make the tournament environment much better. Setting up and cleaning up are tiresome activities, doing it alone will make you feel as if it is too much work. Which for one person, it is. As your events grow larger, you will want to have more people helping you of course. Setting up equipment, moving chairs and tables around, collecting entry fees, answering questions, patrolling matches, etc... is simply too much to go about it on your own. Also keeping an eye on the prize money is required; if you let yourself try to do it all on your own, you may just end up losing it and having very dissatisfied players.
Make sure to always post up your results for the players to see. Players seeing themselves rise in the ranks over tournaments is always a good morale boost and will keep people coming back.
More factors such as ruleset will be discussed later on.
1. Everything before this still matters.
Yes, a lot of things are changed when it comes to hosting a larger event, but much remains the same, it simply becomes more complicated. You've gotten TO experience from small tournaments, you've gotten a solid growing community. You've gotten recognized on smashboards for your work. Other areas are interested in playing your area. It's time to go ahead and set up a larger event.
2. The community.
Now, by this point you shouldn't need to be building your community from the ground up. You should have a good amount of players, and now tap into the resources of smashboards. You have the players who will vouch for your being an excellent, dependable host, and that's important. No one wants to travel to “Game Garden's Regional Brawl Tournament!” when they haven't heard of anyone because it's just a bunch of GameSpot casuals. However they will be attracted to your event if you have a strong community. Now you will be able to tap other communities. Once your name is out there, people will start traveling, and you'll have to make it as convenient as possible for them.
3. The agenda.
Now you are no longer worried about people abandoning you for a high school football game. However you still need to plan your agenda wisely. If this event is going to be large enough, you may want to consider the possibility of using a two day event. However, you can still get everything done in one day, it will simply be a long day. A two day event allows for you to have more flexibility without tiring yourself out, as well as allowing players more free time to play friendlies with one another. However a two day event also runs the risk of more schedule conflicts, so if you feel you need to get it done in one day, you'll need to be prepared to start early and end late. In either case you will be wanting to have a strict agenda with enough breaks such that your smashers do not get too tired. If you are hosting both brawl and melee, the time constraints matter more. You'll want to make sure to have a longer registration time, allowing for those who are traveling to not be too pressed for time. Also pools will most likely be needed, so more time must be alloted for them.
Example Timeframes:
Example 1:
Saturday
9a-11p: Registration & Free Play
11p-1p: Doubles Pools
1p-2p: Lunch Break
2p-5p: Singles Pools
5p-7p: Doubles Bracket
7p-8p: Dinner Break
8p-10p: Singles Bracket
10p-12p: Side Event
Example 2:
Friday
2p-4p: Registration & Free Play
4p-6p: Doubles Pools
6p-7p: Dinner Break
7p-10p: Singles Pools
Saturday
11p-1p: Free Play & Lunch
1p-3p: Doubles Bracket
3p-5p: Singles Bracket
5p-8p: Side Event & Dinner
As you can see, the first option gets everything done in one day, however it is a very long day, and you must keep true to your strict schedule. Remember that you will be there both before registration and after the side event. So your day is longer than the day for the players.
The second option is less stressful, and allows for more time leniency. If you fall behind, you aren't as much in trouble as if you were doing everything in one day. If you are running both Melee and Brawl, the one day event becomes much more difficult and the two-day plan is much more feasible.
4. The Date and Place.
As mentioned before, the venue will now need to be a larger one. Preferably one that will hold lots of people while providing enough space to move around, as well as being in a location that will allow players to easily get fast food if you are not offering food as part of the tournament. Location is key for larger tournaments. If your event is large enough and players may be flying in from out of state, having a venue far from the airport is a bad idea. Venues such as convention centers and other such places are ideal for these large-scale tournaments, and will likely require a large chunk of money to pay for. You will be having a venue fee for the tournament in order to cover this cost. As mentioned before, remember to be professional and confident when asking to rent out a venue. Don't allow them to think you're some crazy kid wanting to play video games with some friends. Figuring out your costs after securing your venue and then dividing this by the estimated players will help you to determine a good venue fee. If the tournament date hits and you get much more than expected and the venue fee gets you more than enough, don't keep the money for yourself! Yes, you are putting in a lot of work, but this isn't a paying job. You are doing this for your community, not your finances. Instead add the extra money to the pot and allow the payout to run out to the top 8 players instead of the top 3 or 5. The more players who get money, the more who will be happy!
When it comes to picking out the date, two or three weeks in advance might be pushing it. This can work for smaller or mid-scale tournaments. However, a few months in advance can never hurt. It allows more people to make their travel arrangements and housing arrangements in addition to clearing up the weekend as well as giving you more time to get everything in order.
5. What do you have?
Getting all of the set-ups can be harder this time around. Most likely you'll be wanting to incur the cost of renting out a fair amount of TVs depending on how large you believe the event is going to be. The reason for this is because those traveling will have a much better time having four people and a few Wiis in the car, rather than 4 people and a few TVs in the car. Also, showing people you already have a guaranteed amount of TVs will increase their likelihood to attend the event. And always, always make sure that the TVs are not High Definition TVs or any other sort of TVs that will lag. Ask to test them first before renting them. You don't need your event being the one with horror stories about having to play the tournament with too few TVs that were also lagging.
Now, while this isn't too much of a concern at your smaller scale tournaments, something that is near required at larger scale tournaments is a method of recording videos. If it's a big event, people are going to expect matches to be recorded, and if you can't off that, they'll take their smashing elsewhere. Investing in some Dazzle recording equipment is never a bad idea, as you'll always find use for it. Also asking others to help bring their recording equipment makes things even better. Recording on multiple TVs always makes players happy. Make sure you have either enough space on your laptop or have an external hard drive with plenty of space. You don't want to get to the grand finals and not be able to record due to space issues.
6. The players.
When it comes to an event of this scale, you really need to be able to meet the needs of the players, especially those who are traveling from long distances from out of state. What this means is talking to your local community and seeing who would be able to house these travelers as well as housing them yourself. Of course, providing hotel information is also great. Providing detailed directions from hotels and airports to the venue is also a great way to help cater to the out of staters. Making sure there is available parking at a convenient distance from your venue is always a great thing and will make many players happy. Basically, you want to make every effort to get the people here easily, and make them feel like it isn't a hassle to come to your large out of state tournament. If a smasher gets lost due to poor directions, has to figure out where to get a hotel, has a hard time getting to and from the venue, doesn't know where the local restaurants are, and can't even find a close parking space, you can be sure this experience will convince them to not bother with your tournament again and look for one with more information. Remember, you can never provide too much!
7. Advertising
One again, you'll want to utilize smashboards and allisbrawl for your advertising purposes. Making sure that the threads are put up well in advance, and if you are hosting a very large event, getting the thread stickied is always a great idea. If you can keep the promise, offering a guaranteed pot is always a good way to gain attention for these large events. Also providing pictures of the venue will help bolster your case. If there is a college nearby, placing up plenty of fliers will help the tournament to grow even more.
8. Extra Tips
You cannot do this alone, and you will need the help of quite a few people. Make sure you plan ahead and see who is able and willing to help you out in advance to avoid any catastrophes. There is a lot that needs to be done for larger events like these. And you simply cannot keep watch on everything at once.
Make sure you check and double check the pools and brackets, making sure there are no glaring problems (no one wants to see M2K and Ally fighting in round 1). Tio becomes more helpful, making sure you assign everyone to the correct set-up, instead of telling them to find one. Use the program to keep track of this and keep the tournament running quickly. If needed, feel free to announce you will be following the Mage's DQ Rule, as it helps to prevent the tournament from falling behind.
Offer pre-registration, this helps you in that people are committing to attending the tournament. Make sure to reward these players for signing up early by offering them a cheaper full deal than those who will be paying at the door. Also make a list of both those who have pre-registered and those who say they are coming. This shows that attendance seems to be high and will convince more people to make the effort to attend the tournament.
Make sure you are not charging too ridiculous of a price for the tournament. Yes, plenty of people are willing to shell out the cash, but there is a point where people who would otherwise attend do not because of the price tag associated with the tournament as well as travel expenses.
1. Keeping Calm
This is one of the most important things to keep in mind. It may be easy to forget, since organizing an event can be but physically and mentally stressful. However you must remember that in the end, this is something you're doing thanks to your love of the game. You aren't doing this because it's your job. You aren't doing this because you are required to. You are doing this so you can have fun as well as help everyone else have fun. Keeping this in mind, when a crisis does occur, don't let it get to you. Take things one step at a time and you'll manage to get everything done and have a great time in the process.
2. Communicating Online
Communication is key when it comes to addressing and relating to your fellow smashers. However this can be hard online on the forums. While there may be plenty of people who know you personally, there are still going to be lots of people who do not know you who are thinking about attending your tournament. When talking about the tournament, you should try to keep things are professional as possible. Typing a bunch of inside jokes between you and some of your smashboards friends will only serve to deter new people from the tournament. Being readily accessible to give detailed answers to the questions people will pose to you is a crucial key to getting those who don't know you to trust your qualifications as a TO.
3. Communicating in Person
Now here comes the most important part, speaking in person to those attendees at your event. One of the first things you want to do is introduce yourself before the tournament begins. People would like to know who's in charge of everything, and it's easy to get caught up in things and forget to let everyone know who you are. Also individually getting to know people and introduce yourself to them during the tournament is another great idea. Also clearly going over the rules of the tournament, specifically outlining those that will likely come into effect helps to keep smashers up to date. It's also great to show you have your own personality and joke around some, but make sure to show everyone you encounter respect as well and don't step out of bounds.
1. Understanding your players.
This is crucial when it comes to creating your rule set. If you understand what your players are interested in, then you shouldn't have too hard of a problem creating a rule set that sees little opposition. A lot of this comes from understanding the regional philosophies of not only your own area but also all other areas. It is important to know that difference players from various places will have diverging opinions on many topics, such as the stage list you choose to put into effect. By understanding what those attending your tournament want, you'll create a better rule set. Holding a tournament with Smash Balls on when no one wants them would have negative effects on not only this tournament, but your reputation and ability to hold future tournaments as well. This is extremely important for all rule decision, such as stage lists. Understanding that many people agree with the SBR Rule List as well as realizing that others do not is a great place to start and build your own opinion as to what will please the players. Remember, you are attempting to please your players, not yourself.
2. Understanding your options.
A great place to begin with understanding your options is with the SBR Rule List. While it is not to be taken as fact, it is a valuable tool to learn from and figure out what your options are. Understanding that you can set the time limit to 7 minutes despite the recommendation being 8 minutes is just one example. There are many key things that may change based on who your audience is. While stage striking has been widely accepted by many tournaments, there are still many people who would prefer to stick with the previously used random stage selection.
Choosing your stage list is especially important as many stages still see heated debate. There are many stages that are borderline, and educating yourself on them as well as the opinions of others about them will help. Adding a certain stage to your counter-pick list might make some players feel as if you're adding an element to the game that detracts from the core game play and interrupts battle. While adding that same stage to the banned list might make another player feel as though you've taken out a valuable part of the game that they have practiced hard to learn how to utilize to the fullest. Deciding which way you want to go is based purely on your understanding of the regional philosophies of your players. The better you know your players, the better your rule list will become.
3. Enforcing your decisions
Finally, you must learn to never back down from a decision you've made and not let players convince you to let them bend the rules. Remember that you are the one in charge of the event, no one else. While it is best to cater to your players, it is not okay to cave into changing a rule the day of the tournament because someone is harassing you about it. You can always post your rule set when the tournament is announced and have them state their concerns early on. But once a point is reached where the tournament is near, you need to stand by your decisions. This will show consistency and avoid you having to make specific cases where you seem biased for letting something slide past the rules. Be clear with your rules, let your players know your rules in advance, and then keep to them.
As many of you are aware, one of the most important roles in the smash community is the role of the Tournament Organizer (TO). Without the TO, smash tournaments would not exist and the community would be unable to function. TOs are responsible for finding a suitable venue, advertising, set-up/clean-up, brackets, helping players with food, housing, and travel, rule decision and much, much more. Putting together a tournament is completely orchestrated by the TO, and the community is needed to help with this (providing set-ups, providing rule feedback, etc...). Because of this, TOs are not simply people who run tournaments, but people who also are responsible for bringing the community together and keeping it that way. In this guide I will go down into the specifics of your options as a TO, and help to provide you a framework for running a successful tournament.
II. The Small Scale
1. The Community and You.
The first step to organizing successful tournaments does not come with finding a date, a venue, a ruleset, or anything along those lines. Instead, your first step is finding a community. This is not the general smash community you see on smashboards. Simply announcing a nation-wide smash event without any past relations to build upon will result in an unsuccessful event. What you must do is recognize your locale community on a personal scale. Simply knowing a bunch of people who play smash in the area is a great way to go about this. However, bringing them together to form your locale community won't happen out of the blue. As a TO it is your job to help build your local community from the ground up when a strong one is not present.
How to go about this? Fuel the competitive spirit of those players and help them to get to know one another. Thankfully, many smashers are already in contact with one another, but without any local tournaments, they likely won't see each other often. If you host a tournament from out of the blue, many will shy away for various reasons. “Are people even going to show up for it? I don't want to go to a tournament with six people.” “I've never heard of that venue before.” “I don't want to waste money, I'll just lose probably.” Are all examples of thoughts that might turn players off.
Instead, finding locale smashers, and helping to bridge the gaps between them is a great place to start. Holding a few small smashfests is a great way to start getting more and more people attached. Start by inviting some, and leaving it to them to invite more. Eventually you will find enough players that you know there is not a community. Also it helps their confidence as they will see and grow with the competition. Better yet, they will actually know who you are and where to go.
Luckily, most areas won't have to worry about building a community. Thanks to past melee players, it isn't hard to find the interest in the community. However, for those that need the extra step, this is where it should begin. Getting a community that is friendly and knowledgeable of each other is the best way to start. Even if you can't maintain smashfests yourself, always try to see if another member in the community can. It's your job to help keep them together.
2. What do you have?
So, you know there is interest and a community is starting to form. Great! Let's go ahead and book the venue and tell everyone and we're all set! Right? Well, not quite.
What you need to do next before going ahead and finding a venue, date, etc..., is to find out exactly what you have. You can't expect to hold a tournament if you simply have your parents' TV and your Wii. There's more to it than that.
Your first few tournaments will most likely be small. You are the head of your community, so you know best how many people would be likely to show up. This is what you need to gauge first. Are you going to have thirty people come? Or is it more likely going to be around fifteen? Once you've found the answer to this, you can then get a good estimate for what you are going to need spacing-wise as well as resource-wise.
Getting 10 set-ups is great! But with fifteen people you aren't going to be getting much out of them. Likewise holding a tournament for thirty people with 2 TVs isn't going to cut it.
A tournament with sixteen or less people is going to have around thirty matches played if you're doing double elimination. But when you get to around thirty players, you'll be looking at about sixty-two matches played with double elimination. Trying to get through all of those matches with only two TVs is going to likely force you to resort to single elimination. And the players would likely be dissatisfied with that.
So, you've now gotten a feel for how strong your community is. You think you have a good estimate for how many people are coming. You think you know how many set-ups you'll need.
Now: how are you going to go about getting those set-ups? For larger events that require a venue fee, most players won't mind lugging a TV around to get the fee waived. However, for smaller tournaments, people are much more reluctant to go about that. Begin by seeing how much you have. You have 2 TVs and 1 Wii? That's a good start. Know you need to figure out which people in your community would be willing to bring a TV or Wii to help you out. Don't try to push too many people, otherwise it'll become more of a chore. Instead, find out the minimum amount of set-ups you need, and try going for that. Will the person need a ride in order to get the TV there? Always keep yourself open for that, but also try to get another member of the community to help. You don't want to be arriving to the tournament five minutes late because you had to pick up someone and their TV.
So, you've got an idea about how you're going to go about getting your set-ups and you have an amount that will get the tournament done in an orderly fashion. Great! So you have the people and you have and idea for your equipment equipment, what is next on your agenda?
3. The Agenda
You need to now get an idea for how you are going to run this. Are you going to have it on a Friday? Saturday? Do you want it to start in the afternoon? Evening maybe? Are you going to need to have a lunch break? Are you going to have singles then doubles, double then singles? Will you have enough time for a side event? All of these questions are important, and if you have a good idea of your community, you'll be able to figure things out easier.
If your tournament is in the summer, Friday afternoons are much more likely option for a tournament than during the school time. If you live in a highly religious area, a late-night Saturday tournament might turn away any church goers. Is there a football game going on Friday night at the local high school or college? If so you might not want to have a conflict. All of these little things can influence a person's decision to make it out to your tournament.
So let's say you've decided on an afternoon event. Those coming won't expect it to take the whole day, and would like to come after lunch and leave before dinner. Here providing a food break can be omitted from your schedule. However if the tournament is one that will take up the evening, you might want to consider setting off a block of time so people can eat. The last thing you need are people complaining about being hungry in the middle of your event, asking if they can leave and come back, causing your event to be held up on them.
The next option to decide is which events you are going to run and in what order. Most of the time you will be able to run doubles first, followed by singles. However other options are possible based on the situation. Having the singles first can be anti-climactic for many, however if you fear time constraints may be an issue, players would much rather have doubles be rushed than singles. Having a side event schedule first is not a bright idea, as it can cause time problems for an event most won't take too seriously. Setting it at the end for those players still wanting to play some more allows for it to not slow down the rest of the tournament. If it gets canceled, players will understand. If you're forced to use two-stock for singles to speed things up, players will likely never come to an event hosted by you again.
Don't forget to leave a decent amount of time for registration! This allows players to come early to get in their money matches and friendlies, so you can avoid them clogging up TVs during the tournament. It also allows you time to make sure everything is going in order and making sure you don't have any mid-tournament disasters.
Here are some example timelines:
Example 1:
Saturday
12p-1p: Registration & Free Play
1p-2p: Doubles
2p-4p: Singles
4p-5p: Side Event & Free Play
Example 2:
Friday:
4p-5p: Registration & Free Play
5p-6p: Doubles
6p-6:30p: Food Break & Free Play
6:30p-8:30p: Singles
8:30p-9:30p: Side Event & Free Play
However. Don't forget that this is the schedule for the players, not the TO. The TO should have at least 30min before and after schedules for set-up and clean-up. Your day is longer as a TO. The players are arriving at registration time, not you.
So let's go over everything. You have the people ready to smash! You know what equipment you have! You know your timeframe! Now let's go to the venue and date!
4. The Date and Place.
Now here comes a tricky part. Where are you going to be holding all of this and when. If you are suspecting thirteen people, maybe your basement will work. But if you're counting on a larger number than that, I think you'd need to try something else.
So how do you get a venue? First always look at the options you have yourself before scouting around downtown. Are there any rooms in your high school/college/local library that you would be able to use for this event? If you suspect you can reserve a room at one of these places, go ahead and try! If not, search your town for other possible venues. Such as a church or small gaming store. Remember that we're on the small scale here, so going and renting out an expensive venue like the Indianapolis Convention Center probably isn't the best idea. When you do think you have a place, find out who exactly you need to talk to, and make sure to present yourself as professional as possible. If you go in and say you want to play video games with your friends, you probably won't be having an easy time. Make sure you sound confident, and are prepared. Also, once again, this is a small scale event, don't give in and spend a ton of money on the venue. No one will want to pay a venue fee for a small tournament.
So you've found the perfect venue for your event. It's easily accessible and offers enough space for your players and set-ups. You've gotten the address to the venue, as well as any other contact information to provide to your participants. You've even gotten them a nice map ready from the nearest major road to the event. This is going to be a great weekend!
Well, this weekend might be great, but it probably won't be from your smash tournament. When considering your date, make sure it is a decent time in advance. Giving people a week's notice isn't going to change any plans they have already made for themselves. Work out a date that will give you plenty of time to pass on the information as well as allow smashers to set off the date for the event. As mentioned before, make sure you aren't overlapping with something such as a local football game. Try to get as free of a date as possible. No need to rush this.
Okay, let's see what we've got now.
Community interest? Check.
Equipment? Check.
Schedule? Check.
Venue & Date? Check.
People? Check! Well, not exactly.
5. Advertising
Now of course, you've estimated the number of people you think are coming. But are they all actually coming? You can't depend on everyone to just show up because you've scheduled your event and told your friends. You need to do more than simply go by word-of-mouth, that's what you use for smashfests. First thing you want to do is of course target those who you know in your community. However, just sending them an IM with the place, date, and time probably won't win them over. You'll probably want a nice, long detailed thread with everything included to link them to. Having the address, contact, event schedule, ruleset, and anything else that you feel is important is the best way to have them know you are serious. And luckily, smashboards and allisbrawl are both great places to put this information. Not only will you have a nice, clean method of displaying it to your local community, but you may also attract a few extra faces that you didn't know were in the area before. If you're on a college campus, always feel free to make a catchy flier and hang them around, you might get even more people. But don't try to overdo it, you already have your plan for the turnout, don't stress yourself by getting thirty extra casuals to come when you aren't prepared.
6. Extra Tips
For local tournaments, you still have a lot more minor details to iron out, and all of them are important. One important thing is the price. No one wants to come to a small tournament with a 15$$ fee for singles and a venue fee of 5$$. Make sure you have everything reasonably priced. You shouldn't be trying to make a profit from this, and you shouldn't have been forced to spend a large sum of money to set this up. Thus there should be no venue fee and you shouldn't be taking any money from the pot unless absolutely necessary. Also make sure you don't charge too high of a price for the singles/doubles, you don't want people turned off by that at this small scale event.
Make sure you are familiar with the tio tournament organizer or tournament maker 2. Attempting to do brackets by hand can prove to be a hassle with little experience. Using the programs provided to you will always help. Spend some time learning how to use all of the features so you can have your tournament run as smoothly as possible. Avoid seeding at your first event, but for future events, keep your results and use them as seeding.
While it is your job to set up and arrange everything for the event, you don't have to go about it alone. Finding a friend who is willing to help your transport equipment and keep track of matches with you will also help ease your workload and make the tournament environment much better. Setting up and cleaning up are tiresome activities, doing it alone will make you feel as if it is too much work. Which for one person, it is. As your events grow larger, you will want to have more people helping you of course. Setting up equipment, moving chairs and tables around, collecting entry fees, answering questions, patrolling matches, etc... is simply too much to go about it on your own. Also keeping an eye on the prize money is required; if you let yourself try to do it all on your own, you may just end up losing it and having very dissatisfied players.
Make sure to always post up your results for the players to see. Players seeing themselves rise in the ranks over tournaments is always a good morale boost and will keep people coming back.
More factors such as ruleset will be discussed later on.
III. The Big Leagues
1. Everything before this still matters.
Yes, a lot of things are changed when it comes to hosting a larger event, but much remains the same, it simply becomes more complicated. You've gotten TO experience from small tournaments, you've gotten a solid growing community. You've gotten recognized on smashboards for your work. Other areas are interested in playing your area. It's time to go ahead and set up a larger event.
2. The community.
Now, by this point you shouldn't need to be building your community from the ground up. You should have a good amount of players, and now tap into the resources of smashboards. You have the players who will vouch for your being an excellent, dependable host, and that's important. No one wants to travel to “Game Garden's Regional Brawl Tournament!” when they haven't heard of anyone because it's just a bunch of GameSpot casuals. However they will be attracted to your event if you have a strong community. Now you will be able to tap other communities. Once your name is out there, people will start traveling, and you'll have to make it as convenient as possible for them.
3. The agenda.
Now you are no longer worried about people abandoning you for a high school football game. However you still need to plan your agenda wisely. If this event is going to be large enough, you may want to consider the possibility of using a two day event. However, you can still get everything done in one day, it will simply be a long day. A two day event allows for you to have more flexibility without tiring yourself out, as well as allowing players more free time to play friendlies with one another. However a two day event also runs the risk of more schedule conflicts, so if you feel you need to get it done in one day, you'll need to be prepared to start early and end late. In either case you will be wanting to have a strict agenda with enough breaks such that your smashers do not get too tired. If you are hosting both brawl and melee, the time constraints matter more. You'll want to make sure to have a longer registration time, allowing for those who are traveling to not be too pressed for time. Also pools will most likely be needed, so more time must be alloted for them.
Example Timeframes:
Example 1:
Saturday
9a-11p: Registration & Free Play
11p-1p: Doubles Pools
1p-2p: Lunch Break
2p-5p: Singles Pools
5p-7p: Doubles Bracket
7p-8p: Dinner Break
8p-10p: Singles Bracket
10p-12p: Side Event
Example 2:
Friday
2p-4p: Registration & Free Play
4p-6p: Doubles Pools
6p-7p: Dinner Break
7p-10p: Singles Pools
Saturday
11p-1p: Free Play & Lunch
1p-3p: Doubles Bracket
3p-5p: Singles Bracket
5p-8p: Side Event & Dinner
As you can see, the first option gets everything done in one day, however it is a very long day, and you must keep true to your strict schedule. Remember that you will be there both before registration and after the side event. So your day is longer than the day for the players.
The second option is less stressful, and allows for more time leniency. If you fall behind, you aren't as much in trouble as if you were doing everything in one day. If you are running both Melee and Brawl, the one day event becomes much more difficult and the two-day plan is much more feasible.
4. The Date and Place.
As mentioned before, the venue will now need to be a larger one. Preferably one that will hold lots of people while providing enough space to move around, as well as being in a location that will allow players to easily get fast food if you are not offering food as part of the tournament. Location is key for larger tournaments. If your event is large enough and players may be flying in from out of state, having a venue far from the airport is a bad idea. Venues such as convention centers and other such places are ideal for these large-scale tournaments, and will likely require a large chunk of money to pay for. You will be having a venue fee for the tournament in order to cover this cost. As mentioned before, remember to be professional and confident when asking to rent out a venue. Don't allow them to think you're some crazy kid wanting to play video games with some friends. Figuring out your costs after securing your venue and then dividing this by the estimated players will help you to determine a good venue fee. If the tournament date hits and you get much more than expected and the venue fee gets you more than enough, don't keep the money for yourself! Yes, you are putting in a lot of work, but this isn't a paying job. You are doing this for your community, not your finances. Instead add the extra money to the pot and allow the payout to run out to the top 8 players instead of the top 3 or 5. The more players who get money, the more who will be happy!
When it comes to picking out the date, two or three weeks in advance might be pushing it. This can work for smaller or mid-scale tournaments. However, a few months in advance can never hurt. It allows more people to make their travel arrangements and housing arrangements in addition to clearing up the weekend as well as giving you more time to get everything in order.
5. What do you have?
Getting all of the set-ups can be harder this time around. Most likely you'll be wanting to incur the cost of renting out a fair amount of TVs depending on how large you believe the event is going to be. The reason for this is because those traveling will have a much better time having four people and a few Wiis in the car, rather than 4 people and a few TVs in the car. Also, showing people you already have a guaranteed amount of TVs will increase their likelihood to attend the event. And always, always make sure that the TVs are not High Definition TVs or any other sort of TVs that will lag. Ask to test them first before renting them. You don't need your event being the one with horror stories about having to play the tournament with too few TVs that were also lagging.
Now, while this isn't too much of a concern at your smaller scale tournaments, something that is near required at larger scale tournaments is a method of recording videos. If it's a big event, people are going to expect matches to be recorded, and if you can't off that, they'll take their smashing elsewhere. Investing in some Dazzle recording equipment is never a bad idea, as you'll always find use for it. Also asking others to help bring their recording equipment makes things even better. Recording on multiple TVs always makes players happy. Make sure you have either enough space on your laptop or have an external hard drive with plenty of space. You don't want to get to the grand finals and not be able to record due to space issues.
6. The players.
When it comes to an event of this scale, you really need to be able to meet the needs of the players, especially those who are traveling from long distances from out of state. What this means is talking to your local community and seeing who would be able to house these travelers as well as housing them yourself. Of course, providing hotel information is also great. Providing detailed directions from hotels and airports to the venue is also a great way to help cater to the out of staters. Making sure there is available parking at a convenient distance from your venue is always a great thing and will make many players happy. Basically, you want to make every effort to get the people here easily, and make them feel like it isn't a hassle to come to your large out of state tournament. If a smasher gets lost due to poor directions, has to figure out where to get a hotel, has a hard time getting to and from the venue, doesn't know where the local restaurants are, and can't even find a close parking space, you can be sure this experience will convince them to not bother with your tournament again and look for one with more information. Remember, you can never provide too much!
7. Advertising
One again, you'll want to utilize smashboards and allisbrawl for your advertising purposes. Making sure that the threads are put up well in advance, and if you are hosting a very large event, getting the thread stickied is always a great idea. If you can keep the promise, offering a guaranteed pot is always a good way to gain attention for these large events. Also providing pictures of the venue will help bolster your case. If there is a college nearby, placing up plenty of fliers will help the tournament to grow even more.
8. Extra Tips
You cannot do this alone, and you will need the help of quite a few people. Make sure you plan ahead and see who is able and willing to help you out in advance to avoid any catastrophes. There is a lot that needs to be done for larger events like these. And you simply cannot keep watch on everything at once.
Make sure you check and double check the pools and brackets, making sure there are no glaring problems (no one wants to see M2K and Ally fighting in round 1). Tio becomes more helpful, making sure you assign everyone to the correct set-up, instead of telling them to find one. Use the program to keep track of this and keep the tournament running quickly. If needed, feel free to announce you will be following the Mage's DQ Rule, as it helps to prevent the tournament from falling behind.
Offer pre-registration, this helps you in that people are committing to attending the tournament. Make sure to reward these players for signing up early by offering them a cheaper full deal than those who will be paying at the door. Also make a list of both those who have pre-registered and those who say they are coming. This shows that attendance seems to be high and will convince more people to make the effort to attend the tournament.
Make sure you are not charging too ridiculous of a price for the tournament. Yes, plenty of people are willing to shell out the cash, but there is a point where people who would otherwise attend do not because of the price tag associated with the tournament as well as travel expenses.
IV. Mindset and Communication
1. Keeping Calm
This is one of the most important things to keep in mind. It may be easy to forget, since organizing an event can be but physically and mentally stressful. However you must remember that in the end, this is something you're doing thanks to your love of the game. You aren't doing this because it's your job. You aren't doing this because you are required to. You are doing this so you can have fun as well as help everyone else have fun. Keeping this in mind, when a crisis does occur, don't let it get to you. Take things one step at a time and you'll manage to get everything done and have a great time in the process.
2. Communicating Online
Communication is key when it comes to addressing and relating to your fellow smashers. However this can be hard online on the forums. While there may be plenty of people who know you personally, there are still going to be lots of people who do not know you who are thinking about attending your tournament. When talking about the tournament, you should try to keep things are professional as possible. Typing a bunch of inside jokes between you and some of your smashboards friends will only serve to deter new people from the tournament. Being readily accessible to give detailed answers to the questions people will pose to you is a crucial key to getting those who don't know you to trust your qualifications as a TO.
3. Communicating in Person
Now here comes the most important part, speaking in person to those attendees at your event. One of the first things you want to do is introduce yourself before the tournament begins. People would like to know who's in charge of everything, and it's easy to get caught up in things and forget to let everyone know who you are. Also individually getting to know people and introduce yourself to them during the tournament is another great idea. Also clearly going over the rules of the tournament, specifically outlining those that will likely come into effect helps to keep smashers up to date. It's also great to show you have your own personality and joke around some, but make sure to show everyone you encounter respect as well and don't step out of bounds.
V. Rule Decision and Enforcement
1. Understanding your players.
This is crucial when it comes to creating your rule set. If you understand what your players are interested in, then you shouldn't have too hard of a problem creating a rule set that sees little opposition. A lot of this comes from understanding the regional philosophies of not only your own area but also all other areas. It is important to know that difference players from various places will have diverging opinions on many topics, such as the stage list you choose to put into effect. By understanding what those attending your tournament want, you'll create a better rule set. Holding a tournament with Smash Balls on when no one wants them would have negative effects on not only this tournament, but your reputation and ability to hold future tournaments as well. This is extremely important for all rule decision, such as stage lists. Understanding that many people agree with the SBR Rule List as well as realizing that others do not is a great place to start and build your own opinion as to what will please the players. Remember, you are attempting to please your players, not yourself.
2. Understanding your options.
A great place to begin with understanding your options is with the SBR Rule List. While it is not to be taken as fact, it is a valuable tool to learn from and figure out what your options are. Understanding that you can set the time limit to 7 minutes despite the recommendation being 8 minutes is just one example. There are many key things that may change based on who your audience is. While stage striking has been widely accepted by many tournaments, there are still many people who would prefer to stick with the previously used random stage selection.
Choosing your stage list is especially important as many stages still see heated debate. There are many stages that are borderline, and educating yourself on them as well as the opinions of others about them will help. Adding a certain stage to your counter-pick list might make some players feel as if you're adding an element to the game that detracts from the core game play and interrupts battle. While adding that same stage to the banned list might make another player feel as though you've taken out a valuable part of the game that they have practiced hard to learn how to utilize to the fullest. Deciding which way you want to go is based purely on your understanding of the regional philosophies of your players. The better you know your players, the better your rule list will become.
3. Enforcing your decisions
Finally, you must learn to never back down from a decision you've made and not let players convince you to let them bend the rules. Remember that you are the one in charge of the event, no one else. While it is best to cater to your players, it is not okay to cave into changing a rule the day of the tournament because someone is harassing you about it. You can always post your rule set when the tournament is announced and have them state their concerns early on. But once a point is reached where the tournament is near, you need to stand by your decisions. This will show consistency and avoid you having to make specific cases where you seem biased for letting something slide past the rules. Be clear with your rules, let your players know your rules in advance, and then keep to them.
VI. Closing
While many may think that all the TO has to do is post an event, run it, and enforce any rules, this is nothing more than a broad generalization of the duties of a TO. A TO has a strong role in the community, and is a valuable person for keeping the community strong. All TOs should continue to do their best keeping everything running smoothly, and all players should continue to support their local TOs.
While many may think that all the TO has to do is post an event, run it, and enforce any rules, this is nothing more than a broad generalization of the duties of a TO. A TO has a strong role in the community, and is a valuable person for keeping the community strong. All TOs should continue to do their best keeping everything running smoothly, and all players should continue to support their local TOs.
