Firstly, I want to say thank you, because what you're doing is awesome and it's something I think every community needs if it doesn't already have one.
Secondly, I would try hosting a sort of smaller scale event so you.can get the overall feel of what to expect as a TO. Host a basic house tourney or a medium scale venue tourney with only one or two brackets. I feel this is the best way to get the hang of TOing. Because it's a smaller scale event people tend to care less about small mistakes with seeding and the bracket in general.
To do this you'll need to have access to/be mildly experienced with several tools. It's not too hard to achieve, but you should at least have a grasp on how to use these tools:
- A laptop, or a computer you're comfortable taking places.
- A safe place to keep money (I.e. Venue fees, and Bracket fees)
- Setups: This can vary depending on the amount of people you are expecting to attend, but this essentially describes tvs, and systems with Melee/PM/Sm4sh on them and all stages/characters unlocked on them.
- Establish a ruleset. This seems pretty obvious but there might be people who come to your tournaments that are new to the scene, so don't count them out.
- A TO assistant/Bracket Creator
There are two major programs used for this purpose currently. A free standalone program called TIOPRO. This program is definitely good when you're first starting out, but I've personally ran into a lot of crashing issues, but it's possible it could have been my computer.
I would highly reccomend using Challonge.com for bracket making as it's easily sharable and it also has preregistration, plus it doesnt crash because it's browser based.
- Having someone to either help you with seeding or learn how to seed yourself. Seeding shouldnt be that hard. The only time seeding becomes a problem is when you let opinion have a greater effect on your seeding than results. If your area has a power ranking than you should use that to get started with seeding and after that everyone should be on an equal seed.
- Establish a schedule. Try to have set times when you want to start the bracket and when you think the bracket should end.
- Be strict with tournament sets/be efficient. Make sure that if there is an open tv a tournament set is being played on it and that once a set is over that the players record their match results immediately. I can't stress this point enough. People really like to play friendlies after their set, and this can really put a damper on efficiency.
These are the most important things in my opinion. Try to minimize mistakes and triple check the bracket before you officially start it to make sure no one gets left out of the bracket.
Once you up the scale of the tournaments I would reccomend to build a team of people who you can trust to spread the work load across just to keep the tournaments ran efficiently and to take some stress off of your shoulders.
Be prepared for haters. There will always be that one guy who plays Yoshi and is salty about who he's playing in the bracket. It's almost inevitable, but I say if it's only one out of 70+ people you did one hell of a job.
Most of all have fun! Use this opportunity to establish yourself in the community and to meet new people. This game is more than just about winning. It has taken one hell of a community to keep the competitive scene alive and you're doing God's work, my friend.
So God's speed.
