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Shepherd |
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Post subject: Help a new League Manager out
 Posted: Aug 12, 2005 - 07:47 AM
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Joined: Aug 11, 2005
Posts: 34
Status: Offline
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Hi all,
I'm taking over from a current League Manager who finds himself a little overwhelmed with family commitments. The league is currently at five players, with one returning after the summer for a fall league of six.
It's a fine league, but I'd like to get a few more people involved. I find five players makes for a really limited amount of team variety. But how do you recruit? I'm finding that the time commitment scares some people off, and the "geek factor" is quite intimidating for a lot of people that I think would enjoy the game otherwise.
I've considered putting a posting up at the local game shop, but I'm not wild about the uncontrolled aspect of that. We're all guys in our late 20s and early 30s with full-time jobs, and 17-year-olds in the mix just might not work out. There's also the very Quebec factor of being mostly English guys in a very French town, and potential language barrier problems.
I'm wondering if any of you have been in a similar position. This is a city of about 100,000 people, so it's not huge. I notice that even in large cities there are leagues of 10-12 people, so maybe it's unrealistic to expect a 10-player league in a city of this size.
Any advice welcome. |
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EvilGit |
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Posted: Aug 15, 2005 - 07:12 AM
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Joined: Mar 06, 2003
Posts: 105
Status: Offline
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matt have you thought about maybe having 2 divisions? then there may be more variety in the league as a whole. i'm playing in quite a large league at the minute (about 18 players in total) and everyone has the option of taking 2 teams, 1 in each division which makes for a good mix of teams in general.
saying that though, it's mostly just been word of mouth for us and normally we get about 10-12 people to a league night, which we hold in a gaming club once a month. people can polay other games inbetween though.
it seems to work for us but whether it'll work for everyone i don't know. |
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Team Scotlands Forum
Evil Git's Tournament Mishaps
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Mordredd |
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Post subject:
Posted: Aug 15, 2005 - 07:24 AM
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Joined: Mar 03, 2003
England
Posts: 728
Location: England
Status: Offline
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In my league we were stuck with 4 players for a long time. In order to get a good variety of teams we decided to create a reasonably large number of communal teams in a fixed schedule league that we could take turns in using. Basically we would work through the schedule handing control of the next available teams to the coaches waiting to play whilst trying to make sure everyone got at least one match with each team.
This gave us a good variety of teams in the league and allowed us to try lots of different races without losing the team building fun of a league. On the down side this did mean that we didn't have our own teams to develop entirely how we wanted and we got some strange skill combos on some of the rosters. |
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Paul |
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Post subject: Re: Help a new League Manager out
Posted: Aug 15, 2005 - 02:06 PM
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Joined: Feb 18, 2005
Canada
Posts: 424
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
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Definatly put a sign up in your shop, just make sure that you say"Mature Players Only" or "Ages 18+" or something.
Also, mention that its predominatnltly English speaking players. Who knows, maybe you can pick up a little French and they English to be able to play. JI mean, afterall,  and  are teh same in English, French, German or Whatever |
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dwarfcoach |
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Post subject: Re: Help a new League Manager out
Posted: Aug 15, 2005 - 02:25 PM
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The Best Dressed Man in Blood Bowl
Joined: Apr 13, 2003
Posts: 764
Status: Offline
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I know it will probably raise a smile on some faces but as I have not advertised it for a little while now... 
I assume you have contacted guys on the coach locator?  It really depends on how flexable your league is and on how often you meet. If it's once a month and you allow PbeM and online games for those who cannot make every month then you have a potential 65 guys in Canada to target:
http://www.bloodbowl.net/naf.php?page=locator&op=list&nation=Canada
My old league only met once a month but allowed for inter-league-meeting games. This widened the appeal considerably as you knew that if you missed a league meeting as long as you got a few mid-meeting games then you would not be far behind. A bit of a generic e-mail just as a fact-finding escapade may be in order... |
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Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
224th at The World Cup II
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Leipziger |
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Post subject:
Posted: Aug 16, 2005 - 12:51 PM
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Joined: Feb 13, 2004
England
Posts: 98
Location: England
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Hi Matt,
We used to play weekly but have moved to once a month meets with coaches playing as often as they like in between sessions. As we are in season III there has been a certain amount of word of mouth that has helped recruit. We have also advertised on the forum here/fumbbl/tbb as well as using ebay (this is quite a good way to reach the non-forum users). We have also advertised in a local gameshop (not the GW).
Might also be worth posting something around your local university.
Good luck
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Puckohue |
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Post subject:
Posted: Aug 16, 2005 - 11:58 PM
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Joined: Feb 13, 2003
Posts: 75
Status: Offline
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Hi Matt,
We're in Season VIII now in a city with 250k people. We've split the league in divisions as mentioned above with each coach allowed one team in each division.
As of age, we're almost all 25+ full time workers. We don't have fixed schedules or gaming nights. Instead we require coaches to arrange games privately.
Each team is required to play one game each 14 days, so each coach has to make a judgement as to how many teams he's got time to play with. With five divisions and a league cup this makes it possible for those with a lot of time to play much more.
We're a core group of maybe five coaches, with about ten more playing each season. Most players that join have found us through our web site. |
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Shepherd |
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Post subject:
Posted: Aug 17, 2005 - 04:08 AM
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Joined: Aug 11, 2005
Posts: 34
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To be honest, we've always played on a fixed round-robin schedule. Never even occured to me to run an open-format league, even though I've seen them mentioned in TBB.
I'm a little nervous about running something where anyone can play anyone else... for one thing, those of us who are family men will wind up not getting as many matches in; for another, there's the cherry-picking question (or the sour-cherry-avoiding question); thirdly there are some players who don't have cars and the public transit system in Sherbrooke blows goats. A fixed schedule and semi-regular night (although the semi-regular night hasn't worked so well this summer with holidays and all) at least means everyone gets the same number of games and nobody can avoid the Ogre team.
Obviously there are sane intelligent people running these leagues. Is there a convenient "how these leagues work" page somewhere that will set my mind at ease? |
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Deathwing |
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Post subject:
Posted: Aug 17, 2005 - 05:37 AM
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Former President
Joined: Feb 10, 2003
England
Posts: 1289
Location: England
Status: Offline
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We run an open format league using the STARS/QUILT utilities, it pretty much takes care of itself. Guys just play, put their results in through STARS and QUILT automatically updates the league table.
We run multiple teams each, that way we can just try and pick similar level TRs to whoever's about for a game. It's quite rare to see a handicap roll. Sometimes we'll arrange matches in advance, but that's quite rare too. We don't seem to have a problem with cherry picking, but then we're a solid bunch and it's more about getting together socially and playing some BB. Of course the more regular coaches tend to have more teams so they generally have TRs low enough to play the more infrequent coaches, but being able to run as many teams as you want isn't a bad thing.
The downside I suppose is that we don't have play-offs/finals, but it suits us fine as a relatively small group of more frequent players and a larger group of less frequent coaches. In fact we've recently decided to allow Pbem games so the less frequent travelling coaches can get more involved.
Not for everybody I suppose, but an irregular rolling open league of trusted guys is a lot of fun and takes no running at all other than entering your own results. It works for us. 
http://bloodbowl.net/naf.php?page=league&op=view&l=Wodell |
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 Ex-UK NTO,ex- Senior Tourney Co-Ordinator, ex-VP and ex-President....because Lycos says that new members don't know who I was..
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juck101 |
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Post subject:
Posted: Aug 27, 2005 - 05:41 AM
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Joined: Apr 04, 2004
England
Posts: 74
Location: England
Status: Offline
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Yep any amount of teams and an pen format is the way forward. My home league has maybe 5 core players and 4 that play two games a year... encourage beer and fun more than winning and new players may be a bit more into the idea.
To get a commish i always found was a crap idea - very unlike most leagues that run. There has always been a strong few characters and we tend to argue a lot over house rules - and thus never had any most times without hassle.
To be honest best approach is see what works for you - but a long time ago the power hungry 3rd ed league fell down to the best teams always winning. DONT let that happen - big problem in a small league |
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Khaine |
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Post subject: Re: Help a new League Manager out
Posted: Aug 29, 2005 - 06:09 PM
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Joined: Sep 06, 2003
Posts: 193
Status: Offline
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Shepherd wrote: Hi all,
I'm taking over from a current League Manager who finds himself a little overwhelmed with family commitments. The league is currently at five players, with one returning after the summer for a fall league of six.
It's a fine league, but I'd like to get a few more people involved. I find five players makes for a really limited amount of team variety. But how do you recruit? I'm finding that the time commitment scares some people off, and the "geek factor" is quite intimidating for a lot of people that I think would enjoy the game otherwise.
I've considered putting a posting up at the local game shop, but I'm not wild about the uncontrolled aspect of that. We're all guys in our late 20s and early 30s with full-time jobs, and 17-year-olds in the mix just might not work out. There's also the very Quebec factor of being mostly English guys in a very French town, and potential language barrier problems.
I'm wondering if any of you have been in a similar position. This is a city of about 100,000 people, so it's not huge. I notice that even in large cities there are leagues of 10-12 people, so maybe it's unrealistic to expect a 10-player league in a city of this size.
Any advice welcome.
I found the best way to recruit was to make a heck of a bloodbowl pitch, and grab the front table at a local game shop. You will usually draw people in with the custom pitch and then have a 4 hour long game as you alternate between playing and explaining the game to every passer by. Granted you will probably only get 2 or 3 people a demo this way but you can usually find enough to make the time put in worth while. Just make sure you get a table up front. I found that a table twards the back got mixed results to say the least. BTW I have always found that people who shy from the "geek factor" don't make good players. Too worried about what people think and not worried enough about pounding players into the dirt . |
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