My apologies, I have the feeling that this will be a long post.

First off, I'm the Commissioner for the BBBL, a small league based in Glasgow. We have eight coaches at the moment as we start our second season, the first we're using OBBLM to record. I'd be more than happy to offer the league data for this project and help out in any way I can.

I am very excited by the project and think it has the potential to offer many benefits to BB coaches around the world and re-vitalise the NAF. However, I'm not entirely clear on the scope of the project as it stands. There seem to be a few different ideas and views in the topic so far. Hopefully it is still open ended and all up for discussion.

Personally, I'd like to see something along the lines of OBBLM on steroids crossed with Facebook for Blood Bowl, meeting all of the requirements suggested on here so far. At its heart it would be a database that recorded Blood Bowl matches, but how you record that and what you do with the data afterwards offers huge potential. I beleive it should record all matches, league and tournament, progressive and regeneration, LRB4/5/6, friendly and competitive, house ruled or otherwise. The important thing (and the hardest) is to establish a flexible and robust data format that will allow this.

On top of this, you can build support for tracking leagues and tournaments, provide front pages for organisations and leagues to advertise and attract players. There can be individual team pages with pictures and fluff along with the stats, coach pages with similar information. It should support every league, tournament and match played around the world and allow them to be accurately recorded.

I dis-like the talk of Gold/Silver/Bronze leagues, that should be irrelevant at the data capture level. Once the matches are in the database, if you want to filter to just Gold standard matches, you can do that. Equally, if you want to include all matches, you can do that too. Sure, the NAF will have their standard for Official ranking, but that's a feature of reporting not recording. And if I want to see which gobbo has the most kills in matches with at least 400k of inducements and played on a Wednesday, then I should be able to do that too!

Capturing this meta-data for matches will probably be the hardest part. However, my gut feeling is that the 80/20 rule will apply. There's a handful of common rulesets that'll cover the majority of matches. Additionally, these will be defined by the League or Tournament Commissioner and so won't need to be captured every match. I envision it as a panel of options or switches:

- Base ruleset LRB4/5/6
- Additional NAF Teams Y/N
- Illegal Procedure Y/N
- 4 Minute turn limit Y/N
- Progression/Regeneration
- Round-Robin/Swiss/Knock-Out/Open/Manual
- New team value?
- Which inducements are allowed?
- etc.

I also object to recording NAF member only matches, for several reasons. Firstly, the more data we have, the better. It provides a better base for analysis and decision making. Secondly, (and I admit I'm veering into the political here) the NAF should be inclusive, rather than exclusive. Membership should have it's benefits of course, but it shouldn't prohibit recording matches. For example, non-member matches may not be linked to a central profile, so games across different tournaments or leagues will not be linked while members have profile pages recording their careers with all their teams. Also, in order to accurately track progession leagues, you'll need all matches, not just the NAF v NAF matches. I would also advocate this policy for the NAF forums, they should be open to all, with benefits such as signatures and profile pictures for members. We need to show users the benefits of joining, rather than insisting that they pay up front and see what they've bought afterwards. However, I'm digressing here.

I hope this comes across as positive and constructive as I do hope this project bears fruit.

I agree to an extent, but rankings in general don't excite me. (The fact that I'm usually near the bottom of those rankings is entirely irrelevant ) However, a system that supports leagues and tournaments will also allow for ranking, and ranking in what ever way you see fit. If and how you use it is up to you.

Ruleset: I understand that back in 2004 LRB 4 tournaments were the rage, but in 2013 it's LRB 6.0, Composition Ruleset or however you want to call it. If League was established on NAF back when LRB 4 was current then fair enough, but going forward now all Leagues and Tournaments are using the current ruleset. Why would this be any different? It would be like going back to Latin. What's the value of tracking that?

Additional Teams: Anybody not using them? They were sanctioned by the BBRC, they are sanctioned in NAF Tournaments. It's kind of a dead issue.

Round-Robin/Swiss/Knock-Out/Open/Manual Most of these are considerations for tournaments. In League it's really just scheduled and open with regards to how matches are set up.

Ruleset: I understand that back in 2004 LRB 4 tournaments were the rage, but in 2013 it's LRB 6.0, Composition Ruleset or however you want to call it. If League was established on NAF back when LRB 4 was current then fair enough, but going forward now all Leagues and Tournaments are using the current ruleset. Why would this be any different? It would be like going back to Latin. What's the value of tracking that?

Not sure on that. We have, and probably will again, play a season that was a house-ruled LRB4, just because, in our view, it was more fun. The only reason we mainly use LRB6 now is because of tournaments.
Also, I was under the impression a LRB4 (or earlier) tournament would still be sanctioned (or did that change, I honestly can't recall). If it would, I don't see why a league db should disallow it.

Round-Robin/Swiss/Knock-Out/Open/Manual Most of these are considerations for tournaments. In League it's really just scheduled and open with regards to how matches are set up.

What about end-of-season play-offs? We have an open season (to crown the league champion), followed by a knock-out comp for the top 2/4/8 to see who's the Bowl champion, and I'd guess we're not alone in that. I know the ECBBL (lycos's home league) do something similar (and bigger).

While I like the idea of 'one database to rule them all' I have to be clear that the league side of NAF and the tournament side of NAF will always be separate. We will discuss a great many things here while we pound the league side of NAF into shape, but the aspect of mixing those Blood Bowl worlds into one database is not open to discussion. My apologies if that sounds closed and rigid but it's the NAF mandate which is outside the control of this discussion.

That's all Gold/Silver/Bronze are meant to be are filters. I was actually having a discussion with one of my own members when we were discussing names of filters and he was also against those names for the polarizing byproduct and non-existent idea that somehow Silver and Bronze were somehow less due to what they represent in real life. I told him that I believe that NAF members were more sophisticated and would see through that, and would see beyond like what that would look like on a db page and whatnot. Clearly I was wrong and owe that guy a beer.
Going forward we will be using terms like Scheduled, Open and House. These terms are hopefully less incendiary to the gp.

Prior to going live filters will be established to any NAF league that applies and wants to be included in the NAF database. These will be based on one-time questionnaires when League Commissioners wish to have their league join. Those questionnaires will be the product of discussions here, like what constitutes 'straight rules', how open is 'fixed' or 'scheduled', as well as what formats we're using for House. Maybe Variant can be a separate filter from House - for games like 7's, Streetbowl, Deathbowl and Dungeonbowl.

Ruleset: I understand that back in 2004 LRB 4 tournaments were the rage, but in 2013 it's LRB 6.0, Composition Ruleset or however you want to call it. If League was established on NAF back when LRB 4 was current then fair enough, but going forward now all Leagues and Tournaments are using the current ruleset. Why would this be any different? It would be like going back to Latin. What's the value of tracking that?

Additional Teams: Anybody not using them? They were sanctioned by the BBRC, they are sanctioned in NAF Tournaments. It's kind of a dead issue.

Illegal Procedure/ 4-minute Time Limit: These are league rules that I wouldn't even consider house rules, whether leagues play with them or not. It certainly would not be a filter in a database.

Progression/Resurrection: Progression is League. Resurrection is Tournament. Those two worlds are filtered right there. Tournament results will not appear in the NAF League db and vice versa. If coaches are playing progression but eliminate the pitfalls of progression by also allowing resurrection in between matches I see no value in creating a "Cheeseball" filter for them.

Round-Robin/Swiss/Knock-Out/Open/Manual Most of these are considerations for tournaments. In League it's really just scheduled and open with regards to how matches are set up.

I agree that all matches regardless of membership should be recorded, with privileges such as access to the db withheld to non-members, but this is not a discussion for this thread as it won't be changed here. This is NAF tournament policy. It is also the NAF forum policy with regards to whether it should be accessible to non-members. This is a discussion members may want to have during the NAF Presidential Elections. If this policy changes then so would my position.

If that's the mandate, then I guess you have to work within that. However, I admit I am a little puzzled and disappointed by this. Are there any good reasons to keep them separate?

I'd certainly advocate a softly,softly approach, and not attempt to combine the two immediately. However, leagues and tournaments are just two different structures for playing BB games. Much of the stored data will be similar and to my mind makes sense to store together.

It's not the terms I disagree with, it's the concept. You are essentially grouping leagues into distinct groups at the data capture stage. This removes many reporting options at a later stage.
Instead, I'd recommend that you simply capture data on the leagues and if you want to report on them in Gold, Silver and Bronze groups then you can. You lose not of your required functionality but potentially gain lots.

It's a little akin to recording the heights of a group of people as Short, Medium and Tall. This is fine if all you want to know is how many people are in each category. However, if you later decide you want more detail or you'd like to change the properties of each category then you can't.
However, if you record actual heights, you can group them however you like when you report. Additionally, you can change the report at a later date.

Again, my recommendation would be to not group or filter leagues at the start. Simply capture all the details/options of the league and you can use that data as and how you like.

You say that all leagues use the current ruleset, but without tracking it how can you confirm this? Assuming that a large dataset of league matches can be used for further rules development, tracking changes between rulesets would be immensely useful.

I don't know? I would assume until the database starts collecting information, there's no way to know. I'd certainly hazard a guess that some leagues restrict which teams are available, such a Stunty only. I'd really expand that out to selecting which teams are eligible in the league.

Why not? Where is the downside to having this information? This is a decision that League Commissioners have to make and publicise to coaches. Therefore, it should be part of the database.

This was from the point of view of capturing both league and tournament matches.

As Darkson mentioned, leagues can combine league and knockout formats.

My gut feeling, and I apologise if I'm wrong, is that your current intention is to create a database for leagues that conform to a very specific structure. It'd be much more useful (and admittedly much more of a challenge) to create a flexible system that can support all sorts of leagues. If there was one thing I'd put money on, it's that no matter how crazy a league you can design, someone else is already playing a whackier one!

Happy to volunteer the Isle of Wights Bloodbowl League if the data will be useful
http://swwg.obblm.com
We are just about to start season 3 (a bit young by your standards but happy to help if we can)