I like the idea of league support and promotion, but don't see the need or the feasibility of a ranking system.
I like the initiative but think it's misguided. Rankings between disparate league house rules will mean nothing, but promotion of home and store leagues would help grow the game immensely.

I like the idea of league support and promotion, but don't see the need or the feasibility of a ranking system.
I like the initiative but think it's misguided. Rankings between disparate league house rules will mean nothing, but promotion of home and store leagues would help grow the game immensely.

I have to agree, I feel that leagues are too varied to develop a ranking system that will work. Or you will end up denying entry because a league doesn't fit the criteria.

My focus would be on a database of all leagues, getting this working before doing anything more complicated.

+1!

imho, *THIS* is what the NAF should be to us league players.

Craig, we have a league run at the local store and is using OBBLM to keep track (since the current season -- 3rd) at www.bkbbl.com. There is currently 22 players, but will be increasing for next season. Let me know if you need anything.

Couple of quick question (which determine if we can help or not).

Why limit it to leagues with an online presence? We use the Halfling Scribe, as that's adequate for our needs, and I know of at least one other local league that does the same (bigger than ours).

Why all-NAF only? We've just gained a new club member who's just starting to learn BB, and has indicated that he'd like to play league next time we run a season. He's non-NAF obviously.


Other than that, good luck. Long overdue, so I look forward to seeing what comes through, whether I can help or not.

The project sounds inviting and very interesting. I have a few comments to make and some questions to ask.

1. The league I run, the HDWSBBL, has it's own system which we have developed for the last 5 years and is totally unique to us. Please feel free to take a gander at how we run it. Would custom systems be allowed to participate or would they have to conform to the two systems you have stated? Obviously if it's a conform that is required we would have to sadly rule ourselves out of the participation of this.

2. We run our league format much like the NFL with play-off, a SuperBowl and also a plate tournament (for the bottom teams who miss out on the play-offs) all matches are scheduled and each teams plays the same amount of league games. Which category does this come under? Would it be scheduled (which I would of thought it would be) or would it be a different category altogether?

4. I would suggest that leagues host a separate competition which is counted towards the NAF League Rankings under certain guidelines which are set by yourself. This will allow the option for leagues to still run their own competitions for their league and only their league, but also they can run a competition which would count towards the NAF League Rankings to keep things fair for all. It would also allow leagues to still have non-NAF members play in their leagues but not the competitions which count towards the NAF.

5. How would the rankings be calculated? Would they be the current ELO system (hope that is correct) or would a new system be devised?

Please visit our league site at: http://www.hdwsbbl.co.uk/ to see how we run things.

The only criteria that would be minimum off the top of my head would be:
01. All the members of your league need to be NAF members.
02. 6 player minimum.
03. LRB 5/6
04. An online presence like OBBLM or Aros.

So really, this is going to be considerably more restrictive than the rules for tournaments. Item 01 certainly doesn't apply to tournaments, for better or worse.

The same with item 04 (which is going to count out any number of established leagues in my region).

The "house rules" downgrade is somewhat similar. Are there many long-running leagues that don't have ANY house rules? And how boring must those be?

What constitutes a house rule? Getting rid of Illegal Procedure?

Technically, isn't a scheduled league diverging from what the LRB lays out as a standard format?

Finally, you can decide to run the regular season as a league with scheduled matches (like the FA Football League in England and Wales). Teams score points depending on how well they do in matches (typically 3 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss). At the end of the season the four teams with the most league points get to go to the semi-finals.

04. From afar, it looks like you're holding your own league up as the ideal (the "Gold standard," if you will) that all others should move toward.

Like I said we are trying to be as inclusive as possible, and we want commissioners to submit their leagues, but without an online presence what are we looking at?

Craig, one question:

For OBBLM, I've used it in leagues where 90% of the games are tabletop, but a few are played with Cyanide's client, with the games uploaded to OBBLM to integrate. How would this be handled? What if someone had a "Tabletop" league played mostly like that? Would one game like that invalidate the league?

Just food for thought...

This is kind of what I was referring to - I think that a handful of guys playing games and recording on paper should be registered in a NAF database somewhere as a league, such that a new BB player can find those guys and join in. This is before anything complicated like "NAF sanctioning" of leagues. As inclusive as possible, absolutely.
.

You need to show your work. Just like any algebraic equation where the final answer was realized after many steps, you can't just produce the answer - you need to show how you came about that answer. We demand that even after a 6-game resurrection tournament, but with teams that maybe have played 50 games and have a ST4 AG5 Wardancer to boot, of course online records of how that came about would have to be produced otherwise it's way too open to abuse.

Also we will need something to extract. And this is also the first iteration. If after such time there is a NAF program that's easier for all the paper and penners still out there to use after, then this requirement may not be an issue later. But for now it is. The only way I or anybody else can see someone's league other than line of sight is from their computer.

What downgrade are you referring to? And why would you imply that anybody's league is boring if they don't play with house rules? That's like saying every other game on the planet that doesn't employ house rules is boring.

We all know what a house rule is.

It's not my standard but a NAF one. As you point out open formats are presented in the rulebook. These rules in the LRB 6 are interchangeable when talking about leagues and tournaments, both on pg. 24 and 31. Yet NAF tournaments are never set up as open tournaments - they are scheduled, they are round robin, they are swiss, they are random, but they are never ever open. I, nor my league created that standard - it's the NAF tournament standard. So logically when classifying a standard of League play for NAF wouldn't you consider the tournament standard as the ideal one?

Perhaps Gold, Silver and Bronze are too iconic. The Silver and Bronze classifications are only viewed as lesser if you consider winning a Silver or Bronze as some sort of tragedy which I don't.

If you have anymore concerns Nate please feel free to post again. Like I said we are trying to be as inclusive as possible, and we want commissioners to submit their leagues, but without an online presence what are we looking at?

+1 to this for sure.
Our home league should be included in a registry at least if we choose to promote it.
Or the store leagues that don't have online presences.

To me, that's much more important than ranking.

I guess I don't see why information that is plugged into an online program is any less open to abuse than that which is not. The threat of collusion or corruption still exists, and is probably unavoidable in a project like this. The same is true with tournaments; if someone really wants to fix results for some reason, they could. It's also worth noting that NAF tournaments don't require the use of SCORE.

But I see how it's easier to make use of existing programs rather than adding a manual input to the NAF site. I'll email you with some more specific concerns regarding conversion.

I wasn't being facetious. Eliminating IP was a major sticking point for a couple of my coaches, who felt that it was an important aspect of the game. I take it that this change wouldn't constitute a house rule? How about bounties? Those are pretty commonplace, in my experience, but only serve to (potentially) change certain coaches' mindsets as opposed to affecting play on the field.

I'm not playing devil's advocate or trying to disrupt your plan; my main point here is that "house rules" need to be clearly defined if they're going to affect the division of results.

I'm not advocating equality between open and scheduled leagues. If anything, my point is that open leagues are going to produce results that are more skewed than in those with a few house rules.

I think the nomenclature is my main objection here (let me suggest mithril, vorpal, and unicorn hide).

BUT, I also think that you should consider splitting the "house rule" group into schedule and open divisions. Open leagues are just so different from those that are scheduled, and I think that makes much more difference than a few house rules.

As mentioned above, I'll email you about the prospect of modernizing my league.

The NAF already has a registry for Leagues:
http://member.thenaf.net/index.php?module=Web_Links

Could you confirm that you have to be using OBBLM to participate? If the answer is yes then sadly I will have to rule the HDWSBBL out of this one. We use our own system which we have developed for many years. It works for us and I don't intend to change it. Shame if this is the case.

It is virtually unused and full of out of date information. IMO the first job for a league officer should be facilitating an easily accessible, searchable and up to date list of all tabletop BB leagues around the world, ideally with a map like this one:http://www.thenaf.net/tournaments/information/upcoming-tournaments-map/

Anything else is a bonus and should follow after this.

i jump in this wagon without reading exhaustivelly all wall-text-posts so i may miss some point.
I will just speak about the world league database, as i was asked for because it looks like the tournament map(i will not speak about a world or global league ranking system. )
as i stated to sano and to a someone who sent me an email, it is possible to create a wordpress plugin to create a database and get information manually updated by league comissionar, but my primary concern is about the accuracy of those informations thrue time. i think a automatic devalidation of the entries is required so there is an active action from the league comissionar to update his league year after year. So the users of the database know that the information about the leagues are no more than 1 year old.

To do this we need to set up a cron script and this is a different matter than just adapting the tournament map. So for now i did not produce anything ( also because i am not developping that much those days and because i do prepar for the eurobowl). also i assume i am not the only one with php-fu so maybe there are underground work and i wish if they where that i would be aware of them before launching anything because i would hate to make this development and after learning that it has already been done by someone else.

i think a automatic devalidation of the entries is required so there is an active action from the league comissionar to update his league year after year. So the users of the database know that the information about the leagues are no more than 1 year old.

Any timescale on this?

Members,

The committee have decided to instigate research in to a new potential project. We have asked General_Jason from Canada to chair a project to look at a Global League rankings system alongside the NAF Tournament ranking system.

It is important that we word this carefully. We have said research because at this stage there are so many factors that could make this project difficult that until we research it properly, we cannot stipulate it is something that will be done in the future, or at least, how we will deliver it.

Dave/Lycos
NAF President

My focus would be on a database of all leagues, getting this working before doing anything more complicated.

I like the idea of league support and promotion, but don't see the need or the feasibility of a ranking system.
I like the initiative but think it's misguided. Rankings between disparate league house rules will mean nothing, but promotion of home and store leagues would help grow the game immensely.

League rankings just seems like a silly idea and way to open to abuse.

Very constructive, thanks!

Leagues by their nature are a closed format (ie not open to everyone to join) and as such the results are open to abuse so any rankings in turn can be abused. What is to stop me, for example, setting up a gold league that consist of me, my dog, my mum, my tv and my girl friend (listed according to skill) and then recording all my results as 8-0 pitch clearances?

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)