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 Post subject: Park Status
 Post Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:00 pm 
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So in discussing park sizes with people over the past few months, it seems that none of the current Duchies meets the attendance requirements to maintain their status. What are peoples' thoughts on reducing all the duchies to Barony status and then seeing how the next 6-12 months go?


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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 12:17 am 
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Forest Evergreen";p="16 wrote:
So in discussing park sizes with people over the past few months, it seems that none of the current Duchies meets the attendance requirements to maintain their status. What are peoples' thoughts on reducing all the duchies to Barony status and then seeing how the next 6-12 months go?

I'm pretty much in favor of that.


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:45 am 
 
What is needed to maintain Duchy status??


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:07 am 
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Well, you need 40 people a week to achieve Duchy status.
I would say that you should have at least 30 a week to maintain that.

I'm all in favor of a reduction.


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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:09 am 
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Well that shouldn't happen, apparently the default permissions allow unregestered users to post. I will change it to require being a regestered user to post in the general forums. In the park forums and event forums it could be useful to not have to be registered to post, so I will leave it alone in those.

And to answer the question the current EH requirements for promotion are a 6 month average of 20 different players per event for Barony status and a 6 month average of 40 different players per event for Duchy status.

No EH park is even close to Duchy status. The park with the highest average attendance is the Barony of Finders Keep, with a 6 month average right around 20.

While I think that the demotion level should not be the same as the promotion level. If you dip below the level for Barony promotion, I don't think you should still be a Duchy. I am in favor of demoting Duchies with average attendance of less than 20 to Barony status. (which would be all of them)


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:22 am 
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I agree that it doesn't make sense for the parks as they are right now to be duchies. If it were up to me, I'd be fine with the Midnight Sun being dropped down to a barony today.

If someone wants to maintain their park's duchy status, though, I'm not sure that "effective tomorrow, every park that has an average attendance less than 20 over the past 6 months is a barony" would be the right plan. I definitely think we should institute a cutoff for being dropped from a duchy to a barony, and perhaps then parks should have three months to get their three-month average above that? This may be totally immaterial - it may be that nobody is interested in or capable of retaining duchy status at this point.


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 12:45 pm 
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Honestly, I've never been a fan of the Demotion idea, simply because this game is so cyclical that it will be near impossible for any park to keep it's status... I've seen parks go from 30avg weekly attendance, down to 6avg, back up to 20avg... Everything changes, and I think it would be more of a setback to drop a parks status, and ultimately completely remove the possibility of becomeing a Duchy, because due to the nature of the game it would be next to impossible to ever maintain.

Draeven


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 2:00 pm 
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Draeven, if I'm reading you correctly, you are saying that it is not possible for an Amtgard park to maintain average weekly attendance of 20+.

If that's the case, then I retract my earlier idea. We should take duchies out of the corpora entirely. If the Emerald Hills is never again going to have a park that can put four Wizards on the field most of the days it meets, then the Emerald Hills is never again going to need to have a park that can award 8th level orders on its own.

I guess what I'm saying is this - you've explained that, in your world, no park could maintain duchy status with any sort of demotion - even if the requirement to be demoted were HALF of the requirement to achieve the status in the first place. But even if we accept that as true, you haven't explained why "The Barony of Eagleshire" hurts anyone.


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 2:43 pm 
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Kodiak, there's no reason to get condecending. If that wasn't your intention, then I apologize, but it read to me like I was being talked down to...

No, I'm not saying that it is not possible for an Amtgard park to maintain an average weekly attendance of 20+. Finder's Keep currently has an average of 20+ a week. I'm saying that parks go through phases. Parks located in college towns (like Eagleshire, & Finder's Keep) usually have an attendance slump during the summer (with people going home for the break, and many of those that don't go home suddenly discover they can have a social life for a few months), and many parks also see a severe decline during the winter months due to weather issues. Numbers at a park can fluctuate greatly for any number of reasons, I just don't feel that it is fair to take status away because a park is going through some rough times, when they put so much hard work into gaining the status to begin with.

I think it's discouraging to people to punish the park for hitting rough times, and can lead to a snowball effect. Now we're talking about dropping duchies to baronies. Once precedent is set people could easily take the next step of trying to bump Baronies to shires. I could see this eventually leading to a kingdom of nothing but shires, which doesn't necessarily hurt anyone, but it also doesn't help anyone. I don't think dropping a park's status does anything to promote growth. But from my own personal experiences with 2 different struggeling parks (IC & FK) when you have a status you're not making the numbers for currently you're constantly trying to come up with ideas to bring in more numbers and grow. You think of ways to try not only to gain the numbers to match your status, but to expand further. But when the status is lost, it can bring a sense of failure and hopelessness. Look at what happened to IronCloud when they dropped their status Voluntarily from Barony to Shire, right around 6 months later there was no longer an IronCloud park.

You wanted me to give an example of how the "Barony of Eagleshire would hurt anyone" and I have, in my opinion, so on the other side of that coin, I would like for you to give me an example of how the "Barony of Eagleshire" would help anyone.

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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 3:10 pm 
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I didn't mean to be condescending. I'm sorry I gave that impression. I just wanted you to explain what is bad about demoting a park, which you did. Personally, I'm ashamed that my home park calls itself a duchy. A duchy is a park is a park with regular attendance over 40+. My park is not a duchy. But I show up as often as I can while it's called a duchy, and I'll show up as often as I can if it's called a shire.

I don't undrestand why someone would stop coming to a park because that park was demoted. I did not realize that's what killed Ironcloud.

As far as how demoting a park helps someone, I'm going to address my home park, because I know what the attendance is like there.

Personally, I think it's insulting to Finder's Keep that Midnight Sun is a duchy. So in my opinion, The Barony of the Midnight Sun helps Finder's Keep, by abating that insult. If I were attending a barony that regularly saw four Wizards legally take the field*, I'd be peeved that there were a duchy that can't even field a battlegame some days.


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 3:40 pm 
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kodiak";p="37 wrote:
Personally, I think it's insulting to Finder's Keep that Midnight Sun is a duchy. So in my opinion, The Barony of the Midnight Sun helps Finder's Keep, by abating that insult. If I were attending a barony that regularly saw four Wizards legally take the field*, I'd be peeved that there were a duchy that can't even field a battlegame some days.


You know, I've never thought about it like that. I can completely understand and respect the thoughts behind that. I still say I would like to see other avenues explored to help try to get park attendance up, and IMHO demoting a park should be the final step, but after seeing it put that way I have less objections to park demotion.

But as far as getting attendance, I think part of the problem is the metroplex is too saturated with parks currently... I mean right now I think there are 3 saturday (altho 1's pretty defunct) and 3 sunday parks in the metroplex with 2 more petitioning Saturday parks... Considering the past couple of events have been hard pressed to break 100 we seem to have more parks than people... maybe we need to sideline the demotion thoughts for a while and look more into consolidating

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:19 pm 
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Why can't FK be promoted? Then lets see how their number are in 5 yrs.

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:10 pm 
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I may be putting in my two-cents rudely, as I only know a small bit of this conversation. However, I wanted to say something that may or may not help -well, someone-. We, in CK, were also going thru this same issue of deciding to 'knock' or 'promote' parks to their 'deserved' status. Some of the local leaders stepped forward and made effort to ensure that their records were in-line(as we only recently became able to deal with ORK on local level,comparatively), however, some didn't. Whether this was due to ability, organization, or leadership is unclear, but also irrelevant. Due to the attendance records of what was available, and what more to the point was not available, the KPM did an audit on all parks. What came to be is that almost every last park was demoted as their records did not prove them 'worthy' of keeping their status. Granted, it made some mad, it made some unhappy, and between it all... it encouraged those not only in leadership roles to step up to make sure next audit they show themselves 'worthy' of the status they had(or better), but also stirred up the local members as well.
As for consolidation, IMO, if there are that many parks in a small locale, each with small attendance, it would be a wise decision to join them together. Just from what I have seen in our area.
Of course this is all just my little opinion, and y'all can send it thru the window if ya like. I won't be offended.

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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:23 am 
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I don't see it as a bad thing to change from Duchy to Barony, I see it as responsible. I am proud of Eagleshire. It was the park I started in and I have been in office out there more than most anyone. But we are not a Duchy any more.

And this is not a cyclical problem. Go back and look over 6 months, a year, 2 years, we just are not the size we once were and have not been for quite some time. I did not bring up this topic because the Duchies of the Kingdom have been below the needed number for a few months, I brought it up because it has been well over a year since any park has maintained that average.

I will hold an Allthing at Eagleshire on Feb. 19th to see if the populace of the park is wiling to voluntarily change our status from Duchy to Barony. I think it would be a good show for the other Duchies to join us in theis measure and see how the populace feels in their parks.


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 Post subject: Re: Park Status
 Post Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:11 am 
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Personal opinion is that at least at the park I attend (Midnight Sun) most of the populace has seemingly become desensitized about low attendance. There are exceptions, the few that continually vest themselves in important park functions, but I don't remember the last time we, as a duchy, really advertised the game with flyers and pamphlets. Anyone leave info at local comic book stores lately? Hole in the wall bookstores? I may have been in the game for less than 5-6 years, but I have definitely seen a drop off of members. Is HFS really that better?

The shire of the west supposedly pulls in about 20 folk a weekend. Rolland has recruited more than half that number from his highschool buddies alone. I'm sure we have a ton of school attending park members throughout the kingdom. So we gotta look to the young to fill the ranks. It's blood for the future.

Maybe demotions will prompt the old and the new to become innovative in their ways to ensure park status as Duchies.

Regards
S


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