The Kingdom of the Emerald Hills

I don't think having a major cultural event every three months has really worked out. One suggestion that has been floated is having it once a year, as a mini-Olympiad. That is a worthy suggestion, one that I also considered. However, on reflection, I decided to offer an alternative suggestion. Here are my thoughts on what holding DM each reign could be like.

Culturals

Dragonmaster is often billed as the ultimate tournament of A&S competition within a kingdom. However, it often falls short. While it would be rare to hold a Weaponmaster event and not have any credible competition show up, that is not the case with Dragonmaster. Sometimes, it is a clash of titans. Other times, it is won by someone who showed up and put their best foot forward with a handful of strong entries. Based on my observations, it is actually the latter case that is the natural state of being for Dragonmaster. Unless someone makes it a personal goal to overwhelm Dragonmaster, the winning entrant is rarely overwhelming, and unless two people have such a goal, it's not going to be competitive. I propose to address the issue of Dragonmaster's inconsistent level of competition. Specifically, I want Dragonmaster to be a fun time, every time. Entrants need more reason to compete in DM, and DM needs to be restructured to reflect its natural role. To fix DM is going to require examining a few other related issues.

What if They Had a Dragonmaster and No One Showed Up?

Dragonmaster participation varies widely for a few basic reasons. Cultural stuff is a lot of work. Worse, once you enter stuff in DM, it's spent. If you sense you might be up against tough competition, you may be reluctant to spend that dear coin. Winning Dragonmaster, when it is competitive, usually results from the accumulation of months of work, either incidentally or as a deliberate strategy. The strongest rushes at winning DM often take six months or so. Well, each Dragonmaster is only six months apart, and in between you have Crown Qualifications. It is difficult to believe the best artists and creators in the realm are going to deliver their best work every three months. It is a given that either Crown Qualifications or Dragonmaster will be less competitive, or else you will simply see a lot of the entries appear in both events. Surely we have better things to do with our time than judge a whole spread of entries twice.

It's easy to understand how Dragonmaster came about. We have a Crown tournament every reign along with a Weaponmaster. Why shouldn't we have a cultural competition every time we have a war competition? That's a very sensible idea. Unfortunately, not a lot of thought was put into how war events differ from cultural events. To win a war event, you must simply keep your skills up, show up, and fight. If cultural events were primarily singing events, the same logic would apply; you would show up and belt out a song. But a majority of cultural entries are discrete items that are created once and can only be entered one time. Entering more cultural events means using up more of your entries. Dragonmaster needs to be conducted in a different way than Weaponmaster.

During the Month of the Crown, aspirants enter cultural and war events to display their excellence. At the culmination of these events, qualifying candidates compete to be Champion, representative and defender of the Crown. I can't think of a proper cultural equivalent to the Champion in a competitive sense; basically, the Regent is the cultural champion, decided by popular acclaim. But there is a winner of the warmaster events as well as the cultural events. In my mind, the warmaster and cultural events of the Month of the Crown should be the premier competitive events. These are the most visible, the most popular, and the most compulsory events. Weaponmaster can remain much as it is, but Dragonmaster needs to be rethought.

Dragonmaster as a Celebration and Teaching Event

When sizing up someone's cultural competitiveness, in the current conventional wisdom, it's common to talk about how they've placed in Dragonmaster. I'd like to change that. I think people should be asking how someone did in cultural qualifications. After all, in quals, we know they at least competed against the Crown entrants. Whereas with Dragonmaster, it's hard to know if they faced any stiff competition at all. That's okay if Dragonmaster is seen as a showcase event. If Dragonmaster is supposed to be take-all-comers, it's going to be difficult to muster a competitive field each time.

The best purpose I can think of for Dragonmaster is to give people something to be proud of who are not supreme fighters. It's better when you can hold Weaponmaster and have something for other people to show up to with a limited interesting in tournament fighting. By holding the events together, you maximize overall attendance, improving both the social aspect as well as the quality of the ditch field. But clearly Dragonmaster cannot be a retread of Cultural Qualifications without sapping some energy from one or the other event. People who are running for Regent may half-ass Dragonmaster, while people trying to win Dragonmaster may half-ass quals.

Qualifications for Crown require ten categories, so that should be the gold standard for quals. For Dragonmaster, let's change that to three, plus a Best in Show recognition. In Crown, you would get to count your ten best qualifying entries, while in Dragonmaster you would count three. In this way we could shift Dragonmaster toward being a showcase and teaching event. Someone who is very proud of a single item can enter it in Dragonmaster, hoping to catch the eye of the populace in the crown. Other participants may focus on upping their game, entering a handful of items for which they would like to receive feedback. By reducing the competitive pressure for Dragonmaster to be the alpha and omega of cultural dominance, we will have a better chance of recruiting Master Dragons, Serpent Knights, and up-and-comers to judge. The ideal judging panel would mix a few such veterans with other players, whether artist or appreciator, who want to learn more about the arts and sciences.

Raising the Lemon Bar

It is not enough to alter Dragonmaster. If Crown Quals are to be the ultimate cultural beatdown, we have to treat them seriously. No more macaroni sculptures and high school science essays. That means Quals and DM have to be judged, as much as possible, on exactly the same scale. We don't want judges or entrants developing bad habits from one category and carrying it over to the other, whether it's the expert's eye picking apart perfectly adequate qualifying entries, or a misplaced generosity allowing so-and-so to ascend to the Monarchy on the strength of everyone's apathy. Doing it means doing it right. On a 5-point scale, a 2.5 is generally taken as a sufficient but mediocre entry and a 3.0 as pretty good. To qualify, you should have to come up with ten pretty good entries. It can be done, and you don't have to be super crafty to do it. If you can't do it, those offices should go to someone who can. If we come up short, the worthy individuals who step into those empy positions should nonetheless do so as interim, pro-tem officers. Does this sound painful? Well, growth is painful. We need to toughen up and stop sucking. Even letting stand the idea that your entries should be, “on average,” adequate, which is weak and terrible, you ought to at least have to do it on a real judging scale.

Suggestions on Running Cultural Tournaments

The above are my prescription for what is broken and what needs to be done to fix it. I'll now offer a more specific suggestion about judging. There have been a number of methods devised for judging, which tend to come to either counting place wins for qualifying entries, or adding up quality points for qualifying entries. The problem with adding up place wins is that our cultural events cover such a breadth, there will be holes in some categories. What does a first place win in a category with only one entrant? If we let those wins count, it encourages scum-scraping weak categories; if we don't, it punishes people who enter in events that need more growth. That is why in Amtgard generally, quality point systems have taken over. All categories are, at least in theory, equal.

Under the original BTA system, your quality points were the amount by which your score exceeded 2.5, demonstrating “goodness and not badness.” To preserve the idea of judging quality rather than carpet-bombing, a person can only get points for two items per category. Somewhere along the way, the suggestion was put forward that we were still rewarding mediocrity too much, so the 2.5 was raised to 3.5. One refinement is to only allow ten total entries, encouraging people to put their best foot forward and to leave their other stuff at home.

In my view, neither 2.5 nor 3.5 is the correct number. A score of 2.5 is really not high enough. We should not be judging by whether someone entered an item that didn't blight the competition just for being there. At the same time, 3.5 is too high. We say a good item falls somewhere between 3.0 and 4.0, which means most good items aren't being counted. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There is only a hair's breadth between 3.4 and 3.6, yet one means no quality points and other does. In most kingdoms, a 3.0 is a qualifying entry and I think that's a good standard to adopt. Your score for cultural events should be the amont by which your qualifying entries exceeed 3.0, in no more than three categories for DM and ten for quals. In this way, we can distinguish between two competitors who score a 4.0 with their best entry, but whereas one has two good entries in other categories, the other doesn't. Especially when attendance is light, we should call attention to and reward the efforts of anyone who enters something good. When competition is strong, the competitors will set the bar. Otherwise, we can only judge what is entered. As a living kingdom, there will be ups and downs to our level of participation. Always we must put forward to recognize those who promote excellence.

As nomenclature for this sytem, I put forward the names Top Three and Top Ten, to distinguish them from the similar BTA 2.5 and BTA 3.5 systems. The main difference is using a qualifying 3.0 benchmark as the base score, and limiting the total number of entries which generate points (which is sometimes but not always done in BTA tournaments).

A Master by Any Other Name

I would like to propose one other change. Traditionally, the winner of Dragonmaster has been called the Dragonmaster, just as the winner of Weaponmaster is called the Weaponmaster. I see three problems. The first problem is a basic one: it sounds too much like Master Dragon. I see a problem with letting people get confused about the difference between a title of Masterhood and an event, especially by newer players still learning the lingo. Second, Dragonmaster sounds too much like we are naming our premier competitor in the arts and sciences. As I said above, I don't think we can continue to run Dragonmaster as a parallel competition to the Weaponmaster. It must be a different kind of event. I think the winner of Dragonmaster should receive a title that sounds very cool, as befitting their efforts, but doesn't automatically sound like someone who can beat all comers, which is only sometimes the case. Third, an ideal replacement title would be as applicable to Owls and Garbers as to Dragons. Something Dragon-related is probably okay, but I think we can do better.

I wouldn't mind changing the name of Dragonmaster to Faire. That sounds fun, and it makes me think of artisans and performers and such.

ridiculas

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Arch-Duke
Arch-Count
Sir Falamar LaCrane

Alley Cat made the suggestion that we could actually combine the approaches; turn Dragonmaster into an annual event, and in the off-reign, run Faire.

"A score of 2.5 is really not high enough. We should not be judging by whether someone entered an item that didn't blight the competition just for being there."

If judges are giving 2.49 for entries that blighted the competition by being there, then something is wrong with the judging, not the means of determining the overall winner. We require an average score of 3.0 to qualify for office; this suggests that the 2.5-3.5 range is what we expect the average person to be able to do *when they are putting forth their best effort*. The fact that a mediocre person did it does not mean that it is mediocre!

The reason people complain about 2.5 BTA is because they feel it allows someone to overwhelm the competition with "average" entries. This is by design! "Average" here refers to a good effort by an average person. Yes, someone who is extremely talented can churn out "average" entries faster than they can turn out pieces that will score in the 4.5-5.0 range. This is why it takes FIVE 3.0 entries to score the same as a 5.0 piece, and FOUR to score the same as a 4.5 piece under 2.5 BTA.

We have stopped posting our Dragonmaster results to the webpage, unfortunately, but look at Dragonmaster III, scored under 2.5 BTA with some sort of placing bonus. Shaylen had 11 pieces that counted toward her overall score, averaging 3.68 points, compared to Nightingale's 5 scoring pieces with an average of 3.92. So in this case, Shaylen clearly "overwhelmed the competition with mediocrity" to take the title. In this case, Shaylen would still have won under 3.5 BTA, because only 5 of her 11 scoring pieces were mediocre.

And here's the thing - 2.5 was already accounting for that mediocrity. Those five pieces, all of which scored above 3.0, and would have been discounted under 3.5 BTA, gave her a total of 3.4 points. That's not very efficient! Nightingale got 2.76 points for singing two songs. Under 2.5 BTA, someone who sings two songs and gets a 5.0 on each of them scores as many points as someone who EARNS A HYDRA. Under 3.5 BTA, what does it take to beat those two 5.0 songs? You can't do it with 3.0s. You can't do it with 3.5s. If you can consistently turn out 3.75 entries, you have to produce 12 of them; if you can turn out 4.0s, it drops to 6. Or looking at Shaylen's actual entries from that event, scored under 3.5 BTA, she got 3.12 points for four entries. Those four entries outscored THE REST OF THE COMPETITION under 3.5 BTA.

tl;dr: 2.5 is not too low. It rewards mediocrity, sure, but only when mediocrity is putting its best foot forward, and even then not much. That's exactly what it was designed to do - allow people who aren't actually that good to get on the board, but not actually compete, even if they do a LOT.

When we changed from a 2.5 BTA to the 3.5 BTA, we actually saw it make a difference. Talthyr moved back from RW and entered 40 or so items in DM. Most of which scored in the 2.5-3.0 range. Tolkien entered far less items (I think around 20-25) and won DM because his entries scored much higher.

To me, the 3.5 system is perfect for DM. If you convert it to a grading scale, then it is the same as getting 70 out of 100, which is barely passing from an academic standpoint. DM should be about high skill, and breadth of ability. Turning out multiple entries that can score over a 3.5 is not horribly difficult.

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Forest Evergreen

Puppet Master of the EH

"Of course you are Forest. You're like the Mr. Burns of EH." - Finn

(insert titles and awards here)

DM is supposed to be the competition where we all put our best foot forward and see who comes out on top. Unfortunately there's a lot of real life that can put a kink in the process of creation. Every time a competition comes along quite a few of the people that i know intend to enter and then through some combination of a lack of time, money and energy they end up not being able to get things done.

One of our biggest failings to get more competition is not encouraging participation, especially among our newer players. There are surely some up and coming artisans in our game who we've never seen. We hide the A&S off in a corner and wonder why we get a low participation. Are your park regents checking the boards and letting their park members know what's going on, or reminding people that they should check them? Do your park members even know how to get to the boards?

I've really appreciated Tigger's attempt to bring A&S out in the open this reign, he had a good turn out for the first one with the garb accessory, but with the male garb not a single person showed up to compete. Did any of the park regents even point out to their populace that there was a competition? (I know mine did, the only reason she didn't enter is because she started started a new job and didn't have time, i didn't because i got the wrong measurements and didn't get to try it on my model till the morning of)

MWG is having "hatchling master" this sat. I'm really looking forward to see who all shows up and what all they bring.

It would be nice to be able to see what you're competing against. I understand giving the judges their space, but if there was a way to have the pieces brought to the judges and then when they're done with a particular category put the items out for display so everyone can look at them before the participants pick them up, i think more people would have an understanding of what our competitions are and be excited to enter them. It's a little disheartening to enter into a competition and think your stuff is really good and then get back low scores or get 5th place and not know why. When you don't get to see the other entries, when you don't get any comments back from the judges it's really easy to be left feeling that either 1. there's a problem with the judging or 2. they have something personal against you. When someone is new to the game or new to competition they might not know what's come before them, what's gotten the serpent knights their belts, what the judges are looking for.

Something we did at ES when i was park regent was a "getting ready for Dragon Master" the A&S people that called that park home came together a few times to show off what they'd come up with and we all took a critical eye to each others work and pointed out things that we saw might hurt them in competition and suggested ways of improvement. I realize that i play at the "stick jock" park, so the one other person that i got excited about possibly entering some day seemed like a huge win for me. I'd love to see that or other small competitions at various parks through out the reign.

I don't think Crown Quals should be used for anything other then qualifying for office. It's there so that people who want to commit to leading this game can show they'll put forth the time and effort to qualify that they're going to have to put forth to run the game. From what i've heard, the only reason there's a minimum score to qualify is because in the past people have entered things such as a crumpled piece of paper in 3d art and spit on paper for 2d art. In my opinion you really don't need to be good at A&S to do any of the offices well, even regent. Regent needs to appreciate the A&S and be willing to co-ordinate artisans in a way to promote A&S in the game, but someone who can win Olympiad isn't necessarily going to be a good regent.

I also wouldn't mind the idea i've heard going around that DM be held once a year as long as there are other small competitions or workshops or something for the A&S people to participate in through out the year.

I saw that, too. I just don't think it's a good difference. I think BTA 2.5 is clearly superior to 3.5. In fact, I don't think BTA 2.5 ever delivered a tournament result that was wrong or unfair. But I do understand why people are unhappy that it might produce dissatisfactory results in some uncommon scenarios. As kodiak pointed out, BTA 3.5 is problematic. You could have a whole event full of quality entries and actually have no one score any quality points. It bothers me that slight differences in scoring philosophies can submerge large numbers of good entries below a threshold where they even count.

Particularly, BTA 3.5 particularly punishes categories where scores tend toward the mean, which usually indicates inconsistent judging. Popular categories like garbing already enjoy some slight advantages, because there are plenty of people qualified to recognize and get excited by high quality entries. BTA 3.5 basically puts the categories of fiction, poetry, armor making, and several other categories underwater. I'm not sure I've ever even seen a poem score above a 4.0 in an Amtgard cultural competition. I'd like to do more to fix this cross-category disparity, but in the mean time, I think it would be nice if those categories counted for something, at least when we're deciding who the best bodice makers and desert bakers are in the Kingdom. Under BTA 3.5, some categories don't even graduate to tiebreaker status.

EDIT: At Olympiad XIV, Randall apparently entered a poem called "Swords of Fun-noodle" that scored an 8.2, which I would take to be equivalent to a 4.1. So there's one.

I've been playing for 5 years now and have seen very little in the way of promoting the arts and sciences. The biggest problem I see with DM is the ability to flood a category or two and win the competition, nor should one be able to win the competition with one or two entries. This does not show a true scale of "who's the best crafter". This may prove you're a great garber or a great cook, but doesn't show any depth of skill. I would like to see a limit of one entry per category, hopefully your best work, with a minimum number of entries required to gain the title. DM is supposed to be the premier A&S competition and all crafters should be looking to improve their skills and gain new ones to help promote more A&S within the game.

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Duke, Squire Docsi HardAnvil
aka the Mad Dwarf
GMR of Dreadmoor
Squire to Sir Logan T. Black
Clan Chieftain of the Turtle Clan
Ship's Surgeon, HMS "Turtle's Revenge"
Gaslight Sky Pirate

"Dwarves and mountains have one thing in common: It takes an almighty hammer and a tremendous amount of persistence to overcome them."