William the Marshal Tournament Debrief
Posted: Sun May 05, 2002 4:50 pm
I ran a William the Marshal Tournament yesterday and though people would like feedback on the problems and positives.
We had 25 fighters total, so it was a fairly small tournament for the local area.
These were the published rules.
***********************************
William the Marshal Tournament
Teams
There will be Teams of 3-4 replicating a Knight and his men at arms.
Maximum of one Knight per team. Teams without a Knight will have a designated Commander. The Knight or Commander of each team must arrange for a Herald to announce himself as a challenger. Banners and other heraldic display are recommended. Fighters without fealty arrangements to a commander will be divided up by round robin choice by the commanders. Additional commanders may be chosen by lot.
Ransom
Each team will have enough money for the team to loose 3 times. Each time a team is vanquished, they must pay the winner a ransom. A team with a Knight will have additional coin, but will have to pay additional ransom when vanquished. A team with a member in period Norman armor will gain enough money for an additional death, but will not have to pay out any additional ransom.
Field
The field will have a 5' rope border defined on the ground within the List ropes. This is the "list field". Fighters intimidated or pushed past that boundary are considered vanquished. A ransom area will be defined at one end of the field for exchanging ransom funds and resting. No fighting will be within 20 feet of this area.
Vanquishing
3 counted blows received on any part of the body is a defeat
Anyone pushed or intimidated out of the list field is considered vanquished. If someone accidentally steps out of bounds without an opponent there, then the person will be warned and pushed back to the field
No ware edge will be called by the marshals for those being forced out of the list.
The last team participating in vanquishing another team is considered the vanquisher.
When it ends up down to two teams, they will fight one additional fight and then the ransom counted for the winner of the list. The team gaining the most booty wins the team portion of the tourney.
Individual Winner
The fighters will gather together to determine the fighter who was the "Best Tournier of the Day". Judgement should be determined primarily by Prowess, but should include consideration of the other Chivalric Virtues: Largesse, Loyalty, Franchise, Courtesie, Honor, Courage, and Faith.
Weapons
Single spear and shield, sword and shield, mace and shield, axe and shield, two handed weapons under 5'. No two weapons, no two handed spears, greatswords or polearms.
**************************************
At the event the additional rules were announced:
Tourney melee rules: No killing from behind, no dead on the ground. Be chivalrous.
No would pathology, any hit to a legal target area was a single count. Arm, leg, body, head all counted equally.
The whole team must reenter the list together after ransom or rest.
One whole foot or other body part outside the rope boundary is "out". Stepping on the rope was ok.
Individuals were to call out their counts and point to the person who got them on their 3rd so that that team could collect ransom.
No attacks on the way to ransom (while it might be historical, people had run this before and it got nasty.)
The teams were divided into two larger teams which were supposed to stay in an alliance.
**************************************
Problems and possible solutions:
More whining than I expected about weapons restrictions, especially from the madu fighters who were claiming it was a "period form for Scottish to fight metal rod and sword". Answer: too bad, my tournament.
I should have written down that there were no substitutions. This was stated mildly, but some didn't hear me. There ended up being "fu" about this later as some fighters dropped out and several who were on losing teams tried to work out every angle they could think about to get back on the field using "substitutions"..including threatening to ask the Crown. I was not amused.
In the future I would be much stricter about substitutions, and probably make it so that if the "captain" dropped, the team was out. The ability for your team to stay intact was part of the stamina part of the tournament.
I was amazed at the number of guys trying to whine the bankers into giving them more money, or even say they might have to steal more money. I told one _relentless_ guy that that basically the bank was protected. He even whined that he didn't see guards to protect it!! He finally shut up when I said that we are doing a period tournament and in period someone who stole money would probably be sent out to get bludgeoned into a pulp by the other tourniers and then would risk never tourneying again because he pissed off those who'd lend him money as well as piss off the noble host of the event who would spread it around that he should be taken off the "tourney invitation list". He wandered off then, trying to figure out if I was serious. I am not sure if he would have stopped harrassing the Ladies if I wasn't a Peer. I was not amused.
I should have arranged for the amounts to be kept hidden so each team did not know how much another team had. This caused some people to gang up on a winning team, which in period they wouldn't have known exactly how much was available.
There was some perfectly legal body checking to push people out of the lists. There were some mild injuries from over rambunctious charging (no more than a war though), some left because they didn't like anarchy and didn't like that people would gang up 2 on 1. One comment was that if I was doing a war, I should have allowed dead from behind and dead on the ground. Several people felt it was too violent.
We had a number of people stop counting after 2 unless they were beaten to a pulp. I'm not sure exactly how to handle this without determinate marshalling (which would have been the period solution).
Shortly after the first round, the teams decided they didn't like staying in an alliance and broke apart. On a thread in the Research and Authenticity section I was pointed out that Brian Thornbird has rules to help maintain that. I think some encouragement is needed to lessen the "free for all" aspect.
EVERYONE complained of being ganged up on.
In the end, there were 4 teams who kept trading off money and I just set a time limit to finish it off. Next time I would set a time limit from the start. I think there were more injuries than necessary as people got too tired, especially with the 3 count requirement.
**********************************
The good parts:
The swirling anarchy and wilder/more violent than a normal tourney aspect did give a reasonable feeling from the accounts I've read of early period tournaments. At several points I could really envision that if horses were employed, it would have looked like some of the period iconography - everyone going in all directions.
Several people really reveled in the roughness and wildness of it all.
Most people got in plenty of fighting.
Most people felt it was run fairly and though some seemed someone annoyed that I was unbendable about the rules, they appreciated that I had a clear vision and enforced everything equally.
I'm not sure I'll do one again for awhile, but if so, I'd modify the rules slightly and make it VERY clear that this is a somewhat rough and tumble type of tournament.
Hope this helps anyone thinking about running one in the future.
Dame Juliana
We had 25 fighters total, so it was a fairly small tournament for the local area.
These were the published rules.
***********************************
William the Marshal Tournament
Teams
There will be Teams of 3-4 replicating a Knight and his men at arms.
Maximum of one Knight per team. Teams without a Knight will have a designated Commander. The Knight or Commander of each team must arrange for a Herald to announce himself as a challenger. Banners and other heraldic display are recommended. Fighters without fealty arrangements to a commander will be divided up by round robin choice by the commanders. Additional commanders may be chosen by lot.
Ransom
Each team will have enough money for the team to loose 3 times. Each time a team is vanquished, they must pay the winner a ransom. A team with a Knight will have additional coin, but will have to pay additional ransom when vanquished. A team with a member in period Norman armor will gain enough money for an additional death, but will not have to pay out any additional ransom.
Field
The field will have a 5' rope border defined on the ground within the List ropes. This is the "list field". Fighters intimidated or pushed past that boundary are considered vanquished. A ransom area will be defined at one end of the field for exchanging ransom funds and resting. No fighting will be within 20 feet of this area.
Vanquishing
3 counted blows received on any part of the body is a defeat
Anyone pushed or intimidated out of the list field is considered vanquished. If someone accidentally steps out of bounds without an opponent there, then the person will be warned and pushed back to the field
No ware edge will be called by the marshals for those being forced out of the list.
The last team participating in vanquishing another team is considered the vanquisher.
When it ends up down to two teams, they will fight one additional fight and then the ransom counted for the winner of the list. The team gaining the most booty wins the team portion of the tourney.
Individual Winner
The fighters will gather together to determine the fighter who was the "Best Tournier of the Day". Judgement should be determined primarily by Prowess, but should include consideration of the other Chivalric Virtues: Largesse, Loyalty, Franchise, Courtesie, Honor, Courage, and Faith.
Weapons
Single spear and shield, sword and shield, mace and shield, axe and shield, two handed weapons under 5'. No two weapons, no two handed spears, greatswords or polearms.
**************************************
At the event the additional rules were announced:
Tourney melee rules: No killing from behind, no dead on the ground. Be chivalrous.
No would pathology, any hit to a legal target area was a single count. Arm, leg, body, head all counted equally.
The whole team must reenter the list together after ransom or rest.
One whole foot or other body part outside the rope boundary is "out". Stepping on the rope was ok.
Individuals were to call out their counts and point to the person who got them on their 3rd so that that team could collect ransom.
No attacks on the way to ransom (while it might be historical, people had run this before and it got nasty.)
The teams were divided into two larger teams which were supposed to stay in an alliance.
**************************************
Problems and possible solutions:
More whining than I expected about weapons restrictions, especially from the madu fighters who were claiming it was a "period form for Scottish to fight metal rod and sword". Answer: too bad, my tournament.
I should have written down that there were no substitutions. This was stated mildly, but some didn't hear me. There ended up being "fu" about this later as some fighters dropped out and several who were on losing teams tried to work out every angle they could think about to get back on the field using "substitutions"..including threatening to ask the Crown. I was not amused.
In the future I would be much stricter about substitutions, and probably make it so that if the "captain" dropped, the team was out. The ability for your team to stay intact was part of the stamina part of the tournament.
I was amazed at the number of guys trying to whine the bankers into giving them more money, or even say they might have to steal more money. I told one _relentless_ guy that that basically the bank was protected. He even whined that he didn't see guards to protect it!! He finally shut up when I said that we are doing a period tournament and in period someone who stole money would probably be sent out to get bludgeoned into a pulp by the other tourniers and then would risk never tourneying again because he pissed off those who'd lend him money as well as piss off the noble host of the event who would spread it around that he should be taken off the "tourney invitation list". He wandered off then, trying to figure out if I was serious. I am not sure if he would have stopped harrassing the Ladies if I wasn't a Peer. I was not amused.
I should have arranged for the amounts to be kept hidden so each team did not know how much another team had. This caused some people to gang up on a winning team, which in period they wouldn't have known exactly how much was available.
There was some perfectly legal body checking to push people out of the lists. There were some mild injuries from over rambunctious charging (no more than a war though), some left because they didn't like anarchy and didn't like that people would gang up 2 on 1. One comment was that if I was doing a war, I should have allowed dead from behind and dead on the ground. Several people felt it was too violent.
We had a number of people stop counting after 2 unless they were beaten to a pulp. I'm not sure exactly how to handle this without determinate marshalling (which would have been the period solution).
Shortly after the first round, the teams decided they didn't like staying in an alliance and broke apart. On a thread in the Research and Authenticity section I was pointed out that Brian Thornbird has rules to help maintain that. I think some encouragement is needed to lessen the "free for all" aspect.
EVERYONE complained of being ganged up on.
In the end, there were 4 teams who kept trading off money and I just set a time limit to finish it off. Next time I would set a time limit from the start. I think there were more injuries than necessary as people got too tired, especially with the 3 count requirement.
**********************************
The good parts:
The swirling anarchy and wilder/more violent than a normal tourney aspect did give a reasonable feeling from the accounts I've read of early period tournaments. At several points I could really envision that if horses were employed, it would have looked like some of the period iconography - everyone going in all directions.
Several people really reveled in the roughness and wildness of it all.
Most people got in plenty of fighting.
Most people felt it was run fairly and though some seemed someone annoyed that I was unbendable about the rules, they appreciated that I had a clear vision and enforced everything equally.
I'm not sure I'll do one again for awhile, but if so, I'd modify the rules slightly and make it VERY clear that this is a somewhat rough and tumble type of tournament.
Hope this helps anyone thinking about running one in the future.
Dame Juliana
