William the Marshal Tournament Debrief

FrauHirsch · Post by **FrauHirsch** » 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

Rev. George · Post by **Rev. George** » Sun May 05, 2002 5:06 pm

Congrats on a relatively smooth, fun tourney.

Well, you mentioned some blow sloughing, and How it would have been handled in period. If I rememebr my marshall mythology properly, they fought to submission. In fact one time william the marshall had to have his helmet chiseled off of his head after capturing 2 knights. (he was on foot, having been unhorsed, and he came across 2 knights chatting it up. he grabbed the reins, and started to lead them to the "capture point" they pummelled him about the head, but he got them to the point. )

Sorry to hear about the whiners. "its not a madu, its a broken lance held behind my buckler" "I'm an ottoman turk who wa sadopted by indian beggars, so its period" ....Whah. Read the rules follow them, or go to another event.

The bank robbery thing was just stupid. Doesnt sound liek someone was "being chivalrous" on the feild. arent we supposed to eject folx for that?

-+G

-+G

FrauHirsch · Post by **FrauHirsch** » Sun May 05, 2002 6:31 pm

Originally posted by Rev. George:

Well, you mentioned some blow sloughing, and How it would have been handled in period. If I rememebr my marshall mythology properly, they fought to submission.

Right, but our "terms" of submission was three telling blows. Some of these guys decided it was 20. Now if we were really fighting to submission, the guys with the real armor would have had more of an advantage, but the guys not taking their shots were typical leather over plastic types..

From my perspective, this was just cheating and in period cheating might have been bringing missile weapons in or some other breaking of stated rules and would have been treated very decisively by those who ran the tourney. Because the SCA has the "fighter calls their own shots rule", I think certain people just "lost count" in a very convenient way that somehow tended to end at 2.

Sorry to hear about the whiners. "its not a madu, its a broken lance held behind my buckler" "I'm an ottoman turk who wa sadopted by indian beggars, so its period" ....Whah. Read the rules follow them, or go to another event.

Yup.

The bank robbery thing was just stupid. Doesnt sound liek someone was "being chivalrous" on the feild. arent we supposed to eject folx for that?

He didn't actually do it, but only proposed it, so I was iffy on what to do. I do plan to pull this guy aside as well as the "try to get on the field even though my team has lost guy" with a few Knights in attendance and let them know that this kind of thing is poor form at a minimum.

In general its just uncool to harrass the autocrats. Its enough to handle reasonable questions without being asked the SAME questions over and over because someone doesn't like the answer.

Overall it went ok. The effect was pretty much what I was going for, though some tweeking certainly would certainly make some things run easier. I was torn between doing a "protect your captain" with the captain receiving the 3 count would be the defeat of the whole team, and making the loss of the whole team be the goal. Mostly I was trying to keep rules simple. Maybe next time that would be a possible modification.

-J

Hushgirl · Post by **Hushgirl** » Mon May 06, 2002 7:22 am

When people ask me what "melee" means, I tell them it's a french word meaning "I ain't cleanin' this mess up". Sounds like things got appropriately messy.

Maybe you could use an archer as executioner when someone is dishonorable on the field--and another to guard the bank?

FrauHirsch · Post by **FrauHirsch** » Mon May 06, 2002 4:30 pm

As a side note, several fighters didn't show up to the final vote on the tournament winner such that we had an equal number. Two votes tied on the winners. Luckily I had two prizes available. One was Lord Gameel and one was Lady Chianna. As a Marshal I must say that both fighters ROCKED out there. They both had great defense, excellent offense and often ended up out there by themselves for awhile after their teammates had been taken out. Also they both fought very cleanly and had great stamina and battle sense.

Of note, neither were on the winning "team" ransom-wise, but their teams were very close.

Juliana

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » Mon May 06, 2002 4:48 pm

Sounds like a mess!

FrauHirsh, Hushgirl, Shameless, Lisa (anybody know WHERE is Lisa has been?) can you help me out with the Tournament FOR the Ladies?

Thank you!

-Aaron

[This message has been edited by Aaron (edited 05-06-2002).]

FrauHirsch · Post by **FrauHirsch** » Mon May 06, 2002 6:12 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Aaron:
Sounds like a mess!

-Aaron
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It was definitely chaotic, but that was expected. I think maybe some people weren't ready for the wildness of that style of tournament and do better with more formal Pas styles. Some were just annoyed because it wasn't a standard double elim list :-)

Juliana