Wednesday, May 4, 2011

SpoCon 2011 40k Event: Why am I the TO?

Greetings,

So I finally got the official announcement up regarding SpoCon's 40k event this year.  There's postings here and here.  The full rules packet is here.  Feel free to post up feedback or questions regarding the event in the comments section of SpoCon related posts or you can email me.  I'll make a more formal post on the tournament itself on the blog later but first.

So why am I organizing this event?

Well for one, I was asked to.  Chris (aka BigChris) who organized the event the last 2 years, was 'promoted' (voted for or whatever they do, not sure) from gaming chair to overall chair.  There was no way he could do it again this year and other concom members or interested parties had other obligations.  I had been the TO for the very first SpoCon 40k tournament in 2008 and had ran some successful tournaments at a local store years ago, so I guess I was the next best thing.

Another reason why, I have a bit of a soft spot for the event.  I've wanted to see it grow out of being a glorified RTT (which is sadly what it was when I ran it in 2008, for various reasons) to something bigger.  Certainly not the size and depth of Adepticon or NoVa exactly, but something special none the less.  Last year the event came very close to that mark in my opinion.  We saw new players from outside the area for the first time and I personally had the best time so far.  So I wanted a chance to continue that growth and hopefully improve upon what Chris and others at SpoCon have started.  Since SpoCon made the jump to being a hotel based event I thought what better time then now?  And frankly I wanted another shot at it since that first year had been sort of lackluster in a lot of ways -- I'll get to that in another post though.

Finally, the main reason I am a TO can be attributed to a conversation I had years ago at another 40k event.  I was attending Astronomi-con in Vancouver BC and between rounds struck up a conversation with one of the organizers.  We got on the topic of various ins and outs of tournament rules, some of which we had some obvious differences in opinion.  He was not defensive in the least though, frankly he had some of the more well reasoned responses to things like comp, sports, etc.  Anyways at the end of the conversation he had this to say (roughly from memory):

"Have you organized a tournament?  No?  You should."   He had more to say (which I am saving  for another post and another topic) but those words in particular stuck with me and are why I even considered organizing tournaments years ago.

Anyways thanks for reading!
--winterman

4 comments:

  1. SpoCon is lucky to have you Dan. I am bummed I will be missing your debut for OFCC. I hope it falls that I can do both next year. Really looking forward to reading about this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Tony, that means a lot and you will be missed. It really is a bummer that OFCC is on the same weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dan, what was the reason behind going with the more 'european' 1750 instead of the more 'american' point total of 1850? Just curious.

    Ill be happy to join up and get some good games in!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Awesome Tallarn, thanks for the post and happy to have you sign up.

    Points-wise, there's a couple of reasons but the biggest is time. I want to run four games in one day within a limited time slot -- which leaves enough time for 2.25 hour rounds. I don't think its fair to many players to run 2k games at less then 2.5 hours, so that was out. The rest I will cover in a post this week.

    ReplyDelete