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Roleplay Battle Tournament
14 years ago
It's called The Grand Tournament; a bi-annual(ish) event hosted on roleplay forums that have a strong interest in sparring between characters.
It started back in 2006. The third iteration is going to be this year, and registration has begun for one of the 32-64 available slots.
The first GT was hosted on its own home-forum (www.thegrandtournament.com). There was no 'plot', unless the participant wanted to use a single character and have them maintain a storyline from fight to fight. The goal was entirely to test the flexibility and skill of the individual players. The format was a very simple and very straightforward: 'You sign up at the start, you're slotted into a seed, the seeds are arranged in brackets. When you get your opponent assignment you and they settle on the format of your fight, your chosen characters go at it, and if you win you move on.'
There was also a division for 'speed' battles, which took place in messengers or chats, where the goal was to battle your opponent while typing at the craziest pace possible, while still maintaining a cohesive exchange.
I'm happy to say that I made it all the way to the finals of the 2006 GT ;) I had to forfeit the last battle, due to working 12-14 hour shifts at work that were killing me IRL.
Following the GT06, the site became a tracking system for roleplay communities across the internet to have their players register at, and maintain a record of the fights they won or lost on their own home forums. If you and someone you were battling on your board were both registered on the GT site, you could use its system to record the event, and have yourselves ranked among the competitors from all the different communities.
The 2008 GTwas hosted on the webmaster's home forum, RoleplayGateway (http://www.roleplaygateway.com/).
It did not maintain the 'no plot' format of the first. It had a set IC storyline, a limit of one character per player to maintain consistency, some more concise restrictions on character types and powers, and more 'bells and whistles' (like specially drawn avatars for the participating characters).
The GT08 ended in utter failure.
Instead of having a staff of judges to help spread the workload of looking over the fights, the webmaster (Remeaus) did the judging of every single fight himself. He did not enforce the rules established at the start of the tournament equally across all members participating, allowing some to do certain things, telling others not to; he did not elaborate on his reasoning no matter how much he was pressed; he didn't enforce the IC rules for characters in fights that were explicitly stated to not be violated; and as the judgments progressed they gradually got more and more shoddy, often with Rem refusing to detail what went into them. I myself lost a fight to an opponent who would rewrite actions that had already taken place to cut-off any negative effects to himself (this is referred to as writing an 'Interrupt', since it changes the flow of what the other person posted), and who broke the IC rules repeatedly (killing audience members, leaving the arena's designated area, etc). When I confronted the operator about it, he said he'd never intended to enforce the IC rules in the first place (despite having done so in previous threads).
I cut-off contact with him, and left his staff on www.thegrandtournament.com. The tournament ended when both of the finalists (one of them being the guy that dicked around in my thread with him) got tired of Remaeus' shoddy organizing, and mutually threw the fight by having a giant monster interrupt their battle and eat them. One of them was declared the Champion of the 2008 GT anyway by Remeaus, because he 'felt there had to be a winner, even if both of them threw the fight.' Go figure.
Since I was the only moderator working on the GT's home forum, this meant the GT forum became an unmodded one, and since Rem never appointed anyone in my place, it stayed that way for over two years after being renamed 'The Hall of Records', and gradually became a wreck of a troll haven.
GT2010 was announced by Rem during my time away. But he failed to come even close to getting it organized, so it never occurred.
GT2010 was reannounced in 2011 by Rem, and was going to be hosted on www.thegrandtournament.com. A surprise was that Rem was handing over Administration of the forum to one of his RoleplayGateway admins, Pseudosyne, and Rem himself would just be taking care of organizing the GT while the HoR would run under new management. He also announced that he was working on the Hall of Records 2.0, to correct some of the bugs that had cropped up with the original site, add new features, and overall make it prettier.
Pseudosyne approached me, asking me and another staff member get the HoR forum back into shape. Since Rem was largely out of the operating picture, I accepted. We've buckled down, cleared out a ton of the stuff that's choked the forum, and taking out the inactive accounts and alternates that the more dishonest members set-up, and will soon be getting the scoring ladder back into good order.
Rem, being Rem, failed to provide any updates regarding the GT2010-11. He never even addressed anyone on the objections raised about the rules that he posted for it. So after months of zero communication from him Pseudsyne and I approached another forum member about hosting it on his own site.
The member, Ran, accepted, and his forum staff has begun to organize the Grand Tournament 2011 on his site, Isamahii.
http://isamahii.com/index.php
The Tournament is switching back to the more flexible scheme of the GT06. The detailed rules of the game are in the News and Announcements section of the Isamahii forum. Those of us on the HoR staff will be helping Ran's crew get things going, and we'll be making sure all the fights are accounted for, but the majority of the Tournament will be the effort of Ran and his staff. If you like a competitive environment, imaginative characters (albeit they're going to all be geared towards killing or bloodying foes up), and want to test your skill at battle writing then give the site a gander or ask any questions you'd like. I'm one of the ones helping to get it going this time around, and I'd be happy to help.
It started back in 2006. The third iteration is going to be this year, and registration has begun for one of the 32-64 available slots.
The first GT was hosted on its own home-forum (www.thegrandtournament.com). There was no 'plot', unless the participant wanted to use a single character and have them maintain a storyline from fight to fight. The goal was entirely to test the flexibility and skill of the individual players. The format was a very simple and very straightforward: 'You sign up at the start, you're slotted into a seed, the seeds are arranged in brackets. When you get your opponent assignment you and they settle on the format of your fight, your chosen characters go at it, and if you win you move on.'
There was also a division for 'speed' battles, which took place in messengers or chats, where the goal was to battle your opponent while typing at the craziest pace possible, while still maintaining a cohesive exchange.
I'm happy to say that I made it all the way to the finals of the 2006 GT ;) I had to forfeit the last battle, due to working 12-14 hour shifts at work that were killing me IRL.
Following the GT06, the site became a tracking system for roleplay communities across the internet to have their players register at, and maintain a record of the fights they won or lost on their own home forums. If you and someone you were battling on your board were both registered on the GT site, you could use its system to record the event, and have yourselves ranked among the competitors from all the different communities.
The 2008 GTwas hosted on the webmaster's home forum, RoleplayGateway (http://www.roleplaygateway.com/).
It did not maintain the 'no plot' format of the first. It had a set IC storyline, a limit of one character per player to maintain consistency, some more concise restrictions on character types and powers, and more 'bells and whistles' (like specially drawn avatars for the participating characters).
The GT08 ended in utter failure.
Instead of having a staff of judges to help spread the workload of looking over the fights, the webmaster (Remeaus) did the judging of every single fight himself. He did not enforce the rules established at the start of the tournament equally across all members participating, allowing some to do certain things, telling others not to; he did not elaborate on his reasoning no matter how much he was pressed; he didn't enforce the IC rules for characters in fights that were explicitly stated to not be violated; and as the judgments progressed they gradually got more and more shoddy, often with Rem refusing to detail what went into them. I myself lost a fight to an opponent who would rewrite actions that had already taken place to cut-off any negative effects to himself (this is referred to as writing an 'Interrupt', since it changes the flow of what the other person posted), and who broke the IC rules repeatedly (killing audience members, leaving the arena's designated area, etc). When I confronted the operator about it, he said he'd never intended to enforce the IC rules in the first place (despite having done so in previous threads).
I cut-off contact with him, and left his staff on www.thegrandtournament.com. The tournament ended when both of the finalists (one of them being the guy that dicked around in my thread with him) got tired of Remaeus' shoddy organizing, and mutually threw the fight by having a giant monster interrupt their battle and eat them. One of them was declared the Champion of the 2008 GT anyway by Remeaus, because he 'felt there had to be a winner, even if both of them threw the fight.' Go figure.
Since I was the only moderator working on the GT's home forum, this meant the GT forum became an unmodded one, and since Rem never appointed anyone in my place, it stayed that way for over two years after being renamed 'The Hall of Records', and gradually became a wreck of a troll haven.
GT2010 was announced by Rem during my time away. But he failed to come even close to getting it organized, so it never occurred.
GT2010 was reannounced in 2011 by Rem, and was going to be hosted on www.thegrandtournament.com. A surprise was that Rem was handing over Administration of the forum to one of his RoleplayGateway admins, Pseudosyne, and Rem himself would just be taking care of organizing the GT while the HoR would run under new management. He also announced that he was working on the Hall of Records 2.0, to correct some of the bugs that had cropped up with the original site, add new features, and overall make it prettier.
Pseudosyne approached me, asking me and another staff member get the HoR forum back into shape. Since Rem was largely out of the operating picture, I accepted. We've buckled down, cleared out a ton of the stuff that's choked the forum, and taking out the inactive accounts and alternates that the more dishonest members set-up, and will soon be getting the scoring ladder back into good order.
Rem, being Rem, failed to provide any updates regarding the GT2010-11. He never even addressed anyone on the objections raised about the rules that he posted for it. So after months of zero communication from him Pseudsyne and I approached another forum member about hosting it on his own site.
The member, Ran, accepted, and his forum staff has begun to organize the Grand Tournament 2011 on his site, Isamahii.
http://isamahii.com/index.php
The Tournament is switching back to the more flexible scheme of the GT06. The detailed rules of the game are in the News and Announcements section of the Isamahii forum. Those of us on the HoR staff will be helping Ran's crew get things going, and we'll be making sure all the fights are accounted for, but the majority of the Tournament will be the effort of Ran and his staff. If you like a competitive environment, imaginative characters (albeit they're going to all be geared towards killing or bloodying foes up), and want to test your skill at battle writing then give the site a gander or ask any questions you'd like. I'm one of the ones helping to get it going this time around, and I'd be happy to help.
Not certain i'd be up for participating in a message board thing. Did enough of that at Nexuscity.net and its parent site RPGNet
Were I not already participating in another similar competition (magetorment's vorish OCT), I would consider joining this.
If you reach a point in the round where one person admits they've been beaten, then the other person moves on and that's that. If the time-limit expires (in this case, one month) and the fight is still in-progress then a judge on the forum reads the thread, and gives the win to the player they felt did the best and was in the advantage when time rand out.
And if your opponent posts an attack, and you fail to respond in 5 days, they can write the damage in. So there's incentive to keep as active as possible.
The retcon abuse you described would totally ruin it for me if I was playing. I'd either just quit or do something silly like summon 'Death Star'.