Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Here are some thoughts on Nationals in the future that I would like to see. These are suggestions that I believe would be beneficial to Nationals. I am not in any way putting down all the hard work of Rob, or the Elders with these suggestions. Having helped Crachfach here for our Knoxville Nationals, I know all the work that goes into this event, and I want to see it done the best it can be with the greatest amount of people. So here it goes.

1. Move Nationals to the last full weekend of July.
Why?
A: So it's the same week every year. Consistency & planning are vital.
B: For many of us in the South, school has started in August, and it's hard for us to pull kids out of school for the weekend. For instance, in our area, two counties started the first week of August. In my county, teachers had to report the first week of Aug. which impacts me since my wife is a teacher. This makes getting to Nationals extremely difficult.

2. Set the Nationals Place 6 months in advance
Why?
A. Vacation planning is vital when you have to ask off of work. The further out we know, the better we can plan.
B. Airline ticket, if you fly, are typically cheaper the further out you book your flight.

3. A Rotation of places.
I think this is already done pretty good, but I think if we lay out a game plan for the next several years, it will be an overall help.

Like I said, these are just suggestions and I would like to hear some other input from you'll as players and also from the Elders.
 

Hey,

The dates for nationals is something I intend to bring up with the elders in the next couple months.  Any dates we choose will inevitably cause problems for some, but we do want to as accommodating as possible.  In particular several elders have been unable to make it in recent years which has resulted in a very small number of people running the event.  If we can changing the dates means more elders can make it and it happens to help out people in the south too, it seems like a win-win.

Nationals is usually set in February or March, and this year plans were well underway by that point too, but those plans fell apart and we had to come up with a back up plan, which is why it was announced so late this year.

Location is limited to where there is a decent size local playgroup with a facility that can handle the size of nationals.  Which restricts our ability to rotate somewhat.  Playgroups can also grow and fall apart quickly, which means planning out several years ahead tends to not work well.

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

I will reply to these out of order since 2 of them are short replies:

2:  6 months is normally what happens, Tim pointed out the specific situation this year.

3:  a rotation does exist to some extent.  Nationals is never in the same region 2 years in a row and usually only visits the same region every 3 years.  It is impossible to schedule the region it will visit multiple years in advance because as Tim pointed out, the play groups are not stable enough to guarantee a location years in advance.

1:  many probably don't realize it, but before 2005, Nationals was in October and was only 2 days.  We made it a 3 day event and moved it to early August in 2005 to make the days shorter (categories sometimes went until midnight before that) and to make it easier for school schedule considerations.

  The dates of Nationals each year are decided by a combination of Rob, the available judges, and the host.  Looking at the last 10 Nationals, one has been the last weekend in July, five have been the first weekend in August and four have been the 2nd weekend in August.
 
The problem we usually run into with July is family vacations and also there are a number of players/judges that either teach or attend summer school.  And above all, Rob has usually had a conflict with late July.  Regardless of when you have it, there will be scheduling conflicts, but over the years, the first or second week of August has been the time with the fewest issues for Rob and the others running the tournament as well as the majority of players.  (This year was an exception for Rob and most of the regular Nationals judges, but a July date would not have changed that)

So my feeling on this is that we will never be able to set a specific weekend to be Nationals every year due to different schedules each year, however it will most like always be one of the 3 weekends it has been for the last 10 years based on availability of the above mentioned people.

thanks
Chris