Nomination for TEAM judge

What with the Supreme Court being in the headlines and the raging fight raging on Billy's blog via nameless people, I felt the need to step forth and offer my services after this tournament is over to be a full time judge on TEAM. I've become a mark for "Britain's Got Talent" over the last month or so and I really feel like TEAM should have 3 very public judges who go over all the matches and make their decisions.

People complain about losing all the time, it's one of the reasons we all get into this hobby, the feeling of being wronged is something I thing we all can really get into.

The problem is that when people lose in TEAM they blame "TEAM" this faceless entity that existed only to incorrectly judge the Rp in their match and give victory to the undeserving party. It's also deeply annoying to lose in TEAM because TEAM is just a straight Rp event, there is no angles to build off of a loss, no storylines to follow up, you lose and you're done, it's a pretty cold reality. You would like to at least understand the logic of why you lost, and public judges would help with that, cause they would have to explain themselves to the public for why they made the decision they did.

So why should I be trusted to judge TEAM? Well I've been in E-Fedding for forever and have seen just about everything, I spend way to much time on this hobby. I understand character development and the finer points of 'smacktalk' Rp, which is what TEAM is. And I have a pretty simple series of criteria for picking a winner.

1) Effort

Effort is what matters most to me, putting the first Rp up. Stacking somebody. I know people are always going on about 'quality vs quantity' and how 1 good Rp should beat 40 bad ones, but why is that? Good is subjective, I mean crap is crap and that's all there is to it, but if somebody gets off a solid first Rp, their opponent replies back with some epic Rp that makes me weep...And then the first guy writes another good reply, and then a stacking good reply...The first guys wins, he was hungry, he wanted it more, that's all there is to it...If you want to win, don't let yourself be stacked, 48 hours is plenty of time to get an Rp up, and this is TEAM, this is a pure Rp wins format, you know what you were getting into when you signed up.

2) Character

Your character is what you are portraying here, so I'd expect to see that, if I don't know your character I'll read your bio and then check out the league your from and read Rp's you've done to get a baseline for your character. Then I'd expect him to stay as that person. He might be fighting a total stranger, but that's something that often happens in TEAM. I want to see your guy being your guy thrown into this match.

"But you spent your whole time burying Christian Daniels for being a murderer"

That was as Doc Silver, hater of horrible gimmicks. As a judge if I'm judging his Rp's I want to see him killing people in clever ways so as to not be caught, I want "Christian Daniels, biker crime lord" rocking the bikerdom, and the crime lord...

3) The debate

This is a buncha smacktalking, I want you crushing your opponent's smacktalk in a coherent way that is true to your character, controlling the flow of the debate. When people don't have very solid talking points in their Rp's it generally means you skimmed your opponent's stuff. That's weaksause, read it and refute it.

4) Most overt pandering to my pet interests*

If it's really close and you're nervous about victory, pander shamelessly. Quote Garbage lyrics, go for B-sides and shit that's really obscure or I won't really feel like your trying. Talk about 'hand-range' and 'M' in relation to poker. Bring up the JFK assassination and who you think did it. Talk about Warcraft. Odds are it's 1-1 in the judging and I'm deciding if all your hard work is going to be rewarded or not, so you might as well placate me.

*= This is all a lie, none of this will help you.

Maybe I should have PM'ed Adam all this, but then I wouldn't have anything to blog about, and besides, I'd want it to be public anyhow, so I figured I'd post it here.

So that's that, off to await round 2 results and remember, if Doc jobs to Cruise it's the greatest outrage in the history of E-Fedding! Expect a redaction filled tirade right after I see that result!

(Or not. I can't honestly worry to much about matches where I'm writing friggin movie Rp's into the threads.)

Fixing TEAM

With all the no shows plaguing TEAM there seems to be a desire to fix the system or do something about it. Fact is now-a-days most of us are very busy, and do our best to get 1-2 promos up per cycle. Unless you're a nut like me or those two maniacs in the Winters/Hart thread in EPW's PPV that's all that's expected of you. Yet for some reason people love the idea of signing up for big tournaments, but Rp'ing for them...That's a bit of work.

So my big answer for TEAM is simple. Make it like a Magic: The Gathering tournament.

MTG tournaments were played at the start in the Swiss Format, with however many rounds needed (You need 5 for 32 people, 6 for 64, 7 for 128 etc.) and then a top 8. Two losses in the swiss effectively shuts you out from top 8.

Swiss format is simple, you play people with the same record as you. You win round 1, you play a winner in round 2, win again, you play somebody else who's 2-0. By the same token, you lose round 1, you're playing an opponent with a loss in round 2...

With this set up you could rig the pairings to give a tough break loss in round 1 to a no Rp'er in round 2 and just declare the match a forfeit...Make it clear that a no show in any round without a *big time* acceptable reason is grounds for your character to lose the next round of the tournament and then be dropped out. "0-2 drop" was a common expression in magic tournaments and a sign your day went really crummy.

The drawback to this is that the tournament goes on a bit longer, cause to win it you could have to Rp for 8 matches instead of 5 in a traditional 32 man knockout tournament, you could make it 5 rounds of swiss and then a top 4 and save a match that way.

I think that having a format like this would create a strong finals, since the people that made the top 8 would clearly deserve it, and the other fun thing it would do is allow for crazy drama.

In the MTG tournaments if you were 3-1 after 4 rounds and had good tiebreakers, you would draw somebody else who was 3-1 with good tiebreakers, the two of you could intentally draw and make top 8...In TEAM that would be an option also, but what if one character just refused to do it, felt it was dishonorable, the drama of risking a sure spot in the top 8 just to be true to himself, his opponent can write outraged promos about what an idiot he's fighting, and how it sucks that of all the people he had to get in the last round, his was the one idiot that wouldn't take a deal.

Just food for thought.