State of the NAFtion

[Shteve0]

@ Shteve0: I've got to say I would prefer to keep things the way they are as well. Paying for membership has a number of advantages. You also came across quite rude just because someone disagreed with you, it may well not have been intended that way but these things do not always come across the way they were intended on the internet.

My apologies, I didn't mean to offend you Long_Bomb, and you're right, I should not have fed the troll. For what it's worth, I wasn't rude because he didn't agree with me, I was rude because I felt the tone of the poster's response was inappropriate.

Incidentally, I don't know what's more tiresome; the handful of people (and it is a handful) who are genuinely attacking the NAF, or the really rather intolerant mob who greet even the most constructive suggestions for improvement with bile, scorn and waves of negativity. If you're looking for vocal minorities, right now that's pretty much exactly what the NAF membership represents; a vocal minority. Regrettably, GW appears to have reached the same conclusion.

Regardless, this is a thread for ideas, and that's what I'm trying to offer; I'm not claiming they're better than what we have, they're just ideas. You're very welcome to disagree, I fully respect that, and totally welcome arguments delivered in a considered, open, even handed manner.

[Shteve0]

My point being if you don't attend tournaments and don't like the free gift, there is nothing you can do to make people join. Frankly the idea of making it free for those who won't use the services and then increasing subscription for those who do simply to balance the books is stupid.

There is nothing wrong at all with the way the naf is currently run, it is a voluntary organisation for a game, that is all. I frankly do not see why a very verbal minority take the situation so seriously, apart from those parties clearly have nothing better to do with their time apart from moan and post self opinionated rants.....

Not quite; that post of yours I've quoted there is a self opinionated rant, not anything I "or others" have delivered.

Your argument is that you benefit disproportionately from the existing arrangement on the basis of geography and that any solution that might threaten this, even if you would benefit more under the new system, "is stupid". If people don't use the service when it's not free, that doesn't decrease your membership. In theory there's no reason why you wouldn't see a reduction in costs under this model, and it's more even handed in distribution.

[snakees]

I've play only one tournament ranked NAf. But I am a member since three years for five reasons:

• - The dices (always happy to play with official dices and they are great)
  - generate a lot of tournament
  - federate IRL players
  - be a part of an organisation who take care of blood bowl in a good way
  - 10$/year is not expensive. Seriously, if you can't spend 10$ a year for your hobby, you should stop buying miniatures...

My wishes for the NAF future are the followings:

• - Produce official rules for ranked tournament (tiers list advantage, skills and so on)
  - a better ranking definition and explenation
  - more advertising in conventions and miniatures tournaments
  - reset ranking every X years and distribute prices for top ranked players (it will boost competition spirit and give a chance to new players)

Thoses are my feelings as a NAF tournament newbee.

[Darkson]

[mod hat on] That's enough from both of you. [mod hat off]


I do believe those of us lucky enough to live in areas rich in "local" tournaments (UK/some parts of Europe) need to look at what the NAF represents. Suggesting that people that live in tournament poor areas (or widely spaced) don't join so we can leave "as is" is hardly going to help the organisation keep its current size, let alone grow.

I'm not saying I agree with Stheveo's suggestion, but I do think some changes are needed if the NAF wants to continue to be a worldwide group.

[Shteve0]

Sure, all good.

I'm not even sure I agree with my own suggestion, but that's moot. I just see that the current NAF membership numbers represent significantly less than 10% of the number of people who've "liked" Blood Bowl on Facebook, and probably represents in the region of 2-5% of the worldwide Blood Bowl playing community (across all formats). In those stark terms, I think there's a lot of room for growth in membership if we're to prevent the NAF slipping into relative insignificance; which lets face it, would be awful for the community as a whole, members or not.

But, just as an example; I'm looking at hosting a NAF tournament here in Wellington (NZ) in January 2014, potentially taking us to 3 NZ NAF tournaments in the next six months with the return of the MLB in Christchurch later this year; and as part of that I'd like to encourage our local players to sign up to NAF. But I have the mother of all struggles on my hands; as an equivalent, imagine you live in London (just for a moment) and the nearest two tournaments are in Glasgow and Paris - you have the geography and distance equivalents of what we're dealing with here pretty much spot on. Plus, because of exchange rate differences, we're essentially asking our coaches to pay £8 for one or two tournaments' worth of membership a year, tops. If NAF membership for that tournament isn't compulsory, most won't take it up; if it is compulsory, they'll see it as a tax on their attendance.

That's not a complaint; I'm just trying to put across what it's like outside the EU. Maybe if membership were priced on a sliding scale it might be easier to sell it to coaches, or if we could offer free membership for the first year... I don't know. As it stands, I can't see us getting many NAF signups here in Wellington in the next year; I know those that already are members are questioning their renewals, and if that's the case across the rest of the continent, let alone the world, then the NAF is potentially in serious trouble.

[Rewslaun]

I've been an NAF member since the dark green block dice and I have never been in an NAF tournament. I live in Nova Scotia and there really isn't much of a blood bowl scene here. I've always looked forward to getting the new block dice but that isn't the reason I continue to renew. I do it because I want to support the game I love. If they tell me they can't do a free gift but still need my money to keep things going then I'll be first in line to pay.

For a change to help me get more out of my membership I just want to see the community grow. Maybe they could try expanding the number of volunteers and have a representative in every province/state in North America whose job it is to be an ambassador of the game. Working together with the elected NAF volunteers they could support one another and share ideas on the best ways to get Blood Bowl out there to recruit new players. On the NAF website they could list the reps contact info and if someone new comes by they would immediately see who to contact If they are interested in the game and it would be someone living in the same part of the world as them. I think that would have helped me when I first started playing Blood Bowl.

[Long_Bomb]

I do appreciate the difficulties for those trying to reach a critical mass of NAF players but free membership, even just for the first year may cause a number of problems. If membership was free how would you stop people registering more than once. In fact you could register 2000 times and elect yourself president of the NAF.

[Olaf the Stout]

* make the default ranking based on performance over one calender year. You can still access lifetime stats or stats for a specified time period using filters, but turn the default view into one that reflects current and active players.

* introduce a decay factor on lifetime scores. If you don't play Skaven for 3 years, your lifetime ranking for that race shrinks by a factor of K (5% or even 15 points) until you reach starting ELO. Of course, your highest ever ranking will be recorded as well ("kids, I used to be the #1 Goblin player of all time...").

Apologies for only quoting 2 points of a rather detailed post, but I disagree with ranking based only on match results for the last 12 months, and rankings decaying over time.

I'm not sure how the tournament scene is in the rest of the world, but I think such a policy would render the ranking for a lot of people in Australia pretty much irrelevant.

Using my home State as an example, since a BB tournament scene was established in South Australia in 2008, there has been a grand total of 1 NAF-registered tournament per year in the State. That tournament is Southern Shrike Bowl, which I run.

We have 2 other smaller tournaments that have been run multiple times, but one use the DungeonBowl rule set and the other the Street Bowl rule set. As such, those matches results aren't recorded for NAF ranking purposes.

So if I wanted to play more than 1 NAF registered tournament a year I'd have to either drive for 8 hours each way to the next closest tournament, or fly across to a tournament at considerable expense.

Now Australia has what I would consider to be a decent BB tournament scene. There were 25 NAF-registered tournaments run in 2012, so that's one held every fortnight, along with a number of non-NAF registered tournaments. However, since Australia's so large, attending most of them either requires a long car trip, or an plane flight, no matter what State you live in.

So, under your proposal, rankings for the majority of NAF members in Australia would be based on a couple of tournaments at most. In addition, most NAF members would only be able to maintain rankings for just a few races. That's not something I'd want to see personally.

Olaf the Stout

[daloonieshaman]

Years do not matter as much as version
My Khemri pre 6th edition is different than my CRP Khemri due to virtue of skills apples and oranges as opposed to old v/s new apples
nuke all the games prior to CRP <VERY VERY EASY TO DO as you accept the information from a certain date> and I am good for ever as everyone will be on an even keel (open the whining doors as a lot of stats are from older versions and said whiners do not want to loose those)

[Mango]

two of the ideas I posted up earlier in the thread (instructional youtube videos for n00bs and the naf linked sigs) have already been implemented.

From March 2011

- Subtle Advertising. I am sure many of us would see peoples sigs/avatars on some forums proclaiming their clan alligience for whatever game. We could do a push to use NAF sigs around the place, I am sure in the membership there would be some talented sig makers who could make some generic sigs (not using GW IP). I have found that once some people start using sigs, budding artists come out and try and do better, some talented people start to make them for their friends. Start seeing a heap of NAF sigs around the place and people will start asking questions about it "grow interest in the game"

http://talkfantasyfootball.org/viewtopi ... 4&start=30

A good read on reflection, many things I commented on are now more relevant (growing income etc.)

Oh and this one

It brings an interesting point though, is there a treasurer's report available, a budget forcast for the next budgetary year including estimates of reciprocal membership, costs etc.

[Woolfe]

I am not a NAF member. Because I don't play tournies due primarily to family commitments.

I do believe in a larger community however, Ausbowl provides that in Aus, but I don't know about anywhere else.

I am glad this discussion isn't locked away on the NAF site, because frankly I am one of the people the NAF should be targeting, and if I found this level of argument AFTER joining I would be mightily pissed.

On reading this thread a few things appear to have come to light for me.

Lack of change in some areas that have been repeatedly highlighted and that the committee has said it would fix. - My simple answer to this is that if the people who were voted in have failed, then they themselves owe it to the rest to not run next time. If they are unable to complete their promises over an extended period, then either they are incapable due to lack of skill/ability, or due to other commitments. Many people have mentioned the volunteer nature of the committee. So what. If you put yourself up then it is YOUR responsibility to manage your time. If you are finding you cannot commit as you expected, then step down and move aside for someone who can.
Concern regarding Spend and allocation of funds. Are there minutes etc kept for committee meetings? Especially ones that are related to budget? If not, then why not. They don't need to be written minutes, hell someone amongst you must have a smartphone, record the damn things and upload them to Youtube. Then members who do have the time can transcribe them for the rest.
Concern regarding the focus of the NAF - I agree with this. Is the NAF about Tournies, or is the NAF about BB?
Concern regarding the focus on specific tournies over others - I agree, when one member can demonstrate a larger tourney than one of the majors, shouldn't it be considered differently? Perhaps some guidelines for tourneys and benefits could be written or loosely defined, so that people have the opportunity to ask for assistance if needed.
Concern regarding the ranking info - WTH? Surely there are some DB admins out in member land that could help fix the DB problems.
Finally the biggest issue appears to be comms. Not just the Newsletter type comms, but the actual actions of the NAF type comms as well. Easy to fix, create a DL that people can voluntarily sign up for. Plus post on Webpage. And seriously 1200 pound for software to essentially spam a DL. I cannot believe that is the most economically viable option. You span nations, surely there would be someone somewhere in some country, able to do this for a lot less, if not for free.

My suggestions for helping grow BB rather than just tournies.
Bring Leagues in. Start a location based list of Leagues(assuming this doesn't already exist). Start pulling in some of the stats from leagues. Maybe offer to help established leagues with covering costs for league software etc.
Create a League DB. But ensure that there are options to display "variants" Thus league specific rules can be identified so that any comparison of teams in one league to another can be done using specific parameters.

Bring Cyanide and FUMBBL in. Make sure everyone knows the differences, everyone knows how to access them, everyone knows that this section is for TT, this section is Cyanide and this section is FUMBBL.
Create a DB for online leagues. Variants should be even easier to control here as there are limited variations available.

Become a hub for connecting to the other resources. Ausbowl is the place for BB in Australia. So if someone comes to your site from Australia, and they are looking for a forum in another country, have a link to Ausbowl.

Further, make sure that any NAF announcements get announced on those forums. Ausbowl can't be the only countrywide BB forum around. Why aren't you posting details EVERYWHERE. Get people used to the idea of the NAF being synonymous with the greater BB community, but do it by celebrating the smaller communities and bringing them in, rather than trying to force everyone into a single place.

Merch is good, start some cross pollination of merch. Our tournies here often have nice mini's and dice as fundraising. Those funds don't need to be exclusively AUS, if someone in middle of nowhere Europe or America or South America or Africa or Asia wants to ante up, then help them. Be a facilitator. All you need to do is help Person A see product 1 in Country Y. They'll work out the rest and whether they can do the purchasing etc.

Get your members involved. Start putting up requests for help. I cannot believe that in the entire community we don't have any web developers. Hell you couldn't swing a bat without hitting a web dev a few years ago. People are more willing to volunteer if they know what needs doing.
Start asking questions of the membership. Big questions. A good example is the trophy thing. I reckon if you had of pushed that out, with an explanation etc. You may have found that some people may well have donated to it anyway, some may have objected to the amount, but they may not of as well, and you could have simply called a vote if it was controversial enough.
And you are better off airing dirty laundry, so that we can deal and get over it. Otherwise shit simmers and explodes when you least expect it.

Finally I know GW is the original and there is fear of the loss of relationship. Perhaps you should explain the logic behind why you stay with them, when they appear to be abandoning us. I am almost 100% sure there are legal and licensing issues that will be part of the reasoning and that's fine cause we can all understand them. But let us know. That way we can actually understand these issues and when someone says something we can explain it properly.

So in a nutshell, become the centre hub of the BB fan universe, and communicate communicate communicate....

[Elyoukey]

My suggestions for helping grow BB rather than just tournies.
Bring Leagues in. Start a location based list of Leagues(assuming this doesn't already exist).

i think a world sized league would be great. i mean a league where all bb players can play. If you play in this league against your local mates but once in a while you go in another country, you still could play your team against foreigners. Even we could imagine some international tourneys using those teams. You grow up your team locally and face the rest of the world in an event. This of course need to be structurize to avoid cherrypicking and abuse, but this could be really a big IRL bonus for NAF members.

[snakees]

My suggestions for helping grow BB rather than just tournies.
Bring Leagues in. Start a location based list of Leagues(assuming this doesn't already exist).

i think a world sized league would be great. i mean a league where all bb players can play. If you play in this league against your local mates but once in a while you go in another country, you still could play your team against foreigners. Even we could imagine some international tourneys using those teams. You grow up your team locally and face the rest of the world in an event. This of course need to be structurize to avoid cherrypicking and abuse, but this could be really a big IRL bonus for NAF members.

Excellent idea but a lot of work (new gui, new db, new fonctionnality). The team sheet must be stored on naf. The skills must be rolled on naf (to avoid a bit of cheat and compute automaticaly the TV and stats). The cheating factor will always be there (experience assignement and quantity, scores and so on) but we must trust the members.

It could be realy, realy awesome if it works because all casual players could participate (the one who can spend an entire weekend in a tournament).

[sann0638]

My personal thoughts on the last few posts:
- can't see a world league being of interest to much people
- elections don't usually work by people choosing not to stand, they usually work by someone voting for someone else?
- minutes have been mentioned a few times, it's a good point
- league list does exist already, but people don't use it much, despite recent encouragement
- absolutely right about a link to other forums, that's in progress.
- good idea about NAF announcements, that should be something for NTOs to disseminate ideally
- and absolutely requests for help are the way to go, but this all needs managing
- NAF ambassadors is interesting, but the first stage is to get local league players interested in the NAF, rather than non-Blood Bowlers, probably.

And lots of other good stuff, thank you!

[Woolfe]

My personal thoughts on the last few posts
- elections don't usually work by people choosing not to stand, they usually work by someone voting for someone else?

Yep, but if someone can't do it, then they need to step down so that others can step in and take over. I have very little exposure here, as I said I am not a member. But it certainly appears that there is a lot of negativity about claims to do something that don't end up happening. If that's the case then 2 things can happen, people can vote someone out. Or the person can hold themselves to a higher standard and step down. If as this thread has suggested some things have been repeatedly promised and not delivered, then those who promised need to look at themselves honestly, and ask themselves why they made the promise if they couldn't keep it. If the only reason is to stay in a position, or to appease people. Then perhaps they should let someone else step forward.
Again this is not a criticism of anyone specific, because honestly I have only seen snippets of these arguments here and there. But several people raised these issues in this thread, and the only response has been apologies and comments on the "volunteer" nature.
As I have stated, the Volunteer excuse holds no truck in my opinion. If you can't handle it, then don't volunteer for it. By all means stay involved but let someone else who is willing AND able step up and try.
There are so many leagues and tournies run by only volunteers in this community, I cannot believe that only a few are willing to step up and try.

- minutes have been mentioned a few times, it's a good point

With today's technology and access to resources this should be a minimum of what is done.

- league list does exist already, but people don't use it much, despite recent encouragement

Been in BB for about 4 or 5 years now. Its not long compared to others, but its certainly long enough that if NAF were getting the info out there I should have found something like that.

- good idea about NAF announcements, that should be something for NTOs to disseminate ideally

Why, why NTO's. I mean sure, but why make it someone else's responsibility. Get the list of Forums and start communicating with them.
Join Forums once, Copy and Paste, check regularly. NTOs help with the checking and any clarifications.

- and absolutely requests for help are the way to go, but this all needs managing

So ask for help. This IS volunteer work, no one expects you to do everything yourselves. Ask for help and delegate.

And lots of other good stuff, thank you!

I don't think most of these guys want thanks, I think they just want to see the NAF turn into something that it currently isn't. A community that is representative of them all. And Communities need Communication.

Communication, Communication, Communication!!!