Proposal for New Rosters

[Vanguard]

In response to the current, largely negative, debate regarding Cyandide’s Brettonian and Khorne rosters I’d like to put forward an alternative argument. I think the NAF should be open to additional rosters and even actively encouraging and developing new rosters.

As far as I can see, there are a few common arguments against the NAF endorsing new rosters:
• That the Roster is broken
• That the roster is dull/boring/unimaginative
• That the NAF shouldn’t (or don’t have the authority) to make rules changes
• That it will splinter the player base

I don’t believe any of these arguments are sufficient for the NAF to avoid endorsing new rosters.
The first argument is, in my eyes, the most important one and the one closest to being valid. Yes, it is vital that new rosters should not be broken. That is they should not unbalance the existing ruleset. The current range of 24 rosters have a statistical win ratio of about 45-55%, generally recognised as the three tiers of teams. As long as a new roster fell somewhere in that spectrum (and within a slightly larger spectrum versus individual teams) then it could be reasonably argued that it was no more or less powerful than existing teams. I’ll touch later on my proposal for how this could be achieved and documented, but essentially statistical documentation that a new roster performs to a similar level as existing teams should counter any argument that the roster is broken.
The second argument covers a wide range of complaints but they can generally all be summed up as “I don’t like the roster”, which is fine. Everyone is entitled to dislike rosters. We have a few TFF notables who are (in)famous for their dislike of specific existing rosters. No-one is forced to play specific rosters, so why should your dis-like of a roster prevent someone else from playing it? Equally, why should it prevent a roster from being endorsed by the NAF?
The final two arguments are related, in that they suggest any changes the NAF make or endorse could have a negative impact on the wider BB community. With regards to additional rosters, I do not believe that this would be the case. Firstly, we are discussing additional rosters, not rules changes. All BB coaches will still be using the same ruleset, wherever they play so I can’t see how that would splinter the community. Secondly, NAF endorsement really only carries any weight in NAF tournaments (and leagues, as NAF involvement there improves) so it is only impacting on that specific subset of the wider BB community. Different leagues and tournaments have their own unique house rules. In fact, the generic NAF tournament style (Swiss, Resurrection, 1.1M TV, 6 skills) is just a collection of house rules that have been widely adopted. As it stands at the moment, in order to be a NAF approved tournament, it has to include the 24 NAF races but can include additional rosters if the TO desired. The current downside to this approach is that coaches could potentially take Khorne/Bretts/Apes to a tournament but wouldn’t have their matches recorded and neither would their opponents. Alternatively, if the NAF opened up to these rosters , which are already in use, they would be providing a better service to their members by recording all matches.

In order to ensure that a new roster was suitable for NAF endorsement, I’d suggest two broad stages of development and testing.
There would be a phase of initial testing, probably not requiring any involvement from the NAF at all, where a roster is played in few leagues and tournaments. Typically, I’d expect this to be started by the roster designer and then picked up by other leagues/tournaments that were interested. All that is required from this small-scale testing is a general opinion that the roster is not obviously broken or unplayable. Essentially, this would be down to the roster designer (or champion) to playtest and tweak the roster until they feel it is ready for submission.
Following that, and this is where the NAF would become involved, the roster would be endorsed by the NAF as ‘experimental’. This would mean that there was a specific, documented roster that was available to be optionally included in tournaments and that the NAF database was updated to accommodate it. This would then allow the NAF to collect a large sample set of data from around the world over a period of one or more years. The experimental rosters could then be reviewed every year. If there was sufficient statistical evidence that the roster was performing within the acceptable range then the roster could be given full NAF endorsement. Alternatively, if it was under or over powered, the roster could be tweaked slightly and remain in the experimental stage. If a roster was not being played sufficiently, it would indicate that the NAF community was not interested in it and it could then be dropped.
Once a team moved to NAF endorsed status, it would effectively be treated in the same manner as Chaos Pact/Slann/Underworld and become a required option for NAF tournaments. I would expect it to take a minimum of two years data to reach this stage and probably more for a roster to achieve general acceptance.

How this process was handled by the NAF is really an internal matter for them. I suspect that experimental rosters would have to be kept to a manageable level, probably no more than one or two at a time. I would assume that the NAF committee (or some sub committee) would have to look at all the proposed rosters and select the one(s) that they felt were most interesting/desirable for consideration.

In summary, I can’t see why the NAF (carefully and deliberately) endorsing new rosters could be considered a bad thing. New rosters and options should help freshen the game up and bring new challenges to old coaches. FUMBBL has several additional rosters and, while I’m not suggesting a wholesale adoption of FUMBBL’s setup, it certainly hasn’t caused the BB world to implode either.

[dode74]

I think the NAF should be open to additional rosters and even actively encouraging and developing new rosters.

Is it up to them?

[J_Bone]

I love all of this... Very well thought out and seems very reasonable!

[Wifflebat]

This is almost exactly my own thinking on new rosters for Blood Bowl. Thanks for typing it up so I don't have to!

I think the NAF should be open to additional rosters and even actively encouraging and developing new rosters.

Is it up to them?

But that's the thing... It works itself out! They're not changing the rules in this scenario--just adding rosters. (And I think that's where they should stop, but that's maybe because I love the rules as they are.) What we need to know is the number of people who 1) think that the NAF is an unacceptable body to be approving new rosters and 2) play or wish to play in NAF tournaments. If there really are a ton of devoted NAF-tournament players who will lose their minds if Bretonnians get NAF-approved status, then nothing will ever get off the ground. (Also, the game will never change again barring GW involvement. I don't think this is a terrible scenario either. Like I said, I'm pretty happy with things as they are.)

For the rest of the community, then, the NAF rosters would (I hope) hold the status of "widely used house rule rosters," or "well, kind of official" rosters.

[spubbbba]

In summary, I can’t see why the NAF (carefully and deliberately) endorsing new rosters could be considered a bad thing. New rosters and options should help freshen the game up and bring new challenges to old coaches. FUMBBL has several additional rosters and, while I’m not suggesting a wholesale adoption of FUMBBL’s setup, it certainly hasn’t caused the BB world to implode either.

All the additional FUMBBL rosters are kept away from the Ranked and Blackbox divisions that make up 80% of the games played on the site. The League division would still have very few games featuring Apes. Stunty division is kept separate and the standard stunty teams were actually removed from there to keep it unique. So there is not really any precedent of new "official" races being added. A far better comparison would be to how many choose to pay for Khorne if they get added to Cyanide's BB2 in comparison to other less popular teams like Underworld.

Before the NAF go adding new teams should they not consider looking at the existing rules and teams we have now? You might get more people in favouring of fixing amazons and Khemri or altering the much maligned Clawpomb.

I think there is a very real danger of fracturing the playerbase and have heard it happen to other specialist games. There is enough confusion about which rules set should be used out of 3rd edition, lrb4, lrb5 and crp.

[Vanguard]

I think the NAF should be open to additional rosters and even actively encouraging and developing new rosters.

Is it up to them?

Why not? We're talking about NAF tournaments and leagues here for NAF members. Why shouldn't they make decisions for that specific subset of the BB community. As I said, the NAF essentially has an accepted set of house rules when it comes to tournaments, this should be no different.

Before the NAF go adding new teams should they not consider looking at the existing rules and teams we have now? You might get more people in favouring of fixing amazons and Khemri or altering the much maligned Clawpomb.

I think there is a very real danger of fracturing the playerbase and have heard it happen to other specialist games. There is enough confusion about which rules set should be used out of 3rd edition, lrb4, lrb5 and crp.

This is where I'd disagree and suggest you're at more risk of splintering the playerbase. Putting aside the ruleset issue (certainly within the NAF LRB6 is the accepted standard) changes to existing rosters are more devisive than new rosters. If the NAF tweak the Amazon roster, they're going to upset all the players who didn't want it changed and all the players who wanted them changed but in a different way. It also means confusion for new NAF members who are familiar with the GW roster and then realise that the NAF have overruled it.
With new rosters, there's no 'sacred cow' to desecrate. It's all brand new and doesn't directly impact any existing rules. It's also a much easier sell to new members as it's the official GW rules with extra teams.

When it comes to fixing or altering existing teams, I can't see anyone have enough recognised authority to do so. The idea of resurrecting the BBRC raises it's head every so often, but I'll be very (pleasantly) surprised if it happens.

[juck101]

I don't see why a Naf event cant allow non-naf sanctioned teams to be honest. I think the popularity of the computer game really is not to be ignored and probably excluding newer ideas is not a good idea for our community unless we want to shrink.

Figures dictate a lot of this also

[Daht]

The big issue to me, is no matter how much the NAF does, if the game stagnates, it can only shrink.

The main rulebook is kind of untouchable as it's available thru GW still and cyanide. New teams and minor tournament-specific tweaks are all the NAF can really do without having to steer people away from the actual rulebook, which is very bad for new players.

I do think a team on the officially liscenced video game, if vetted to be reasonable to play without being unbalanced (which the Khorne team has tons of data at this point to show it is not broken balance wise) should be allowed in. If the Brets are the current plasmoid version we should have some data already and obviously will get tons after release to consider them as well.

Religiously preserving the game from 10+ years ago from any influence or adjustment is great if you are collecting it to sit on a shelf, not good for trying to keep the game active.

[Chris]

Commissioning new teams into Cyanide could be a way to widen the pool and use some of the NAF's billions.

[Joemanji]

In summary, I can’t see why the NAF (carefully and deliberately) endorsing new rosters could be considered a bad thing. New rosters and options should help freshen the game up and bring new challenges to old coaches.

Good post, very interesting and well considered. The flip side, and to answer the quoted question, is that introducing new rosters will drive away the casuals, fracture the community (with arguments over just which rosters we should use) and seal us off from new players (who would find playing a roster they've never heard of very frustrating and demoralising). As a hardcore Blood Bowl nutcase, I'm all for innovation and developing the game. But the sad fact is that doing so (without official GW support) will probably just shrink the player base.

[mzukerman]

I agree with Vanguard and some others. Keep the game relevant by having the NAF add some new rosters - just don't do too much at once or you have confusion which is what will splinter the community.

[Darkson]

@Daht - the rules aren't available through GW and haven't been since they dropped all support for BB.

[Daht]

Oh, thought they still had the link thru specialist games.. it's still downloadable from cyanide, right?

Either way, the NAF is missing out ignoring the Cyanide game, as 90% of the hassle of community development is already done.. I think the "casual" playerbase for blood bowl is more likely to be upset not being able to use teams from the games than being upset at them in, as outside the video game audience I don't know where there are any casual blood bowl fans left.. by default anyone following and buying physical product for a game so long discarded and out of print loses the 'casual' label.

[Kilowog2814]

I'm all for new races. Anything that adds to the game(that's optional) is good in my opinion. Keeps stagnation away.

The NAF may not be the end all and be all of Blood Bowl, but since they have the ranking system and most tournaments are NAF Approved, then they would be the likely front people to approve/disallow teams.

I don't know the best way to do it, but if they could just allow an "Other" into the ranking, then that would allow other teams being used in sanctioned events. I know some tournaments HAVE created races or allowed prior created ones and they get ranked as Chaos Pact. If they can allow that, I don't see why they can't allow others.

Of course, I don't want to see 20 races each year and every tournament having weird rosters pop up... but in moderation it could be good.

[Gaixo]

Someone might have entered Khorne or Apes as Chaos Pact, but it shouldn't have been authorized and is not official policy. I'd sure like to hear some more details about the situation you've described.

Tournaments are allowed to include unsanctioned races, with the caveat that matches involving those teams don't count. Even that is relatively controversial so far as the committee is concerned, as most of them weren't aware it was going on until very recently.