[Ansteorra] When did this change????

[Michael Tucker]

Greetings from Michael Silverhands:

Thank you, Master Ansgar, for your comments. As usual, yours is a calm
voice of reason.

I've passed on the comments and discussion from this list to Lord
Stefan, the Kingdom Chronicler. If you wish to contact him about this,
feel free to do so. Here's my understanding of the situation:

Bottom line, the Black Star still needs to make some income from the
Kingdom. The stipend is enough for (occasional) "skinny" issues, but
doesn't cover (more common) "fat" issues. If there is no income for the
Black Star, it will be back in the red again before you know it.

If groups are allowed to spread their 3 free pages out over an entire
year, instead of tying them to a single event, most groups will probably
budget their pages (one here, one there...) so they don't pay any fees
to the Black Star, even if they are running up to 3 events per year.
That's good for the groups, but bad for the Black Star. Sooner or later
it comes out of the Kingdom's coffers, one way or another. It's better
to charge a pay-as-you-go fee, than have to resort to fund raisers or
borrowing from the Kingdom (again).

The current policy (3 free pages for one event per group per year)
doesn't cost small groups (or any group, for that matter) who only run
one calendar event per year.

My own two cents: if a group has the wherewithal to run multiple
calendar events in a year, then it has the wherewithal to pay $50 or
$100 for publication fees to help subsidize their Kingdom's newsletter.
If not... then what are they doing running that many calendar events?

[To clarify a point that someone raised: calendar events must be listed
in the official calendar that's published in the Black Star, and they
must ALSO be published in the Black Star. A certain minimum set of
information must be published, including the hosting group, the date,
and the location. Although this could be achieved in Notes and
Challenges (as one person suggested), in general you end up needing a
full page with graphics (to show, for example, a map to the site).
Non-calendar events do not have any of these restrictions. You can even
hold court, you just can't grant armigerous awards or conduct any other
"business of lasting significance" (such as read changes into Kingdom
Law).]

We have way too many calendar events in this kingdom, in my opinion.
Does every group *really* need to run that many? Could we not have
fewer, but higher-quality, events in this kingdom? (Lionesse Tourney,
and Tournament of the Nine Worthies are two events that come to mind.
Elfsea Defender, with its culture camps, is another.) Could we not
forego the desire to have every event we have be a calendar event?
Small, "just  for fun" events could just as well be non-calendar events,
in my personal opinion. For example, Loch Yule Revel is a wonderful
event (one of my favorite events in all the kingdom), and is a
non-calendar event.

Yours,
Michael Silverhands