[Steppes] Twelfth Night -- major decision in front of us.

[Faelan Caimbeul]

When I asked about some of the background of all these events last year, the
only reason anyone gave me for Artisan being separate is that is just is.
Period. What brought this up was not having A&S at Warlord. I found this to
be really kind of wrong somehow. We had everything else, heavy and light
fighting, EQ, archery of various flavors, thrown sharp-pointy-things, bardic
. . . A&S was missing. It seems to me that all our titles are given at
Warlord, and that Warlord itself IS the Baronial title competition. By this
line of thinking, Artisan should have been at Warlord all along.

People keep saying Warlord is over loaded. I agree, but, as I have said
before, I'll say again, Warlord isn't overloaded, it artificially
compressed. We're always touting it as a four day event, but it's not, it's
one, Saturday. I agree, there's WAY too much for one day. Yes, there's a
couple small things Sunday, but really, does that make it matter more, not
really. We were packing by noon, we set up all day Friday. That left
Saturday for the event itself. The dead horse of that discussion has been
beaten to a well compacted sheet of furry velum, but I'll sum it up so that
the rest of this makes sense.

Friday Warlord is set-up. No scheduled events.
Saturday is heavy, archery, EQ, thrown, court, peerages, step-up/down (this
time), award court (usually two and several hours long) and bardic.
Sunday is rapier, and clean up.

Does this really sound like a four day event? Not even close.

I have to assume the reason that Warlord was scheduled for a three day,
national holiday, is because it was always supposed to be a three day event,
possibly even four, and almost everyone gets Memorial Day off, often with
pay. So why do we artificially compress all this stuff into such a small
time frame and overlap everything so no-one has time to do more than one
thing. This seems almost criminal to me considering the wealth of things to
do.

Here's my answer to the Artisan question. Add it to Warlod, and make Warlord
truely a three day event. Set up Friday, have events all day Saturday,
Sunday and Monday and break down Monday night. I wouldn't have suggested
that last part, except for the efforts of everyone after 12th night this
year. They broke down the hall and had everything packed in about an hour
and half. With that kind of effort we could easily do Warlord in two or
three hours. Less, if we spread it out more (like breaking down individual
events right after they were over and not going to be used again).

By doing this, you eliminate the pressure of Artisan as well. Now, you don't
have the artisans and judges running a marathon competition in 12 hours in
one day and killing themselves, you can spread that out for 4 hours a day,
over three days. You could even schedule judging times for each competitor
and and the judges so that everyone isn't chained to their table all day.
And, for those that are paranoid about their stuff, we can have security
watching the tables. At night, the hall gets locked. We could even have the
drive by populace votes like last year at Warlord A&S. An extra prize for
the attendee's favorite entry.

This is entirely doable. Plus, it keeps Artisan on the calendar
(effectively), as well as Warlord and 12th night, giving us a major event
for awards in each reign every year. Granted, they're still a little close
together, but we can't move 12th Night (since it's a winter holiday
celebration it makes no sense doing it in September) and Warlord, as was
mentioned, is actually in Kingdom Law that it's held on Memorial Weekend. We
don't want to loose our special status there either.

Another reason for dropping Artisan from the calendar is that 12th Night and
Warlord have traditionally been award heavy, to include peerages. Artisan,
to my knowledge, has never had a peerage, a step-up/down ceremony, or very
many, if any, grant level awards of any kind. Since the ability to give
these kinds of awards, and conduct business of a permanent nature (like
reading in new Laws) and not being able to do these things, is the only
difference between an on and off calendar event, there's no reason to keep
Artisan on the calendar. Giving out our local titles does not require a
calendar event.

Just my 2 and half cents.

Faelan