Tournament Organizer Participation

The TO may participate in a tournament for which

he or she is responsible only if there is a second

Tournament Organizer present. This second TO

must be present and announced at the beginning of

the tournament, and is responsible for all rulings for

games in which the primary TO is playing.

Tournament Organizers and Judges for premier

championship tournaments (Regionals, Nationals, and

Worlds) are expected to commit their full attention to

organizing and judging the event, and therefore are

not permitted to participate in their own Regional,

National, or World Championship events as players.

The underlined paragraph is a new addition to this document. Many of us have run and participated in our regional this year and had 1 - 2 co-TO/Judges to make rulings on our games. Is anyone aware of any issues with this past regional season where this had to be added to the document? It makes me worry about players stepping up to run a regional in their community.

I know we can just ignore this, but if FFG knows you are running the regional then reporting yourself as a winner is incriminating.

What are people's thoughts on this?

In my opinion, the person passionate enough about thrones to organize a regional, is most likely doing so because he or she wants to play. I think it highly unlikely that someone would be willing to organize a tourney just for the sake of it (Unless your last name is Faherty). So it creates a bit of a conflict. The text seems to indicate that FFG wants most regionals to be FLGS organized rather than player organized.

I don't think the addition was prompted by "issues" of bias, collusion, unsportsmanlike conduct or anything like that. My guess is that it's an organizational thing that asks TOs to consider the integrity of the event before they participate.

People have long asked me why I don't play at Gencon when I'm judging. Seriously, with all those games going on and the size of the hall, it can be hard enough to call me over quickly when a question arises. Now imagine that you had to find me and tear me away from my turn in the game. Am I thinking about your question or my game? And imagine you are the person playing against me who has to put the game on hold for a minute or two every 5 minutes or so while I answer questions. In a tournament of that size, if your attention is split between playing and judging, you probably aren't doing either one as well as you could, or should, be doing it.

And let's face it, when the event is not run well (because the TO is phoning it in), the whole thing is a lot less fun.

So I think there is some wisdom in the rule. Personally, I think it is more of a numbers thing than it is a "tournament level" thing and that if your regional is only about 20 people, you're probably OK playing. But FFG had to draw the "think about it" somewhere.

It's going to be hard to find non-playing judges. Even at Stahleck, almost all judges play during the qualifying rounds (including the Head Judge) - during the final rounds, however. the separation is complete (the TO and scorekeeper do not play at all). While I understand the need for impartial judges, it will be hard to ask people who have come a long way to choose between judging and playing.

The sad thing is, the only badly run regionals that I went to this year were the ones run by store employees. NYC will be just find next year because MDC doesn't play. And if Corey is content to sit out in DC again, great. But this makes me wary of traveling to events I know less about.