[Archers] Known World stuff

[barysears]

I would really like to think that, as archers, we could keep politics 
out of it, but apparently not.

barre

On 9/7/2012 9:21 AM, Holly Gibbons wrote:
> Greetings, Atlantian Archers.
> I have not been on the archery lists much this past year, but this one 
> really caught my eye.
> 1.First off, I think we need to remember our history as we go forward 
> in the planning for a known world championship. The discussions on 
> this whole topic really got going a long time ago, on the archers' 
> list, in the fall of 2010. I recall that it was Fen and I that first 
> wrote and were soon joined by all the others of you who were unhappy 
> with the archery experience at Pennsic. The motivation for running a 
> shoot parallel but different from the "champions' team" was plain and 
> simple unhappiness with the status quo. Every year at Pennsic archers 
> from all over the known world gathered and wanted to play their game 
> and compete against each other, compete against archers from all 
> across the kingdoms. We watched as the Thrown Weapons folks had a ton 
> of fun running their championships and we wondered, why can't archers 
> have the same fun? Yet, year after year, the Mid and East controlled 
> everything and severely limited the number of Atlantians that could 
> shoot the champions team war point. Most really good Atlantian archers 
> were left shooting only the populace targets day after day. Not much 
> fun and not happy. There was just horrendous bad karma surrounding the 
> whole champions shoot. So bad that it was totally turning off many of 
> Atlantia's best archers from participating at all - - some didn't even 
> take their bows to Pennsic! So in the fall/winter of 2010, since we 
> had no control over the official Pennsic stuff, we all decided to put 
> on our own shoot. At that time, I was one of the ones in favor of 
> making this "extra shoot" a Known World Archery Championship. It made 
> sense to me that since we were all at Pennsic and since many archers 
> already traveled for long distances to be there, that it was our best 
> shot for a real known world competition. But in the discussions on the 
> list, most Atlantians wanted a non-exclusive, relatively 
> non-competitive, shoot. There was just a strong sense of "enough with 
> the competition already." So that's what we did, we decided to hold an 
> open, fun, not particularly competitive shoot (although there were 
> scorecards and prizes), and we called it St. Sebastian's Shoot 
> (thanks, Siegfried!) and purposefully left out any wording about 
> championship or known world. The ulterior motives were to (a) show the 
> known world what kind of wonderful novelty shoot Atlantia could put on 
> (b) contribute to Pennsic archery in a positive way (c) demonstrate 
> that it is possible to run 150 or more people through a novelty shoot 
> in one day, as a way to try to convince the powers-that-be to open up 
> the "champions' team" to a larger size so more Atlantians could shoot, 
> and (d)to have fun putting on a shoot together. So for two Pennsics we 
> have put on St. Sebastian's Shoot, with great success as measured by 
> the smiles, the children, the amazing targets, the "thank-you" 
> comments, and the sense of happiness and camaraderie on the archery 
> range. I have been really proud to be an Atlantian Archer, as I'm sure 
> many of you have been, too. All the other stuff has somehow become 
> moot. I felt no compunction to do any other shooting, nor any bad 
> karma during my vacation.
> 2.Which leads me to the present discussions. After strongly opposing 
> any mention of "known world" or "championship" for our big Pennsic 
> shoot, which lead to the St. Sebastian's Shoot and its focus on 
> inclusiveness, suddenly there was a new push in 2011 for just that 
> very thing, an ultra-competitve known world archery championship! So 
> we then decided on the archers' list that it is a big world and there 
> should be room for everything. I think it was said there should be 
> room for St. Sebastian's on the range and for cog's dog-and-pony show 
> at the castle, too - - the more archery the merrier! And that's pretty 
> much where things were left off. After some discussion of a symposium, 
> a stand-alone archery event, it dwindled. I do think it is most 
> sensible to attach any "known world" event to Pennsic, just the most 
> logical choice.
> 3.That said, the present talk right now is of a known world 
> championship consisting of another novelty, multi-target shoot with 
> archers keeping their own score and then a shootout at the end. I am 
> afraid we are reinventing the wheel here. But much more troubling to 
> me, as someone who has worked hard on the two St. Sebastian's Shoots, 
> is the revelation in the new posting that somehow, unilaterally, St. 
> Sebastian's Shoot has gotten scrapped by the authorities. The East has 
> been informed that we do not want to hold St. Sebastian's next year? 
> Was there a consensus on this? Whose decision is this to make? Janyn? 
> I disagree that the "original" intent was to hand off the shoot to 
> other kingdoms. That was never in my understanding of it. Yes, it is 
> great if other kingdoms wanted to do that, but there was also quite a 
> bit of, this is Atlantia's baby and we like it that way.
> 4.As a public spectacle, cog's dog-and-pony show , I absolutely love- 
> adore! - the idea of a shootout in front of the castle. But I have 
> seen the jockeying and cheating that goes on and I would say, do not 
> have a pre-shootout qualifier multi-target shoot-at-your-own-pace 
> event to pick teams.Have any of you watched the way they do things at 
> Thrown Weapons? Four competitors in front of four targets. Two throws 
> and you rotate. Repeat. When those four are done, bring on the next 
> four. Marshals score the hits. It is very efficient, very public, very 
> fun. If you really have a crowd of archers to run through in a very 
> small amount of time, it could be even more efficient if you only got 
> two or three arrows, period. You could have four archers at a time 
> shooting at each of four identical targets. Up and out. (Seen Brave?) 
> Then take the top scorers and have your shootout. All public, all with 
> a crowd. And we absolutely could pull this off in 2013. It's just not 
> that complicated -- that is the beauty of it. Getting on the 
> battlefield schedule is the hardest part.
> 5.This idea that you can call for targets from each kingdom is one 
> that has been bandied about endlessly. But as every MIC who has tried 
> it knows, it does not work. How many times have "target competitions" 
> been announced -- you know, bring your best target and we will let the 
> populace vote on their favorite -- only to have no targets show up? I 
> won one of those once because mine was the only target. Someone from 
> the East actually said, at Pennsic, that the East would do like to 
> that next year for a novelty shoot at Pennsic. She actually said,"we 
> have a great idea, everybody else will bring the targets and the 
> people will vote and we will give prizes but not have to do the work 
> !" It told her we call it the lazy MIC shoot. Good luck with that. And 
> even if you can get targets from every corner of the earth, who is to 
> put a cohesive shoot together out of all the orphan targets?
> 6.Anyway, I am writing for several reasons. One, I hate to see 
> Atlantia walk away from St. Sebastian's Shoot, especially without some 
> kind of public forum on that choice. Two, I like the public shootout 
> as a separate stand-alone Pennsic event. Three, I just want to remind 
> everyone of all that has led up to this point in time.
> Nuala
> *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
> Original Message:
> Good evening everyone, now that we are back from Pennsic and hopefully 
> well
> rested I wanted to take a minute to discuss something with you. Around 
> this time
> last year THL Christophe and I started a discussion about trying to 
> hold the
> first known world archery championship. Our thoughts were that Pennsic 
> would be
> the most opportune place because we could capitalize on all of the 
> archers there
> from the known world. I wanted to start this discussion now because I 
> firmly
> believe that if we start now we will not be ready for Pennsic next 
> year but we
> could target 2014. Also there is no way myself or even a few of us 
> could pull
> this off alone. If COG is willing I would throw my hat and hopefully 
> his into
> the ring to lead this event. With that said, we would need a lead also 
> for each
> kingdom for archery related items, an autocrat like lead to help with
> communications and inter-kingdom discussions and I'm thinking an 
> exchequer like
> lead because I'm thinking we would want to charge a small fee if we 
> want to get
> some very nice prizes. If not we could drop this last position. In 
> addition we
> would need volunteers again to help marshal and make some targets.
>
> Unlike St. Sebastian's, I was thinking that each of the participating 
> kingdoms
> could make 2 or 3 targets to enter into the competition. This part is 
> still
> fuzzy but I was thinking that we could hold basically eliminations by 
> the way of
> an all day shoot like St. Sebastian's to pair the teams down to a 
> final 4. The
> whole point of this would then be to have a shoot off of those final 4 
> teams in
> front of the populous on the battle field (yes I know scheduling will 
> suck, that
> is why we would do this 2 years out), to a final champion team of the 
> known
> world. Team sizes would be 18 -24 and this would be a total points 
> competition.
> This part is also fuzzy still but I was thinking that we could make it
> interesting by making each of the team positions cover GBE, BE, BOWMAN,
> MARKSMAN, etc...
>
> I have been mentioning this to Lord Godric of the East and this year 
> while at
> the range at Pennsic, I overheard him talking with his deputy about 
> trying to
> start communications about this event. I would love for Atlantia to 
> pull this
> off but I need to know how you all feel and if you're up to something 
> of this
> level? I don't believe for a minute that the East will pull this 
> together for
> next year since they can't seem to even run the St. Sebastian's as it 
> should be,
> but I would hate to lose this shoot to someone else because we didn't act.
>
> So, that is that. I just wanted to start the discussion again over the 
> fall and
> winter months to see where our excitement level is? If we decide to 
> proceed I
> will get word to Godric and we would need to form the core team 
> quickly. That
> way we could start to get the word out to the other Kingdoms and try 
> to get the
> logistics in place to lay the foundation. I told the East that we did 
> not want
> to run St. Sebastian's next year because we wanted to move up to this 
> event. In
> all honesty the intent of St. Sebastian's was that Atlantia would run 
> it the
> first year and hand it off to the mid or east to run it next and then 
> rotate
> through so no Kingdom had to repeatedly run it. I took it back this 
> year because
> there was little interest from the east or others to run it at the 
> level we are
> used too. I will still probe the East later this year to find out what is
> happening with the novelty shoot for Pennsic next year. We can worry 
> about that
> later....
>
> In Service,
>
> Janyn
>
>
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