[Archers] Known World stuff

Fri Sep 7 10:58:01 PDT 2012

Okay a few things here. I'm not sure where the politics are coming in as
well but I want to clear a few things up that I am reading to set the record
straight.

1.       The St. Sebastians and Known world shoots were thought about and
actually discussed long before the fall of 2010 by myself, Godai and Seamus.
I still have the original emails that I sent out starting the discussion
topic. We then discussed it with COG and a few others to get input and it
was opened to the forums. I have no energy to "see who's is bigger" on the
matter but the facts are the facts. Not sure why this is even important?

2.       I'm unclear to your reference of opposition to the known world
shoot??? St. Sebastians was born as a starting point to show what Atlantia
could do and what we consistently do in our novelty shoots. My discussions
with Lorelei and the leads from the Mid and East were always that Atlantia
would conduct the first and then it would rotate through the other Kingdoms
so no one kingdom would have to host multiple years in a row. I don't
remember you ever being present at any of those discussions I held so Im
confused? 

3.       I never stated that there would not be a St. Sebastians shoot. My
statement was that I would not lead the St. Sebastian's shoot next year if
for some odd reason the other Kingdoms asked us too. Right now, the East
knows they or the Mid are up to run it. Either way I am shifting my focus to
the Known World Shoot as it is something that I have always aspired to pull
off. Why is this troubling to you in any way? Why would you care? No one has
made any final decisions on anything and I would ask that you don't jump to
conclusions prior to discussion. It was Atlantia's baby to kick it off which
we have done two years in a row, if there is signs that it will fall on the
floor I'm sure we will take it again to make sure it happens (I'm pretty
sure that is what my post stated?)

So once again I will ask that we communicate with each other and not hang on
every word I say. I know this was not the direction I was posting about in
my lat post and I don't wish to turn something positive into negative
things. So let me recap here once again to make sure I am very clear.

1.       Right now next year's St. Sebastian's shoot will be run either by
the East or the Mid as we planned from the start. If they falter we will
have the chance of stepping in to run it again. If that happens I will not
be the MIC for it next year because I am focusing on the Known World Shoot
and I would like to give someone else the chance to run it if they would
like from Atlantia.

2.       The Known World Shoot is not intended to replace the St.
Sebastian's shoot, but if it is to be as grand as planned, I'm not sure how
we would pull off two of them in a limited time and space at Pennsic. In any
event this is in the planning stages and I am just starting to talk to the
other Kingdoms about this. 

In Service,

Janyn

From: archers-bounces at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
[mailto:archers-bounces at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org] On Behalf Of barysears
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2012 10:17 AM
To: archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
Subject: Re: [Archers] Known World stuff

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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