[MR] "far north" vs was Re: Fall Coronation

[Michael Houghton]

Howdy!

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 9:32 AM, John Gahrmann <twosword at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why does everyone address this as a problem "from far up north" as being a burden? Having lived in the "far Down South" for over 10 years, it can be just as long a drive from remote regions anywhere in the kingdom. This is no special burden to be releived from one that is not placed on another. Central just means it is equally painful to all but those in the center. There is no perfect solution and any solution will require compromises. We simply need to decide which factors are important and what compromises are acceptable.  The current process leaves many compromises and is obviously not serving our best interest.
>
You are absolutely correct. Let's take "up far north" to be equivalent
to "far down south"
for the purposes of this conversation.

There has been a persistent problem getting bids for kingdom events,
and the current
law regarding crown tourneys and coronations makes it impossible to
plan for an event
at a site with a long lead time. Compound that with some groups on the
edge having
their bids rejected for what appeared to be reasons of distance only
(which would be
a criterion not listed) and you have a real problem. Just as we do.

It is tempting to try to settle on one or two relatively central sites
(such as BJP), and
there are benefits to be had from doing so. However, there are costs
that are not
being as freely acknowledged. It is difficult for a team from Highland
Foorde or Bright
Hills or Border Vale Keep to effectively plan and execute an event at
a site that is
six to eight hours away. The effect of centralizing the site will be
to centralize the
folks planning and executing the event. In my opinion, Atlantia not
sufficiently compact
for that trick to be effective in the long run.

Note also that somewhere in the vicinity of 40% of the kingdom's
population is north
of Caer Mear. There is a fair argument that "central" should be "Caer
Mear". Of course,
that makes the drive from South Caroline even longer.

Unfortunately, even with events "centrally located" at BJP, attendance
from folks in
the northern tier has tended to be very sparse. I can't speak to the
same for folks from
the far south, but I would not be surprised if the journey is just as
daunting. Having
events in more geographically diverse locations will give folks at the
edges opportunities
to attend events closer to home. The distribution of late has been
biased southerly.
Concentrating events will also concentrate where the workers come
from, and that's
not fair to the people left feeling that they always have to be the
ones doing the work
nor to those who would love to be able to but can't because it's
always too far to go.

One thing that could mitigate the costs of travel is more emphasis on
the offering of
crash space as Mistress Derbhiled recently noted.

yours,
Herveus

-- 
Michael Houghton   | Herveus d'Ormonde
herveus at gmail.com         | White Wolf and the Phoenix
Bowie, MD, USA            | Tablet and Inkle bands, and other stuff
                          | http://whitewolfandphoenix.com