Welcome to the 78th Baptism of Fire [BoF] tournament, being hosted by Farfadillis and Mertagne. This is the in-character [IC] thread for the tournament, and confirmed participants may begin posting rosters and roleplays [RPs] from this point on. If you are not a confirmed participant or if you wish to make an out-of-character [OOC] comment, please do not post here. OOC comments should be posted in the World Cup Discussion Thread [WCDT].
The BoF is a tournament for new nations to the World Cup [WC]. As such, this opening post [OP] is divided into two sections:
- The first section is for entirely new players. If you are new to the NS Sports forum or to football roleplaying, or perhaps returning after a long absence, we strongly recommend you read this section.
- The second section is a specific guide to this tournament and all participants, regardless of whether you are an experienced player or not, must read it as it contains specific, novel information pertinent to this tournament.
Table of contents
Well. It seems you have decided to venture into the world of NS Sports. Or should I say multiverse? Multiverse, definitely. Many questions will arise, and we seriously cannot cover them all. Some will always escape us, and there probably will be new ones brought up by you. However, we can cover the basics.
First of all, you might ask yourself, how does everything work? Well, quite simply, nations sign up, and they get into the competition (or its qualifying stage, if any). There are very few exceptions to that. Then there’s group draws and the like. Pretty simple so far.
Then, you have to post your roster. Surely, your nation is represented by people. Wait, actually, sentient species. Make it species. Actually, just make it something. We’ve had sentient blancmanges competing before, so just something will do. Anyway, you should definitely post a roster. As this is the Baptism of Fire, you most likely will have to start from scratch… which is awesome. You can create your star, your scapegoat, your captain and your manager. Choose their name. Their sex. Their species. Their personality. Their way of playing. Their position. Anything! The more detailed, the better. You can use name generators, or even player generators (if you can be bothered to make one). Maybe your nation uses English names. Maybe your nations uses Portuguese names. Maybe your nation has its own unique names. Maybe your nation uses codes instead of names. You’re free to choose. Finally, you can choose your style modifier. It’s a number ranging from -5 to +5, which determines how defensive/offensive your team is. -5 is a maximally defensive team; analogously, +5 is a maximally attacking team.
Then there’s the way of producing scores. We don’t pull them out of our posteriors just like that. That would not be professional. We let random numbers pull results out of their posteriors, minimizing our liability! But, seriously, scores are far more complicated than most other things.
There’s basically three things our score generators (scorinators from here on out) take into account. First, rank. That will not be a problem for this competition - everyone’s new, and therefore have a ranking of 0. Second, roleplaying bonuses. That’s the biggest part of the entire game. If you want to go far, you must RP. Rosters fall into this category, too. Basically, at it most basic, you can roleplay your match by writing a report about it. You can also roleplay a revolution, one of your players killing your president, or literally anything. RP’s are graded by hosts, and they will influence your performance. Think of them as PEDs, except they’re encouraged and the system won't care if you use them. So, PEDs (Disclaimer: this is a purely out-of-character perspective; your approach to actual, in-character PEDs is for you to decide). Anyway: the better your RP’s are, the better your team will fare. Similarly, the more you RP, the better your team will fare, in the sense that there are various instances for you to RP, which we will call matchdays. There's a set max bonus for each matchday, so RPing frequently is a much better strategy than blowing all of your creative energy on matchday one.
All of this does beg the question, however: what stops NS Sports from becoming a writing competition?
Well, it’s the randomness. There’s three R’s for scores: Rank, RP and RAND. Randomness is what makes things interesting. Basically, the best RP’er does not get a guaranteed win, just better chances. Many upsets have happened, and you should definitely never write your team off. Randomness can be a pain in the behind for some, and some kind of Godly gift for others.
Randomness is frequently referred to as “Margaret” here. Think of her as some kind of Chaotic Neutral Goddess. That should go straight into the NS Sport Glossary section of your brain. She will be mentioned frequently. You’ll get to know her to her full extent if you stay long enough.
Lastly, there’s somewhat less important things like permissions, cut-offs and other things. Permissions are what you allow your opponent to do with your players/nation/etc. Do you allow them to card your players? What about sending them off? And what about injuring them? And making all the goals of the match incredibly unbelievable? What about kidnapping your entire team and making you lose by default? All of this is covered by our handy permission box, which will be available for copy pasting at the end of this section. Cut-offs are when the hosts (in this case, Farfadillis and Mertagne) post saying cut-off and maybe add something to the post so it's not too drab. It means no more RP’s will be graded for that matchday. Soon after the cut-offs, results are posted. Often, they’re edited into the cut-off post, so refresh the page frantically. Or be patient. Either works.
This is just your first step here. Contrary to what the size of this forum may hint at, it’s generally agreed by everyone in this small subcommunity that we are the subforum with the most organized way of RPing. You may find yourself pouring your heart into this game-within-a-game soon! Anyway, best of luck to all participants, regardless of whether you end up staying in NS Sports or not.
Don’t forget to check the stickied threads! They’ve got some important information in them.
If you're interested in what other, smarter people have written to introduce BoFers to NS Sports in the past, feel free to check out the following: 1, 2.
Finally, as promised, here's an example of a roleplay permission box (with no permissions yet set):
- Code: Select all
[box][b]My opponent, if they RP first, may do the following:[/b]
Choose my goalscorers: Yes/No
Godmod scoring events: Yes/No
RP injuries to my players: Yes/No
Godmod injuries to my players: Yes/No
Hand out yellow cards to my players: Yes/No
Hand out red cards to my players: Yes/No
Godmod other events: Yes/No[/box]
Teams will be randomly sorted into X groups of 4, with the eventual format still up in the air as we do not yet have a final sign-up list. Each team will play each other team in their group once. Draws will be permitted during the group stage. The final standing in each group will be according to the following tiebreakers:
- Points
- Goal difference
- Head-to-head result
- IC coin flip/drawing of lots (OOCly, matches are scorinated using the RP bonus accrued by each nation)
Matches in Groups A-D will be scorinated and ICly played in Mertagne, while matches in Groups E-H will be scorinated and ICly played in Farfadillis.
GROUP A
Football Tiger
Kyhun
Maphidon
Fort McKinley
GROUP B
Aleirave
Gortolekua
Caribbia
Unpleasant
GROUP C
Hopal
Macbon
Montesina
TotoMishin
GROUP D
Trollish Islands
Cardenao
Kuraita
Forbidden Territories
GROUP E
New Eestiball
Stresia
Delte
Serdtgyu
GROUP F
Reorganized Portugal
StrayaRoos Barrier Islands
Efnakia
Mon Sold
GROUP G
Gardelrya
Sudilia
Tjorl
Tyskerlund
GROUP H
Tekatus
Gadria
Kamisato Ayaka Nation
Potenzia
22 APRMATCHDAY 1
1 vs 4, 2 vs 3
23 APRMATCHDAY 2
4 vs 3, 1 vs 2
24 APRMATCHDAY 3
2 vs 4, 3 vs 1
26 APRROUND OF 16
R1Winner A vs Runner-Up B
R2Winner C vs Runner-Up D
R3Winner B vs Runner-Up A
R4Winner D vs Runner-Up C
R5Winner E vs Runner-Up F
R6Winner G vs Runner-Up H
R7Winner F vs Runner-Up E
R8Winner H vs Runner-Up G
27 APRQUARTER-FINALS
Q1Winners R1 vs R2
Q2Winners R3 vs R4
Q3Winners R5 vs R6
Q4Winners R7 vs R8
28 APRSEMI-FINALS
S1Winners Q1 vs Q2
S2Winners Q3 vs Q4
29 APRTHIRD PLACE PLAY-OFF
T1Losers S1 vs S2
30 APRFINAL
F1Winners S1 vs S2
Cut-off time is likely to happen between 21:00 UTC and 22:00 UTC for both halves. Teams will play all of their matches in the same host nation except for, perhaps, the third place play-off and the final, which will be played in Mertagne and Farfadillis, respectively.
Sponsored by the all-encompassing Farf company, Boom!™ Uranium Mining, at the end of the tournament a team consisting of the tournament's best performers will be announced. This will be a highly-subjective thing, both ICly and OOCly. If you'd like any specific player of yours to have better chances of getting included, please do mention so in an RP. To increase the chances of one or more of your players getting picked, RP well, RP often and pray to Margaret for some good results.
You do not need to take any action to participate in this mini-competition but if you do not wish your players to be considered for selection please explicitly state as such in your RP permissions box.
For the uninitiated, the Baptism of Fire hosts are voted on by the Executive World Cup Committee [EWCC]. This voting body is supposedly composed of representatives from the most experienced nations in the Multiverse when it comes to hosting: the requisite for admission into the committee itself is to have hosted a World Cup. However, despite all this presumed experience and good judgment, they have nonetheless picked two nations which could be described as not ideal hosts. Farfadillis, in particular, is very... sui generis. This will result in the circumstances surrounding different matches to be potentially out of the ordinary for the teams that come from more standard and competent nations. Matches might get delayed, venues might be changed on short notice, referees might die en route to the stadium, etc. If you, as an OOC user, do not like these RP prompts, you are 100% free to ignore them at no cost to your RP bonus. Similarly, do not expect extra RP bonus for not ignoring these prompts. They're here just to help you have fun, so tying RP bonus to them would defeat their purpose.
Discord. NS Sports has a Discord server. Here's an invite. It is not an official NS function and not all users are members of it. As such, all tournament updates will be posted on the forum.
Etiquette. Any user breaching etiquette by spamming OOC comments, blatantly disregarding others’ RP permissions, engaging in plagiarism, or otherwise breaching NS Sports etiquette, will receive a warning from the hosts. Any user who continues after being warned will have their RP bonus reset to zero.
RP permissions. The hosts strongly encourage all users to, at a minimum, set their ‘Choose goalscorers’ RP permission to Yes. If you do not, do at least provide instructions for how goalscorer should be picked. If you do not do this either, we will not look upon it positively.
General restrictions. No user may RP destructive damage to the people or infrastructure of the host nations e.g. stadium collapses, unless they have cleared these things first with both their opponent and the relevant host. No user may introduce COVID-19 or any such pandemic to the host nations or to other users’ nations.
Style modifier changes. Each nation may change their style modifier once during the tournament. Contact the hosts to arrange this.
Everything else. Other than issues to be resolved by NS site moderation staff, or by the World Cup Committee and its Executive, the hosts’ decision will be final on any other issues.