The Cup of Harmony (CoH) is an invitational tournament for some of the teams that did not qualify for the World Cup finals. It's a consolation prize, it's a reward for roleplaying well during qualifiers, it's an opportunity to extend and finish the stories of your players, team and country that you didn't get the chance to finish during the World Cup finals: it's different things to different people. Invitations are being distributed based on criteria established in my bid plus some wildcards to fill out the field. Invitations will be my prerogative exclusively.
On account of the nature of the tournament, there should be no genuinely new players involved: everyone here has participated in at least one NSS tournament. If you are still new (or an older returning player) and want some guidance, I recommend the guide to sports roleplaying, or looking at the previous edition.
The remainder of the information in this OP is pertinent to all players, even experienced veterans of the CoH, so please try to take a moment to read it over.
Rosters
This Cup of Harmony will treat rosters slightly differently, though this is not intended to set a precedent for future Cups.
Because only teams who have already posted a roster will be invited, every team should already have a roster. You may, if you wish, post a new roster. Perhaps you want to drop some of the players who failed to get you to the World Cup finals and call up new ones, or narrow down a large qualifying pool to a lean 23/26 player squad. You may also see no need to copy+paste over your roster if it will be functionally the same as during World Cup qualifying.
Therefore, there is no roster bonus or penalty; posting a new roster will not earn RP bonus (though you could do so by roleplaying about it, just as you could by roleplaying explaining why you have not changed your roster). If you post a new roster that will be linked from the OP; if you do not, your World Cup roster will be linked. By accepting the invitation to this Cup of Harmony, you are accepting that your World Cup roster may be linked and referenced by other players in their roleplays, unless you post a new roster.
If you do not post a new roster (or indicate otherwise) your style modifier will be set at whatever it was set for during World Cup qualifying. You may change your modifier at any point but you must send me a TG/DM to alert me of the change and you are encouraged to provide an IC justification in your RPing.
Format
Provisionally, the format being proposed is an 8×6 single round robin group stage, from which the top two teams in each group will qualify for a single elimination knockout bracket. The bracket will not be seeded: it will be Group 1 winner v Group 8 runner-up, Group B winner v Group 7 runner-up, etc. All games will be played in Græntfjall. NSFS with additive modifiers will be used for scorination. Tiebreakers in the group stage will be goal difference followed by head-to-head.
Roleplaying
The CoH is a tournament that rewards or encourages RPing. At the same time, the gauntlet of World Cup qualifying is over, and I have no desire to host a tournament that sees people going into stress-comas because they are worried about missing one cutoff out of five. You can improve your team's chances, to a point, by roleplaying, but each individual roleplay still only functions to somewhat weight a random number generator, whose essential randomness remains. It's more important you have fun participating even if you don't feel like writing every cutoff. I will try to post some anonymized stats on RP bonus at each cutoff. There is no RP bonus carryover from World Cup qualifying.
Enough is as good as a feast. You do not need to write hugely long RPs in order to gain a high RP bonus. Taking these numbers as somewhat approximate and inexact, 3 - 5 paragraphs, totaling 400 - 600 words, should, if written well, be enough to earn a good RP bonus. While there is no word limit on RPs, there is a point at which overly long RPs may be counterproductive and piling on more text for the sake of merely expanding the word count will not increase the RP bonus earned by a post at all. In general, qualities that help earn a good RP bonus are: interactivity (showing you have read others’ RPs and rosters); salience (it is fine to write your own storylines or pursue non-football stories, but if there is no sense at all in your RP that a football tournament is even happening, it may be difficult to justify absolute max bonus); and good RP etiquette (respecting permissions, respecting hosts, taking bad results in reasonable grace). You do not need to be a great writer, a skilled graphic artist, or a knowledgeable football expert; what’s more important is that it’s clear you’ve made some kind of effort. Allowances are always made for the fact that not everyone is a native English speaker. RPs do not have to be humorous, and humor is very subjective anyway, but NS is a satirical game, so a light hearted approach can always be welcome.
Please read and respect other users' RP permissions, and contact them directly if you are not certain. In addition to individual users' RP permissions, the following tournament-wide permissions apply to all participants:
- No pandemic, COVID or otherwise, may be introduced to the host nation or spread to any other teams.
- No destructive violence towards the host nation's people or infrastructure.
OOC questions may be addressed in the bid thread, World Cup discussion thread, or to me privately by TG/DM. The host's decision is final.
Groups
Group 1
Lozho
Eshialand
Aleirave
Saint Eleanor
Valentine Z
Cap Nord
Group 2
West Barack and East Obama
Saterun
HUElavia
Trolleborg
Elmyia
Cassadaigua
Group 3
Poafmersia
Krytenia
Darmen
Mytanija
Patriotlandia
Fort McKinley
Group 4
Eraman
Naixi
Ceni
Mertagne
Stevencousin
Oberour Ar Moro
Group 5
Ziwana
Baggieland
Audioslavia
Qasden
Sendhang
Ile de Richelieu
Group 6
Aeragny
Xanneria
Independent Athletes from Quebec
Acastanha
Saperetia
Cardenao
Group 7
Brookstation
Kirungabi
Sargossa
Eura
Estorvipa and Estorpiva
Kimi-suomi
Group 8
Atheara
Zeta Reka and Hugeltaldom
Drawkland
New Gelderland
Srubnaya culture
Gnejs
Bracket (large image!)
Schedule
March 8: draw
March 12: MD1 (1v6, 2v5, 3v4)
March 14: MD2 (6v4, 5v3, 1v2)
March 16: MD3 (2v6, 3v1, 4v5)
March 18: MD4 (6v5, 1v4, 2v3)
March 20: MD5 (3v6, 4v2, 5v1)
March 22: Round of 16
March 24: Quarter-Finals
March 26: Semi-Finals
March 29: 3PPO/Final