BAPTISM OF FIRE 80 - MERTAGNE
thank you to Osarius for making the logo look better than my attempt.
Host Bid • World Cup Discussion Thread
Welcome to the 80th edition of NationStates' premier footballing tournament for new players, the Baptism of Fire [BoF]! This edition is being hosted by the nation of Mertagne, and this thread is the in-character [IC] and roster thread for the tournament. If you are a confirmed participant (as per the list in this post, of if you see your nation below), then you may begin posting rosters and roleplays into this thread. 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 about to enter their first World Cup [WC]. What follows is a brief summary for the newest of newcomers, as well as a quick guide to this particular edition of the BoF.
This is likely your very first step into the multiverse of NationStates Sports roleplaying. Congratulations on taking such a successful first step such as signing up to this tournament! Now that you are confirmed to be taking part, your next step is to post a roster in this thread. As this is an association football (soccer) tournament, you will need some association football players to represent your nation on the multiversal stage! In its simplest form, a roster is a list of names of members of your team. To create these names, you can use your imagination, name generators, or even specific player generators out there on the internet, and you have free reign to build your team of players, and develop their roles. Does your team contain a star player? A manager with a particular personality? A player known for their drama?
Examples of association football rosters can be found here. These are the rosters for the most recent edition of the Anaian regional association football cup, the CAFA Cup. As you can see, rosters come in all shapes and sizes - from a list of names to full player bios. Be as in depth as you like!
As a part of your roster post, you can also include a style modifier. This is a number, which for the purposes of this tournament can be between -5 and +5, which describes how defensive or offensive your team's style of play is. -5 describes a maximally defensive team, and +5 describes a maximally attacking team. These style modifiers will be included in the scorination process, which is how scores are generated here on NS Sports. Three factors influence the final result of a match:
- RANK - A coefficient number that describes how your team stacks up to other teams across the multiverse. This can be earned by participating in tournaments, and is different for each sport. The BoF is within the World Cup family, so any ranking points you earn in this tournament will be carried over to World Cup 93. Currently, all nations in this tournament will start with a ranking of 0.
- RP BONUS - This is arguably the largest part of the 'game' here on NS Sports. If you want to go far, you must RP. RPs are graded by the hosts of a tournament, and will influence your performance. The more you RP, and the higher quality RPs you post, the better your team will fare. RPs are graded each matchday, and there is a set max bonus for each matchday, so RPing frequently across matchdays is a good strategy to improve your performance in this tournament. RPs can be on anything you choose - commonly, users will write match reports of the previous match they have played in, but you are welcome to roleplay pretty much anything - an interview between political opponents, the death of one of your public figures, or an alien abduction in your nation, to give just a few examples.
- RAND - This randomness ensures that the very best RPers are never guaranteed to get a win, they simply have better chances, and keeps things interesting and competitive. As a result, you can never truly write your team off until they are statistically eliminated, and RAND has been the saving grace of many a team's campaign, and the ruin of many others.
Finally, in your roster post you will need to include your RP permissions. These detail what you can and can't do regarding players on other nation's teams. The permission box, an example included below, shows a format with which to display these permissions, and it is important to read the permissions of other players before including them in your own roleplays -- those roleplays may be ignored if permissions are broken! Furthermore, the permissions box also discusses 'godmodding', which is to control another person's roleplaying beyond the usual RP permissions. Examples of godmodding include unlikely events, such as a goal being scored by bouncing off of a passing seagull, or a player being injured by plane debris falling from the sky. If in doubt, check those permissions!
One unique feature of this tournament is that I, Mertagne will be posting ‘stadium happenings’ for many of the matches played in this tournament. These are unique to Mertagnian tournaments, and provide a brief snippet of things that have happened in and around the match that you have played. These stadium happenings may give you some inspiration when it comes to writing your roleplays. You are free to ignore them at will, and if you would not like to see stadium happenings in your games, you can include that in your roleplay permissions. Stadium happenings will only occur in games where no players have their permissions surrounding them set to ‘No’. An example of scores including stadium happenings can be found here. They are the snippets of text after the scores.
Also in this tournament, roleplay prompts will be given at each cutoff to give you some further inspiration in your roleplays. You do not have to use these, and there will be no extra bonus for doing so, but if you really want to write something but just can’t think of a topic, these might be useful.
Throughout the tournament, cut-offs will be posted. These are when the host (Mertagne) posts saying “cut-off”, and maybe adds something more to the post so it's not too drab. It means that 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, check the discord for a message from the hosts (linked below), or be patient. Whichever is more your style.
Furthermore, 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.
Here is 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
Generate stadium happenings: Yes/No[/box]
We have 36 entrants, and teams will be randomly sorted into 4 groups of 9. The top four teams from each group will be placed into the Round of 16, which will be seeded. 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)
Cut-off time will (mostly, I'm only human) be between 21:30 UTC and 22:30 UTC. All matches will be scorinated by the host, Mertagne. This event will use double scorination (also known as 2/48 scorination for a portion of the group stage. This means that, during those times, two matchdays will be scorinated for one 48 hour cutoff, meaning your team may play two games! Check the schedule to see who you will be playing when. If you have a bye, that means your team will not play on that matchday.
Matchday Schedule
During the group stage of the tournament, you will play everyone in your group once. Your position as written in the group list in this post determines the order in which you will play each of your group-mates. Using Group A as an example, on Matchday 1, the 2nd listed team, Obrela, will play against the 9th listed team, Inkwellistan. On Matchday 2, Obrela will play Ile de Richelieu, who is the first entrant in the group. Group entrants have been numbered to make it easier to find who you are playing on a given matchday. These groups were generated at random.
2022-01-11 - Matchdays One & Two
- (2v9, 3v8, 4v7, 5v6, 1 bye)
- (7v5, 8v4, 9v3, 1v2, 6 bye)
- (3v1, 4v9, 5v8, 6v7, 2 bye)
- (8v6, 9v5, 1v4, 2v3, 7 bye)
- (4v2, 5v1, 6v9, 7v8, 3 bye)
- (9v7, 1v6, 2v5, 3v4, 8 bye)
- (5v3, 6v2, 7v1, 8v9, 4 bye)
- (1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5, 9 bye)
- (6v4, 7v3, 8v2, 9v1, 5 bye)
2022-01-24 - Quarter-Finals
2022-01-26 - Semi-Finals
2022-01-29 - Third Place Play-Off and Final
Group Lists
GROUP A
- Ile de Richelieu
- Obrela
- CONGOlese Republic
- Aureumterra III
- Illiryja
- Naixi
- Varavel
- Archalit
- Inkwellistan
GROUP B
- Tanirinthia
- Lionsroar
- Patriotlandia
- Greater Kamilistan
- Oflia
- The Cannaland Islands
- St Saratoga
- Depivik
- Novaros
GROUP C
GROUP D
- Strayan Rus
- Srubnaya Culture
- Ascvalion
- Katterimunk
- Bubiyan and Warbah
- British Covelandia
- United Bongo States of America
- Okerne
- Lozho
And finally, a few more housekeeping points of information:
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 a goalscorer should be picked. If you do not do this either, we will not look upon it positively.
General restrictions. These are examples of godmodding events that we don't wish to see. 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 by telegram 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.
Spot any issues? Please send me a telegram!