
That's right! The World Bowl, the premier international competition for Gridiron Football on NationStates, has reached its 50th Edition!
Whether or not you're an American Football enthusiast, we encourage everyone to participate in this historic anniversary of one of the most tenured tournaments in NS Sports lore. This thread is for collecting signups and potential host bids for the competition. If you know the drill already, feel free to sign up posthaste! If you're new here, read on for more details.
Sign-Ups
To sign up for the World Bowl, simply post in this thread stating your intention to participate. If you roleplay under a name different from your NationStates account name, please make a note of that in your post. Typically, nations that Cease-To-Exist (CTE) prior to the start of competition are removed from the sign-up lists; if your nation CTE's prior to the beginning of competition, you are advised to check on the status of your sign-up and, if necessary, sign back up.
Puppet Policy
Nations which have previously participated in the World Bowl are permitted to submit a second nation for participation as a puppet. To sign up a puppet nation, simply post a sign-up post with that nation as you would normally for a main nation, and note that you are signing up a puppet. Please note which main nation/account it is a puppet of. After this, post a confirmation with your main account/nation. Please note that, in the event that main nations wish to sign-up after a hard sign-up limit is reached, puppet nations are the first nations to be booted from sign-ups (apart from CTE'd nations) to make room for mains. Please also note that any additional puppet policy is at the discretion of the host.
Hosting
As with other NS Sport events, the World Bowl requires a host. The host is selected from among nations that submit a host bid. The host is selected from among the bids by a simple majority vote of the World Bowl Assembly -- that's nations that have submitted a roster in at least two consecutive World Bowls, and then not allowed their membership to lapse (due to inactivity).
A host bid is a summary by a prospective host about how they intend to run the competition. There's certain points of information that are essential for any good hosting bid; we have no hard requirements, but people will ask you about this information if you don't include it off the bat.
First, you need to include scorination information -- how are you going to generate scores for the competition's matches? Most people use a scorinator, a modified random number generator that can be weighted to incorporate team rank and roleplay bonus. There's a few good ones out there: there's no reason you can't use any given scorinator that produces results appropriate to gridiron football, but there's a good chance you'll need to at least explain your choice, so make sure you know how to use the scorinator you choose and understand its advantages and drawbacks on some level. Xkoranate has been the program of choice for at least the last decade of World Bowls, so that's the best place to start.
Second, how do you intend to format the competition? How are matches going to be scheduled, how will a champion be decided, and so on? Typically speaking, what this refers to is how you're going to generate the schedule, how many games everyone will play, and who gets to move on to the "post-season"/elimination rounds. Typically, we use a group stage followed by single elimination playoffs, but this is by no means a hard rule. Feel free to get creative with the format, but be prepared to defend your choice to those who will be voting on the bids!
Third, describe why you're qualified to be a host of a major NationStates Sports competition. If you'd be a first-time host, feel free to submit a bid. That said, typically-speaking, it's preferred that those attempting to host the World Bowl have at least some kind of hosting experience, even with a small competition. It's a big job. If you're interested in getting started with hosting, perhaps try asking an experienced host if they'd be willing to co-host the tournament with you.
Fourth, and this is more optional than the others, feel free to include some in-character information about the host nation and its bid. You can write most of the bid in-character, if you'd like, or you can keep the whole thing out-of-character. That's up to you. Note that while having lots of details about hosting cities and stadiums serves as very nice flavor text, it's ultimately the least important part of the bid. Most care about the scorination and format specifics.
If it would help you to look at past winning host bids:
- World Bowl XLV
- World Bowl XLVI
- World Bowl XLVII
- World Bowl XLVIII
- World Bowl XLIX
Norms and Traditions
Typically-speaking, the World Bowl has utilized IFAF overtime rules (you might also know these as "college overtime" rules), in which each team has an opportunity to score from a certain distance out from the endzone, and play continues until one team fails to score. You may, if you have the means to scorinate it appropriately, use the modified sudden-death overtime rules utilized by the American National Football League (NFL), but if you intend to do this, please make note of it in your host bid in advance.
In addition, typically speaking, the competition has been formatted using a group stage (in which matches are played in a round-robin or double round-robin), followed by a playoff/elimination round (usually four rounds - a Round of 16, Quarterfinal, Semifinal, and Final/3rd Place Game). Typically, the groups are created using pots, which are created using rankings to create groups with teams across the spectrum of the rankings (i.e., the first pot has the top-8 ranked teams in the World Bowl, the second pot has the next eight, and so on). Again, you are not required by any means to follow this format, but you are asked to make a note of it in your host bid if you are planning on diverging from this norm.
Other Useful Information and Resources
On NS Sports roleplaying:
Guide to NS Sports Roleplaying - If you're new to NS Sports, PLEASE read this guide first! It has all the information you need on how things work around here, that way you'll be prepared for the tournament once it begins.
On the game itself:
Here, we use the version most commonly seen in the United States of America -- that is, 11 players on each side, 60 minute games (divided into four 15-minute quarters), etc, etc. If you're looking for a quick primer on the sport, Wikipedia has a good family of articles on the sport. IFAF/college overtime is the norm (as touched on above). If you're curious about the strategy of gridiron football, I encourage you to explore those articles.
On the rankings:
The World Bowl uses a simple ranking system (which you can find here). You can tell where teams are, generally-speaking, relative to one another, based on their past results. These rankings are used to help weight the scorinators (see above under Hosting), but they are not the end-all, be-all: a good roleplayer can improve their fortunes rapidly, so don't get discouraged.
Thank you for bearing with us through all that information. Last bit of housekeeping, any OOC discussion should naturally belong in the World Bowl Discussion Thread. We like to keep any chatter about the tournament there once it begins, to prevent the signup thread from being continually bumped and confusing people into thinking signups might still be open. If necessary, you can tag the discussion thread so you don't miss anything.
And now, without further ado, our sign-ups! Drawkland, as the poster, is signing himself up here.
Host Bid Cutoff Date: Tuesday, February 4th at 2359 Eastern Time.
- Signups (35):
- Drawkland
- Quebec and Shingoryeo
- Chromatika
- Ranoria
- New Umoja
- Cardenao
- Sarzonia
- East Lithuania
- Kamijiro
- Banija
- Katzeburg
- Ko-oren
- Grand Exultia
- The Kytler Peninsulae
- Crpostran
- United States of Nova Calania
- Natkr
- South Newlandia
- HUElavia
- Delaclava
- TJUN-ia
- Valanora
- Newmanistan
- Vaishnavaria
- Norway-Sweden-Finland
- Quirhoshe
- Sherpus
- Pafi
- Rouyoute (puppet of Ranoria)
- Darmen
- Barnettsville
- Of the Golden Harp
- Busoga Islands (puppet of Banija)
- Equestria [Equestrian States]
- South Americanastan
Host Bids (1):
Banija and Ranoria