How to run a weekend event - By Forkbeard

An excellent guide by Forkbeard after his recent success with Sam Hain, considering our event is now less than a month away it's worth a read. Because let's be honest, Fork has more experience with events than any of our leadership or members, and some of our leadership planning the event should definitely give this a read. I agree with every word of it.

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HOW TO RUN A WEEKEND EVENT

Who’s in charge:
You’re in charge. An event can not be a democracy. If everyone gets a say, nothing ever gets decided. One person has to step up and risk making everybody mad in order to make this a streamlined process free from extra work for a lot of people.

Objective:
The plan is to have a full Saturday of fighting. If you want people to spend hours driving to your event, Saturday is EVERYTHING. They drive all afternoon after work Friday to get there and they have to spend Sunday driving home. And they came to fight. Everything else is window dressing. Longer events are much more involved and contain other element, like entertainment and such. A short weekend event, however, doesn’t need any extras. Just get the people there and get them fighting.

Timing:
Don’t have your event within 3 weeks of another event within normal event traveling distance in your area. This varies from region to region. You don’t want to have your event at the same time as Beltane if you live in the south east. You don’t want to have you event in either July OR August if you live in the entire western US because of Chaos War. Not because you and your Realm aren’t charming, but because everyone will be either saving up for or recovering from the Big Show and simply won’t be able to come. On a smaller, local event scale, think of it like this, If you expect people to come from hundreds of miles away, plan your events around the events that already exist in that area. Don’t step on your neighbors toes.


Funding:
If your Realm has been responsible and has done this before, you’ll have some. Good job. If you haven’t ever run an event, or you’ve had some problems and have no money, here’s what you do: get all of the local people to pre pay. If you get 20 people to prey pay for a $10 event, you have $200 and can start making plans. You’re probly going to need to go into your own pockets some. Hooray for you! You’re in Charge! Any money you spend you can get back after the event, provided people show up.

Location:
You need to find a place with a big grass field safe for fighting AND where people can camp overnight. These need to be connected. Private property is good, but locked gates are a no go, people WILL NOT show up on time, if there is a gate, a guy MUST be sitting by it 24 hours a day. I find Hot Springs/RV camps, Scout Camps, Large county owned campgrounds are the best. Any place that has a large group area you can reserve. These places usually have toilets, so your toilet budget can just go to camping.
*pro tip: DO NOT TELL THE CAMP HOSTS YOU ARE “running an event”. This implies that you are having an open to the public fair type thing to make money. You are NOT. You are renting their park for a gathering of friends and family. You will do some medieval sports and have a big meal together. That’s why the people pay when they get there. It is NOT an EVENT. This keep them from asking you for a large deposit or if you have insurance.
Port-a-John’s. If you need to rent them, be there when they are dropped off, so they are where you want them. If you have to rent them, you shouldn’t be paying very much for the site. I wouldn’t pay anything.

Staff:
After you have the site and the date, you need to get some volunteers from the Realm. You need:
Some one to run troll. Trustworthy people only here.
Some one to check weapons. Extra volunteers will come along, if not get the unit leaders to make people help you.
Some one to be head Herald. Same as weapon checkers. Smaller events like this are the best place for newer people to herald so they can learn without as much pressure.
Some one to go pick up the food.

Schedule:
You need to write up a schedule of when everything should go down for the whole weekend. Here is the schedule we used for our latest event. Everybody seemed please with it.
Friday Night:
Troll should open at 5 pm. this could be earlier or later at the convenience of the person running it. No later than 7pm. Lisa has volunteered to do this.
Pick up battles from whenever people want 'em till dark.
Saturday:
9am: weapons check opens and troll opens.
10am:weapons check closes. Pick up battles start.
11am: 3 trail boat/capture the flag battles. New idea, might be gay.
after that, random team battles for the heralds entertainment. we'll reset the field markers for regular bridge CtF.
12:30-2:30pm: Devide up the units present into even teams(numbers) base it on who wants to fight together, but within reason. Then CtF
2:30-3:00pm: Lunch
3:00-4:00 random pick up fights. Again, for the heralds entertainment. Don't make it gay. I want this time to really be a long lunch, but I also want fighting for the people who eat fast and wanna fight. i hate all this down time at events lately.
4:00-whenever: some other kind of scenario battles. I'm still looking for something cool and fun, people will be tired, so lets find something easy on the fatties if there is such a thing.
Then pick up fights till the food is ready.
Feast:
Keep this easy. People came here to fight, not eat a fancy meal. The food needs to be GOOD and there needs to be enough, that is all. I do not like the idea of asking some one to cook for 100-200 people. It’s a serious undertaking and should only be attempted by either professional or really good amateur caterer’s. I think Fried Chicken is a great answer. It’s cheap and you can adjust the order to fit the crowd up until about 3 hours before you pick it up. It’s not the most medieval feast ever, but after a day of hard fighting, hungry people really dig hot fried chiken and rolls and potato salad. We just fed 90 people for about $2.25 per person. Mostly from a Kroger Grocery store Deli. It took 2 people about 35 minutes to feed 90(they had to go pick up the food).
We gathered a few of the parks picnic tables and a few from some of the fighters and threw down the grub.
*protip, unless you have some veg-heads who volunteer to make some kind of veggy food, don’t bother with it. If people want special food, they can bring it. The needs of the many, and all that.

Clean up:
Make sure everything is clean after the event. Go around and visit all the camps and make sure you talk to the leaders. Apply a little guilt and get them to make sure their people take all the little pieces of tape and foam and beer caps and cigarette butts. Leaving a clean site makes next year easier.

After the event, take devide the money from troll. Pay the people who spent their own money to put the event on, if any. Then take the money to do it again next year out. The remainder should go to the realm for recruiting or whatever.

FB

Also, is someone planning on announcing our event on the national Belegarth boards? I don't see a post there by Knubbs, and most people in our region think Sam Hain is the last attendable (weather wise) event of the year. Our event will have similar weather to Sam Hain we think.

The trail boat game was GODDAM EPIC

yes please bele boards we want to have fun and the more the merrier in my opinion if i get down for king's tourney and it is a practice i will chew someone i promise. bele peeps are close and we generally have a fun time when we go to there events so why should we deny them time to have fun at ours

I just checked again, Smithy posted an invitiation on the 6th of October. 1 month before the event. Good man Smitty.

lol good shit miroki
sweet

I did post it on the Bel boards.

gewd and thank you

Sorry that was me who posted on Prysm's log on.

lol sex change that's cool