Highton
Not a Malorian vassal
- TNP Nation
- Highton Islands
- Discord
- Highton#5752
Hello, welcome to my lecture on Sport RP, both in organizing and operating events, and RPing them out. First I’ll begin by introducing myself, for those of you who don’t know I am currently the Minister of Culture of TNP, and along with McMasterdonia and Nessuno was an instrumental part of launching sports RP events starting back in 2018. Since then we’ve had a few events, the Eras World Cup, the Odinspyl (Eras Olympics), and a few RMB football events as well as some planned for the near future. In this lecture, I’m going to go through some steps on organizing such events, and how to make sure they are as fun as possible for everyone involved. For this lecture, I’m going to focus on a one-sport event, like a World Cup, since these are the most common types of events and most realistic to run for most, but if you have any questions about a larger scale event like Odinspyl (which contained over a dozen different sports) feel free to reach out to me.
The first thing you need to ensure before you even get started is to make sure that there is interest in an event; for it to be fun, you’ll need at the very least 8 people, though a number like 12, 16, 24, or 32 is preferable. It is also important that you know that people are interested in participating in the RP, not just watching their scores come in. The next thing, once you know in advance that there is interest, is to make a schedule. Stick to that schedule, which is presumably made weeks or months in advance. Don’t cram it into a week, make sure the participants have time to write and participate. If it all happens so quickly, there’s not nearly enough time for everyone to be active in it. Another important thing you have to do in advance: get everything ready. It may be that the organizer wants to participate in the event, or that you don’t want to spend too much time every day focused on it, but you want to ensure that everything that you will need to run the event is ready to go. You need to have everything tested and ready before starting. If you are working with a team, ensure that everyone on the team has everything ready to go as well, in line with whatever responsibilities they may have. Have this process done at least a week in advance. For instance, with the World Cup, I came up with the graphics templates and scorination formula about a week before so that it would only take a couple of minutes each day to prepare the post.
Now, the event finally begins. One good way to open up the RP is with an opening ceremony post of some sort, preferably by the IC host of the event. But what is most important is that participants are given time before the beginning of the competition, even if it's just a day or two, to make posts before it begins. This could be introducing characters or previewing their teams. This is a fun introductory portion of what might be a month-long event during which everyone has opportunities to learn more about each other’s nations, people, and culture. One important thing to do in scheduling is to spread it out, as mentioned before, but also to the level that there are only a handful of games each day. Having a couple of days between one’s game creates a great opportunity to go in-depth writing-wise, and I’ll come back to the specifics of that in just a little bit. One important thing you will want to do is to encourage participation from everyone. This means creating bonuses and other incentives for posting in the thread and encouraging RPers to collaborate with one another on details of the competition and their teams. If there are any issues that arise, try to solve them. No matter how well prepared you are, everyone is subject to things that they may have missed or unexpected issues, and that's fine, just try to work through them. The most important thing to do is to learn from mistakes so that you can solve them and improve for next time.
Actual writing and posting is the meat of RP, not just scores and winners. I will now move into the second portion of this lecture, where I discuss some ways that you can use sports as a device for RP. In the real world, sports play a huge role in our lives, and there is no reason that it wouldn’t be the same for RP characters. This could go down to the smaller scale level, where a character like to play a sport or supports a certain team, but it can also create story opportunities. Let's not forget, sports have a huge impact on culture, and successes of nations or even certain athletes on the sporting stage can impact the patriotism and interests of a people. As we can see IRL, a country making a deep run in the World Cup can excite an entire nation, and a Cinderella story can do the same. Sports can create joy for suffering people, or unite a group of squabbling people behind one team.
Moving back to specific events in RP, there are many ways that you can participate RP-wise. One of the best things about RP is that there are a lot of ways that you can take it and a lot of ways you can go with it. The same applies here. You may choose to write about events from a character's perspective, from a newscasters perspective, from the perspective of a fan, or in the form of news articles, or many others; in short, there's a lot of ways you can take it, and that all comes down to personal preference. Athletes can be very compelling characters with backstories and inspirations, expanding on them may be more challenging than some other characters but still fun. Posting throughout events can be challenging as well, but it is a great opportunity to flesh out some details of your nation which wouldn’t otherwise be covered. What happens on the pitch? What do fans in the stadium and back home think of their team? What are the thoughts of the coach? What happens off the pitch in the host nation? These are examples of ideas for what to write about during an event.
That pretty much wraps up what I had to say, if anyone has any questions now I am happy to answer them. And if anyone has any more specific questions I am also happy to answer them, just shoot me a DM.
The first thing you need to ensure before you even get started is to make sure that there is interest in an event; for it to be fun, you’ll need at the very least 8 people, though a number like 12, 16, 24, or 32 is preferable. It is also important that you know that people are interested in participating in the RP, not just watching their scores come in. The next thing, once you know in advance that there is interest, is to make a schedule. Stick to that schedule, which is presumably made weeks or months in advance. Don’t cram it into a week, make sure the participants have time to write and participate. If it all happens so quickly, there’s not nearly enough time for everyone to be active in it. Another important thing you have to do in advance: get everything ready. It may be that the organizer wants to participate in the event, or that you don’t want to spend too much time every day focused on it, but you want to ensure that everything that you will need to run the event is ready to go. You need to have everything tested and ready before starting. If you are working with a team, ensure that everyone on the team has everything ready to go as well, in line with whatever responsibilities they may have. Have this process done at least a week in advance. For instance, with the World Cup, I came up with the graphics templates and scorination formula about a week before so that it would only take a couple of minutes each day to prepare the post.
Now, the event finally begins. One good way to open up the RP is with an opening ceremony post of some sort, preferably by the IC host of the event. But what is most important is that participants are given time before the beginning of the competition, even if it's just a day or two, to make posts before it begins. This could be introducing characters or previewing their teams. This is a fun introductory portion of what might be a month-long event during which everyone has opportunities to learn more about each other’s nations, people, and culture. One important thing to do in scheduling is to spread it out, as mentioned before, but also to the level that there are only a handful of games each day. Having a couple of days between one’s game creates a great opportunity to go in-depth writing-wise, and I’ll come back to the specifics of that in just a little bit. One important thing you will want to do is to encourage participation from everyone. This means creating bonuses and other incentives for posting in the thread and encouraging RPers to collaborate with one another on details of the competition and their teams. If there are any issues that arise, try to solve them. No matter how well prepared you are, everyone is subject to things that they may have missed or unexpected issues, and that's fine, just try to work through them. The most important thing to do is to learn from mistakes so that you can solve them and improve for next time.
Actual writing and posting is the meat of RP, not just scores and winners. I will now move into the second portion of this lecture, where I discuss some ways that you can use sports as a device for RP. In the real world, sports play a huge role in our lives, and there is no reason that it wouldn’t be the same for RP characters. This could go down to the smaller scale level, where a character like to play a sport or supports a certain team, but it can also create story opportunities. Let's not forget, sports have a huge impact on culture, and successes of nations or even certain athletes on the sporting stage can impact the patriotism and interests of a people. As we can see IRL, a country making a deep run in the World Cup can excite an entire nation, and a Cinderella story can do the same. Sports can create joy for suffering people, or unite a group of squabbling people behind one team.
Moving back to specific events in RP, there are many ways that you can participate RP-wise. One of the best things about RP is that there are a lot of ways that you can take it and a lot of ways you can go with it. The same applies here. You may choose to write about events from a character's perspective, from a newscasters perspective, from the perspective of a fan, or in the form of news articles, or many others; in short, there's a lot of ways you can take it, and that all comes down to personal preference. Athletes can be very compelling characters with backstories and inspirations, expanding on them may be more challenging than some other characters but still fun. Posting throughout events can be challenging as well, but it is a great opportunity to flesh out some details of your nation which wouldn’t otherwise be covered. What happens on the pitch? What do fans in the stadium and back home think of their team? What are the thoughts of the coach? What happens off the pitch in the host nation? These are examples of ideas for what to write about during an event.
That pretty much wraps up what I had to say, if anyone has any questions now I am happy to answer them. And if anyone has any more specific questions I am also happy to answer them, just shoot me a DM.