Game Guides Archive
Thread: How To Run A Pageant
Page 1 of 1
DanceRulez
Tue Jul 05, 2005 11:13 am
#1
Danial & Shi'ann's Guide to Running a Pageant
Introduction
Any pageant, when done properly, can be a lot of fun, but it's a lot of hard work too. Between judges, prizes and contestants, you definitely have your work cut out for you. It is highly recommended that you have at least one or two good people backing you up on the design and planning of the pageant, as well as operations the day of the event.
Initial Preparations
Initial preparations for any pageant include selecting a date, time and location. The day and time are pretty much up to you, though you should probably plan it at least two weeks out, possibly more if you want any CSR support, and you might want to check to make sure you won't be competing with any other major player events at the same time. The best locations are theaters in NPC cities or theaters in player cities if you prefer the outdoor approach. Any location chosen must have a staging area for your contestants, a viewing area, and a large area for your observers and judges to sit. Any area that meets those three basic requirements is more than appropriate for a pageant.
The type of pageant can be whatever you like. Some examples could be a male or female beauty pageant, a costume pageant, a combat pageant, and so on. The basic idea in any case is for the contestants to get a chance to show themselves off, and for the judges to decide which contestant best represents the ideals of the pageant.
Prizes
Now a proper pageant should have a proper prize to encourage people to participate and give them something to shoot for. Prizes can come from several sources. The first and most obvious source is your own pocket. It's good if you can put together at least an initial prize to help get the ball rolling. From there the next step is to involve your server community. Work with crafters, guilds, and wealthier players on the server, and invite them to contribute to the prize pool. In addition to credits, non-cash items such as sets of armor, clothes, vehicles, rare loot items or a shopping spree at a local player city mall all make very good prizes. You can spread the word by networking with other players, sending out e-mails, or even posting on your local galaxy forum. You might find your fellow players to be quite generous (especially if they get their name mentioned or some advertising out of it!).
Once you have an idea what your prize pool is going to be, you'll need to decide how you want to split it up. You may want one large prize for the winner, three tiered prizes for the top three contestants, or you may want to save some for consolation prizes for all contestants. It's all up to how you want to distribute the prizes and how successful your prize recruiting efforts are. It's best to get an early start on this process, to get the best prize pool possible.
Judging
Judging can be done in many different ways, and you can be creative with this as well. You can have as many or as few judges as you like. The fewer judges you have, the easier the scores are to record. However, having more judges allows for more variation in scores (and makes for a fun time trying to keep up). Unless you're hosting a single faction event, it's best to try to even out the faction standing of the judges to prevent favoritism. It is also much preferred that the organizers of the event not judge, to avoid any appearance of foul play. Judge selection is another process you want to start early so that the judges are known and prepared well in advance.
Scoring can be handled in various ways. The easiest way is to use a simple 1 to 10 scale. Each judge gives a score to each contestant in each round. If you had 10 judges, for example, you would have 10 scores per person per round. The judges then pass their scores to a scrutineer whose job is to collect and tally the results. It is best to use e-mails or tells for this to keep individual scores secret from the contestants and the other judges during the contest.
From there the easiest way to deal with the scores is simply to average them together to yield a single score. This has the added advantage that if the number of judges should change during the course of the competition due to connection issues, RL concerns, etc., the average will not be affected. Using a spreadsheet outside the game is a handy way to deal with all the numbers and calculations, though a calculator and pencil and paper will work as well with some good organization. The scores from each round can be added together, giving a total score or they can again be averaged for a final score out of 10.
You should also make some decisions on what to do in the case of ties. You can let them stand, or make some rules on how to break ties. Possible ways to break ties can include setting priority to the different rounds so that whoever has the highest score in the more important round could win the tie. You can also go back and see which contestant has more high scores: for example, which contestant has more scores of 10 or more scores of 9 and 10
Make sure to send an e-mail to the judges prior to the competition including all the vital information, including scoring procedures and when to score, what to score, what the competitions are, etc.
Participants
Again, this is something you want to work on in advance. It is a good idea to limit the number of contestants to something reasonable, say around 50, but keep in mind that many will not show up the day of the event. You might plan for a no-show rate of about half. Don't be upset about those who cancel. Not only do they miss out on the prize, but also it means you have fewer contestants to manage! You should be prepared to deal with some last minute additions as well and decide in advance how many, if any, you will continue to accept and when the absolute cutoff will be. Ultimately the number and type of rounds you decide on and the number of participants you have will determine how long the event lasts. It's important that it doesn't last so long that people will get bored or that they won't be able to stay until the end.
Recruiting participants is definitely easy enough. Advertising the prize pool is generally enough enticement to get people to sign up. Unless the theme of your event calls for it, there's no real need to screen participants, but make sure that each participant understands what is expected of them.
It's a good idea to prepare an e-mail to summarize the contest procedures, list the order in which the contestants will appear on stage, and encourage them to be there early for organization and prep time - 30 minutes is a good buffer. This e-mail will help them and you keep track of what is going on, and who needs to be where, when they need to be there, etc.
Competitions
You'll probably want to hold about two or three competitions or rounds during your pageant. Each competition should give the contestant a chance to say something and/or display something. Here are some ideas for giving the contestant something to talk about:
Introduction - give each contestant 15 seconds to introduce themselves to the crowd, the judges and the organizers of the event.
Interview - come up with a variety of fun, interesting questions to ask the participants in a random order, and have them respond. Good questions may cover several potential topics from opinions on the game to local issues to role-play oriented questions. Examples might be "What is your favorite thing about SWG?" or "Why do you think Coronet is the best city?" or "Do you think that the Rebellion has any chance of defeating the might of the Empire and why or why not?" Note that some players are role-players themselves, and deserve a question that enables them to answer as a person in the Star Wars universe and not as a player of a game. Such players should make an effort to notify organizers ahead of time so that their wishes may be accommodated at the time of the event. These questions should be prepared ahead of time so that they are ready at the time of the event, and both organizers and judges may suggest possible questions.
Statement - each contestant may make a statement either of their own choosing or in response to a particular topic or question given to all contestants. Note that special consideration may need to be given here as well for role-playing contestants.
These competition ideas may be combined with each other if desired or combined with a display round. Some ideas to give the contestants something to show off are swimwear (always a popular round for a beauty pageant), casual wear, formalwear/eveningwear, and combat wear/adventure wear (have participants pick outfits that they would run around in while fighting or adventuring). Things to consider during display rounds are whether contestants should be restricted to specific clothing items, any clothing items, a mix of clothing and armor, or only armor. Also consider whether contestants should be allowed to equip weapons. Keep in mind that there may be species and profession restrictions on what items a contestant may be allowed to equip or wear so you may want to put limitations on what is allowed for each competition.
Some final things to consider are how contestants should behave during each competition. Should contestants simply walk on and off stage when cued? Should they perform a specific emote or one of their choosing? If a particular round is a display-only round, are the contestants allowed to say anything or will they be penalized if they do? Such actions may or may not be important to your particular event, but you should have some idea how you wish to handle them should questions arise, or you may want to notify judges and contestants specifically ahead of time.
The Forum Post
You will most likely want to post about your pageant in the forums. Make it bright and colorful. You will want to draw attention specifically to the type of event and the date and time. Be sure to include credits to the co-organizers and any sponsors in your event. You can use your forum post as a recruiting post for prizes, judges and contestants, but be sure to post well in advance of the event, in order to give everyone a chance to get involved.
Include in your forum post the list of participants, the list of judges (sorted by faction, if you decide to go by that method), any rules for the contest, and so on. Unless your event will have special protection or will be taking place in a private structure or location, BE SURE to specify that ALL contestants and judges need to come non-PvP enabled otherwise you run the risk of your entire pageant turning into a huge PvP battle.
Live Support
You may wish to request event team support from a CSR or developer. Such support may be as simple as having a CSR available to resolve any disputes or interference from other players, or you may want to have a particular named character as a special guest. Such requests should be made well in advance (at least two weeks or more) and must conform to the live event team's stated schedule. Such support is always given as availability permits and is not guaranteed. For more information on availability of event team support and how to apply for it please refer to the Events forum.
The Day of the Event
As a fun pre-show idea, try to hire a band or get some of your fellow entertainers to put on a performance before the pageant so your early guests, judges and participants will have something to enjoy while they wait. You should designate someone to be a deck captain to work backstage and serve as a guide and organizer for the contestants. Additionally, it's a good idea to create a chat channel for the contestants so that all instructions can be given in one place free of all the clutter that will be going on in spatial. Depending on how many judges you have you may be able to put the judges in their own group or you may need to make another channel for the judges to talk to each other and coordinate their efforts. Be sure that only judges and organizers have access to the judges' channel. While judges will have things to talk about during the competition, they should probably be discouraged from openly discussing scoring of the contestants.
Try creating macros for the important things you want to say to help avoid errors and typos during the event. Prepare welcoming comments for the event, a list of organizers and sponsors you want to thank, and introductions for each of the contestants. When introducing the contestants, try to find a unique and interesting way to welcome each one on stage. Mention things such as their faction, race, or any unique features they have. Have fun and enjoy it!
Use the time before the event begins for final instructions for the contestants and judges. You should assign one person the responsibility of making a final decision on any last minute issues that may come up with regard to the rules. The deck captain should help line up all the contestants in their given order ahead of time and be sure that everyone stays organized. He or she should also perform attire checks to be sure all rules on clothing, equipment, and other requirements or restrictions are being followed. Make sure all organizers and prompters have the list of which contestants showed and the order in which they will appear, so they know when to prompt people.
Take this time to breathe deep and relax, because the most fun and exciting part of the competition is about to begin.
The Actual Event
Once you have everything ready, it's time to begin the show. Introduce yourself, thank all the viewers, organizers, contestants and prize donors, and get the show underway. It's nice to give a brief summary of each round of the pageant at this point, so people will know what to expect. You can use the information from the e-mail you sent to the judges describing the competitions and scoring system to help you figure out what to say.
For each round, welcome each contestant onstage one at a time and give each one his or her turn in the spotlight to display his or her outfit or equipment or make an introduction or other statement as appropriate. The judges can then take turns asking a question, if it's an interview style round. When the contestant is finished and the judges are satisfied, he or she should then be thanked and allowed to walk off stage. The judges then decide on their final scores and deliver them to the scrutineer.
The scrutineer should keep careful track of scores using whatever method works best. If he or she is using an external spreadsheet it makes for a lot of ALT-TAB'ing, so it's helpful to have a decent computer with only SWG and the spreadsheet software running in order to be able to give prompts quickly and record scores
When the contest is over make sure you have recorded all scores, and that the number of scores for each participant match. Take the time to calculate and double-check all the results to make sure they are correct. Then once you're confident that all the scores are correct, invite all the contestants back on the stage one final time. Be suspenseful! Announce your winners and hand out the prizes. You may even want to hand out special colored sashes or necklaces (the immense gemstone necklace works nicely for this) to signify each winner's placing.
After The Event
Take the time to send each of your contestants, judges and sponsors a thank you e-mail for participating. They will appreciate it, and it will encourage their participation in your next pageant, should you choose to do one. It takes time, effort, money and energy but a successfully run event can be a reward in itself. We hope this guide will help bring many fun player events to a server near you!
Danial Atrosian & Shi'ann Dinova
Entertainers Extraordinnaire
Flurry Server
Introduction
Any pageant, when done properly, can be a lot of fun, but it's a lot of hard work too. Between judges, prizes and contestants, you definitely have your work cut out for you. It is highly recommended that you have at least one or two good people backing you up on the design and planning of the pageant, as well as operations the day of the event.
Initial Preparations
Initial preparations for any pageant include selecting a date, time and location. The day and time are pretty much up to you, though you should probably plan it at least two weeks out, possibly more if you want any CSR support, and you might want to check to make sure you won't be competing with any other major player events at the same time. The best locations are theaters in NPC cities or theaters in player cities if you prefer the outdoor approach. Any location chosen must have a staging area for your contestants, a viewing area, and a large area for your observers and judges to sit. Any area that meets those three basic requirements is more than appropriate for a pageant.
The type of pageant can be whatever you like. Some examples could be a male or female beauty pageant, a costume pageant, a combat pageant, and so on. The basic idea in any case is for the contestants to get a chance to show themselves off, and for the judges to decide which contestant best represents the ideals of the pageant.
Prizes
Now a proper pageant should have a proper prize to encourage people to participate and give them something to shoot for. Prizes can come from several sources. The first and most obvious source is your own pocket. It's good if you can put together at least an initial prize to help get the ball rolling. From there the next step is to involve your server community. Work with crafters, guilds, and wealthier players on the server, and invite them to contribute to the prize pool. In addition to credits, non-cash items such as sets of armor, clothes, vehicles, rare loot items or a shopping spree at a local player city mall all make very good prizes. You can spread the word by networking with other players, sending out e-mails, or even posting on your local galaxy forum. You might find your fellow players to be quite generous (especially if they get their name mentioned or some advertising out of it!).
Once you have an idea what your prize pool is going to be, you'll need to decide how you want to split it up. You may want one large prize for the winner, three tiered prizes for the top three contestants, or you may want to save some for consolation prizes for all contestants. It's all up to how you want to distribute the prizes and how successful your prize recruiting efforts are. It's best to get an early start on this process, to get the best prize pool possible.
Judging
Judging can be done in many different ways, and you can be creative with this as well. You can have as many or as few judges as you like. The fewer judges you have, the easier the scores are to record. However, having more judges allows for more variation in scores (and makes for a fun time trying to keep up). Unless you're hosting a single faction event, it's best to try to even out the faction standing of the judges to prevent favoritism. It is also much preferred that the organizers of the event not judge, to avoid any appearance of foul play. Judge selection is another process you want to start early so that the judges are known and prepared well in advance.
Scoring can be handled in various ways. The easiest way is to use a simple 1 to 10 scale. Each judge gives a score to each contestant in each round. If you had 10 judges, for example, you would have 10 scores per person per round. The judges then pass their scores to a scrutineer whose job is to collect and tally the results. It is best to use e-mails or tells for this to keep individual scores secret from the contestants and the other judges during the contest.
From there the easiest way to deal with the scores is simply to average them together to yield a single score. This has the added advantage that if the number of judges should change during the course of the competition due to connection issues, RL concerns, etc., the average will not be affected. Using a spreadsheet outside the game is a handy way to deal with all the numbers and calculations, though a calculator and pencil and paper will work as well with some good organization. The scores from each round can be added together, giving a total score or they can again be averaged for a final score out of 10.
You should also make some decisions on what to do in the case of ties. You can let them stand, or make some rules on how to break ties. Possible ways to break ties can include setting priority to the different rounds so that whoever has the highest score in the more important round could win the tie. You can also go back and see which contestant has more high scores: for example, which contestant has more scores of 10 or more scores of 9 and 10
Make sure to send an e-mail to the judges prior to the competition including all the vital information, including scoring procedures and when to score, what to score, what the competitions are, etc.
Participants
Again, this is something you want to work on in advance. It is a good idea to limit the number of contestants to something reasonable, say around 50, but keep in mind that many will not show up the day of the event. You might plan for a no-show rate of about half. Don't be upset about those who cancel. Not only do they miss out on the prize, but also it means you have fewer contestants to manage! You should be prepared to deal with some last minute additions as well and decide in advance how many, if any, you will continue to accept and when the absolute cutoff will be. Ultimately the number and type of rounds you decide on and the number of participants you have will determine how long the event lasts. It's important that it doesn't last so long that people will get bored or that they won't be able to stay until the end.
Recruiting participants is definitely easy enough. Advertising the prize pool is generally enough enticement to get people to sign up. Unless the theme of your event calls for it, there's no real need to screen participants, but make sure that each participant understands what is expected of them.
It's a good idea to prepare an e-mail to summarize the contest procedures, list the order in which the contestants will appear on stage, and encourage them to be there early for organization and prep time - 30 minutes is a good buffer. This e-mail will help them and you keep track of what is going on, and who needs to be where, when they need to be there, etc.
Competitions
You'll probably want to hold about two or three competitions or rounds during your pageant. Each competition should give the contestant a chance to say something and/or display something. Here are some ideas for giving the contestant something to talk about:
Introduction - give each contestant 15 seconds to introduce themselves to the crowd, the judges and the organizers of the event.
Interview - come up with a variety of fun, interesting questions to ask the participants in a random order, and have them respond. Good questions may cover several potential topics from opinions on the game to local issues to role-play oriented questions. Examples might be "What is your favorite thing about SWG?" or "Why do you think Coronet is the best city?" or "Do you think that the Rebellion has any chance of defeating the might of the Empire and why or why not?" Note that some players are role-players themselves, and deserve a question that enables them to answer as a person in the Star Wars universe and not as a player of a game. Such players should make an effort to notify organizers ahead of time so that their wishes may be accommodated at the time of the event. These questions should be prepared ahead of time so that they are ready at the time of the event, and both organizers and judges may suggest possible questions.
Statement - each contestant may make a statement either of their own choosing or in response to a particular topic or question given to all contestants. Note that special consideration may need to be given here as well for role-playing contestants.
These competition ideas may be combined with each other if desired or combined with a display round. Some ideas to give the contestants something to show off are swimwear (always a popular round for a beauty pageant), casual wear, formalwear/eveningwear, and combat wear/adventure wear (have participants pick outfits that they would run around in while fighting or adventuring). Things to consider during display rounds are whether contestants should be restricted to specific clothing items, any clothing items, a mix of clothing and armor, or only armor. Also consider whether contestants should be allowed to equip weapons. Keep in mind that there may be species and profession restrictions on what items a contestant may be allowed to equip or wear so you may want to put limitations on what is allowed for each competition.
Some final things to consider are how contestants should behave during each competition. Should contestants simply walk on and off stage when cued? Should they perform a specific emote or one of their choosing? If a particular round is a display-only round, are the contestants allowed to say anything or will they be penalized if they do? Such actions may or may not be important to your particular event, but you should have some idea how you wish to handle them should questions arise, or you may want to notify judges and contestants specifically ahead of time.
The Forum Post
You will most likely want to post about your pageant in the forums. Make it bright and colorful. You will want to draw attention specifically to the type of event and the date and time. Be sure to include credits to the co-organizers and any sponsors in your event. You can use your forum post as a recruiting post for prizes, judges and contestants, but be sure to post well in advance of the event, in order to give everyone a chance to get involved.
Include in your forum post the list of participants, the list of judges (sorted by faction, if you decide to go by that method), any rules for the contest, and so on. Unless your event will have special protection or will be taking place in a private structure or location, BE SURE to specify that ALL contestants and judges need to come non-PvP enabled otherwise you run the risk of your entire pageant turning into a huge PvP battle.
Live Support
You may wish to request event team support from a CSR or developer. Such support may be as simple as having a CSR available to resolve any disputes or interference from other players, or you may want to have a particular named character as a special guest. Such requests should be made well in advance (at least two weeks or more) and must conform to the live event team's stated schedule. Such support is always given as availability permits and is not guaranteed. For more information on availability of event team support and how to apply for it please refer to the Events forum.
The Day of the Event
As a fun pre-show idea, try to hire a band or get some of your fellow entertainers to put on a performance before the pageant so your early guests, judges and participants will have something to enjoy while they wait. You should designate someone to be a deck captain to work backstage and serve as a guide and organizer for the contestants. Additionally, it's a good idea to create a chat channel for the contestants so that all instructions can be given in one place free of all the clutter that will be going on in spatial. Depending on how many judges you have you may be able to put the judges in their own group or you may need to make another channel for the judges to talk to each other and coordinate their efforts. Be sure that only judges and organizers have access to the judges' channel. While judges will have things to talk about during the competition, they should probably be discouraged from openly discussing scoring of the contestants.
Try creating macros for the important things you want to say to help avoid errors and typos during the event. Prepare welcoming comments for the event, a list of organizers and sponsors you want to thank, and introductions for each of the contestants. When introducing the contestants, try to find a unique and interesting way to welcome each one on stage. Mention things such as their faction, race, or any unique features they have. Have fun and enjoy it!
Use the time before the event begins for final instructions for the contestants and judges. You should assign one person the responsibility of making a final decision on any last minute issues that may come up with regard to the rules. The deck captain should help line up all the contestants in their given order ahead of time and be sure that everyone stays organized. He or she should also perform attire checks to be sure all rules on clothing, equipment, and other requirements or restrictions are being followed. Make sure all organizers and prompters have the list of which contestants showed and the order in which they will appear, so they know when to prompt people.
Take this time to breathe deep and relax, because the most fun and exciting part of the competition is about to begin.
The Actual Event
Once you have everything ready, it's time to begin the show. Introduce yourself, thank all the viewers, organizers, contestants and prize donors, and get the show underway. It's nice to give a brief summary of each round of the pageant at this point, so people will know what to expect. You can use the information from the e-mail you sent to the judges describing the competitions and scoring system to help you figure out what to say.
For each round, welcome each contestant onstage one at a time and give each one his or her turn in the spotlight to display his or her outfit or equipment or make an introduction or other statement as appropriate. The judges can then take turns asking a question, if it's an interview style round. When the contestant is finished and the judges are satisfied, he or she should then be thanked and allowed to walk off stage. The judges then decide on their final scores and deliver them to the scrutineer.
The scrutineer should keep careful track of scores using whatever method works best. If he or she is using an external spreadsheet it makes for a lot of ALT-TAB'ing, so it's helpful to have a decent computer with only SWG and the spreadsheet software running in order to be able to give prompts quickly and record scores
When the contest is over make sure you have recorded all scores, and that the number of scores for each participant match. Take the time to calculate and double-check all the results to make sure they are correct. Then once you're confident that all the scores are correct, invite all the contestants back on the stage one final time. Be suspenseful! Announce your winners and hand out the prizes. You may even want to hand out special colored sashes or necklaces (the immense gemstone necklace works nicely for this) to signify each winner's placing.
After The Event
Take the time to send each of your contestants, judges and sponsors a thank you e-mail for participating. They will appreciate it, and it will encourage their participation in your next pageant, should you choose to do one. It takes time, effort, money and energy but a successfully run event can be a reward in itself. We hope this guide will help bring many fun player events to a server near you!
Danial Atrosian & Shi'ann Dinova
Entertainers Extraordinnaire
Flurry Server
Page 1 of 1