WBC Event Recaps

The event recaps for this year's World Boarding Championships are almost online. By this I mean that they are actually up on the website but they haven't been announced as up and aren't linked to. Of course any hacker who cares can figure out where they are... Each year they just increment the number at the end of the webpage name and it seems the 12 one is up. This is always a happy time for me since I love reading all the event recaps. Some of them I read to see if I get mentioned in the recap. Some I read to see how the event ran to know if I should try it in a future year. Some I read even though I don't care about the game at all because I just like reading them.

In 2011 there were five events that didn't submit a recap. There's a punishment for not getting one in on time and that's a reduction in status for the event itself. A top tier event get bumped down to a potential trial. A potential trial gets kicked off the trial ballot for a whole year. This year there were three events that didn't submit a recap. That makes me sad in general but these ones in particular make me really sad since they include two events I've won in the past and a third I was interested in playing now that the game is on Yucata. Hawaii has been kicked out for a year while both Puerto Rico and Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation will have to be voted back in as trials.

I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand I've never been a GM so I'm in no real position to complain that they aren't writing recaps. On the other hand if I'd known the Lord of the Rings GM wasn't going to submit a recap I would have written one myself to let it have a full compliment of plaques next year. It feels like the people getting punished here aren't the ones who slacked off for whatever reason but the people who do well in that specific game. But as Sceadeau pointed out on Facebook yesterday you can't have any punishment against the GMs specifically or you'll really deter people from volunteering to GM and that's the last thing you want to do. I'm worried enough that I'd do a bad job GMing and forget to do something... If you threaten me with a ban from WBC if I do a bad job then there's no way I'd do it. And if there's no punishment at all then way more than 3 reports would get skipped each year. Presumably people choose to GM games they care about in some way so the status quo does seem like a reasonable way to approach things.

I just wish there was a way to prod these things along. Because I don't want popular games to get removed and because I want to be able to read about all the events each year. And because I want to win a Lord of the Rings shield!