Danger and adventure
Tournaments
A knock-out of single combats, drawn as a bracket and run by the server: pay the fee, win your way through, and the champion takes the whole pot. Nobody dies in the lists.
A tournament is a knock-out of single combats. A marshal opens it - or any player, from F2 > My character > Set up a tournament for 300 groschen, who then runs it as its host (begin it, set the entry fee, call the next match, cancel it); the fee comes back if the staff call it off before it begins. Fighters pay to get on its roster, and the server calls the matches itself, one after another, until a champion is left. Several can be on at once: each tournament a marshal opens has a number of its own (counting from 1), its own name, its own fee and pot, its own ground and its own boards. Where a command takes an id, that number is the id - and it can be left off while only one tournament fits the verb; with two, the command asks which one? and lists them.
Each one passes through three states: signup, while fighters pay to enter; running, while its matches are called; and finished, once its champion is crowned. The whole pot goes to the champion - there is no second prize and no share for the finalist. A finished tournament stands with its champion for 30 seconds, then clears itself away, boards and all.
Entering the lists
- See what is on
Near the lists, open the action wheel - Z > Tournament - for the tournament desk (a note on your screen tells you when a signup opens near you); F2 > The realm > The tournament opens it anywhere (
/tournamenttoo). Every tournament on the server has its card: its state, its fee, its pot, who is up next and who fights now, your own standing, Show the way to the lists and The bracket full screen. - Enter
Enter the lists on its card - click once more to pay the fee (
/tjoindoes the same). The fee leaves your purse at once and goes into that tournament's pot. A roster holds 32 fighters at most, and you stand in one tournament at a time: knocked out or withdrawn, you may enter the next signup. - Wait where you please
You need not stand at the ground. When your match is called you are carried to the marks and set back afterwards - what the clock measures is that you are in the world and on your feet, not how far off you are. You have 20 seconds from the call.
- Leave while you still can
/tourney leave, or Withdraw on the card, takes you off the roster and hands your fee back - during the signup only. Once the marshal starts the tournament the roster is shut and nothing is given back.
The fee and the pot
A tournament opens with a fee - 50 groschen unless its marshal sets another - and the fee is locked as soon as the first fighter has paid, which is what makes every refund exactly what was paid. Every fee goes into that tournament's pot, the marshal may add house money to it, and the champion takes the pot whole. Your purse is counted before it is touched: short of the fee, the join is refused with both amounts named rather than half-charged.
When your match is called
Matches are called strictly in bracket order - the next is always the first without a winner - so there is never a question of who is up. The rhythm never varies:
- The call
The whole realm is told the round and who fights whom, and the two fighters are named on their own screens, with their opponent and the seconds they have.
- Stand ready
20 seconds for both of you to be present: on the server, loaded in and alive. Distance is not asked about.
- To the marks
The moment both are present, where each of you stood is remembered, you are both healed, and you are set on the two marks - three paces either side of the centre, facing each other.
- The countdown
3, 2, 1 across the middle of your screen, a number a second, then Fight!
- The bout
No blow may cut a fighter to 10 health: the blow that would never lands, and that fighter yields on the spot - a bleed that would do the same yields too. Yield the match on the desk yields of your own will (or
/tyield); when your match is called the desk says so, with the way to the lists. A bout still standing after 3 minutes goes to whoever has more health left. - Back where you were
The result is announced to everyone, you are both healed, and you are set back exactly where you stood when the match was called. The next match is called after a breather of 10 seconds.
How a match ends
| A yield | The usual ending, and why nobody dies in the lists: the blow or the bleed that would have cut a fighter to 10 health never lands, and they yield on the spot. The match goes to their opponent. |
| A fall | Only on a server whose lists are fought to the death, with the yield turned off: the loser is killed, or bleeds out with nobody to credit for it. A fighter who truly falls follows the realm's own way with the dead - they wake at an infirmary (see Wounds and the infirmary) and are not carried back to the ground. |
| Forfeit | A called fighter was not there when the 20 seconds ran out, and the one who stood ready takes it. Neither of them there, the bracket must still move: the winner is drawn by lot and announced as a double forfeit. |
| Their man left the field | A fighter logged off, fast-travelled or hit a loading screen in the middle of the bout. The match goes to the other at once, rather than letting the clock hand it over on health. |
| Time - more health left | The bout ran past 3 minutes. The fighter with more health left wins; dead even, a coin decides. |
| The marshal's word | The marshal named the winner of a match that would not end by itself. |
| Did not appear | The marshal skipped a called fighter who never came, and their opponent advances. |
| Withdrawn | The marshal took a fighter out of a running tournament. Their opponent advances at once, and their later matches are handed over as they come up. |
The bracket, and the boards in the world
/viewbracket (or /bracket) puts the whole bracket on your screen - yours if you stand in one, else the only one on, else the number you name; Esc or the ✕ sets it down, and you can walk about with it up. During a signup it is the roster in the order it was written, with the fee and the pot at the foot. Once the tournament runs it is the rounds laid out left to right: each match a card, winners and losers marked, a bye written as a bye, the live match picked out, and a Champion column once the final is decided. The desk's Bracket button opens the same page. Without the game's windows the command prints the same facts as chat lines, a line a round.
Marshals also hang two boards at the ground, and anyone within twenty-five paces reads them. The up-next board is for the edge of the lists: UP NEXT - or NOW FIGHTING while the blows land - the two names, the round and the pair on deck after them, and the pot. Idle it reads No tournament today; during a signup it calls the fee and counts the names written. The bracket board is the tall notice board: the whole roster during the signup, then every round written out with its results, the live match marked with crossed swords, and the champion at the foot.
The champion
The champion is proclaimed to the whole realm and takes the pot whole. With it come +35 renown and +15 influence for their faction in the town the lists stood in (see Influence and renown), a line in the Chronicle, and the Champion of the Lists deed with the title that comes with it (see Deeds). The town feasts the victory, which draws on its luxury stock.
For the marshals
The verbs below belong to the staff, Moderator and above, and every one of them is written to the staff log. The desk's second tab - The marshal, which only staff are sent - does all of it with buttons - Z > Tournament opens it for the staff anywhere, and a tournament opened there has its lists where you stand: a card to open a new tournament, then a section for each one on, with its called match as two rows (each fighter tagged stands ready or not here, with the one right button beside them), its roster with a Remove by every name, its arena button and its two boards with the whole mounting rail. A button can never do what the typed command would refuse.
/tourney open [fee] [name] | Makes a new tournament - a number of its own, its fee (50 groschen unless given) and its name (Tournament #N unless written, 48 letters at most) - and announces the fee and the winner-takes-the-pot rule to the realm. Refused in a town whose luxury stock has run out (see Trade packs and town warehouses). |
/tourney arena [id] [x y z yaw] | Puts that tournament's two marks where you stand, along your facing - or at the coordinates named. Every tournament fights at its own marks, and they all begin at the server's spawn point, so give each its ground before you start it. Refused while a match is being fought in it: move the marks between matches, not under the fighters' feet. |
/tourney fee [id] <groschen> | Sets the fee, only while nobody has paid it yet - that is what keeps every refund exact. With no number, it reports the fee as it stands. |
/tourney prize [id] <groschen> | Puts house money into the pot; during a signup or a run. A cancelled tournament does not hand top-ups back to anyone - they evaporate, and the amount goes to the log. |
/tourney start [id] | Shuffles that roster, pads it with byes to the next round number so a bye always sits against a fighter, resolves those byes at once, builds the bracket and calls the first match. Two fighters at least. It warns when another running tournament fights on the same marks, and is refused where the town's luxury stock has run out. |
/tourney next [id], /tnext [id] | Cuts the 10-second breather short and calls the next match now. Refused while a match is called - end that one first - and when nothing is pending. |
/tourney forfeit [id] <player> | Hands the called match to the other fighter: the marshal's word. It needs a match in the arena and a player who is truly one of the two in it. /twin [id] <player> says the same the other way round, naming the winner. |
/tourney skip [id] [name] | For the fighter who simply never came: their opponent advances, did not appear, the countdown is stopped and anyone already carried to the marks is set back. With no name it skips whichever of the two is absent - refused when both stand ready (that is forfeit's ground) and when both are away (name the one you mean). A named fighter who stands ready is refused and pointed at forfeit. |
/tourney remove [id] <name>, /tkick [id] <name> | Takes a fighter out. During the signup: off the roster, their fee given back (to their moneylender's account if they are away) and the pot lighter by it. Once the tournament runs: marked withdrawn, and no refund - the fee is in the pot and the pot is the champion's; their called match goes to their opponent at once and their later ones are handed over as they come up. Refused once the final is decided, and refused outright for the champion. |
/tourney cancel [id] | Stops that tournament: any bout ends, both fighters go back where they stood, every entrant has their exact fee again, and the whole realm is told in red. |
/tourney board [id], /tourney bracketboard [id] | Hangs that tournament's up-next board (1.5 x 1 m) or its bracket board (1.5 x 2 m) two paces in front of you, facing you. Run again, the same command moves the board you already hung rather than making a second. |
Naming a fighter, and truing up the boards
A name given to skip or remove is the name as the bracket writes it, matched without regard to case: the name written out in full wins, failing that the one name it begins, and a beginning that could be two fighters is refused with the candidates listed - so a fighter who has logged off is still reachable. Two fighters of a name are told apart on the bracket by a number, Henry (2), because the pages read the bracket by name alone.
The boards are set straight from the desk's The boards card: Place here or Move here, Mount on a sign - a real sign hung just behind the page, so the bracket reads as written on a board rather than floating in the air - and a rail of nudges to true the whole thing up by eye: slide left and right, raise and lower, near and far along the way it faces, turn (fifteen degrees a press) and bigger or smaller (a tenth a press). A mounted board adds the sign's own four buttons - the sign up and down, and toward the page or deeper behind it - and a Sign: button that cycles the style: rustic board, fancy board, hanging board rustic or fancy, and the Broken Sword tavern sign. The split is deliberate: the sign is planted when it is mounted and then stands still, and the page arrows move the page alone, so you true the page up against the sign. Place here replants both together to start over, and Take the sign down leaves the page floating again.
Wagers on the champion
While a tournament's signup is open with two fighters or more, anyone but its fighters, its host and the staff can back one fighter to win it all, from the tournament's card (Z > Tournament): the stake leaves your purse and goes into one pool. When the champion is crowned, the pool is shared among those who backed them, each in the measure of their stake - no bookmaker: what the winners take is what the others put in. Nobody backed the champion: every stake comes back. One pick a tournament (more coin may go on it, up to 500 groschen in all), and none of your account's characters may then enter its lists. Wagers close when the tournament begins and are never taken back; a fighter who leaves or is withdrawn has every stake on them returned, and a tournament called off, ended without a champion or cut by a restart or a crash gives every stake back. A third board beside the tournament, The odds, shows what is on each fighter and what a groschen on them pays now.