Realm Defibrillator
Jump starting your Realm
After many years sometimes your chapter or realm falls into a slump. Usually a drop in attendance is the reason. This page is designed to discuss many of the reasons why groups fall apart and how those who wish to shock-start the realm back into getting bigger, better, and more fun.
Inconsistency is no way to play
Probably inconsistency is the number one reason a group fails. Those who run the group must remain consistent in almost everything they do. Being inconsistent will make fighters that are there to just have fun feel that they have been cheated and it also may discredit the solidity of the group.
What time is practice?
Groups that survive have a schedule, a set schedule that never changes. Five years from now your group should have practices and battles the same 2 days that they have practices and battles. Deviating from those days will cause people to miss events. Who could attend practices and battles if they have to change their work schedule once every 3 months to attend? Nobody can, and that is why a practice schedule should be planned a year in advance. It is good practice to have is entirely set in stone by August of the year before a schedule and it should go through the entire next year. The schedule should go as far as saying next August we will plan the next years schedule. Now sometimes events that are scheduled later in the year are not determined in August, but those changes can be added at a later time.
Along with a set schedule the chapter leaders need to be at practices and battles. And not some or and or they need to be at ALL practice and battles. If you want your group to fail or fall into 8 guys fighting don’t show up yourself. One chapter leader can speak on this matter:
“If it was for my mother’s funeral I would feel bad about not attending a practice. Whenever I miss a practice something bad happens that takes months to clean up.” – Madog, The Household of Rausumea
If there is an emergency than it is acceptable. But if the realm leader can’t make it to something then the group should seriously reconsider finding a new leader. There have been some groups that have had a leader who has worked 6 days 80 hours a week, and their only day off is the day they practice. Because of this the group is limited and the realm leader always wishes they were spending time with their family. This puts the realm leader in a negative position, if you find your realm in this situation you should consider choosing a new realm leader, one who is more flexible and free.
I don’t have any weapons
Many people bring 5 or 6 weapons that are extra with them to practices. This does help a group grow, but only 2 or 3 people and those 2 or 3 people get use to borrowing weapons and now are being supported by the person who is loaning the weapons. Like sharks to blood in the water these weapons scavengers are taking a bite out of those who are being kind and trying to help. This is bad. The first day a fighter shows up they won’t have weapons and that is why people bring a few extra. Try to be a little more responsible as loaner of weapons, let them know week one the way it will be:
- Weeks 1 and 2 – you can borrow weapons.
- Weeks 3 and 4 – if you don’t have garb you can’t use my weapons
- Week 5 – your cut off, go take a bite out of someone else.
This is a little tough, but face it if the group is growing and the people are not learning how to get / make garb and weapons then the group really is not growing. Once 2 or 3 noobs use all the weapons how is the group going to grow.
The Life Cycle of the group
The life cycle of a group is the common ups and downs of a group. There are often small trends that occur during different seasons, as well as larger trends that occur over longer periods of time.
You will find that most groups generally get bigger in the spring and summer. Then during the winter there will be small short practices. The closer to the poles you live the more you can come to expect this. Some groups are warm relatively all year long, because of school breaks, holidays, and vacation time they too see a slump in the winter months.
You’ll get One out of Four
It can generally be said that one out of four new fighters will stick with it. Along with that the average length of time a fighter will stay with the sport is four to six years before they move, change jobs and can not attend, or flat out quit the sport. Because of this simple fact to keep your numbers any group could look at it this way.
If your group is 20 member: in 5 years we will need to have 80 newly exposed people to fighting to maintain our current size and a relative good level of experience and expertise fighting wise plus grow a little. We can round that to 16 fighters a year. If your group has practice 4 times a month you should have about 50 practices in a warm climate and 30 practices in a temperate climate. Using the equations you can see that a warm climate group then needs to expose someone new once every 3 practices, while a temperate climate needs almost another new person exposed to the sport two out of three practices.
If the world was math we would have it down. But by those basics we can draw some conclusions. A temperate zoned group can not afford to have people who are going to treat new fighters poorly, in order to survive they have to get new people almost every time they meet weekly during the 6-8 months they meet. Maintaining a huge group of 60-100 fighters becomes a really hard PR job. You also can say that they can not afford to have 2 or 3 failed practices in a month.
The upbeat/the slump
Groups do it every 2 to 4 years. Suddenly they will have fifty people, half of which are new and they will stay that way for a year, then they will drop down to some medium in the twenties and then slump dramatically to 8 or less fighters. As a realm leader you can just hope that it gets better. Through consistency and catching those new fighters that come you could slowly bring the heartbeat of the group back to a steady beat of 20-30 fighters.
The best thing to do is identify what things you do when you’re in an upbeat 50’s practice routine and what things the group is doing during a slump. Then get everyone together and say we need to be doing the things you normally do during an upbeat time and not do the things your doing to cause the slump.
CrAcK – Getting your fighters addicted.
There is a level of addiction to fighting. For some people it is the fantasy, for some people it is the sport, and for some people it is the friends. And for everyone it is a combination of the three. You need to identify the crack and inject the correct type to hype up your participants. If you get it right you may bring dozens of old fighters back into the fold. Once you identify the proper thing. Give them as much as reasonably possible without destroying the other two types.