SimmplyGammon's 4th Birthday Lobby

Having our Fourth Birthday here at Safe Harbor Games was so much fun. The Lobby design here at SHG made for a very colorful room. With so many emoticons, font control and filter free chat sometimes the lobby can be as much fun as the game. We wanted to share with everyone a sample of a SimmplyGammon Lobby at SHG, Enjoy!

If you have the aptitude, or even if you don't but are prepared to really work at it, hosting can be the biggest buzz in the world. It's challenging, it's interesting, and furthermore, it's a lot of fun! A smooth well run tournament is a pleasure for both host and players. But there are other things to bear in mind before you sign on that dotted line.

Hosts will be held to a higher standard of behaviour than other players.

Sounds a little like hype, but this is reality. Even your best friends will start looking at everything you say and do from a slightly different perspective once you have that token, and suddenly have the power to tell them what to do and how to do it. Unless you are in a hider that nobody knows, you always have keep in the back of your mind that consciously or not, people will be judging you about almost everything.

You will almost certainly lose a few friends, or people you thought were friends.

That wacky character you always thought was so hilarious while you were 'just a player', who liked to push the envelope and stir things up a little, will push it a little too far one day in one of your tourneys. They'll think it's ok because they 'know the host'. But it isn't ok, because other people will jump on the bandwagon very quickly if you don't nip it in the bud, and you may have a riot on your hands. So you may sometimes be put in the position of having to jump on a 'friend' really hard to prevent the riot before it starts. If the wacky ones are true friends, they will back off, but some of them won't. Some of them are going to say to themselves, and more importantly, to others, "So and so used to be a really nice guy/gal, but since they started hosting they've got big headed. They've really changed." (Actually, they'll put it a lot more rudely than that, but this is a site that is open to the public, so I have to watch what I say.) And just like that, you've lost somebody you thought was a friend, and it's going to hurt.

You WILL have tournaments from hell.

They may come early or they may come late, but they will happen. And you will sit there with a tournament falling apart around your ears and wonder why on earth you are doing this to yourself. The tool will malfunction, you'll have a whole horde of disruptive players, you'll have mass boots or you will boot yourself - the list goes on. If you really are a host, you will learn a lot more from your tourneys from hell than you ever learned from the ones that ran like clockwork, but at the time you will just want it to be over and the points posted so you can hide in a corner and lick your wounds. But you will be back there on time with the tool open ready to do it all over again for your next scheduled tournament if you are a host. And about those disruptive players - as your regular players get to know you, they will be tempted to rush to your defense if somebody attacks you. You can't let that happen. It's great that they feel strongly enough to want to defend you, but in those circumstances, you need to take a strong line and let them know that you need to deal with it yourself.

You may have to enforce rules that you do not agree with.

If you host as an Independent, you can mostly set your own rules within reason, but if you host with a group, that group will have policies that you may not always agree with entirely. So before you commit yourself to joining a particular group, observe a lot of tournaments and ask a lot of questions to make sure you will be a good 'fit' with them. You may be a brilliant host, but if you have to work with a group of other people, they need to be people you get along with and whose policies and protocols you agree with. Furthermore, every gaming site has a COC or TOU/S. You will probably find that you are comfortable with most of it, but even if it has parts you strongly disagree with, you must adhere to the rules, and always be consistent and fair about how you do it. If you don't feel you can do this, you shouldn't be hosting.

You may have to host on a day you'd rather be anywhere else but online.

We aren't talking about some kind of disaster, family crisis, major illness or anything of that nature, because somebody will always help out if possible under those circumstances. But some days, you just don't feel like doing it. Well, you know what? It's your tournament, you scheduled it, and it's your responsibility to do it. And what's more, as much as it's in your power, you have to do it as if it were any other tournament, and as if your only desire in life is to be right there doing what you're doing. Nothing will put players off as fast a host who just sits there and does nothing but run assignments, and has no interaction with them. I've seen examples of hosts who were so down for one reason or another they've been sitting there feeling miserable to the point of tears right through a tourney, but the players never knew, because from their point of view, everything was going along just as usual. It's what you have to do if you're a host.

You may need to keep some things confidential you'd love to tell a few trusted friends.

One very important rule is that information shared between hosts in a group STAYS in the group. As a host you will have access to information that others don't have, and you will also probably get to hear some really juicy gossip occasionally. Learn to keep it all to yourself. If you get a reputation for being somebody who can't be trusted to do this, people won't feel comfortable telling you anything. They may not intend to treat you as an 'outsider', but this is what will happen, and it will not be a comfortable position for either you or your fellow hosts.

Finally, it's not easy to walk the line between being somebody who is 'in charge' and somebody just hanging out and playing with a group of friends. And hosting IS playing, or should be. You have to do it in a professional way, but it should always be fun, or mostly. Nothing is fun all the time every time. If it's never fun any more, then maybe you need a break, or maybe you need to step away from hosting entirely. And you need to remember at all times, you are not the 'boss'. A tournament is ALWAYS a cooperative effort between host and players. Sure, without a host, there wouldn't be a tournament. But without the players there wouldn't be a tournament either, and you wouldn't be a host.

But if you've made it to the end of this screed, and are still thinking, yes, I'd like to be a host, then do those tests, learn the skills, and prepare for the ride of your life. It will be worth it.