Well, a week has gone by and I just haven't bounced back from Egils. This does not bode well for the rest of the season. I slept all day Tuesday, and large chunks of Weds, Thurs, Friday... Saturday I went to Larry's birthday party and left early because I felt so crummy. Too bad for that- I missed the BBQ. (May have not been to bad though- I ate too much already without it.)I sent out the informal survey again and have gotten some replies from Madrone. Turns out even they think the kingdom is too big. So far I have 55 responses, with little variance.
All but one think the kingdom is too big and needs to spawn. 'Ideal' kingdom event size seems to be running 1000-1200. A couple think big is good, and I had two who though 200 was fine. (snarf!) Most people are comfortable with traveling 3-4 hours on a fairly regular regional basis. It seems that the farthest that people generally are willing to travel for a Crown event is 5-7 hours. Quite a few people said they'd be willing to take a kingdom office or event in a smaller (I presuming 5-hour radius) kingdom, and cited travel and sheer work volume as barrier to office now, and problems with handling the sheer numbers for kingdom events.
Of the people from Summits and Rivers who replied, the travel range was about as I suspected. Summits folks will travel the length of Summits plus to to 3M environs, a wee farther north for Crown events. Rivers people will go south to Adiantum (farther south for Coronet events) and north to Rivers Bend, and a wee bit farther north to Crown events. The travel pattern fits what I'd suspected. There is quite a bit of overlap, especially now with some of the major players traveling more- Sir Roland has been going up and down I-5 to get a major fighter practice going, and has also been driving to Stromgard for practice. And apparently there were quite a few people who hit both Egils and Grand Thing last weekend, which I thought was an interesting turn of events.
I'm hoping that more will come in- I'd like to get closer to 100 if I can. And then find out what the kingdom officers think... life could become very interesting...
3 comments:
(delurking) Melbrigda's friend Greet, here. I've had similar thoughts - that as gas goes to $10+/gal, kingdoms might want to consider splitting, and as an A&S person, I'd like to see fewer, though more deeply planned, events.
We're 7 hrs from most events held in the population center of Meridies (North AL/GA), and others have it worse. However this pop center isn't the geographic center...so outliers are effectively 'distanced out' from those events.
There's been some recent discussion about whether official 'distance learning' holds any promise to help with transportation costs, with interesting ideas resulting, at least for me. I suppose I should blog about it.
I hear you on the A&S stuff, but we're worse off than that- it takes roughly 35 hours to drive from the southernmost shire to the northernmost shire. Here in Portland we're 5 hours from the southern border, but it's closer to drive to Estrella than it is to the site of next May Crown! And we need a passport now to get over the border. And forget about seeing the royals- we flat out have too many branches for that to happen...
Our population center is on I-5, roughly Vancouver BC to Portland OR, with a huge bulge in the middle where Seattle is. And there's people in the Seattle metro area who won't go to events that aren't on the bus line. Down south they have to drive three hours just to get to mid-sized regional events. And I went to crown two weeks ago- five hours away= $100 of fuel. I won't be able to do that again for quite awhile.
I figure we'll have to let the Canadians sort out what they want to do, but in the meantime, the southern branches need a break.
Echoing Greet :) One of the problems that we would have in Meridies in splitting the kingdom is that we have a lack of Baronies. Meridies has only 5 baronies. No matter how you would split Meridies (again) would be how do you make it fair to anyone? Our population hubs are Atlanta, Birmingham and Knoxville. There are two baronies in Alabama (one north and one south), two baronies in Georgia (both in the essentially the Atlanta Metro area) and one barony in Tennessee. I also don't think that Meridies has the population base to split. We would have two very weak kingdoms.
I've been surprised since we moved from AnTir that they hadn't made soem of those principalities kingdoms already! I'm all in favor of having events that are either, as Greet said, deeply planned or having lots of small local one day events and feasts. Trying to convince people that they want to spend $150 in gas, $25 site fee, plus food for the weekend (breakfasts, lunches, snacks) to go to a fighting only or A&S only event is going to quickly get very old.
Of course it takes training to get people used to the idea of thinking locally. There are popular events that people are used to going to, but now can't afford. We are skipping University this year because of site and travel costs. May not go to Crown List or Coronation unless they are within a 4-5 hour drive.
I miss the "good old days" when I could put $5 in my VW Bug, pay $10 for a weekend with feast, and grab a loaf of bread and some cheese and be set for the weekend. I'd come home with half a tank of gas still.
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