List Keeping
Introduction
This guide is intended to inform Stewards, Marshals-In-Charge, and List Officers of the List Keeping requirements for Canterbury Faire. It is suggested that the reader also refer to the various tourneys described in the other Martial Activities guides for further details described therein.
List Officer in Charge
The Steward(s) should appoint a List Officer in Charge (LOIC) for the event. This does not have to be the Southron Gaard Baronial List Officer (though it has often been so previously). The LOIC should have experience in running lists in various formats, and knowledge of the reporting that must be done afterwards. There is also quite a bit of paperwork to be drawn up and printed before the event, so the LOIC should have access to printing facilities, or be able to designate this to somebody else through the Steward(s).
The LOIC should ideally be recruited some months before Faire, so that qualified volunteers can be sought for the tournaments that have been planned and the necessary paperwork prepared. The LOIC should be in regular contact with the Marshals-In-Charge (MICs) for Armoured Combat, Rapier and Archery to ensure that tourney formats and scheduling are known and can be prepared for.
Reporting
In the case of Armoured Combat and Rapier tourneys, the numbers of fighters and tourney results must be reported to both the Kingdom List Officers and the respective Kingdom Marshallates. The LOIC must ensure that each List Keeper assigned to these tourneys is aware of this reporting necessity, and is provided with the requisite reporting forms:
Useful Resources
Lochac Lists (the official webpage of the Kingdom Lists Office): https://lists.lochac.sca.org/
Official Forms (Tourney Sign-in and Tourney Report): https://lists.lochac.sca.org/tourney-resources/
Pre-event planning
Early in preparations for Faire, it is essential for the LOIC to contact the various MICs to determine what tourneys are planned, and their intended formats. While some tourney formats are relatively easy for the List Keeper, some are difficult, and require a List Keeper with experience in the format involved. Note that it is not uncommon for the format to be dependent on the number of combatants who participate. Remember this when you come to recruiting volunteers. For large tourneys with difficult List formats it is often advisable to assign two Listkeepers to keep track of everything, check each other’s work, and ensure smooth communication with the marshals and heralds. This can also be an opportunity for a less-experienced Listkeeper to learn from one with greater expertise.
The LOIC must ensure the week before Faire that there are sufficient printouts of all the forms that will be needed by LIstkeepers. Spare copies will be needed, as forms can be spoiled, and some tourneys may have more entrants than can be contained on a single form (For example: it is not unknown for the Thorfyrd’s Arrow archery tourney to have 30+ entrants, or the Fighter Auction Tourney to have 20+).
As soon as the number and type of tourneys has been finalised by the MICs, the LOIC should contact the Chores Coordinator to establish the number of chore slots to be allocated to LIstkeeping roles. A general rule of thumb would be to request two Listkeepers for each tourney, however this could be adjusted if it is known ahead of time that Listkeeping will be more/less difficult. A large tourney where the MIC intends to run two or more fields, with bouts running simultaneously, will probably require two or more List tables and additional Listkeepers to run them.
Authorisation Card and Armour Inspection Tracking
It is required for fighters in both Armoured Combat and Rapier tourneys to present their Authorisation Cards to the Listkeeper, and there is confirmation that their armour has been inspected and approved by the Marshals, before they can be entered into the List. In recent Faires MICs have sought to streamline this process via some form of card-sighting and inspection process at the start of the event which covers the combatant throughout the length of Faire. The LOIC should consult with the respective MICs before Faire to determine if/how such a system will operate.
Listkeeper Volunteers
Good Listkeepers need a sharp eye for detail, and it often helps to be good with numbers. People with mundane experience in bookkeeping, computer programming, or anything numerically-based are often good recruits. When assessing your volunteers it can be a good idea to sort them into ‘Expert’, ‘Journeyman’ and ‘Apprentice’ groups (or some similar categorisation) so they can be matched with tourneys that fit their ability level (or partnered with another Listkeeper they can learn from/teach).
The Faire booking form usually has a checkbox for people to volunteer for Listkeeping, and the LOIC should receive regular email updates informing them of these volunteers. The LOIC should make a point of contacting this list of potential Listkeepers well before Faire to establish their schedule availability and expertise level.
Structured List Formats:
Be prepared to discuss with the various MICs the time requirements for various formats, and whether or not the desired format is achievable with the expected number of fighters and the time allocated for the tourney in the schedule. The number of bouts for different formats can be calculated in advance to assist this assessment:
- Round Robin:
- Number of match-ups: 12nn-1 (where n = number of combatants)
- Double Elimination:
- Number of match-ups: 2n-1
- Triple Elimination:
- Number of match-ups: 3n-1
Note that a full round-robin will have considerably more bouts, and thus take much more time, as the number of entrants grows. If the number of combatants is unknown until the day of the tourney, MICs may specify that the format will change from a round robin to double- or triple- elimination if the number of combatants exceeds a certain threshold.
Listkeeping Resources: Draw Creation
One of the fundamental challenges of Listkeeping is the creation of the round-by-round draw for combatants. The challenge here is to ensure - as much as possible - the avoidance of double-ups (where two combatants meet more than once in the same tourney. This is a particular challenge in the round-robin format where fighters can only meet each other once.
