Well, since our League is starting to pick up and we seem to have plenty of participants, I think it's time to unveil the next event going down here. Namely, the appointment of our first three official gym leaders!

Gym leaders, of course, are recognized as some of the best trainers in the League and get to distribute badges, create and manage their gym, and even create a special TM to give to people who triumph over them in battle.

In order to appoint a gym leader, they need to prove themselves in a trial by battle. At the moment, though, we have to get everything nailed down and determine what sort of tournament we're going to have.

First, a few quick facts about gym leader tournaments before we get down to the nitty-gritty:

1. Anyone who wants to can participate in the gym leader tournament (assuming they have a registered team and a bank account, of course).

2. A participant in the gym leader tournament must use a pokémon whose type corresponds to the type of gym that they want to run (water-type, normal-type, etc). The pokémon may be only half this type or may evolve into a pokémon that is all or half of the desired type (thus you could use magikarp if you were trying out for a flying-type gym... but then again, you'd most likely be crazy).

3. Any number of people may bring a pokémon of the same type, but only one person may have that type of gym. If more than one person wins and wants that gym type, then the first-place gets first pick, second place second, and so on.

4. Know that gym leaders are required to have three pokémon of the type that they want to use in order to run the gym, as that is the minimum number required for gym battles. You do not have to have the three now, but you will need to get them before you can open your gym to the public.

5. You may enter for only one type of gym. That is, you can't want a fire, water, or ice gym and therefore enter pokémon of each of those types into the tournament. That simply isn't fair.

Okay, now to the planning. We need to decide upon the following three things:

1. Tournament Style: Single battle? Double battle? Free-for all? Damage caps? DQ time? etc

2. Terrain: Generally, it would be most prudent to pick terrain that gives no distinct advantage to any one type. However, if possible we want to make it more than just a boring arena with no special features, as unusual terrain features can be used by expert battlers to great effect. It might also be possible to have some terrain features that give boosts to certain types, but there would need to be a boost area for most/all of the types in order to make it fair to all prostpective gym leaders.

3. Referees: Who is willing to make a commitment to ref battles in the tournament?

All right, a rundown of what we're looking at in terms of possible tournament styles:

1. The Grand Melee

This is sort of a "traditional" thing with gym leader tournaments; everybody enters one pokémon, they all hit the field at the same time, everyone attacks, and it's all crazy right up 'til the end. Generally, you need a very large field for this, as you'll have tons of pokémon crammed into it.

Pros:

A. Well, it's pretty crazy, but undeniably fun. If you're not a good battler, you can sometimes try the "run away!" strategy to survive towards the final rounds when your opponents will be weakened, maybe netting yourself a third-place gym slot.

B. Puts everybody on a fairly even playing field.

C. You PM all moves to the ref because otherwise the thread would get seriously spammed up. No countering opponents' moves/strategies, then, but you don't have to worry about them knowing your own, either. If you're good at poker, this style would probably work in your favor.

Cons:

A. Freaking hard to ref, and time-consuming, too. Your inbox is likely to become rather full, depending on the number of participants. Also, whoever refs cannot participate and get a gym. And yes, it would probably be me.

B. Gang attacks are easy to pull off. When three pokémon, even weak ones, gang up on the top contender/someone they just don't like much, it's not pretty/fun.

C. Difficult to run, as you have to deal with all of the PM's.

2. The Tiered Melee

Similar to the grand melee but broken up into smaller groups (say, four on four at once). Combatants would be sorted into groups of four or five that would battle (on pokémon/person) and then would compete in melee-style matches. The winners would move on, eventually reaching the melee between the finalists.

Pros:

A. Melee tournaments are kinda fun, as I mentioned before. The smaller tiered match makes it a little less crazy.

B. Again, fairly even, especially in beginning rounds.

C. Anonymity of moves again... four players cycling attack advantage is tough.

D. Refs can participate, as long as they grab another ref to do the match that they're in.

Cons:

Same as melee, but without the crazy parts.

3. Tiered Elimination

Straight up one-on-one battles againts other tournament participants. Could be single or double battles with any number of pokémon, but I'd recommend doing a small number of pokémon just for time's sake. People who win advance, people who don't wait for the next tournament.

Pros:

1. Standard battle style will probably most closely replicate what kind of battles people will have to have in their gyms, making it the best determinant of ability.

2. Faster and easier to ref than tiered melee. Basically, simpler to handle.

Cons:

1. Lower pokémon count means that luck and type advantage is more important.

2. If you lose, there are no second chances. True of the other tournaments as well, but people tend to lose faster in this format.

4. Round Robin

All participants fight all other participants and the top three win/loss records win. Can be single or double battles with any number of pokémon, but to prevent the tournament from dragging into next winter, it would probably be most prudent to use, say, one or two pokémon apiece with short DQ times.

Pros:

1. More forgiving than the other formats: if you have crappy luck in one round, you might be able to redeem yourself in others.

2. You'll have more matches and, consequently, probably make more money/win more pokémon.

3. You get to try your stuff against everyone.

Cons:

1. Really, really, really long.

2. Confusing to tabulate--it can be nasty to try to keep track of all the different win/loss records.

If you have an idea for a different tournament format, please do speak up.

Now, I'll propose a DQ time, damage cap, and banned moves list. If you have further suggestions in these areas, let me know.

DQ: One Week. Automatic disqualification after two weeks even if posted as away (the tournament waits for no (wo)man).
Damage Cap: 50%
Banne Moves: OHKO's. Chills restricted to three/pokémon. Direct recovery moves restricted to three/pokémon.

Now terrain. Anyone have any ideas there?

So, that's that. Ask questions if you have them, throw out ideas... discuss!

I've always liked the idea of a round robin tournament, but as you say, it'd take ages. Battles would have to be fast. I'm still participating in my first battle from when I joined the ASB a couple of months ago. o.o

Maybe attacks could do twice as much damage as before? Three, even?

Summary: Round robin style with action taken to make battles as fast as possible.

The proposed DQ, damage cap and restricted moves: Nothing to add. Looks good to me.

Other: Bias could be a problem. Time will definitely be a problem. Getting enough refs, ditto. Maybe it should cost a little to enter?

Random: I SO want to be a Dark Gym Leader. I have the Pokemon for it and everything. o-o

Mm-hmm... I bet everyone'll go for Dragon, Dark or Psychic. Won't be surprised. Maybe Fire, too.

Doubling or tripling the damage from attacks would probably mean that a lot of attacks would be "uber-powerful". I mean, it's supposed to be fast, but still.

PLAYER1 sent out SALAMENCE!

PLAYER2 sent out MUDKIP!

SALAMENCE used EARHTQUAKE!

MUDKIP used ICE BEAM!

SALAMENCE was PWNED!

damage breakdown being 9 x 4 weakness x 3 your plan = 109. Basically saying a really weak Pokemon could beat a pseudo-legend with type advantage. Well Damage Cap but whatever.

Lower the damage cap, please! 30% maybe? I personally think 50% is just playin too much.

I'd love a Psychic Gym, and I can claim originality on it because of my FR mono-Psychic team. :D (okay so I traded Gardy.)

EDIT: oh yeah on another note free for all madness ftw, if a mod reffed the pm storage wouldn't be a problem and even a normal member could do it (relatively) easily.

If I try for Flying, can I enter a Flygon? It can fly, after all...

I was wondering when we'd have leaders at last... And I guess that time is now.
I'm not sure if it's even worth consitering, but a lottery type choosing came to mind, where all entrants would be put into a hat- or RNG, more accurately- and three chosen, but yeah... I'd personally hope we get a teired tourney, as it seems the best to me, as it's not too long, yet not too short or hectic, the best of both worlds, IMO.

I'd quite obviously be trying for a water type gym... But no use stating the obvious, is there?

Anywho, as for terrain, if we did tiered, I'd say every battle have a terrain that gives an equal advantage to both types, or possibly one that evens the playing field. For example, if we want equal advantages, Steel versus Water might have a submarine or a ship for a setting, and for evening the field, Ice versus Fire might be on a tall volcano, with snow and such at the top, but pleanty of hot springs and lava puddles.

As for DQ, I'd say short, to make the battles, fittingly, short, and Damage Cap... I'm indiferent on that... And attack power? I don't care about that either, as long as we're not whittling away the HP and we're actually getting somewhere, yet that might be the ref as much as the battlers and attacks.

But, I've said too much already. Yeesh, I'm suprised how opinionated I am.

Well, the DQ is tricky. I can understand reducing the time in order to make things go faster (especially for round robin), but then that would be kind of unfair to the slightly less active members. I mean, it takes me usually a couple of days at least to plan my attacks, and then there are people who can't get on the internet every day.

I'm going to have to agree with opaltiger and Music Dragon on increasing attack power, though. With the already-high damage caps and the fact that type-trumping will be very important for that battle, I think that we might see quite a few two-round matches, which would be silly. Actually, I was thinking earlier today of lowering the damage cap, as opaltiger suggested. 30% is my preferred cap, but again, we're trying to keep time to a minimum... I've seen tournaments last nearly a year, which would suck.

Bias? Do you mean like reffing bias? But yeah, getting refs will be an issue. Dunno about making people pay to enter; that could be a little hard on people who are just starting out, as people often right away spend their money down until they have only $3 or something left.

Oh, no, shoulda addressed that. Gym leader's can't use "pseudo-types" in their gyms: that is, pokémon that look like/have traits of the pokémon type that they use but aren't really of that type. For example, no charizard for a dragon-type gym and no flygon for flying-type. Sorry.

Interesting idea. I'd kind of prefer that we have standardized terrain, but this idea could work...

I don't think that picking people out of a hat would be a good idea because being a gym leader is sort of an honor and the idea is that the best battlers get. Having a tournament is really the best way to determine who those people are.

Ideas come slow to me, so I'll just post them as they come. X3

How about giving a minimum number of battles you have to complete in order to try out for gym-leadership?

Problem with that is, I think that there might be a couple of people who have completed two. A few have finished one. Most, like myself, don't have any to their name, and won't for a long while.

I think that you should restrict the opponent of a particular Pokémon to one with no particular advantage or disadvantage for every round, if at all possible... it's a stupid idea, but I can imagine that if you're going for say, a grass gym, and your opponents end up being a fire type, then a flying type, then an ice type. And so on.

And um, perhaps you should match up Pokémon into double battles. But four trainers, so that two trainers have to work together against two opponents. And having double battles like that is better than a free-for-all. Because there isn't ganging up(it's always two against two), and you can't attack your ally in order to get them out of the competition. I'd say that you can DQ someone if their Pokémon attacks their ally, but they might use earthquake or their Pokémon may be confused. Or whatever.

As for terrain... I think H-land's idea is good, so I'll just cheer for him. *waves "GO HONALULULAND!!" flag*
Else I'd just go for the boring-neutral-environment thing, maybe with small pools or whatever here and there for fishies.

Damage cap I think should be about 30%... that seems to be the average. X3


Oh, and if I was going to try out for anything, it'd either be grass, dragon, or um, flying. I avoided same types on my team for most of it though, so I'll have to go and do something about that. XD Prolly grass... *shrug* No-one's going for that.

To restrict entries, I'm thinking of a quiz, just to test if they're good at battling, or at the least not stupid. Like, say, "What is the chance that a Poison Sting used by an Arbok will poison Skarmory?" or other trick kind of things. Or perhaps a multiple choice, such as "How does Gloom evolve? a) Moon stone b) Level c) Happiness d) None of the above". If they get more than say, 80%, they would qualify for the tournament. Of course there's the chance they'll look up the answers, so it could be held in IM or in a chatroom or whatever and timed so they didn't have time to look up answers. Et cetera.

Yeah. I mean, it happens all the time in football, right? Someone wants one of the sides to win, it can be difficult to judge fairly, even if you mean to, I'd imagine. And in ASB, the refs have MUCH more control over the general direction of the match...

And point, opal.

My thoughts on the arena: Standard, one-size-fits-all stadium. Something to cater to every type. Maybe main stadium in the middle, with a kind of moat around it. Weather would be sunny yet raining (...? Hey, it happens. It'd give a rainbow :3)... and there'd be a few rocks lying around, I guess.

Me owning a bug type gym would rawk.

...

Anyway, I think we should do tiered battles, with varying arenas depending on the Pokemon.

Funny. "ABS" made me read that as "Animé Bile Stuttling". But I digress.

This, I believe, would reveal the greater strategists. And the good strategians would make better Gym Leaders. I personally love Double Battles, because they make me want to use my head. I won a battle once because I used Waterfall on my own Vaporeon (Water Absorb, y'know?)... Then there's the Guts + Poison ally thing, but it usually doesn't work too well. And Safeguard + Outrage... Well, stuff's different in ASB, but I still think Double Battles would effectively unveil the great minds of the Animé Bile Stuttling - especially seeing as you would have to cooperate with a person you might not be too familiar with. Perhaps even battle on the same side as someone you dislike. A good Gym Leader should be able to flexibly adapt their style.

Raise yorr glasses to the Double Battles!

xD;;; Oh gosh... *Fixes.*

Good point about the strategy thing. Might help to discourage bias, too, if there are two people on each side.

Wow, I never thought of that.
...

I agree with MD now. *shot for changing opinions*

Ya know, I kinda was thinking of double battles, but had discarded the idea as not working.

However, after people seemed to want it here (and after already writing a negative reply) I thought out a way to make it work... I think.

My main gripes with the system were that 1) it would be hard to determine a clear winner because you'd have two people in first place and two people in second place and 2) double battles wouldn't really be an adequate measure of how people would be at gym running, since you don't normally do partner gyms (unlike Tate & Liza).

But, here's what I thought. Pairing up with somebody would probably actually be more difficult than trying to fight alone, especially if you don't know/get along with that person well. In addition, the final three rounds would work like this... top two teams face each other, then the members of the winning team face each other and the members of the losing team face each other to determine the top three (so your partner becomes your enemy. Spiffy, eh?)

We'd repair teams at each round's outset, and this would allow us to balance the field a bit; that way, there would never be, say, a randomly paired set of water trainers going up against a randomly paired set of electric trainers.

I kinda like that. It would be tiered melee style. Does that kinda go with what you guys were thinking?

Oh, and as for reffing bias... s'pose it's possible, but I've never witnessed it myself. Guess I'm just too trusting a person. You're right, the tournament would help with that.

For a tournament like that, however, I think I'd favor a standardized terrain, one with a bit of everything in it.

Oh, and in addition, I just thought I'd mention one more tournament rule: the order of first sending out/first attack is always done by PMing your pokémon choices to the judge, and then having them randomly determine the first round's attack order. That way, nobody sees what pokémon that you're going to be using until they've already sent theirs in.

That'd probably be a good idea for battles in general, to PM the ref the Pokemon you're both sending out to begin with.

I was thinking... it seems to me that the most time-consuming part of the battles would be the reffing, seeing as everything has to be worked out. Well, it'd be extremely tricky, but maybe someone could make a javascript damage calculator? You'd enter the two Pokemon's types, and the moves, and with a fancy bit of calculation based on effectiveness and power, it'd churn out values for how much energy it'd use, and how much damage it'd do. Then it's just a matter of tweaking it to fit the circumstances.

It's probably either impossible, or the time taken to make the script would outweigh the amount of time it saves refs, but meh...

I have an idea, why not twelve badges. 8 would be standard and 4 would be double battle. And the tournaments had rules that followed suit E.G

1. the winter tournament, three badges, single battle.
2. spring tournament, three badges, single battle
3. summer tournament, two badges, single battle
4. fall tournament, four badges, double battle
5. big winter tournament, Elite four, single battle.
This is also good for people who cannot beat someone, they had other oppertunities. But you had to have at least ten badges to face the elite four.
and when challenging the champion, you chose the format.

so Within a year you could have the entire league up.

o.o I'm confused by 006's idea.

*Reads.* I think it means that the tournament we have now, in winter, could be for three of the badges, and have single battles. To obtain those badges from the newly-appointed leaders, you'd fight them in single battles.

And so on and so forth, going down the list. I think...

Gah. Now I'm confused, too.

12 badges. 8 badges are single pokemon. 4 are two pokemon. five tournaments spaced out to select the badges and elite four. Having 12 badges would allow for more type gyms, thereby testing peoples teams more. however, you would only need ten badges out of the twelve to challenge elite four members.

You... don't even have an ASB team. o-o;; I understand your idea, though. I don't really like it, but oh well.

I know, I just wanted to help.

No, that's fine. X3 I was just saying it seemed odd to show so much interest in something you don't do yourself.

Well once I figure out a team I will.

Hmm, Javascript reffing calculator. I could do it, but not in time for the tournament, and it would be based on my scale only... without taking into account arena effects and the like.

It's not the damage and energy calculation that takes a long time for me, though... it's the writeup in the middle. I spend a lot of time there because I try to put my best into it, so that's really the problem in terms of time constraint. It usually only takes me ten minutes or so to do the actual calculations, usually less.

Oh, and some people do like PMing pokémon selection to the judges instead of making it public for normal battles. It's no problem, you just have to define it in the challenge; the default is challenger sends out first, accepting person sends out second, public battle.

Regarding 006's plan for tournaments... I don't think that that would work very well. That many huge tournaments would be a big drain on resources, refs especially. It's also not necessary--we may have another tournament later on, but once we have our first three gym leaders picked out, anyone who wants to become a gym leader just has to earn badges from those three gyms in order to open their own.

Also, single or double battle... your selections seem arbitrary? Is there any real reason behind it?

Now, working on terrain, I've got a couple of ideas. The first is your general "with everything" field, including rocky areas, swampy areas, water, forests, desertland, and planes.

The other is a little off-the-wall... namely, a school. Basically, all the rooms would be open to battle in, as well as the hallway, and you can enter or leave any room. No particular type affinity, but lots of interesting things that you could do in there. And for the real aquatic types... there's always the pool.

I never said it would be easy.

I like the school idea. (But it'd havta be a BIG school... *coughonixwailordetccough*

I'd be Flying type, cause of all of 'em on my team.

And when is the tournament gonna start? If it's before the first of da year, I can't enter...

Well, if you're good at Maths, or have a normal calculator, a Javascript one wouldn't be necessary, really.

I've always said ASB Battling is like RPing! A bit. All the refs I've seen so far have done a very good job with the writing. Though I think some of that might disappear if things are going to go fast.

By the way, this here "three-badges-open-own-gym" thing... A couple questions:

1. Do you get to design your own arena for the Gym, and if so, is it allowed to have effects that are beneficial to the Gym Leader's Pokemon?
2. Is there going to be any limit to the amount of Gyms that can be opened?
3. If you can open a Gym by simply beating the first three Leaders, what will the second tournament be for?
4. Do we need an image of the badge?

Oh, and as for arbitrary selections, I wouldn't say I saw any, but lah.

The "school" thing is probably going to be popular. Personally, I don't like it. I don't know why, really. Impulse, whim... Whatever. I'm actually not sure what kind of arena I want. I think a plain boring arena with nothing at all would work better, but it'd be much more boring, too. And the point of Animé Bile Stuttling is having fun, really...

I'm going off on a bit of tangent here, but... you say it's the writing up that takes the most time up, Negrek? Hmm...

You know... the only two things stopping me from trying out to be a ref are time and accuracy. I'm no good at figuring out damage and stuff, and the time it would take me is more than I have spare.

But I could do write-ups, easily. If someone else could do the calculations for some matches, and tell me roughly what happens, I could narrate quite well, I think.

I could narrate for some of the tournament refs, if they wanted to save a bit of time. Split the work, you know? It's the best thing I could do to help, as far as I can think...

I was actually planning on starting the tournament on the first of January, as after we get the actual tournament set up we'll need a bit of time to let people sign up and to get the tournament tree worked out. However, it looks like we might be able to get it done a bit sooner than expected; if so, I think that it would still be within a week of January 1st, so you could make the DQ time.

As for Music Dragon's questions:

Yes. You get to determine the way that the gym looks and any effects that it might have on the battles, within reason. For example, if you were going to become a fire-type gym leader and you had your gym in the bowels of a lava-filled, active volcano with the terrain clause "Because there's no water here all water types immediately dry out and faint automatically", well, it's unlikely that you'd get it approved without changes. Something like, "All fire-types get a bonus to attack strength and water-type attacks suffer reduced power and increased energy cost" could work.

Eight. After eight gyms are open, there will be a special tournament for the gym leaders, allowing the top four to become the Elite Four and freeing up four more gym spots. Once those are filled, it's still possible to become a gym leader if one of the other gym leaders quits.

We might not have one. If people find that they can't beat the three leaders, then we might have to try another.

It would be nice just to have a little image, something that a person could display in their sig, for example, but it's not required. If you're terrible at drawing like me, I'm sure you could get one of the numerous talented spriters around here to do one up for you.

That's an interesting offer, Crystylla. I think that some of the refs here would be very grateful if you could do write-ups for them... did you just mean for the tournament, or normally?

Both, if needed.

I mean, I'd have to try narrating a practice one before I could be confident about it, but after that I'd be glad to help out on a regular basis.

*waves hand in air franticly, shouting "Pick me!" and "Oh, I know! I know!"*

I gots a great idea for a tournement arena: Pokemon Stadium from Melee. Why? Well, it's gots a normal arena, but it changes freguently for several types, so there's a bit of everytin in it. So it seems logical... To me, anyway.

And I'm posting this in my free time in a class... Which I don't have after this semester. Not at home. ^^;;

Double Battles seem great for me, but I'd pair up people with partners that have a type you're strong against or vice versa, like maybe Fire/Water or Dark/Psychic (we'll ingore Bug here because the amount of bug attacks is what, three?). That way there's a larger chance of the fight being fair (ie covering both halves of the type chart). Just an idea.

One; it doesn't represent all the types. If it shapeshifts into, say, the rocky arena, that's an instant unfair advantage to Rock-types, right there.

And two; an arena that changes form could make reffing more difficult.

Leaning towards a plain stadium arena, personally.

Oh! You've given me an idea, Monkeysaurus!

How about battles with a different objective? One that it easier to achieve but takes just as much skill? I'm thinking SSBM-style matches, here, where the aim is to get your opponent off the platform. So simple, and yet requires all the strategy of a battle where to aim is to defeat your opponent! Could be worked to make for shorter matches.

I mean, think about it. Smaller characters have the advantage of speed and agility, bigger ones take a little more power to throw off, in between is a balance.

The only snag I can see, apart from having to adjust the way the tournament'd work slightly, is Flying-types, or Pokemon that hover. I suppose it could be so that if hovering Pokemon are pushed too far below platform level, they're out (they'd run out of energy trying to resist being pushed down, I guess). And Flying-types, a similar rule...

Or every turn a Pokemon is in the air (not jumping, hovering or flying, like I say), they lose a small amount of energy.

Well, however you'd work it, I don't know. And you'd have to sort it out with the refs.

What does everyone reckon?

Snorlax.

Um. x.x

Well, how many people have a Snorlax? Besides, it'd have to move somewhat, to try to get its opponent off of the platform. Being so big, the platform will seem a smaller place for it to stay on; one wrong footing and it'd be off the edge like a lead weight.

But I just thought of another problem - Water-types. Meh...

Yup, that was the idea.

As to a type-morphing stadium, I had actually just thought of that this morning when I was trying to come up with a third arena option. Actually, I kinda like it... I think that complicated arenas are the most fun to battle in, but I do agree with Crystylla that it could be a pain to ref and the sheer randomness of it all could be a problem.

Set objectives aside from winning the battle I'm not so fond of... I think that the diversity of types that we're going to be seeing here would make it real hard to come up with something that no particular type would have an inherent advantage at. I think it would be better as an idea to save for a later different sort of tournament, possibly a mono-type one.

And I was fancying using snorlax; I'm going to enter for normal-types, myself. Have to buy a snorlax first, but...

I'll see what I can do to get you a practice reffing thing so you could try your hand at it, Crystylla.

How about a plain concrete arena with a moat around it for water-bounds?

I'm afraid that'd have some major dis/advantages for some types...
Like, electric. Advantage. Shock just the water, and pow.
Or ground. It can't dig, and rock... The concrete'd be crushable, I'm sure. And grass. I can only see Lombre and friends surviving in that kinda soil- Well, actually, I don't see even THEM in the concrete, just in the moat...

I'm also a bit dissapointed that my idea for stadiums didn't really carry on to... Well, the next page of this thread, though I think it'd still be possible to orient the arena for four types in at least some cases, if not all, but I'll be trying for that gym regardless...

Also, I see another problem for the knock-off-the-edge idea. Earthquake, Fissure, Seismic Toss, Vital Throw... All seem cheap to me in that scenerio. And teleport, too...

As for the morphing arena... Meh. I just hope that we remember water-bounds, as... Lesse... *counts* Two to four of my team are water bound, Amanda and Shelly being questionable.

But yeah, Double or Single battles, I care not.