SGDQ 2017 2D Mario Warpless Relay Post-Mortem

Alright, so I figured it would be a good idea to write a "post-mortem" of sorts relating to the 2D Mario Warpless Relay at SGDQ 2017. I've heard rumblings of a few different communities looking into perhaps submitting one for AGDQ or some other event, and I hope that this will give people an insight into what I think went well, and what could have been handled better.

I guess we'll take this chronologically, so this all started the night of the DKC Relay at AGDQ. I think it was Spike interviewing Supreme and Antilles, and he asked them if they thought there were other series out there that could potentially set something up, and Supreme said "Mario." At that point, I knew that I wasn't gonna be satisfied if there wasn't a 2D Mario Relay at SGDQ. The next day I set up a channel in the Discord server and invited everybody that expressed even passing interest in being a part of the relay. Originally I thought that we'd just do the first 4, as the SMW Crew usually has something planned out on their own, but right away they came to us expressing a huge interest in joining us for the fun, and it was definitely for our benefit. I think the early stages went fairly well. We decided on going with 3 teams, which I think worked really well, as well as submitting Warpless as the category for every game. At this point, we didn't quite have everyone on board; I think one thing I could have done better was being assertive with asking people if they were interested. By the time submissions were about to roll around, there were still a few people who knew very little about the plan, and I could have reached out and got people in the loop faster.

Shortly after we decided on some base stuff, I contacted the GDQ submission staff to try and get their input on what we had put together, and any tweaks they thought would improve our submission. I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE DOING THIS. Getting staff involved early was a huge benefit not only to us, but to them as well. Another thing I would suggest having prepared is a list of runners that could potentially submit, as this gave us and the staff a good idea that having 3 teams with backups was certainly something we could feasibly do.

Submissions themselves were pretty straight-forward, we decided on the "official name" and description for the category, and let everyone know that they can and should submit other potential categories for their games in case the relay itself didn't make it in. Staff contacted me a few days before the games list came out to verify runners and categories, since we had some overlap in who the best players in different games were. From there we got accepted and I set up a Discord server to handle the rest of the things we needed to set in stone before the relay actually happened. There were a few things specific to our relay that we needed to take care of (console swaps, versions of LL, etc.) but I will outline how we handled some things that would likely happen with any relay. One thing to note before I go into all of this; I initially didn't think I'd be running in this relay, there were enough people at first to where I would end up being a back-up. When I found out that I going to be a runner, I debated whether or not I wanted to run, or just stay as a more "administrative" role for the relay. To be honest, I'm still not sure if I made the right choice. It definitely added a lot more pressure, not only to make sure things were going well in terms of having the relay set up, but also with preparing to race against a couple of the best SMB3 players on the planet. I'd like to say I did a fair job of handling both, but I definitely know had I chosen one or the other things would have gone better on that end.

Probably the most important of these that I want to discuss is choosing teams themselves. Initially we planned to balance based on PB, but eventually a couple other ideas surfaced. After what seemed to be about 18 Strawpolls (lol) we decided to go with a draft system. Now I will start by saying that I wasn't too horribly thrilled with this idea at first, as it was by far the most complicated of the options we discussed, but the majority of the runners thought it would be the best thing to do, so we rolled with it. I think this is where I did the worst job in terms of managing the relay. There were a lot of cool ideas, such as setting up a show with some outside people to discuss what possible picks could happen; having the runners come in after getting picked and throwing shade immediately, just little things to make it a little more fun. I didn't do much of anything honestly to try and get this set up. I should have delegated this off to some of the people who were really into it so that something fun could have come out of it. I never went back to look at how "balanced" the teams ended up, which was my main concern, but I think overall we ended up with fairly balanced teams. If(when?) something like this happens again, I don't know if I would want to do a draft again, but it ended up being OK.

The other thing that took a bit of doing to get set was commentators. This was something I was originally planned on handling by myself, I would "lead" commentary and have a couple of other people along for the ride. Obviously when I was slated as a runner this plan had to be scrapped, but thanks to some help from a couple other runners and a couple of outside friends, we went through the submissions we received and decided on a commentary team to guide the viewers through what they were watching. I think this went really well, we ended up with three amazing commentators that delivered amazing commentary throughout the relay. The idea for them to each "champion" a team was their own, and I think that also was a great touch. Oftentimes in a race the commentators tend to focus on who is in the lead, and often the other runners get kinda left in the background. With each commentator focusing on a team, they were able to highlight when each runner was going through a particularly impressive section, or spots that they could make up ground on their opponents. One thing I wasn't too sure about at first was having them onstage with us. Initially we were thinking they would be over in the interview area, but after talking with tech, they said that the audio quality would be better if they had the onstage headsets. While it was a little crowded up there with 9 of us at a time, it worked out pretty well I think. Long story short, commentary was, in my mind, one of the best organized parts of our relay.

I'll just kinda briefly gloss over the rest of the things that we handled, none of them are super noteworthy, but might as well cover them. Team names were decided just by people throwing out ideas and people commenting on them. Birdo, Boom Boom, and Reznor (LET'S GO) were the names that fit the best and the most people liked, so it was a pretty easy decision. Team shirts were handled by Reze, who knows much more about all that than I do. I just wrote the check, so to speak. It worked really well for both us and the DKC relay, I would highly suggest it if you're setting something up for a live relay. Availability on site was kind of just something we tossed together at the event; we set up a practice relay the day before and an after relay dinner, both of which went well and I'd suggest doing. Finally, we initially thought about a donation incentive or two, but ultimately decided against it after our own discussion and some input from staff. The relay itself was a huge draw, and potentially adding something extra on top of that was just extra things to worry about, so I'm glad we decided not to go down that road.

Alright now to get to the actual relay itself. Unfortunately, Big Jon was unable to attend as he had family stuff he needed to take care of. If you're reading this, we missed you man, hope everything is working out and we can meet up soon. Luckily however, we had backup! Raikourider majorly stepped up and brought his time down a bunch in preparation for one of the most insane runs the relay had to offer. Lost Levels is an absolutely bonkers game to run, so huge props to him for stepping up to the challenge and holding his own. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank the tech crew for like the billionth time; they were the real MVPs through all of this. The only real hiccup we had during the relay itself was Svenne's game and NES not getting along, but before I even really knew what was happening, a plan was in place to get things fixed, and when the time came, they got everything patched up lightning fast. I think the only other technical issue that arose was a slight audio issue with Raikou, but I think that all ironed itself out and didn't cause any significant delay. As for the runs themselves, I think for the most part everyone was at least OK with the times they ended up with. One of my major concerns was one team running away with it, or one team lagging behind, but it all worked out that we were all neck and neck (and neck?) entering SMW, so that went better than I could have expected.

I think that should cover about everything? Once again I want to thank everyone that was involved, from the runners, to the backups, to the staff, to the commentary team, even if you just watched and cheered along with your favorite runner, all of this couldn't have been done without all the hard work and support everyone put in. I never in my wildest dreams expected something like this to go so well, honestly I was just hoping it wasn't gonna be a trainwreck! But somehow, some way, this all became something truly amazing. Getting to meet and play with (and against) 14 of the greatest Mario players to have ever graced the planet was something I'll never forget.

So now that you've read this "behind the scenes" novel I've written, (or maybe you just skimmed down to the ending, I won't judge) I hope maybe it inspires you to looking into setting up a relay of your own for an upcoming event! It's a lot of work, but trust me when I say it's so incredibly worth it in the end. So to give just a few quick tips if this is something you're interested in:

1. START PLANNING EARLY! I mentioned that I started working on this the day after the DKC Relay at AGDQ, and honestly, having things planned early saved a lot of headaches down the road. You don't need to hard commit on anything, but at least setting some groundwork early is a huge benefit.

2. ALWAYS HAVE BACKUP PLANS AND BE FLEXIBLE! From the number of games ran, to the participants themselves, nearly everything ended up differently than how I originally envisioned it. Luckily, everything still went incredibly well, but without the flexibility and backup plans in place, things could have ended up really poorly.

3. HAVE FUN! This will hopefully be an amazing opportunity to not only showcase the community you're a part of, but also get closer to the runners of other games you may not be super familiar with. There were quite a few runners that I barely knew, if at all, before the relay, but now I'm happy to call all of them friends, and I'm excited for the next time I get to hang out with any of them. One of the best parts of this whole process was seeing everybody work hard to improve their game, and everybody celebrating the successes everyone was having. So enjoy the experience, and take the time to grow closer with the members of your community.

That's all for now, I might add some things here and there, depends on if anything comes to mind. If you or someone you know is looking into setting up a relay for an event, feel free to contact me! Antilles, the man who set up the DKC Relay, was invaluable to me when I needed advice on how to handle things, and I'd like to extend that same helping hand to anyone who's looking into it.

-Glib