It is an interesting time for the NAF (if you are not familiar with the organisation check out thenaf.net/). After many years sailing the smoothest of seas, Games Workshop’s revival of Blood Bowl has raised the odd squall.

To provide some background, I was one of those volunteers within the NAF for many years as National Tournament Coordinator for the United Kingdom. I was also the main organiser of the NAF Championships, the largest non-team Blood Bowl event in the world. So my words come from a deep love and hopefully knowledge of the NAF. I’m going to speak mainly of face to face tournaments as this was how the NAF began and still forms a large part of its mandate, if nothing else through historical precedent.

There has been some recent debate around the NAF, not just in terms of specific decision making but even the larger question of what the NAF is or should be. To me the organisation has two main aims. Firstly, to be a central hub for Blood Bowl coaches around the world to organise and find each other. Not a governing body or making any attempt to rival to GW in terms of authority. Secondly, I’ve always perhaps romantically thought of the NAF as a Blood Bowl union. A single body that can communicate effectively with GW and speak for the community when we know how reluctant they can be to heed individuals.

This blog is about the first of these aims, and in my view it is vital for the NAF to be as safe and uncontroversial as possible. I’d even go as far to as to say boring! In trying to be all things to all men and women, the only sensible path seems to find the most vanilla position available. Every controversial decision you make splits the community into camps, some in favour some against. The more decisions, the more division. Blandness is deeply useful for a global organisation, it allows the NAF to appeal to and be relevant in the most places. We are now in a world where a coach from the US does occasionally pop into a local Welsh event, and the NAF wouldn’t be doing its job if that coach found his experience abroad unrecognisable from what he might find at home.

It may sound blindingly obvious, the most important thing for a healthy Blood Bowl scene is being able to find people to play with / against. The NAF should exist to facilitate this, to be a central hub where anyone who has an interest in Blood Bowl can check in when they want to find a game or event. To this end the NAF should not seem controversial or elitist or divisive or competitive. We know from experience that people have a natural suspicion of any kind of top-down regulation on their casual hobbying. The NAF is much better suited to be a beacon than an executive.

One of the most important challenges the NAF faces is getting new people to visit their first tournament. It is probably hard for some of us to remember what it was like to make that first leap. What are these people going to be like? How weird or competitive will they be? We have all heard horror stories from our friends, you know how they go: “They first guy I saw was dressed as Halfling, the next had terrible BO but luckily my first opponent was [insert nice guy] otherwise I would have written off the whole endeavour”. Think how many people didn’t have the luck of meeting a fun first opponent and were lost to us forever. If the NAF brand is to mean anything it should be that the tournaments it approves are both welcoming and consistent. First timers already think we are a bunch of squealing weirdos. It won’t help If they turn up and have to play Space Goblin Toad Riders.

The NAF has been fine at this in the past, although it wasn’t the hardest task in the world when GW abandoned the game for many years and the rules were static. However the NAF has recently been less good at defending the status quo it should be attempting to maintain. Human nature means people will always want to innovate and push boundaries, and the NAF should be willing to say no if they think a particular tournament has tipped too far into wackiness. If you never say no to anything then your yes holds no value. When I was NAF staff I spent hours behind the scenes trying to diplomatically walk TOs back from the edge of full crazy. But I had to do this because I knew the NAF would never say no. It was mediate or capitulate.

I have deliberately kept this all a bit vague rather than give my thoughts on specifics matters concerning the community. I wanted to set out my basic thoughts on the NAF rather than just focus on a single case. If you have any thoughts or questions please feel free to hit me up on Twitter, I blog infrequently so may miss a comment posted here.