OK, you've read through the 2010 rock band details and you know roughly what to expect, so now what? How can your players earn fame and glory on a national stage? I'm not sure, but I can tell you how to enter their scores into the gtsystem leaderboard.
Note: you can also watch this quicktime video that goes through all this!
If you've looked at and shrunk in horror from the how to setup and score ngd brawl page, relax! Rock band is SO much easier. All you have to do before the event starts is get your equipment set up and create an event in gtsystem to enter your scores into. There's no chat, no timeframe, and no direct coordination with other libraries required.
* log in to your gtsystem site (be sure to use your site code like aadl.gtsystem.org) with your admin account
Remember that there's no time constraint on this event; you can make it happen whenever you want, so long as your scores are submitted by the end of the day Sunday, 11/14. So, once you've got your event created and your equipment set up, you can register Bands for your event! I recommend that you allow bands to register of any size playing any number of instruments although it's great to encourage singletons to pair up to have a better score. Also remember “Vocaltar” when 1 player sings and plays guitar, playing the parts of 2 players at once. If you have a mic stand, you can offer this as an option!
There are no required or banned songs or versions of Rock Band, but it's got to be Rock Band; Guitar Hero world tour or Band Hero won't really work because the scores are so different. However, you should let your bands play at whatever difficulty level they'd like. It's more important that they feel comfortable with the difficulty than that they are competitive, and simply put, there's no way to be competitive nationally at less than hard or expert. But they could get the best score in the room or in town or on that song!
Once you've created your event, click the GT registrations tab to register the bands that would like to play in your event. Have your players come up with a name for their band and just type the name in, then click register. Continue until all bands are registered. It's easy to add late entrants later, so when you're ready to start, just click GT results to reach the scoring tab!
So, depending on how many bands you have and how much time you have, decide how many times each band will get to play for score. Usually 1-3 times depending on turnout. Remember that some songs are over 6 minutes long, and you'd certainly be justified in asking the bands to “avoid the long songs”. They'll usually know what that means and be good about it. So, just enter the following into the New Bracket Form:
The system will then create a round of matches so that every band gets the number of turns you specify. If you have late entries, you can just add matches for them.
After each band plays, enter the actual score that the game gives them, with no commas, for their score. Also, if possible, click Specific and enter the song they played; this can help them find something they were best at later! Then click commit. Repeat until each band has played the number of times you thought you had time for them to play!
After all bands have had their turns, you can do a final face-off between the top 2 or 4 bands to determine who wins your local tourney and to give the best bands an extra shot at posting a high score. To do this, under the leaderboard on the right, you'll see a create new bracket link; click that and enter something like:
It will then make a finals bracket. Have the bands play their final songs, enter the scores, and award victory!
If you entered all the scores, the National Gaming Day Rock Band leaderboard will show all the top scorers and their libraries! We'll announce the best scores posted on Monday after all events have wrapped up.
That's it! Let us know, as always, if you have any questions at gtsystem@aadl.org and ROCK ON!