Kit is been approved as the new President of the Dueling Club and we would both like to see if we can't get some more activity for the club. So where all my Dueling Club kids at and when and what would you like to do?

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Erik would be totally up for this, his skills with dueling are probably above average and mostly due to reflexes and luck. I might throw Naomi in but I think it would depend on how its organized and what-not.

Which brings me to how it's organized. Would people be divided up by skill level or will things try and encompass everyone's current learning level and then work up from there? How often would they duel, or would it be more of a mentor-student skill level pairing type thing? Would Kit enjoy covering some of the other aspects of self-defense along with dueling like Dumbledore's Army did with patronuses?

From research and discussion with Stef, the Duelling club heirarchy works like this:

Supervising Professor (Ignan Storm)
Club President (Kit Branwell)
House Leaders

• Gryffindor (??)
• Ravenclaw (??)
• Hufflepuff (Dion Fayette)
• Slytherin (??)

Standard Members
Junior Members

The President presides over the club as a whole, organising matches, deals with issues and,well, runs the things. The house leaders are responsible for the members who bellong to their house and can oversee/organise in-house duels in the house's dueling pitch (each house has a spot in its common room for duelling) and acts as the President's officers.

For the most part, it seems that during meeting it is the job of the officers and president to match up people to their skill level and train the junior and standard members.

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In-game, the dueling club will have gained members recently - as the books have shown time and again, a death of a student or attack always makes the students more interested in self-defense. Due to this the dueling club is probably currently focusing on how to avoid/protect yourself as well as how to disarm or disable your opponent.

Please do say if you need me to lend a hand, though it would be good to not have to lead the meetings to make them different to the classes of course.

I'm around very little until next week, but I'll keep an eye out.

I'm glad you posted up a bit of our discussion, Tappy

At this point, part of me likes the house organization idea (a bit like prefects) but I'd like to keep organization and hierarchy open to other suggestions as well. House isn't the only way we could organize this. We could do it by year, by years/experience in the club or simple dueling skill. All of these would make sense as to how to organize it so I'd like to get everyone's thoughts and suggestions before we set anything in stone.

The death of Ava and the recent drama could increase interest for students to learn self-defense which can be an IC reason for the club to be revitalized.

I honestly don't know about a mentor- right now I'm seeing the set up as a mix of general lessons like Dumbledore's Army, specific groups going off by skill level and matches.

I did have an idea as a way to kind of get this thing off with a bit of a bang to have a dueling tournament. Get kids excited and allow Kit to assess everyone's skill level in a fun way.

Thoughts?

The house leadership comes from this:

Harry Potter Wiki
"...Each house, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin and Gryffindor had their own head of duelling club member who acted as a leader and would arrange practice duels. Each house also had their own personal duelling area from which students of all houses could go to duel."
Full Article

And agreed w/ the above - it's probably about more general lessons. Mentors could certainly happen, but I'd think that'd be based on a friendship basis rather than an institute within the club itself.

And I think a tournament would be great - we'll have to see who's interested, but maybe it could be a by skill level thing, so each house has a  team?

Yeah I read that article while I was doing research to try and figure out possible ways to organize the club. At the bottom of the article, it says that information is from the Half Blood Prince videogame. I'm a bit leery to take cannon cues from the video game adaptions seeing how we also see giant Bertie Botts floating about, Fire crabs that don't look like JK's description and Snape written out of the Prisoner of Azkban game lol.

So I'd like to hear what other people would like to see in the Dueling club before making any firm decisions. I also added a list at the top to write down the names of any interested members.

As for Ava's death and the Dueling club, which some people have asked me about, this was my thought: I see there's a possibility for affecting interest in self-defense but there wouldn't be much focus on that beyond that in the club itself besides it happened. Kit's not going to make a big speech about it or mention it. (It would be unseemly for a lady to do, of course). So it's more background information. The actual focus of the club will be (hopefully) more fun duels and stuff.

Agreed on the games not being the best source of canon, but as there's no other example to go on, it's that or dreaming it up from scratch, really.

Though if tournaments are a regular thing (maybe once a year?) having a house lead makes sense, and it allows the President to delegate. Though if delegation is the only goal the club can just have 'officers'.

(Oh, Go ahead and add Tynan MacFusty to the list of members as well. )

On the plot bunnies side - it could be possible the dueling club follows both the dueling club format and also a bit of Dumbledore's Army's heritage - i.e., teaching and working on stuff like Patronus charms as well as more standard Dueling charms.

I think it would be fun to make the organization based on how many members there are, and of course players participating. The having a sort of leader for each house really only works if there are enough IC players, I think, otherwise it'd be a bit hard to play around. So I think maybe Kit might pick a co-president, or maybe sort through what each individual would like to do and then focus on that.

Also, besides tournaments, I think holding a sort of arena type thing where there's an all-out dueling brawl would be amusing and a lot of fun, possibly converting one of the dungeons for this since the Room of Requirement is currently being used by Fir?  I think throwing in some  "referees"  or moderators to keep things under control would make the arena thing a lot more controlled and safe. There could also be normal dueling practices held, but I think an arena face-off, like guilds going off against each other in a MMORPG would be cool.

When Kelly was working on this as Dracon being the President, Grace was kinda slated into the Gryffindor "lead" position. I'd be happy to keep her involved that way, but if there is another student from the house more gung ho at it, that's no problem either. I could see Grace stepping aside with some of her issues going on so that she has less stress. But she'd be happy to support Kit, especially since they bonded over fencing.

Erika

Honestly, I don't think having house leaders (whether games calls it "canon" or not) will be very beneficial for the arrangement of the dueling club. We don't really have enough students per house for that to work out, since not EVERY student joins. And having like, one head of house for the clubs for maybe 3 people from one house seems... superfluous.

Having said that~ Baxter would like to learn a few things. Callum would also be interested.  And he will behave He's actually REALLY good with a wand, and he'd probably like helping out younger kids (if they weren't Gryffs or Huffles of course).

Cyhirae would defiantly want to join, so count her in.

Nikolas would be interested in the lessons and the self defense part of it but he wouldn't want to participate in the competition aspects of it, such as tournaments or matches beyond practicing spells and techniques. So depending on how things get organized, and if the completion aspects are optional,  he might or might not join.

I was rereading the old plot thread for this and pulled out some ideas from there:

1) People seem to be in favor of free-form duels without dice or points to determine who wins. I'm okay with continuing this, though if we have one-on-one duels maybe putting a cap on moves (ex: each duelist gets five spells to bring down their opponent?)

2) Professor rotation on who supervises the meetings and duels

3) Some other ideas instead of one-on-one duels. I like the stuff that was thrown around in that had dueling teams. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun and get a lot of people involved.

So we have a few types of activities they can do:
Capture-the-flag
WOW-style team smack down
One-on-One
Tournament
There can be only one/Battledome (just stick them all in a room and the last man standing wins. Because that couldn't possibly go wrong....)

Personally to kick this off I'm in favor of a Tournament, Battledome or team duel. I think it might be more fun to start this back up with an event and not a meeting.

I was also thinking about ways to organize students in duels. One possibility would be to have three groups: Advanced, Intermediate and Beginner. It's up to the students to decide where they think their skills lie and possibly Kit will move them up or down depending on what she sees. First years are welcome to try and make it in the Advanced group but should be prepared to be beaten or possibly moved down after a few fights. Beginners would be closed to any sixth or seventh year taking a NEWT course in any of the following: DADA, Transfiguration or Charms. All your wandwork classes basically. If they're in a NEWT level class they've got enough spell know how to have a leg up over any of the Beginner levels.

The tournament, if we choose to go that route, could be separated into those three divisions and everyone battle it out to be their division champ. Maybe end it with a four-way battle among the Pres and all of the champions (or just have her duel in a standard division and have a three-way battle at the end).

If we did one of the team battles, the teams would be split to be as even as possible in skill. Kit and any officers could join in one of the teams or patrol the arena as 'snipers'- taking out any member of any team that has their guard down.

I also see the possibility for having a little more lighthearted fun with dome of the team stuff, for example it doesn't count as a "kill" unless you take down the opponent (stun, petrify, disarm, etc) and then execute a "finishing blow" which would be something a little more whimsical, like say turn their hair pink. If you get chased off before said blow, kill doesn't count. Just a few ideas. 

A large tournament or battle could also be how Kit chooses any officers or whatever positions we decide work best for the setup.

I do like the idea of older students helping out with the younger years, especially since we have a lot of signups that are first and third years.

EDIT: I added everyone to the master list along with house and year so everyone can see who's who

EDIT 2: Added a couple new thoughts. I'll really stop editing this post now, promise.

I'd love to have Fauna show up to another Dueling Club event out of curiosity . Feel free to add her to the list! Not sure if she'd be a regular, but yeah, this is too much fun to pass up .

Josh will be there. As for the battledome idea, i think it could work, with a tweak. If we do the three groups, have each group hold their own battledome.  (whihc would also cut down on it going wrong)