Realm leadership

The fundamentals of realm leadership definitely fall into a low complexity high effort scenario.  That is to say that while the basics are simple they are also require tons of time and energy to execute on properly.  Anyone COULD do these things, but most people don't because this is our hobby after all and not our lives.  But let's get into it.

Consistency

The MOST important thing when running a realm is making sure that you pick a practice time that you can show up to consistently.  That means that regardless of how many people are going to show up, you are out there.  Exceptions can be made if 1) the weather is bad enough to permit fighting or 2) there's an event that lines up with your practice time that you encourage your fighters to go to.  That's it.  Otherwise you show up ON TIME to the SAME LOCATION at every instance that you run the practice.  Showing up on time (or a bit early) means that you're always going to be one of the first people there.  This prevents someone from showing up, not seeing anyone around, and then promptly heading home.  When you're first starting a realm it's going to be super common that you have almost no fighters and the ones that you do have may be lax about being on top of things.  As the leader of a realm it's up to you to be the person who is on top of everything.  Showing up to the same location is important because you want to make sure that if someone has seen you in the past they are able to find you again.  It also means that if you've drawn someone in who isn't able to contact or communicate with the rest of the group they aren't left behind because this week you've moved to a different park.  If you want to host multiple practices a week and would like to do so with more then one location that's perfectly fine, so long as for each practice you go to that practice happens in the same place it did the week/month prior.  In California we do practices a week, in many other places they do a practice a month.

Location

The place that you choose to plant yourself is HUGELY important.  The first piece is finding a good bit of ground.  An ideal space to fight on will be soft enough to fall onto which usually means some good grass.  It will also be solid enough that a person isn't likely to injure themselves while moving around, either as a result of potholes, mud, or other hazards.  Finally you need to make sure you have enough room to actually fight so you aren't hemmed in by people who aren't participating in the combat (a problem at a public park) or by obstacles where a person is likely to take a spill on concrete or get injured by running into a flagpole/bench/etc.  An ideal location also has the proper amenities like a source of water to make sure people can hydrate and a bathroom.  As far as starting up a new realm you'll also want to pick a location that has high visibility so that there's a lot of foot traffic in that area.  This promotes people coming up to you and asking about what you're doing.  A sort of final note is trying to find a place that's easy to get to, which includes both having it be a short drive from most locations and making sure that there's also parking once someone gets there.

Gear

First things first, if you're starting a new realm or taking over leading an old one, make sure that you have enough gear to support a bunch of new fighters so that when someone new shows up they can participate.  At the very least this means having a stack of blue weapons that are all relatively similar to pass out to people for them to use.  In an ideal situation you also have a few company shields and a few polearms.  A few spare pairs of gloves is also recommended though by no means required.  People who get to beat up or injured because they don't have the right safety gear to participate will sometimes not come back.  Encourage early on into any new fighters career in the sport that they pick up (minimally) a pair of knee pads and a pair of gloves.  For men recommend a cup.

Ideally if you're starting or leading a realm you should be proficient in all weapon types; single blue, sword and board, florentine, red, spear and archery so that you can teach a person to use any of those safely.  If you can't use one of those weapon sets safely or can't teach someone else to use one of those weapon sets safely then don't let those weapons on your field.  A person who is reckless or inept with almost any weapon set is likely to injure fellow combatants.  While this is true with almost any weapon set the results are particularly nasty when its a board, a spear, a red, or archery.  With a board people will commonly slam that directly into a person's face.  If they catch a person with the edge or the shield is cored this can be super bad.  Spears when used poorly generate really nasty shots to the solar plexus or the face when ramped off a shield.  A read weapon just imparts more force because of the way you can use 2 hands so reckless headshots can become concussions and shots with too much force can lead to general injury in almost any other location.  Archery gear when mistreated is the only thing on a field I really worry about killing a person because they contain pointy bits that can piece skin.

Finally it's a good idea to have at least one person out in garb on the field.  This will provoke a discussion about garb so you can talk to a new person about what it is and why they'll need it.  It is my opinion that the best way to promote garb is to have good garb (rather the minimal garb) out on the field and make it easy for a new fighter to acquire garb.  I am of the opinion that mandating garb at a practice is an extremely stupid practice that only serves to drive would be fighters away.  If you're running the practice it will be up to you how you handle the garb issue but generally speaking encouragement > enforcement.

Culture

Fighting is not just about swinging stick at each other.  Fighting is also about the social aspects of spending time with people you actually enjoy being around.  You can see this by watching what happens when a field has a toxic fighter that no one likes.  Pretty soon either the toxic person leaves because they aren't well liked or the rest of the field leaves because they no longer wish to deal with that individual anymore.  Putting that aside for the moment however, part of making a good realm is making sure that you promote a positive social experience for the people who show up.  This includes encouraging them to fight and applauding their triumphs.  It should go without saying that this involves making sure everyone on the field has good honor as that's one way to quickly have people get angry.  Nothing I can think of is more discouraging as a new person then finally managing to kill someone who is more experienced then you are only to have them then sluff the hit.  The two easiest ways I know of to promote socializing are 1) to call long water breaks (like 15 minutes) so people have some time to hang out without having the break last so long that fighting completely loses momentum and 2) when fighting is done have everyone gather in the same place for food, drinks and conversation as in most cases after fighting folks are either hungry or thirsty and want to talk about their battles.  If you can find a way to bind people together once they're OFF the field that tends to make a realm much more stable.  By having people see fighting as a place to socialize this means that your fighters may show up because they hope to see their friends there as opposed to just because they want to swing stick.  Let me couch that statement though by saying that, at least from my perspective (as views of this differ), it's important to make sure that socializing doesn't take over fighting so that people who came to fight don't stop showing up because they can no longer do that.    Another easy way to bind people together is to help them get organized with a facebook page.  This provides a place for people to socialize outside of fighting and provides an easy thing to refer people to if they have questions.  If you do wind up having to cancel practice for some reason this also makes it easier to communicate that to the people who would be interested.

Handling problems

All of the above stuff is pretty much setting up an idealized environment from which I would expect a realm to thrive while under some individuals leadership but along the way there are plenty of problems you can run into.  So let's touch on those and how to handle each of them.

Consistency - If you know that you are not a person who is good at showing up on time or just bad at making it to practice from week to week (I am one such person) then find someone else who is more dependable then you are to show up on time with your practice's company weapons.  You can always have a co-leader or multiple co-leaders if that's what's required to make sure that practice runs on time, every week/month, and is supplied with weapons.  If you are consistent but find that one week you can't make it because you are going to an event but the rest of the group will not be going to that event see if you can get someone to show up and lead the practice for just that week.

Location - In some cases you won't be able to get all of these things so you'll have to make due with what's available.  If you wind up not having very soft ground to work with encourage people to learn to fight without grappling or really aggressive shieldwork in order to reduce the likelihood of injuries.  If you wind up fighting in a constrained space it's often a good idea to set boundaries using rope with hard edges (when you step outside of them you die instantly) to prevent people from getting themselves in trouble.  If you wind up with hazards directly on the field you're using it's a good idea to have cones available so you can mark these hazards and to announce at the start of combat why the cone is there.  If you find yourself in a place with minimal/no real foot traffic then spend some time outside of practices to promote what you do to get people to come try out your practice.

Gear - If you find that you don't have enough gear to supply the people who have shown up either because you don't have gear, it's been run down, or you simply don't have the things people want to fight with then try to host build sessions often and provide the materials and instruction to new people to show them how to build their own gear.  A quick side note on this which is that new people are notorious for 3 things at build sessions.  The first is the desire to build bad/unfeasible weapons like tonfas (illegal), punch daggers (illegal) or scythes (impractical).  You need to make sure to let a person know ahead of time that those are bad weapon choices.  If they still want to build them anyways by all means let them just as long as you've pointed that out ahead of time.  The second thing that most new people will do is build the longest blue they're able to because they think that having more reach then their opponents will automatically win them the battle.  While this is true initially about a month in it will no longer be the case and instead of winning they'll be losing almost every battle because they've built a weapon that is heavy, poorly balanced, and that they have little to no control over.  Encourage new fighters to build a weapon that makes sense for them by figuring out things like weight and length ahead of time.  Finally new people are notorious for either missing steps or doing steps wrong, so the first time you build a weapon with them watch over them very carefully and have them construct the weapon a SINGLE step at a time.  If you find that you don't have the time to build weapons, either for yourself, the company or for your fighters but you/they have money you can always buy gear online.  My personal recommendation being warlord sports for gear or forged foam.  In many cases there are also people locally who can smith weapons/garb.

Culture - In some cases you'll have bad actors in your group.  This can range anywhere from a person who is fine off the field but a menace on the field to a person who is fine on the field but is a bad actor off the field.  Regardless of the issue if you notice a person is a problem then pull them aside and talk to them about it.  Sometimes people can be doing bad things without even realizing it and all they need is direction.  Other times they won't care that they're doing something bad, and you may need to tell them to leave because 1 fighter isn't worth more then any other fighter.  It's better to have 10 new people who are having fun then 5 people with 1 cheating vet who is making other people not have fun.  If a person isn't taking hits on the field then pull them aside to spar.  Try to get them to calibrate to what a good hit is and be more communicative when you think a good shot has landed but they haven't taken anything.  If you don't mind using communal shame you can also do bear pits where everyone watches combat and calls a person out when they get hit.  If the person is reckless or overly aggressive while on the fighting field talk to the them about toning it down.  If the issue is that they aren't ready to be fighting with a weapon that they're using then take that weapon away until they can demonstrate that they can use it safely.

If a person is being a problem off the field either because they have a bad attitude or because they are creeping on the ladies then have a conversation with them.  If they have no intention of reforming they behavior make it clear you don't want them to show up anymore.  Everyone who participates in fighting needs to feel safe doing so both on and off the field.  As a realm leader it is up to YOU to provide this for anyone who shows up and that may mean removing some people from the community if it's clear that they are going to be bad actors.