Notes for the Grandmaster

From MIT Assassins' Guild
"It's good to be the king." -- Louis XVI, History of the World Part I

This page needs to be updated.

Glorious Leadership![edit]

Congratulations! You are now the Glorious Leader of the MIT Assassins' Guild. Accordingly, you are the largest target around for flame-happy Guild members, and flame-happy nonmembers. So, be careful. People are counting on you to not do anything stupid. So, be careful. More to the point, you're responsible for the operation of the Guild. So, be careful. Make sure that the High Council members are doing their jobs. If the Administration wants to talk to the Guild, it's your job to represent us. When a crisis occurs, it's your job to deal with it. And always remember that they're out there somewhere, gunning for you...

Immediate Stuff[edit]

The most time-critical thing you should do right now is reserve Patrol (see appropriate sub-section under "Room Reservations"), unless your predecessor was a lameass and didn't reserve rooms for a game coming up in, like, two weeks, in which case that's probably a bit more time-critical.

It's been tradition to have dinner with the outgoing High Council and the incoming High Council. Schedule something at some point; the Guild can pay, unless you feel guilty or we're broke or Exchequer decides otherwise.

Other bits of transitional book-keeping:

Running Meetings[edit]

You have the grand and glorious duty of running Guild meetings. Of course, before you actually run a meeting, you need to schedule it, or make sure the Scribe schedules it. Sunday afternoons are traditional. A room with an Athena terminal is recommended, since it allows things like the text of standing policies and amendments to be displayed and edited easily. It's also a good idea to announce the meeting a few weeks ahead of time (one week is required by the Constitution; two weeks for the elections meeting), so that people have time to think up new business to suggest, nominate people for mastering, and to forget to send in their proxies (so you get to hunt them down and kill them).

You should also probably get to know the Constitution before your first meeting (if not before then) so you know what the procedures actually are, and what things you can do about any problems that arise. Things like Constitutional amendments make things particularly interesting. Note that you do have the power to forcibly table any new business brought up at the meeting, which allows you to keep people from suggesting motions and passing them without the Guild as a whole hearing about them. Don't use it if you can help it, but keep it in mind if people get unreasonable.

Suggestions for actually running a meeting:

  • Print out copies of Warlock's Rules of Order, so people know what's going on in terms of procedure. As a corollary, run the meeting by WRO. It cuts down on the amount of rules-hacking by those of a more parliamentary bent.
  • Make use of the powers granted the Chair by WRO. If debate isn't going anywhere, close it. On the other hand, if debate is actually going somewhere, avoid giving in to those who feel that the meeting should last no more than five minutes. (Footnote: Awwwwwww.)
  • Keep a queue. Either write it down on paper, or draft someone to keep it on a blackboard, but definitely keep a queue.
  • Having some kind of gavel or some other device to get people's attention is useful. Use the Sergeant at Arms to threaten people who are being problematic or overly wankful. Disc guns also work.

Room Reservations[edit]

Responses to the call for games for a term should include a list of desired rooms/floors so that reservations can be made as soon as possible. If certain rooms need certain features, make sure they give you those features so you can try to reserve reasonable substitutes if the optimal rooms are already taken.

If GM teams are failing to supply you with this information, have either the Scribe or yourself berate them until they do so, because it's for the good of the game and their sanity --- reservations have become a problem in the last few years and being on the ball about this is very important.

Most of the rooms you'll want are reserved through the Schedules office, which is in 5-111 as a subset of the Registrar's Office. They have a webpage.

The simplest way to reserve rooms is to use the web form. Be as specific as you can with them, and certainly always give a list of rooms, rather than vaguely requesting "all available rooms in 1,3, and 5" or something like that.

If you have last-minute adjustments and need to get the event registration in, you can go to the Schedules office in person. They can do things like searches for all available rooms in a quadrant of campus, or view the schedule of a certain room. They'll sometimes even let you know who has a room if it's booked, so you can try to find out if it's an unnecessary reservation or at least warn them that there'll be a game going on.

In all this back and forth, be sure to reference your confirmation number (which they'll give you the first time rooms are booked for a game) so they can find your previous bookings. Forward the confirmation email to GMs so they'll be able to confirm their reservation if anyone asks.

Nonstandard Scheduling Situations[edit]

Not every room on campus is controlled by the Schedules office, and often this situation can change over time. Currently, the Student Center, Kresge, the Chapel, and some other spaces are reserved by CAC (W20-500). You can go there in person to reserve them, and you'll want to do so in advance, since they're popular. They have a cancellation fee if you don't give them enough notice, so be careful about that. There are also athletic facilities, some of which are reservable through DAPER. CAC and DAPER have an online scheduling system but you need to talk to them to make an account first.

Patrol[edit]

Patrol runs Saturdays from 8pm-11pm in 36-1xx (and occasionally various other floors with nonreservable rooms so they don't apply here). Specifically, the rooms are 36-112, 36-144, 36-153, 36-155, and 36-156. The Patrol rooms should be reserved as early as possible. Usually the Schedules office will allow rooms to be reserved up to a year in advance. There's a specific date when they'll open a new semester for reservations. It appears to be the case that if you get close enough to the date, without actually hitting it, they'll keep your request somewhere safe and get back to you later.

You should probably also reserve Patrol for the traditional post-Activities Midway game. Coordinate with the Vicemaster and with Patrol Comm about when Midway Patrol will happen.

The other room scheduling issue with Patrol is what to do when another game wants to conflict with Patrol. This should be avoided when possible. Interfering with Patrol is a bad thing since Patrol is a big draw for new players to the Guild. Encourage one-nights to run on Friday nights if they don't have two runs (and if they can deal with the higher NP concentration), and encourage games which have to use Saturdays to not use 36-1 during Patrol hours. If a game does have to pre-empt Patrol (which is common with SIK games) try to ask Patrol-Comm (patrol-comm@mit.edu) for permission well in advance. Note, that's ask, not tell. The balance of power between Patrol-Comm and the High Council as to who gets to tell the other what to do hasn't been tested, but it would probably be better if it didn't have to.

Typical Game Areas[edit]

If the GMs don't know where they want to run, or their preferred game area isn't available, you'll want to be able to suggest several alternatives to them. Some game areas the Guild tends to use, and some notes about them follow.

  • 26/36/34/38/24: The most popular one-night game area, with lots of rooms available in a small region. The primary worry in this area is pre-empting Patrol if a game runs on Saturday night, and the high NP density early in the evening on Fridays.
  • 37/35/33: Not enough rooms for most games in and of themselves, though there's a decent scattering of them (2 on 37-1, 2 on 37-2, 2 on 33-3, 1 on 33-4, and 35-225 in between). This makes a good extension of the standard SIK game area when desired, or space for a smaller game.
  • 16/56/66: There aren't many reservable rooms in these areas, but they make a good extension of the standard SIK game area when hallways are good enough.
  • 1/3/5/7: Used to be a popular area, decreasing in popularity as more and more classrooms are going away.

These lists are far from complete, and GMs will likely have their own ideas, but these are good suggestions to fall back on.

A Note about Cleanliness[edit]

We aren't officially allowed to have food or drink in classrooms. In practice, of course, this doesn't always get followed, but do please make sure that rooms are returned in a state equal to or better than that in which it was received. If we're Good enough, we may eventually be able to get access to some of the Special rooms, and if we're Bad enough (Footnote: well, really Bad enough), we may get classroom-reserving privileges revoked or lessened.

Dealing with the Campus Police[edit]

The Guild has had some incidents with CPs in the past. Here's how things should be handled to minimize problems:

1. We have an agreement with Craig Martin (martinc@mit.edu), the Patrol Commander of Campus Police. For each game, including SIK games, we send an email to assassins-guild-notify@mit.edu with information about the game. The emails should contain the following information:

  • Names of the GMs
  • Dates and times of gameplay
  • Gamespace
  • Distinguishing garb (brightly colored headbands, nametags, etc.). Some form of identification must be worn by all players at all times. For high-action portions of game, players should be wearing brightly colored headbands. Additionally, the CPs have requested that we switch the color of namebadges from time to time, so the color of nametags should be specified. Make sure the GMs know all of this...
  • The general genre of costuming.
  • Weapons used and kinds of combat (this is where you stress that we're using ridiculous looking pink and yellow dart guns and that combat is going to be extremely obvious, if you can)

The CPs should probably be reminded periodically that Patrol happens weekly, as well.

You need to get all of that information from GM teams, so email them asking for it. Sending this email to the CPs is extremely important, with the critical component being exactly when and where the game is running. If the CPs receive calls or complaints and you haven't warned them we're running a game, they have been known to show up and shut it down.

2. Make sure the GMs have their room reservation confirmation on hand. Ideally, you or someone else from the High Council will be on campus and reachable in case there's a problem (be it with the CPs, ballroom dancers, or something else).

3. Keep our Advisor, Michael Person, informed if anything happens. If a serious issue with the admins or police arises, he can help.

Scheduling Games with MIT[edit]

Event registration[edit]

Currently, Guild games don't have to be registered as events (see this page), and we communicate with the CPs using assassins-guild-notify. But it may be a good idea to register events as some point, as in the past the campus police have cared a lot about us registering games.

To register an event, go to the Events and Information Center (7-121) to pick up the forms and fill them out, at least 2 weeks before the game you're registering. Information for the form:

  • Times: Events officially end at 1am.
  • Advisor: Michael J. Person. mjperson@mit.edu
  • Entertainment/Contracts/Alchohol: No.
  • Admission: We don't charge admission or collect money at the event. Mark it as no charge.
  • Attendance: Make sure that at least half of the attendees are listed as MIT students.
  • Host: This should usually be you, since it has to be someone on the signature list for the Guild. Now, technically this means you have to be present for all of every game, but the CPs usually aren't too anal about that if they can at least find a GM to talk to if they need to.

If we're registering games, Patrol should be registered as an event about once per semester (including the Summer).

events.mit.edu[edit]

All student activity events technically need to be listed on events.mit.edu to receive Finboard funding. This currently isn't enforced at all, but we should try to do it.

If you don't have access you should bother someone who does (likely someone on the outgoing High Council); permissions are given by people with permissions, who frob something to make it all work. Note that this may be more difficult than it sounds, but if you're nice and neat and keep things up-to-date, it shouldn't be a problem. Probably the best thing to do is to make your predecessor put you on the list, and then go clean out the list so you're neat and tidy.

Space[edit]

We have an office. It's on the fourth floor of the student center. The room number is W20-447, and it's inside a suite. We currently share with SEDS, and there are two doors between the hall and the inside of the room. The other denizens of the suite are (in its own locked sekrit room) Anime and (in the lounge/alcove behind cubicle walls) the Lab of Chocolate Science.

The door locks don't have a particularly long life span; if one dies on you, you should contact the CAC to get it fixed. There may be other information concerning office access that the previous Grandmaster may want to pass down to you in person.

Every few years the ASA conducts the process of space allocations. It's your job to fill out the application. You can see previous applications at /mit/assassin/Grand/Space. Try to make a strong argument for us to stay in our current space, since moving would a huge pain in the ass.

There are a few other ASA-related things you need to keep an eye out for, like bulletin board applications and anti-hazing acknowledgement emails. Don't drop the ball on this stuff.

Members[edit]

For determining who has a vote at meetings, we need to know who's paid dues and who's been active (played or run a game in the last year). We also need membership numbers for filling out Finboard application and ASA space applications. Note that we don't have to use the membership definition in our Constitution for these, so it makes sense to use a looser definition (like the active definition) so the numbers are higher, especially the number of undergrads. Someone, possibly you, needs to keep track of this information. One way to do this is to keep the mailing list guild-active up to date with the player lists and GM lists from the past year's games, with a list of games and dates in /mit/assassin/Grand/guild-active-games.txt.

Greensheets[edit]

Be sure to update this sheet with any new info you discover during your term which you think would be useful to future Grandmasters. You should also be sure that other officers do the same for their respective Greensheets.

In Conclusion[edit]

So, you've got a Guild to run, meetings to officiate over, rooms to reserve, and games to register. Good luck, and watch your back!

See Also[edit]

The original Greensheet.

Retrieved from "https://assassin.mit.edu/wikiweb.php/index.php?title=Notes_for_the_Grandmaster&oldid=352"