Notes for the Vicemaster

"Be polite. Be efficient. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet." -- Sniper, Team Fortress 2

Responsibilities

The Vicemaster has a number of different duties (or things that you should do, because they need to be done), not all of which can be pawned off on the Sergeant-at-Arms. The most important among these is the coordination of Guild recruitment actvities during Rush and CPW.

Rush and CPW

First Year Summer “Mailing”

This is a set of web pages on CD that goes out to the incoming freshmen as part of their giant packet. You’ll get instructions as to how to do this from the ASA early July. It’ll be in one of their giant emails, so make sure you look for it. The email will include a link telling you to update this entry for your group. The /mit/assassin/fysm locker contains some old entries. Any relevant information and logos can be pulled form there. If anything new is made or used, make sure to update the locker accordingly.

Activities Midway

The CPW Activities Midway usually requires coordination with the ASA towards the end of the spring term. Notices will be mailed out -- respond quickly. The Rush Activities Fair is a similar operation. Request at least one table. You can request two and rationalize this to the ASA that we’re one of the largest student groups on campus and we need the extra table for selling guns and t-shirts. In the past, we’ve requested the spot in the back corner, by the fire exits -- this allows us to demonstrate guns to the prefrosh and have a spot to park our cart. Make sure to include this in your reasons for the location we want. We must get a spot on the edge at all costs! Hopefully, there will be at least one ASA plant you can use to try to get this.

Get volunteers to help with running the booth - get people who will be eager, energetic, and not flakes. Send an email out to vicemasters-private-army@mit.edu to ask for volunteers. Make sure to include the time and date in the email. Aim for the atypical assassin - someone who wears collared shirts, and has short hair. Remember, the psychos will find us no matter what we do, it’s the normals we have to convince. Try to get them to wear their Guild shirts or nontrivial costuming -- this goes double for people who routinely costume well, though during CPW week this may be difficult.

Supplies for the Midway should include printed blurbs for the Guild, Patrol, and upcoming games (on colored paper). I recommend about 100-200 copies of blurbs, and print them back-to-back (save paper). 500 is waaaaaaaay too many. Use excess blurbs to poster for games during term. Look in the Vice directory for good fliers. If you’re going to print out a bunch of fliers, try not to make them time-sensitive – say “contact the High Council” instead of “contact Ternus”.

Ensure that you have a (printed, ideally) sheet present to collect emails (more relevant for Rush than for CPW). Well, we did that back in the day, but honestly, it’ll save you sanity to make a excel sheet or Google Doc form for people to fill out. But if you feel like living in the 20th century, go ahead. It’s your job to put these emails on assassins-guild. Feel free to snark accordingly on zephyr.

In the past, we have had fortune cookies, though this was a while ago. Apparently they turned out kind of well; at the least, people seemed to like them, and we had snacks for games for *months*. See /mit/assassin/Vice/Rush/2002/fortune.cookies for details. Solicit fortune ideas from vpa or generic; have some fun with it. (They’re like edible mempackets!)

The Guild owns a Banner with its own Banner Holder, as well as a red table cloth. These were made for the Midway, so you should bring them and put them up. They’re made to fit one table, so another table cloth might be clever for next year. (The red table cloth has since vanished into the abyss, but perhaps we will find it some day.)

Things that have been tried in the past: There is generally the ability to request performance space for dance, singing, sports (like martial arts), etc., groups. I would love to get a few good Patrol players out there demonstrating Patrol (but making sure not to shoot outside of the performance space). You know, turn over some desks, trash cans, etc., for cover. It might be great for getting people interested in showing up to post-Midway Patrol. (We tried this in 2003-04. Is was cool for the first two minutes of our performance time, then seemed kind of lame. Improving an interrogation scene from a larp or something might be cool, though.) (We also tried to arrange a riddle trail that would send prefrosh around between different tables at the midway to solve a puzzle and get a prize, but we only managed to get about 3 other students groups to agree to be stops on the trail and abandoned the idea.) In 2012, we did a quick scene from a LARP, but that quickly turned into a case of bad acting with nerf guns.

Pre-Rush Party Event

This has not existed recently (as of 2013), but in the event this is revived, this entry is kept in this sheet.

As of 2009, this is a new thing that the Administration has put on -- they called it the Boston T Party in 2006 and 2007, and “Tech Tube Tuesday” (grak) in 2008. We’ve requested and received a table at these events primarily for the purpose of directing people to Patrol, but in 2008 it turned into a smaller version of the Midway booth.

Make sure you know where this is happening! Don’t, for instance, schedule Patrol in 32-0 if it’s happening in W20.

That said, in 2008 when they unexpectedly moved the event to W20, we got a table right next to the door and had massive crowds of frosh around our booth the entire time. Make sure you have enough fliers to give them!

Remember that you’re not allowed to collect emails at this event.

Patrol

Patrol should be run during CPW and Orientation. If you can’t get reservations, running it in 32-0, has worked out fairly well. We’ve run it right after the Activities Midway, which tends to help. Postering for this might be clever.

Make sure to coordinate with Patrolcomm to get this to happen. It’s technically their job.

Rush Sort-Of-Game

At times in the past, we’ve put together an event during Rush that was able to support people dropping in whenever and leaving whenever. This has generally worked out well. If possible, timing it as a lead-in to Patrol could be a good idea. Activities that have happened at these events include: pizza, a physical shadowrun challenge, a “talk to people to advance”-style riddle trail, and so on.

The Rush Game

It’s important that there be a game running soon after (but not during!) Rush that sucks new people into the Guild. Make sure that this is a relatively sane, newbie-friendly game; Games that have worked well frequently have an easy-to-understand premise and a general lack of sketchiness. A particularly successful Guild Camp game might be a good choice for this.

Having a good Rush game is key to recruitment. Getting people involved with the Guild before they get too sucked in to other activities is vital. Make sure the Rush game happens.

The Rush game will almost certainly conflict with Patrol. Make sure Patrolcomm knows this (either because you tell them or the GM team running the Rush game does). In all likelihood, Patrol will probably be cancelled; make sure this gets communicated to patrol-players.

General Recruitment and Advertising

Board

The Guild has a board in the infinite corridor. You should keep it up to date and eye-catching. At a minimum, print out a list of games for each upcoming term once the schedule is determined and put that up. Try to get games, particularly longer games and definitely 10-days, to make posters and put those up too.

Events calendar

The events calendar is a way of advertising events online, and in The Tech. All Guild events, including Patrol, should be registered here. This is especially important for IAP and Rush events, as TechCalendar (now the Events Calendar) is the online equivalent of the IAP Guide. To register events requires having certificates, and it must be done by 4 p.m. two days before the event. Earlier (more than a week) is better. Once the schedule for a term is set, go ahead and register all the events—you can always change it later. See events.mit.edu for more details. NOTE: Also good for CPW (Campus Preview Weekend - when prospective frosh visit campus). In 2002-2003, they actually published all student group events on events.mit.edu in the prefrosh handbook, and we ended up with a 75-person Patrol game.

The Vicemaster’s Private Army

There’s a mailing list called vicemasters-private-army@mit.edu (changed from vpa@mit.edu due to spam, formerly known as rush-minions@mit.edu) that is used to send mail to all the people interested in helping with Guild advertising. This is a good list to use for coordinating large mobs of people to man the Guild booth or help with postering and so on. Be sure to update it occasionally – add competent people that you know and like.

Posters

Postering is legal if it’s for an event which occurs during legal Activities Rush. Postering is a good idea for Rush events, as are Daily Confusion entries. Have shirts and guns to sell at all rush events.

Lobby 10 booth

These are good for general publicity. We’ve used them (in the past) to sell guns and shirts, as well as to let people generically realize that we exist. Thought: try to reserve around midterms, to optimize number of people walking through Lobby 10.

Infinite Corridor Advertising

We should advertise particular games on the screens in the Infinite. Patrol as well. Student groups may get a certain amount of advertising free.

ads in The Tech

The Tech (student newspaper) gives student groups a certain amount of free ad space per year (or at least it used to). There are some terms and conditions; I think the deadline is before 4pm on Friday for Tuesday’s issue and before 4pm on Tuesday for Friday’s issue.

LSC slides

Click around lsc.mit.edu for details.

web.mit.edu spotlight

After some complication, we arranged to have a spotlight link from web.mit.edu in 2002-2003 – this was led to a blurb about the 10-day game L5, which included a link to an “About the MIT Assassins’ Guild” page as well as a webapp for the game. It probably gave us more outside (non-MIT) exposure than we would have liked (not that we got death threats or anything, though I have no idea what strange e-mail the l5-gms may have received), but it may have garnered us an app or two (sudden realization: we may have forgotten to ever put those people on the main guild mailing list..), and it was randomly cool.

DomeView

Apparently we get one free use of DomeView (the LCD screens in W20). This might be cool for advertising a ten-day.

General Notes

As Vicemaster, you should help the Grandmaster if they have too much on their plate, and replace them if they can’t be there for a meeting or whatnot. If the Grandmaster has to quit, congrats, you’ve been promoted.

Learn how to use zephyr if you don’t know already – it’s critical for keeping in touch with the other members of the HC, with your minions, and with potential recruits.

In a very real sense, you are responsible for the future of the Guild. Good luck.

See Also

The original Greensheet.