HM is open for applications. Even though only one person will be hired, it's in the club's best interest that we get as many strong applications as we can. So I'm going to dedicate this report to an overview of the modern HM office and link to our current SOPs/documentation at the end.

One thing that I think most people consider when they see a DB job posting is, reasonably enough, how big a time sink is it? Compared to other jobs I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot of them, HM is both extremes.

Assuming your staff aren’t dead, the daily grind is actually very minimal, frankly less so than summit jobs. Grading and wiki patrols aren’t a lot of work and they’re spread across several people, and Kanal handles trivia such that I don’t have to step in unless he calls for help or something goes wrong. The big thing that’s HM-specific is keeping track of what the other DCers and society leaders are doing and making sure you update the SA/wiki accordingly, which isn’t a big lift, either, but will very quickly get out of hand if you blow it off.

But there’s a vast amount of work that could be done. You could burn hundreds of hours on the SA or the Wiki, or even on tangential things like running competitions and RP sessions around the SA and ACS or producing more trivia content. In any given week, you can get by without working on this, which gives you great flexibility for RL flare ups. But if you want to make progress and accomplish anything as HM, this is the stuff you have to put your time towards. And I think the key challenge of the position is figuring out how to allocate your time and your staff’s so that you’re making progress on what’s important without burning yourself out or spiralling off down into less useful rabbit holes.

The Point of HM

I’m a big proponent of intentionality when it comes to jobs and projects. You need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish and work backwards from there. It’s easy, especially for a job like HM that’s 30 years old, to just stick to habit without thinking about it too much, and I think that gets you subpar results.

The point of HM is that the club has a lot of different things that were developed by different people, at different points in time, often without talking to each other, and if you want to fully participate in the club, you have to be able to wrap your head around all of that. That’s one thing for consistently active long-term members but it’s a very tall order for everyone else. So your job is to flatten the learning curve.

Here’s an example. If someone wants to start roleplaying, first they need to understand the basic concept and the way we handle sessions/threads. They need to know where to find sessions and join them. If they need a snapshot, well, not only do they need to understand the /rp snapshot create command, they need to understand how to make loadouts, which requires understanding possessions and item stores and item aspects, and how to make a character sheet, including our skills, Force powers, feats, disciplines, the physical description and character aspect requirements, etc. If the session involves dice, they need to know Dicemaiden. And they’re probably not RPing in a vacuum, so they’ll want to understand how the Envoy trophy works, and the Inquisitorius as well, and how all of that ties into XP and credits. And then they’ll probably need some understanding of DB-specific lore.

That’s one type of activity and we offer many. As you can see, it snowballs pretty rapidly in ways that are nearly invisible after you’ve gotten comfortable with how things work.The more frustrating it is to cobble together all the little things they need to know, the more likely we’ll lose them.

For the RP example, you might be thinking: isn’t that the Exarch’s job? Sure. Isn’t it the summit’s job to walk new members through the stuff they want to do? I think so, yeah. But it’s also the HM’s job, and the HM has the primary responsibility for giving other leaders the tools to help get members up to speed.

The HM oversees two somewhat separate systems for doing that, and then a third random thing, and then you’re also a Council member.

The Shadow Academy

My vision for the SA, which was not the vision of the people who developed most of its content, is that it is the home for introductions, overviews, and how-tos. The SA should be the first stop for anybody who wants to understand how to do something new. And it should cover most of what they need to know, clearly, concisely, and accurately.

As I said, that’s not the vision that most SA content was developed under. For most of recent history, the SA was treated like an activity stream. It wasn’t reference material, it was stuff to do. We have a society to incentivize people to do all the things, and we have competitions to do the most SA, and there are courses that are almost entirely irrelevant to improving your experience as a DB member. Like everyone on the Council, I like giving people credits and XP and fun items and do not like taking them away. So it’s a slow migration to shift the SA towards being a reference library that’s useful whether you bother with the exam or not without disrupting people’s ability to unlock ACS ranks and so on.

Speaking of exams, we still have them. Most of them have been streamlined and are quick and easy to grade, if they’re not auto-graded by the site. The exceptions are generally handled by our professors. Grading is automatically awarded credits and XP through the Scroll of Foundation medal. We also have the Google form for errors and problems in SA content. Neither of these are a big time or effort commitment.

Writing new courses is a very big time or effort commitment, and that’s what you should probably hire staff for. Speaking of, the current crop of magistrates was hired by my predecessor for a set term that ends in another month or so, so you’ll need to hire new (or the same) ones. The profs don’t have fixed terms.

The Wiki

The Wiki now has its own staff as opposed to the Wiki Tribune just sitting in with the SA folks. The Wiki does two things for the club.

First, it’s a platform for members to add their own content. That’s most of what our articles are. Your job, semi-delegated to the Tribune and staff, is to make sure that content is in decent shape, is appropriate, and that members have what they need/want in terms of templates and such. The big day-to-day efforts here, and neither of them are very much work, is making sure images are attributed and licensed and making sure the Wikipedian of the Month and Featured Article awards go out. Longer term, we need some better organization.

The second thing is it’s our storage for official policies, including the Covenant, and more detailed information than is appropriate for the SA, like the CS Guide. The policy/system-owners are the ones who should keep this current, but you are responsible for keeping the whole thing current. We have a lot of bloat here and this stuff needs to be consolidated so it’s easier both to maintain and for members to use.

Trivia

This one is nice and easy. As most of you know, we do weekly-ish trivia in #trivia on Discord. We use a Discord bot called Quizbot to run that. You have to create the quizzes through a web portal and then use some Discord commands to run them. That’s all documented.

In practice, this is almost entirely delegated to Kanal, but you’re the fallback.

The Council

Formally, being a member of the Council only drags you into a few, infrequent extra job duties. One is voting in the Electorate, which confirms GM and JST appointments and Covenant amendments. This is rarely a big to-do but it’s important so take it seriously.

You are also expected to run competitions for vendettas (including one coming up next year) and seasons. This is also not that big a deal. The number of entries is going to be much higher, but if you’re run competitions before, it’s the same premise. HMs traditionally run some sort of trivia competition through the SA, and I have documentation on how to set that up, or you can just copy one of the many existing examples. Or be bold and do something else.

Informally, #core-council on Discord is one of the main places where changes to the club get discussed before they go live. You have a lot of opportunities to get involved here, and some of us do. But you don’t have to, and several Council members don’t. But for HM, I don’t think keeping up with that discussion is optional because you’re going to have to document whatever the good idea fairies pop out.

Closing Remarks

I’m happy to answer questions. Additionally, if you’re curious about recent internal operations, you can find all our documentation/SOPs here. I've spoken in previous reports about my plans, some completed and some far from it, and I'm happy to discuss those further with anyone who's interested--but my plans aren't binding and you can and probably should disagree with some of them.

As always, if anyone sees any errors in the course notes or exam questions, please submit them through the form. Scrolls of Foundation are a nutritious part of a healthy XP diet.

I am always available at [Log in to view e-mail addresses] or archenksov on Discord.

Academy Changelog

DARK BROTHERHOOD FUNDAMENTALS
Activities 104: Roleplaying
- Fixed a typo in the course notes. (Korvyn)

DEPARTMENT OF GALACTIC STUDIES
Planets and Moons   
- Updated course notes. Corrected the home planets of the clans and brotherhood. Fixed grammatical errors. (Korvyn)   
- Corrected Typo in question 8 (Kora)
- Completed Exam Review with 9 new questions written. The course is now autograded. (Darkhawk & Korvyn)
Ranged Weaponry Studies   
- Course moved into this department after being left in the inactive Warfare department (Azler)
Armor and Protection   
- Corrected error in question 13 (Kora)   

DEPARTMENT OF WRITING
Character Development
- Corrected typo in course notes. (Azler)

SHADOW ACADEMY DEGREES
Maven Leadership   
- Added Rollmaster to the Time in Service set to 5 months   (Korvyn)
Savant Leadership   
- Added Rollmaster to the Time in Service set to 10 months   (Korvyn)