CPX 8 Dec 96 New Umpire Lessons Learned

This is a rather humungous post to a mailing list. My apologies to the
bandwidth. Especially so for those parts where I get off track and start
telling stories.. ;)

This text, in a slightly prettier format, is available at
http://www.wolfenet.com/~ewingren/personal/tacops.html along with an AAR of
the action in this weekends game, and links to other Tacops pages,
including the IRC CPX FAQ.

These are my notes on lessons learned during the harrowing and fun
experience of running my first Tacops IRC CPX.

This is only a lessons learned: it is not intended as a full set of
instructions.

First lesson: Read the FAQ sooner than the night before the game, and take
it seriously. ;)

An overall lesson - if you are looking to run your first CPX, and especially
if you have never played in an IRC CPX, I'd try to arrange a trial one with
two players and a simple scenario, as I was blessed to have it kept that
simple for my first run, and still managed to goof a few things, get
confused and panicy, flail around, and still run a relatively slow game.

I don't mean that to scare you off at all - I had a great time and want to
do it again ASAP.

And I want you to ump a game so I can play in one.

I'll break my lessons down chronologically.

Before the game:

1) Get, test, and familiarize yourself with your IRC client, if you are not
allready an IRC user. I got as far as being sure I could join a channel and
send text before the game. Before the next one, I'd like to check how I send
and get files, and learn the commands for making channels private, and to
grant channel privileges/invite people to private channels. This is the
internet - I'm happy for people to do whatever they want.. but we named the
US orders channel "#blue," not thinking of the smut implications of "blue" -
wasn't long 'til folk wandered in - I'm almost sorry we sent them off before
they had a chance to see:
0713 ICM in effect woodline, 2 secondaries
0713 3pln/A co destroyed
0713 overwatch bn engage & destroy apprx 10 T80, woodline
endrep, orders?

Surely not satisfying to the porn-ophile. ;)

Ah, well.. another lesson you don't have to learn, you won't babble off the
topic when you are umping, you're too busy, so indulge me a moment while I
make up for it. ;)

2) Get initial orders from both sides, and get them set up in the game. The
start of this game was delayed while I finished entering orders. If you are
not used to hot-seating Tacops, remember that you can switch back and forth
between sides in Tacops repeatedly during one orders phase, including set up
- OPFOR units can be placed on the map before the US units.

3) Print out whatever materials you have from the players - orders, control
graphics, etc. You will allready at a minimum be switching from your IRC
client to Tacops and back again on your computer - having to switch to your
email client to read orders and a graphics app to look at the overlays, then
trying to remember while you switch back to Tacops would be a bear. Next
time, I'm clipping OPFOR and US orders and info to two different clipboards,
in an effort to keep them organized during game play. I had everything
printed out.. but kept losing it in the chaos that surrounds my computer.

4) Name the units. I did ok at keeping track of which unit was which - but
towards the endgame, it was getting fairly confusing, and I fudged a couple
times. In the Windows Tacops, naming units is obvious.. Since running this
CPX, the good Major, in his usual fashion, answered my question on how to
name units in Mac version 0.1.5 within just hours - expand open the full
orders box for the unit (so you see the part with load/unload sop, etc), and
click in the white rectangle on the lower right portion of the window. A
dialog box will come up for you to enter the unit name. After entering the
name, you will see it in the white rectangle whenever you open the orders
window again. Additionally, the name stays with all subunits when you split
the unit - at least it does so far in my tests.

5) Be sure everyone knows the IRC channel and where to find it, etc., before
play.

6) You might want to run a test that you can run all the apps you'll be
using at once. I'd like to send out some graphic updates during the game,
but Photoshop on top of Tacops and IRC is going to be slow at best.

7) Be sure you are up to speed with the Grid reference system. I'm rather
proud of my land navigation and map reading abilities, and still managed to
goof this up. It's simple, really, and there is an excellent set of
instructions in the Tacops manual. Just remember: right and up.

Get all this done, by the night before or so, and you'll be ahead of where I
was, and well set to run the scenario. Additional possiblities are
prewriting some canned reports in your text editor, which you could rapidly
copy into IRC to add some depth to the game, and to keep the players busy
while you flail around with the mouse changing orders to all their units at
their every whim. Also stock up on refreshments of your choice, you won't
have time to leave the computer while you run this thing..

Getting set to play online:

1) Meet in the #Tacops channel, set up a channel to talk to both sides in.
The umpire will be monitoring three channels in IRC - a general game
channel, and an OPFOR and US channel. I understand that in team play, OPFOR
and US set up their own internal channels.. certainly, while umpiring, I
wouldn't want to be distracted by their chat and trying to find the orders
in the midst of it. I think in team play I might like to try an orders
channel for each player - they wouldn't be able to monitor each other this
way, and they each would have to forward reports to their team as a whole.
More fog of war! Also, turn logging on in IRC - I wish I had logs to go back
over to help me reconstruct the game.

2) If you haven't done it in your preparatory materials you sent out before
the game (orders to each side, etc), agree on terms to notify players that
you are:

   * done reporting (endrep)
   * ready for orders (orders?)
   * have received the orders (copy)
   * done taking orders (end orders)

In parentheses are my suggestions. I wasn't doing this as we started, and it
lead to quite a bit of confusion. I do note that copy means 'understood,'
not 'will comply' - that's wilco. ;) Also, players should note something
along the lines of 'endorders.' I don't think I ever did send anything like
'endorders' - the players can send all the orders they want - if it takes
too long, the orders go in after the next round of tacops combat. ;) I do
need to discuss this more clearly and watch to be sure each side has equal
time to put in orders after getting reports.
Also agree on what times mean in your report. Most of my reports started
with a time - this was the time shown on the game clock at the -end- of the
turn - the reports were on what happened in the previous minute, and I'm
pretty sure this lead to some confusion on the part of at least one player.

An evil part of me wants to demand proper calls for fire for artillery
support, including adjustments. Not practical - this is covered
automatically by the game mechanics, and would take nearly as long to run as the
rest of the processing. Oh, well.

During Play:

1) Save the game often, preferably with a name giving the time hack. Later,
in composing an AAR, you can use this to reconstruct the action and get
whatever screen shots you want at your leisure. I remembered to get one
screen shot during play, and never did remember to save the game.

2) Use the communication protocols mentioned above. Easy to forget as you
hustle along. I keep mentioning the time pressure - I was aware of how long
the players had to wait between hearing anything. I know I'd be in agony -
maybe I'm just too empathetic. ;)
I would have liked to use more formal/proper reporting formats - SALUTE
reports, SITREP, etc., and will try to in the future - but when it crossed
my mind, it seemed it would take too much time.

3) Give position updates from time to time.

4) Try not to get sucked into taking orders every turn - I started leaning
this way heavily, asking for orders every turn. I made up for it in part by
not giving that much time for orders to come in. Game speed will be kept up
the faster you can keep hitting cmd-b, and getting that combat phase going.

5) I'm sure there's lots more...

6) You might like, especially with larger / less decisive scenarios, to have
some terms in mind for ending the game. I know I like to play them to the
bitter end, out of curiosity and stubborness, and have sometimes met victory
conditions after losing the game due to the other side making their victory
conditions.

7) You are going to be busy and feel stressed for time, trying to keep the
game moving. If you've ever Game Mastered role playing games, you have some
idea what to expect. Relax - you're doing this for fun, and providing
entertainment to the players for free. This doesn't mean to be a slob or
excuse not taking it seriously, but.. well, relax. I had to remind myself
that the previous time I was involved in a bn level CPX, we used the ARTBASS
system, a 'portable' (in a semi-trailer) sytem the US Army uses. It came to
our Bn's National Guard armory with 8 or 10 staffers, and had two computer
terminals per company. Each company had the CO, XO, and First Sergeant there
to work with a staffer in running the company through the computer, and two
or three RTOs (er, thems is radio guys) to radio reports to the bn hq, set
up outside in their tents. Only time in my military career I was inside and
warm and the hindquarters people were outside and cold. ;) Point is - as a
Tacops ump, you will be doing what we had 25-35 people doing. Of course,
that sim ran in real time, no stopping for turns, and we were doing all the
logistics and personell stuff, too.

I would love to find someone in the area that wanted to ump with me - two
machines running the game networked, both dialed into IRC, and we could have
an ump for each side. Would either go faster, allow for more command and
control, allow bigger scenarios, or some combination of the above. Any
takers in the Seattle area, or a reasonable drive from here?

After Play:

1) You may now visit the latrine.

2) Do some AAR right there online. For learning purposes, it is always best
to do an AAR as soon as possible. It is also best for the record, as players
have their decisions more freshly in mind. If you haven't been logging the
IRC channels, this is a very good time to log, for accuracy in writing up a
more formal AAR. Having a checklist on hand for the online AAR could help
keep it structured and on track. When I helped teach the sophomore tactics
class in ROTC (using an abomination of a simulation called Dunn-Kempf -
Major? great place to sell some copies of Tacops..), we had all the students
keep decision logs. These were great when we did the AAR at the end of the
quarter - helped not only to reconstruct events, but helped to reconstruct
the thinking of the leaders at the time. Also forces some thinking on their
decision making - it's hard to write down "moving my 3d pln to the woods,
because I like woods."

Most important lesson:

This was the most fun I've had with Tacops in a long time.

I welcome any comments, complaints, congratulations, commendations,
corrections, condemnations, etc., other than those regarding length and
staying on topic, I know I'm a blabbermouth. Believe it or not, if you've
gotten this far, I can be concise when I have to be.

My thanks to John and James and Corinne, and of course, to the good Major.

  - Erik P. Wingren
http://www.wolfenet.com/~ewingren/
ewingren@wolfenet.com   (206) 324-9348
224 Bellevue Ave. E. #6, Seattle WA 98102