Tir County Sheriff's Department

[Brad, STL/MO]

((Note: "In-character" material from InfamousBrad will be set off with indented quotes. Regular text is out-of-character explanations. All of the following relates to dimension Rubi-Ka 1, RK1.))

From: InfamousBrad
For centuries, Omni-Tek has been promising that Rubi-Ka would eventually get a democratic government. Omni-Tek also says that they have a legitimate lease to this planet, that they treat their employees and tenants fairly, and that they had nothing to do with the mutants. So nobody believes them much on the democracy thing, either.

But it's a little bit more disappointing that the Council of Truth hasn't yet delivered on their promise of democratic rule, neither. OK, it's understandable. Life has been one dog-gone crisis after another, and until the immigration ban was lifted last June, they were still trying to recover from the horrible attrition of the Second Rubi-Ka War.

In the meantime, law enforcement has been run as a networked ad-hocracy of freelancers, bidding on missions from the Council of Truth. Networked ad-hocracies are a very efficient way to allocate resources and scarce manpower and minimum management overhead. But they're not, well, they're just not very accountable.

Since the Council doesn't have the time or manpower to do it for us, maybe it's time for us to do some of it for ourselves. It is time to bring some structure and accountability to at least some of the law enforcement activity in the free lands of Rubi-Ka.

From: Brad, STL/MO
Blather, blather, blather. You can't get anything done in the north without making a speech about the freedom loving people of Rubi-Ka. Which is, by the way, the kind of thing I actually believe. But I'm sorry if I bored you, the actual details are coming up now.

From: InfamousBrad
Here's what I propose to do about it. On Saturday, July 27th, 29476, at 17:00 Rubi-Ka Standard Time (17:00 GMT, 1:00 pm EDT), there will be an open recruiting call for the Tir County Sheriff's Department (TCSD). We will organize ourselves based on demonstrated skill and professionalism. We will provide professional law enforcement assistance to the Council of Truth and to our fellow freedom-loving people.

And if this here experiment succeeds, then in six months, during the last week of January, we will open the polls and elect a new Sheriff to run the department, to serve a six month term. From then until a real government comes along and imposes new procedures, we will elect a new Sheriff every six months, in the last week of January and July.

Are you a Clanner, on RK1, and are willing to answer yes when asked, "Do you solemnly swear or affirm, that as a deputized and sworn sheriff of Tir County, you will serve and protect the people of Tir County, and obey the lawful orders of your superiors within the Tir County Sheriff's Department?" If so, then you are eligible and welcome to become a Deputy Sheriff of Tir County.

From: Brad, STL/MO
Saturday July 27th, at 5:00 pm GMT (1:00 pm EDT, 10:00 am PDT) meet in the courtyard of RK1's Tir Apartments #2 (extreme southwestern corner of the city). If you are in an organization now, you must be prepared to leave it. We will found a new organization called the Tir County Sheriff's Department, using the military ranks. Because it's my idea, and I'm the one who's volunteering to pay some of the expenses and do much of the organizational work for it, I intend to lead it. Internally, for role-playing reasons, we'll use the titles Sheriff (President), Deputy Sheriff (General), Assistant Deputy Sheriff (Unit Commander), Deputy (Unit Leader, Unit Member), and Probationary Deputy (Applicant). Or, in ordinary conversation, I'm Sheriff, and y'all are Deputy, even the Probies.


Why You Would Want To Join

• Role-Playing Opportunities: Being a Deputy Sheriff gives you more of an identity. Since we're self-proclaimed, it won't give you any real power or authority, but it will give you an excuse to pretend that you have power and authority. You know, like Meister and his pals, only cooler.
  
• Training and Equipment: I want to recruit and promote people who are, like me, enthusiastic about sharing experience and equipment with newer players and newer characters. I especially want to be able to do something about the shortages in some of the scarcer, slower to advance professions, especially Doctors and Traders, by providing them reliable, trained, and well-equipped team partners.
  
• Reputation: I'm going to set up a web page where you can very quickly record what team missions you've been on since your recruitment. After a certain number of successful team missions, we'll promote you in rank. That means that people you want to team with will be able to tell, just from your rank, how much experience you have in teams. However, on a separate form, your team members can report you ("to Internal Affairs") for things that make a bad team member, ranging from idiocy to rudeness to ninja looting. We'll check out their complaints, and if we substantiate them, we'll put a reprimand in your record. Repeated reprimands will result in reduction in rank; extreme examples may result in explusion from the TCSD. And all of this will be something people can check with a simple URL, one you can script and send to them in chat. Which means you get:
  
• Increased Teaming Opportunities: When you can show people you've had a certain number of team missions with few or no complaints, you may find that all of a sudden, it's easier to get onto groups, even with the less popular team professions. If we build up and maintain a reputation, people will even start seeking us out to add to their teams.

From: InfamousBrad
Code of Conduct

We'll recruit any Clanner, pretty much. But if you expect to advance in rank, here's the kind of person you need to be:

• Hard-Working: The more law enforcement calls you respond to, especially ones that require more than one person, the more recognition you'll get.
  
• Professional in Appearance: By character level 6, I want to see matching sets of armor, or at least trenchcoat over it. If you absolutely can't get a matching set of armor on your own, we'll find a fixer to blitz up a set for you, even if we have to loan you the money to get someone outside the group to do it. On the other hand, if your are off-duty, especially in a place that serves alcohol or other intoxicants, I do not want to see you in armor (showing) or with a weapon in your hand.
  
• Knowledgeable or Willing to Learn: Once we get going and have time to develop them, there will be qualification exams for the upper ranks, testing you on your knowledge of Anarchy Online.
  
• Cooperative: If your team mates catch you running off on your own, looting more than your share of chests, doing stupid stuff that draws more hostiles than the team can handle at once, attacking the wrong target and breaking calms or roots, or otherwise failing to do your part in a team, they will be able to complain to Internal Affairs. If IA agrees that you were in the wrong, it will count against your record, and if you get enough reprimands it will eventually hurt your career in the Department.
  
• Polite: I don't want to hear complaints that my deputies are swearing in public, making personal insults, sexually harassing people, or making disparaging remarks about anybody's place of origin, skin color, religion, breed, gender, sexual orientation, or lack thereof. At least, not where anybody outside the department can hear it, and certainly not in ways that offend or attack each other. And if two people come up for promotion, and they're equally qualified, and only one of them always says "Sir" and "Miss" and "please" and "thank you" and "you're welcome" to civilians, that's the one who'll get the promotion.
  
• Law Abiding: It ain't like there's a lot of laws to break up north, is it? But if'n we get some, I don't want to hear about my people breaking any of them. That includes the Tir Accord, for whatever it's worth. If you get a law enforcement request from anywhere near Tir, you can follow it where ever you have to. But if you head into Omni territory without going through channels, you are on your own. If the Department didn't authorize it, don't expect the Department to stand up for you, or bail you out.
  
  Let me be very specific here, 'cause I know some of you won't listen to me. If you get caught by Omni-Pol in, say, Omni-1 or Clon**** or Galway in armor with a weapon in your hand, and you didn't clear it with me, and I didn't clear it with Henry, and Henry didn't clear it with Boss Ross's kids, then you are in more trouble that I am going to be able to get you out of -- or interested in getting you out of. And you ain't gonna get that clearance soon, 'cause ol' Henry and Boss Ross ain't exactly on speaking terms at the moment.
  
  And I don't want to hear about any my deputies engaging in terrorism, neither, you hear me?
  
• Meticulous: "If it ain't written, it ain't real." If you want to get credit for a mission, then ASAP afterwards you need to go to the web site and report it. It'll be a quick form, a few popup menus and checkboxes, you'll be done in half a minute.

From: Brad, STL/MO
That "no armor or weapons off duty" thing is a bugaboo of mine. In the short run, it's going to create some hardship for a few people. In fact, it'll probably be enough to keep some really deadly, really thoroughly twinked characters out of the organization. But part of the law enforcement image is a clear distinction between "on duty" and "off duty." Soon enough, we'll attract our own corps of meta-physicists, soldiers, traders, and agents. Then you can just stop by the "squad room" when you're ready to go "on duty," get buffed back into your twinkage, and go back to Serving and Protecting. If you can't deal with that, join a different organization. Or wait six months, and run for Sheriff yourself, and revoke the rule.

Why bother recording every mission? Two reasons, one practical, one role-playing. The practical reason is to build up your reputation as an experienced team member. The role-playing reason is that I want to record as many "instances" as we can find of Omni employees engaging in criminal activities in the north, so I can shove 'em up Meister's nose, and anybody else from Omni-Tek. You know, "Last month the TCSD thwarted x attacks with weapons of mass destruction in Tir County, involving approximately y verified employees of Omni-Tek. Fortunately, none of these attempts were successful. We also recovered z items of stolen equipment or merchandise from Omni-Tek employees who were illegally in clan territory and in possession of stolen goods." And so on.

Could they do the same thing? After all, their automatic missions generate Clan bad guys. Sure they could. Let 'em do so. It's good for the storyline. Let's make missions actually have an effect on the story for a change.

Note that there are no rules here about an organization tax. I don't envision one. I hope to fund the department from personal donations, especially from higher level characters. And who knows, maybe we'll sell memberships in a TCSD Beneficial Society, or tickets to the Sheriff's Ball to merchants, or something like that. Note also that there are no rules here requiring you to donate your hand-me-down equipment to the Department ... although it would be quite brotherly of you to do it, and might even help your career a nudge.

(Oh, and one thing about these rules. So long as you don't violate the EULA, you can be as rude to Omni-Tek employees as you want, because on that subject, I'm not going to bother to investigate, and I'll over-rule IA if they do. I'll ask you if you said it, and tell you to say no, and you'll say no, and if you don't say no I'll take that as a no, and have you exonerated. I won't have my deputies impugned by some company so-and-so over a bunch of chicken excrement.)

(continued next message)

[Brad, STL/MO]

(continued from previous message)

Future Ideas

From: InfamousBrad
I look forward to cooperating with other law enforcement agencies, in the future.

From: Brad, STL/MO
The model for this organization is, of course, easy to copy. There's no reason why there can't also be a Tir City Police Department (TCPD), an Athen Police Department (APD), a West Athen Sheriff's Department, a City of Bliss Sheriff's Department, (CBSD), a City of Sabulum Sheriff's Department (CSSD), and so on. There's also no reason why neutrals couldn't organize a Newland City Police (NLCPD), a Newland Sheriff's Department (NSD), a Borealis Sheriff's Department (BSD), and so on. (But I can't imagine someone tough enough to appoint themselves the head of the MeetMeDere Public Safety Committee, MPSC, and make it stick.)

In fact, if you like my ideas, but think that somebody other than me should be running it, that's probably what you should do, is found one of those other police agencies. And notice that while in theory we should respect each other as trained and dedicated law enforcement officials, if we have personality conflicts or other disagreements down the road, there's plenty of historical precedent for that, too. Can you say "jurisdictional dispute"? Sure you can. In fact, there's a built-in jurisdictional dispute. The TCSD is independent from the Council's own (NPC) guards, the "red suits." They sure don't take orders from us. (The first time you get in trouble, petition to ask a GM to instantiate a couple of guards at your location. See if they come. Yeah, right.) So is it written somewhere that we always have to take orders from them?

From: InfamousBrad
Once we get enough trained deputies sworn in, we'll of course organize functionally into departments, including Recruiters, Armorers, a Detective Bureau, a SWAT team, Community Relations, and Emergency Medical Services, just to name a few.

From: Brad, STL/MO
Which means there's room for all professions, and ultimately lots of job titles to hand out. And I hope to persuade the GMs that our most experienced players, the ones who contribute the most to the department and thereby to the game, are entitled to first-name changes, so you can get Deputy as a first name. I can't promise this, but given the precedent, all we have to do is become as famous and as useful as, say, your average DJ, almost all of whom now have the first name "DJ."

Speaking of the GMs, will there be "greenies" (ARK Events Team members) in the TCSD? I'm not counting on it. Part of me hopes not, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, not having them gives us more freedom to act. But more importantly, since ARKs aren't allowed to team or run missions, except as assigned, giving one real rank and a real-looking record would mean falsifying entries in the database, which would undermine the whole reputation benefit. Not destroy it (people would see the green name when the ARK "deputy" showed up and know they'd been had, and after all ARKs are supposed to be experienced players anyway), but undermine it. And all they can offer us, really, is a weak endorsement and maybe some extra equipment.

So I'm not going to actively recruit them, but I'm not going to fight hard to keep them out if they ask. But keep in mind, if one wants to run for Sheriff next January, and the people elect him or her, that'll be the next Sheriff, and for the next six months the whole department could end up working for someone in the Events Team.

Hmm. But now that I think of it, it'd be all too appropriate if some greenie wanted to volunteer to run the TCSD Internal Affairs department. That way my deputies would get written up if people petitioned on 'em instead of going to the web page. The thought gives me shivers.

Once we build up an inventory of lowish level equipment and have people willing to create low-level alts to train people, I'd like to have volunteer recruiters at the exit from Tir Apartments #1, during peak hours and during hours we're having a hard time filling, to recruit new characters. You say they don't know anything, and have nothing to contribute? That won't be true by the time we're done with them. And it would cement our reputation as helpful people, an organization that lots of people on Rubi-Ka thought well of.

From: InfamousBrad
I'm also investigating the possibility of installing "911" Emergency Response Service, some time in the near future.

From: Brad, STL/MO
I also think it would be trivial to build a simple chat bot to let people make 911 calls. One dummy character with an appropriate name would join the organization. A simple Perl script would log in as that character, and take any /tell sent to it and relay the message (and the sender's name) to the organization chat channel. (If it gets abused, we'll log in and add the abusers to its /ignore list.) That way if somebody needs one more person for a team and wants a TCSD officer, and one is available (even if in a nightclub, say, or a store), they can respond. If we do this before we have a large number of people, though, we run the risk of having too many 911 calls ignored, so as simple as it would be, this is something for the future.

From: InfamousBrad
And of course, next January, we've got a fair, honest, and open election to run.

From: Brad, STL/MO
... or at least, an election.

Here's my idea for how it'll work. The first week in January, everybody who wants to run for TCSD Sheriff can post a message on the Official Forums in the RK1 Organizations forum, explaining who they are and why they think you should vote for them for Tir County Sheriff. If at least 10 (not sure?) people to reply agreeing you should be nominated, you're nominated. You can also use that thread to campaign in. If I still want the job, I'll have to do the same thing.

Starting the last week in January, I'm asking every participating clan to post an /org vote listing each of the candidates. Voting will last for one week. When the vote closes, each organization leader will send their vote totals on the Clan Leaders chat channel. If voting irregularities are suspected (say, a bunch of Omnis making level 1 clan alts and forming a clan from those alts in order to vote), a panel of judges appointed by the Clan Leaders will have the authority to throw out a "clan's" votes. All approved vote totals will be added together, and the winner announced. If I get beat, then the first chance I get to be online at the same time as the winner, they get recruited (if they're not already in TCSD), I promote them to my rank, and I step down one rank. Or maybe I'll retire, print up a bunch of business cards that say "Sheriff, Tir County (ret.)," and go back to the Mockers. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Does this mean that people can vote with all six alts, if they can get them into guilds? Yes. But what's the alternative? Put a poll up here? Where people can create as many 7-day IDs as they want, and where Omni and Neutral characters can vote, too?

Then we'll do it all over again, next July, and so on. It'd be more realistic to have it be for a year, or even two years, but in online gaming, that's too long.


Who Are You?

From: InfamousBrad
Who'm I? I'm the Infamous Brad. I migrated to Rubi-Ka in October of 29475. First thing off the "boat," I signed up with the Clans. I'm a Clanner, and I'm proud to be a Clanner, and I'm proud to fight alongside the Clans on the behalf of the freedom-loving people of Rubi-Ka. And I'm even more proud if I can do my part to defy Omni-Tek's illegal lease on this here planet, and to end their odious monopoly on notum.

'Round about a month ago, I joined a clan called the Mockers, whom you might have heard of. Working for and with them, I've engaged in various freelance law enforcement activities, from bodyguard, to contract security guard at some of the best clubs on this planet, to retrieval of lost or stolen objects. Some of you I have had the pleasure of working for, recovering your lost or missing items through the Mockers Item Acquisition Service, or filling your orders through forfeited stolen property I recovered or from my own rewards from the Council. I hope that those of you I have had the honor to so serve will step forward and tell people what a courteous and friendly and helpful son of a gun I was.

Oh, and no, I'm not related to any InfamousDuck, who I'd never even heard tell of until y'all started asking me about him.

From: Brad, STL/MO
I'm also "Brad, STL/MO," aka Brad Hicks. I'm a 42 year old guy. I've been a science fiction fan since 1972, a role-playing gamer since 1978, an Internet user since 1984, and a computer gamer since 1985 (or before that, if you count Adventure Cave and the original Zork). Oh, and I'm also a former network engineer, a former technical trainer, an on-and-off-again entrepreneur, a former bouncer, an unsuccessful (lazy) freelance writer, an occasional political party volunteer, and currently working (but not very hard) as a Licensed Professional Security Officer.

As I've come to learn this game, I've documented what I learned all along the way, writing popular beginners' guides such as "Primer: Team Mission Combat Tactics," "More Than You Wanted to Know: Implants," "Taunt - Or Die" and the controversial "Love/Hate: How to REALLY Tell Which Profession You Should Be Playing!"

My primary character is InfamousBrad, a level 74 fixer, and that's the character I'm going to be mostly sticking with from now on. I've also played a martial artist up to the mid 50s; an adventurer, a meta-physicist, and a bureaucrat up to the mid to upper 40s; an engineer to around 40; and a doctor and a trader to the mid 20s. I've also dabbled a bit with a soldier and an agent, and a little bit of everything else. If this gets going, I'll probably bring into TCSD my 10th level soldier and my 25ish doctor, so I can team with lower level deputies, train them, and help them advance.

I am most commonly logged in between around noon and 4ish AM Central Time, which at the moment (Daylight Savings) is GMT-5, on Thursdays through Saturdays, and from around 1:30 to 4:00 am Central Time the other four days. If I'm logged in under an alternate character, I'm usually logged onto AORC on the other monitor as InfamousBrad, as well.

Edit: Deleted reference to Tir City Watch, an organization that seems to have disbanded. Corrected two minor typos. Added signature.

[Metalynx]

Hey Brad, If i join do I get to nightstick the Omni's???

Or can I just sit at the county jail with my bottle of whiskey and my pack of cards playing solitare....:P

[Brad, STL/MO]

As long as you do it in the interest of anything resembling law enforcement, you can nightstick those stupid company sheep to your heart's content ... preferably anywhere west of the Stret or north of the Central Artery. (Anywhere in the southeast, I'm likely to be told to tell you to stop. Not that anybody actually obeys the Tir Accords, but we're supposed to be law enforcement professionals.)

OOC: Deck of cards ... oh, how I wish. I have been looking for ages for an Internet poker server that would run in a floating window on top of AO, small enough that you could still see and chat with the other players. No such luck.

Certainly would make it more entertaining sitting around the squad room shooting the breeze, wouldn't it?

[Brad, STL/MO]

All Tir County Sheriff's Department personnel records are now available for you on the grid, online. Here's how:

Let's say you see one of my officers. Just to pick on her, let's say it's HollyAnne. You think you saw HollyAnne do something wrong, and you want to make sure it goes on her record. Or you see her do something right, and you want to thank her for it where I'll see it. Or you just see HollyAnne show up and want to be on your team, and you want to know whether or not she's a cool, useful person.

Open a browser window. Point it to http://tcsd.dreamhost.com/hollyanne - and there it is! And yes, as you might hope, my record is there, too, http://tcsd.dreamhost.com/infamousbrad.

Now, there isn't much to these records yet, just as there isn't much to the TCSD gridpage in general. This is all, like everything else on Rubi-Ka, under construction, very provisional, flying by the seat of our pants, and bug-ridden as all get-out.

But I hope you'll find it helpful anyway.