Happy New Year.

So, I intend, from this week, to try and make this weekly and keep to that goal.

I'm currently in the middle of the usual midwinter failout, which, mercifully, is all at the coord level and good manners prohibits me from sharing a lot of it here.

That said, observation 1: When I say "I don't know...x," I pretty much don't know it, and I'm asking so I can find out more. Who someone is, what the story is. I noticed that I'm pretty consistent in that speech pattern. As an aspiring poker player, now that I know that tell, I intend to try and stop it.

Observation 2 (tied to 1): When I ask a question that doesn't start with some variation of "I don't know...x", chances are, I already know the answer and want to see how much you are about to lie to me. If I say "Okay, so this thing you want to do, what book is it in?" you can safely fold knowing that I'm sitting on pocket kings and the other two just flopped to you showing of 6-7 off suit.

Observation 3: I've called you, I've shown you my hand. This is not the time for the debate. If I say "I've got 4 kings with an ace high," do not continue to argue with me saying that "but my 6 of clubs, 8 of spades, and the two kings on the table is just as good with the pinnacle rules from 1868 edition of Hoyles." I've stopped caring and definitely stopped reading. (This goes double if you're arguing something as a Coord or CM that directly affects your PC. Chances are I marked the email as read, moved on, and will only go back and read it later if I'm prepping a CM to propose your removal).

Observation 4: Clan Coords that say "I need an archon to clean up the midwest" I'm going to laugh at you. Seriously. I will laugh. Work together. If you don't have a tool in an area, and another coord has 4, talk to her. Work with her. Say "hey, I've heard about this situation, what can I do to help?" And then include the Sect Coord. So the sect coordinator can do his/her job. You're a clan coord. And that's great. Fix your clan, and your clans genre. Ignoring that to clean up the sect means you're doing a disservice to the other sects, a disservice to your clan, a disservice to the players and a disservice to the STs. Also, chances are you're worse at sect genre than the STs and Players you want to "fix." That arrogance and lack of regional political IC/OOC understanding is as responsible for all that is questionable in OWbN as anything Solon did as Shade.