This topic exists as one single source for instructions to the staff about how to send reports and other things.

All Staff Officers are required and responsible to read and to monitor this topic for instructions, procedural updates, and other things.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 - 03:28 pm: Edit

HOW TO GET ON THE STAFF

Simple. Be the kind of person we want on the staff and when we have an opening we will consider offering you a staff post.

Staff officers get honor, glory, eternal thanks, medals, campaign ribbons, discounts on products, and occasional other benefits.

How do you demonstrate "being the kind of person we want on the staff"? Well, by doing staff-type works. When you see a rules draft or a new product, do a "report" in LINE ITEM FORMAT with whatever mistakes, needed clarifications, notes about exceptions or special cases, or other observations you have.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 - 03:39 pm: Edit

STAFF OFFICERS ARE VOLUNTEERS
You don't get paychecks. (If you know what actual employees were paid, you'd understand that the game business is not awash in cash that can be handed out for various favors.) if you think you should get a paycheck, we suggest you might find another game company to work for, if you can find one that pays better than we do, which so far as we know, you can't.

Being volunteers, nobody can order, hound, nag, or harass you to do your work. On the other hand, imagine someone walking into a McDonald's and saying "I volunteer to work here for nothing. I will take care of putting cheese on hamburgers. If I don't feel like showing up to do volunteer work on a given day, you'll have to close for the day because I am the only one allowed to put cheese on hamburgers." That means the only way we can run this outfit is to give volunteer staffers deadlines for projects, nudge them to report, explain to them why late reports are a serious disruption in the project flow, and replace those staffers who just don't have the time or motivation to report on time.

Getting a report weeks after the deadline is something of a disaster. In a recent case, we sent a book to several staffers to review, setting a hard deadline. Several reported, others did a few reports but not the whole book, and some did not report at all. That's fine. We have more than one staffer assigned to each project just in case someone has a real world problem with sending in reports. We processed all of the reports, then moved forward with weeks of internal work on page layout, Jean's proofreading, art and graphic insertions, and other things. THEN we got 16 pages of seriously important reports which derailed the project. After doing those reports, we had to spend weeks doing the page layout and proofreading all over again. Doing something twice not only delays the project, it means a different project did not get done. It means EVERY project was delayed by a month. That disrupts sales, cash flow, and customer satisfaction.

If you (as a staffer) cannot meet a deadline, at least tell us we're waiting for you, so that we do not waste time doing things we'll have to do over after you finally report.

Remember that no product has ever been perfect, and the day after a product is released someone finds something that becomes the first item on the errata/update list. Such is life. Every one of our games is a complicated game.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 - 04:56 pm: Edit

LINE ITEM FORMAT

The heart of reports on new (or after-action reports on existing) products is the LINE ITEM FORMAT.

This is as follows, and it all has to be ONE PARAGRAPH PER RULE NUMBER. (You can send two or three reports on a single rule number if you find that easier to organize.)

Rule number // what's wrong? // why is it wrong? // How you think we should fix it. // why that is the best fix. // Your name // the date

example:

G73.666 The rule on Framistans doesn't account for the use of argolators. I recommend just saying that argolators have no effect on framistans. -- John LeCarre, 34 Jan 2026

Sometimes things are so obvious that you can use a shorter version.

G73.667 Frambolator is mis-spelled in the third line. -- Oliver Clothesoff, 14 Feb 2026

If the rule number (or other item as we shall soon see) has multiple paragraphs, then between the rulenumber and what is wrong put something like this:

G74.555 Paragraph 3 starting "Pergamon spores..." you misspelled Frambolator.--Liv Forever, 15 Feb 2026

Sometimes you find some big chunk of text, perhaps a comment on tactics or whatever, which doesn't have a rule number. (If it does, use it. If not...) scan back "upstream" and find the last rule number and use that, adding -Z to it, like this

G74.875-Z1 The story PIRACY AND PEANUTS after this rule, in the 4th paragraph starting with "The Crimelord reached for a peanut and ..." the word "cashew" is mis-spelled. --Brooke Babbles, 23 Feb 2026

It is driving me nuts doing reports for the Orion MSSB because Petrick scattered unnumbered junk from all over creation into random spots on the random pages.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 10:47 am: Edit

Thats what you get for aggravating THE PETRICK (not shouting, emphasis intended to mean “irreplaceable “).

Just remember, SPP has access to all sorts of weaponry, and is willing to use deadly force when necessary.

A good rule of thumb is “Do NOT PROVOKE PETRICK!”

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 03:37 pm: Edit

Never send the same report twice. That just confuses things and causes double work. You can if you want ask if we got it and if we need another copy of it, but don't send it twice unless maybe you mark the second one 'SECOND COPY OF REPORT SEND DATE123" and only then because you'd be leaving on a vacation before you could get our answer regarding whether we need it again.