Welcome to the Allied Simulation Association’s Play By Email Division. This manual was created to help you get settled into the word of COing PbEM games.

Welcome to the wonderful world that is being a Commanding or Executive officer, in this guide I’ll try to answer any questions as well as concerns you may have about being a CO/XO. This guide will be divided into 2 main sections, The CO Section, and the XO section. Mostly because, as much as these 2 jobs go hand in hand, they aren’t the same.

Remember, it is your job to keep the game fun and interesting. People play our sims to enjoy themselves in a role playing world, that is your job to uphold and maintain. Law is yours(for the most part, you are a CO/XO for a reason after all), If a player becomes abusive, makes threats, or any serious violation of the ASA’s Code of Conduct, you may eject them from the game, and the entire ASA if nessacary, this most often requires a counsel of the Top Brass of ASA to determine though. Punish people to what is fit and nessacary, nothing more, rememeber, people are here to have fun, not be slapped on the wrist by a self-righteous GM.

CO Section

As a CO or Commanding Officer, it is your job, to function as the GM, keeping the game moving, keeping an active roster of players, addresses concerns of your staff, and formulating new story lines to keep the game moving. Now, Don’t be frightened, this is not all for you, for example, you may employ you XO to assist you on many of the tasks. It is usually best to review story lines with them, input from someone can prove helpful in formulating a lasting and interesting story line.

You are not alone when it comes to this position, there are many other CO’s and GM’s you may contact in you run into some form of a problem. There will be a list available of CO’s and XO’s available to you, should you need to contact one for some reason.

To Review your job as CO:

Keep the Game Flowing:
Start Important posts, and respond often, it is most needed for you to have access to email most everyday of the week. Sure, we all have days when were not around, but you need to be available for the most part.

Keeping a Roster:
This is for everyone’s benefit, yours because you know where to recruit people to, the ASA’s because we will then have active tallies of all our players. The best way to keep a roster is to have a roll call once every few weeks, asking for the players name, character name, rank, position and anything else you may need.

Addressing Staff Concerns:
Sometimes, your staff members may have a question for you that either, they could not answer, or they needed to ask you, in which case, you should try your best to answer it. If it comes from a staff member, it must be of reasonable importance if they could not answer it themselves.

Recruit:
A sim can’t function without people, now although yes, we would like everyone to try and recruit, most often this does not happen. There are a multitude of websites that can assist you in finding people. You should also try friends, internet buddies, all of that.

New Story Lines:
The game will not continue to flow if you do not come up with new story lines. Any CO appreciates the difficulty in formulating a good, plot deep story line, and knows it takes time more often than not. Formulate plots with your XO so they can give you input or their own ideas.

Maintain Law and Order:
As GM it is your job to oversee that no player is discriminated upon or anything else that is a Code of Conduct violation. You can take most matters into you own hands and deal justice accordingly, but if a problem is too large, or you are not certain you can handle it thoroughly and fairly, you may bring it before the ASA Brass.

XO Section

As an Executive Officer, or XO, it is your job to assist the CO in some of their duties. You may occasionally be called upon to function as GM if the GM is on vacation or unable to get to their email for some reason. You may also be asked to assist the CO in formulating new story lines, and more than likely, to help in recruiting. What your CO makes you do is entirely up to them, but here are some of the thing you may be called upon to do.

Assist in Formulating Story Lines:
As it was said earlier, you may be called upon for your input or ideas on new stories, so use your creative side, and unleash!

Maintain A Website:
Your CO may ask you to create and maintain a website for the sim. This makes life easy when it comes to explaining the game, the universe, recent events in game and showing a roster. This helps in recruiting people, and making their adjustment into game play easier.

Recruit:
A sim can’t function without people, now although yes, we would like everyone to try and recruit, most often this does not happen. There are a multitude of websites that can assist you in finding people. You should also try friends, interenet buddies, all of that.

Best of luck to you in your sim, if you have any problems, try to contact another CO or XO, we will try to help you in anyway possible.