Advice for New Rallyemasters

Are you considering writing a gimmick rallye? Congratulations!

And welcome! TRC needs new rallyemasters.

Writing the Rallye

Get Help

If you're writing a TRC rallye, then don't go it alone! Other TRC members will help you with details like:

• printing
• registering rallyists at the start
• awards
• participation plaques (refrigerator magnets)
• tools and expertise for posting CMs (if necessary)
• recruiting precheckers and checkpoint workers

We can also help by matching you up with a more experienced mentor, who can help, guide, and encourage you. As a new rallyemaster, you should look for a mentor whose rallyes you enjoy, and whose critiques you understand and agree with.

As soon as you are considering writing a rallye, please contact any of the TRC officers, or drop by one of our business meetings (usually the third Tuesday of the month, but check our calendar to be sure).

Be Patient

If possible, wait until you have a fair bit of experience as a rallyist before you try writing a rallye yourself. You should be able to understand all the gimmicks described in the critique for someone else's rallye before you try to be a rallyemaster for a similar rallye.

Some find it easier to start by "rethrowing" an old rallye. That is, take an existing rallye and change the theme and other "chrome" as necessary, rather than write your own rallye from scratch.

If you do not have the support of a local rallye club, then study whatever sample rallyes you can find (e.g., on the web). Use them as a source of gimmick ideas, and as an example of what the general instructions (GIs) should look like, about how scoring should work, etc.

Route Instructions

The route instructions (RIs) should get people from the start to the finish if they ignore the misspellings and gimmicks and just follow them as though they were written by a well-intentioned person who is bad at giving directions. You shouldn't need emergency envelopes or other tricks to get lost rallyists back on course. They should be able to follow the RI course (AKA "the turkey route") and make it to the finish.

Special Instructions

All rallyemasters need to be able to give ungimmicked instructions to rallyists. We do this with Special Instructions (SIs). There are never any gimmicks on SIs. Don't even think about gimmicks on SIs. Don't let rallyists even think about gimmicks on SIs.

Prechecking

It's better for problems to be found by your precheckers than by your rallyists. If a prechecker disagrees with your interpretation of a gimmick, then either drop the gimmick or fix the wording so your prechecker is happy.

After making changes, precheck it again to make sure you haven't broken something else.

Often, it helps to have precheckers with styles that differ from yours. They will bring a different point of view to the precheck, and will catch problems that you wouldn't have noticed. Likewise, it also helps to have precheckers with different experience levels (e.g., Novices and Master Experts).

Keep It Simple

Apply the KISS principle. Or, as experienced Cub Scout leaders say, Keep It Simple, Make It Fun (KISMIF).

It's better to make a gimmick a bit more obvious and have more people figure it out, than to leave it ambiguous and have more people protest it (or just be disgruntled). Remember, you're trying to help the rallyists have fun, not to thwart them at every turn. There should be plenty of easy and moderate gimmicks, and just a few hard gimmicks.

If you don't have the support of a local rallye club, then keep it extremely simple. If you're doing this on your own, then none of the rallyists will have much experience either. (If they do, then they should be writing the rallye, or at least helping you.) Complex gimmicks will go over everyone's heads. Besides, you'll probably have less help with the basic logistics of the rallye.

At the Rallye

Protests

There are no perfect rallyemasters. There are no perfect precheckers. Therefore, there are no perfect rallyes.

Expect protests, and don't take them personally. Carefully consider the point being made in each protest. If a gimmick is truly broken, then you should grant it for all cars. If the protest describes an alternate interpretation of the instructions that is as reasonable as your intended interpretation, then consider granting credit for that car, and possibly for all cars with the same answers.

This should be moved to an other ways to help document:

And if you want to get involved, but still aren't sure you're ready to write a whole rallye, there are other ways to help:

• sign up to write one segment of The Amazing Rallye '08
• rethrow an old rallye (change the name, change the theme,...)
• precheck a rallye (get series points for a rallye you'd miss anyway)
• work a checkpoint
• volunteer as an assistant rallyemaster