The elections for new commissioners had finally come to a close. I was named as a Rules Committee Commissioner, alongside Season 3-4 commissioner elfitzo and newcomer PT. TeeJay easily retained his spot as Director of Operations. The previous season had come to its conclusion on the first day of May, and it took until the last day of May to begin the process of preparing for the upcoming season. After being elected, PT naively asked “When is the season starting? Is one month from now too long?” Little did he know that it would be almost another two months before the first week of the season. It isn’t until you have experienced being a commissioner that you truly know how long the process can be.

From the start, it was very difficult to organise times to talk. We had reduced the commissioner numbers for season 5 to make it easier for the rules committee to meet, but due to more important commitments from our members, we spoke as a full group less than when there were five commissioners. Thankfully, our use of Facebook Messenger meant we spoke regularly, but a messenger application is incomparable to actually speaking with our voices as a full group.

The first thing we actually accomplished was the release of our Expression of Interest form for our potential captains. When the responses come in, we assign each applicant a colour, which we usually refer to as lights (as in traffic lights). Applicants that we believe are good leaders, good players, and are highly available are given the green light. Applicants who are not up to standard are given the red light. This was the most frequently assigned colour. We assigned a red light to multiple players that we believed would be good captains due to availability issues during the season. Applicants that we are unsure of are given the amber light. This was given to a strong captain that would miss the draft, as well as a player that we believed had good leadership skills, but a lack of the mechanical skills required to play at the highest level. Five of our six captains from season 6 filled out this form. Three of them were given a green light, one of them was given an amber light, and another was not assigned any colour due to their application being almost two weeks after the previous application. There was one captain who did not fill in the form.

The next thing we released was a public opinion questionnaire. There had been some debate about some fairly large changes to the upcoming season, so we wanted to know where the players stood on some of these issues. We gathered responses from 33 players on topics such as pup delay, draft format, playoff format, trade requirements, and many more. The results of this questionnaire affected some of the final rules. Before the questionnaire, the rules committee was split 2-1 in favour of abolishing the auction draft for a full snake draft. However, due to overwhelming support for an auction draft, the entire rules committee backed the continuation of the auction draft in its current form.

The results of the final question on the questionnaire.

As Rules Committee, constructing the rulebook is probably our most important task. We discussed every rule from the previous season in detail, and the controversial ones even more so. In every season so far, without fail, new holes had been found in our predefined rules, which created difficult situations during the season where the commissioners would have to choose between the rules and what many would call common sense. In season 5, an oLTP player from three seasons prior had asked me about signing up as a free agent. This player had not played TagPro in any capacity for almost a year, perhaps longer, but was unable to sign up due to a technicality. The rule existed to prevent experienced players from signing up as free agents after the draft. In previous seasons, these players were allowed to sign up, but were restricted to oLTP. It threatened to create a culture of captains drafting players that they knew would not attend training and matches, and would therefore be eligible to be dropped, which would give the team a free agent slot. However, this player was not the type of player the rule was written for. It highlighted a flaw in our rules, which we almost always abide by, so as to avoid setting any precedents that we may regret. All players agree to the rules at the start of the season, and I have always thought that changing them halfway through the season could upset a few people, especially if it is a restrictive rule. For the upcoming season, we loosened up the restrictions on free agency eligibility, as well as allowing modification to the rules after the beginning of the season, provided that there is sufficient support from the commissioners and captains. I was originally against any modification at all, but requiring the support of the captains made me much more comfortable with the change.

Another major topic of discussion between the rules committee was the adjustment of our signup rules. Players had been putting low numbers for their availability, but were still playing in every game of the season. I think the fact that the game and training availability section of the signup form being combined in the past had made it difficult for captains to judge the true availability of players. For this upcoming season, the rules committee elected to tie the responses of the game availability section to the maximum amount of games they could play during the season. We hope this will alleviate any issues we have had with draft manipulation in the past.

In previous seasons, I had always made sure to have the rules fully published before allowing signups to commence, as a way of ensuring that all the players are aware of what they are signing up for, and to ensure that agreeing to the rules was a requirement of signing up. As the days passed, it became more apparent that this would not be possible. An extremely large percentage of our player base are in high school or university, which means exams in November. To ensure that players would be available throughout the whole season, we would need to have the draft in early-mid July, and to have the draft then, we would need to start taking in signups. We would need at least three weeks for enough signups to come in, due to waning numbers. We would need a few days between signups closing and the draft beginning so the draft spreadsheets could be prepared and properly tested. We were running out of time faster than any previous OLTP season. We weren’t anywhere near finalising the rules, so we went ahead and opened signups without the rules complete. The signups were open from the 18th of June until the 8th of July. We chose to have the draft on the 10th of July to avoid the season running into exam time, as well as because it would line up with the meetup in Melbourne, which was amazing.

Signups had already been open for a week and we were yet to finalise our captains. We had three sure captains, down from four due to one of them withdrawing, apparently because the original expression of interest was just ‘bantz’. I mentioned banning him from TagPro for ‘bantz’ but apparently that is mod abuse and I can’t do that. Unhappy with the other applicants we had, we looked for alternate options. We asked around, seeing if anybody we thought was good enough was interested in the position. Eventually, we settled for the less than desirable Balwas, introduced a rule allowing non-playing captains so that thetruth34 could be justified as a suitable option, and then the other members of the rules committee managed to suggest dopesayo to captain. We finally had our six.

After about two and a half weeks of the signups being opened, we looked through the additional comments section to check if there were any comments that conflicted with the answers in the other sections. My favourite was effectively a signup from an experienced and highly successful player saying that they wished to be a free agent and didn’t want to be drafted. This was basically an attempt to circumnavigate the rules mentioned earlier regarding experienced players as free agents. I laughed and deleted the signup.

One day before signups closed, the other commissioners raised their concerns with the low number of signups. OLTP had not had this few signups since season 1. I was unsure whether or not they were joking, but proposals to postpone the draft and even cancel the competition were brought up. Their concerns with the low numbers were justified, and our team size was reduced for this season to compensate. Earlier in the season, the other commissioners expressed interest in allowing all players who signed up to be drafted. When they realised that many of these players were pretty much just foreign players with more than 300 ping, they changed their minds. Postponing the draft would have been a viable option had there not been exams in November, but the idea of cancelling the competition was absurd from my point of view, even if there was a strong possibility of teams only being able to field three players in oLTP. We were elected to run a league to the best of our abilities, and that is what we will do. The people want a league, so cancelling it because it wasn’t up to a couple of people’s standards seemed selfish and somewhat elitist. I was pleased that the draft continued as usual.

Draft night was great. We had a few issues with the spreadsheet for the auction draft. I contribute these issues to the lack of time between signups closing and the draft beginning. We really were pressed for time, so working out those issues never really happened. The sheet was somewhat broken, but I think the auction draft still ran quite smoothly, apart from a delay at the start, in traditional OLTP fashion. The snake draft had one major issue. There was a player who had signed up, but appears to have been removed from the signup sheet at some stage. I’m not exactly sure how this happened. It caused a significant delay during the draft, which was already pressed for time due to one of the captains being required to leave by 9:30pm. I needed to check all previous copies of the signup sheet, and then insert the player’s name into the draft packet before I could insert the name into the draft sheet, as data validation was preventing me from inputting the name manually, rather than from a predefined list.

Me running the draft from a child’s bed in an airbnb.

Finally the teams were decided. But our job was not yet complete. The maps still needed to be decided. The rules that we wrote stated that the captains would vote on the maps. When all the captains had submitted their votes, it all lined up quite nicely. I did not expect that the top ten maps would all have at least five votes, and that the rest would have four or less. In the end, all maps which had the support of five out of six captains made it into OLTP rotation. I consulted with 03z to find out his opinion on how the top ten maps should be ordered, and the order he suggested was approved by the rest of the rules committee, with maybe a tweak or two. I then randomised the fixtures for the season, ignoring pleas from certain captains to play certain teams at certain times. Finally, my preseason was almost complete. I still need to make sure that the team logos end up on TagProLeague.com, but I’ve done my bit when it comes to supplying the necessary images. Shout out to SuperSans by the way, he has been a massive help in getting everything working on the website, which is an amazing tool. You should expect more traffic from the southern hemisphere in the coming weeks.

There was so much that I didn’t write about, since writing about every single change to the rulebook would become extremely boring, but if there was interest in it then I could probably do something like that.

Season 6 of OLTP begins on July 24 at 8pm AEST.