Remember in a previous tale that I mentioned about putting the Order of Precedence?  Well another trick of this is the updating of the whole thing.  Simple right? Well one part yes, one part no.

Ok step one would be to pull all court reports for the year.  Why do I say year?  Trust me when I say this, when updating the OP save yourself some headaches and the constant work that it can be and pick a date for the year mark and do it then, or you will be (especially during the summer time) be updating this thing.  (for me I use a point after The Great Northeastern War as this is Malagentia’s biggest court event of the year), and I grab last year’s OP, and I grab not only the Pike Staffs for the year (or whatever your kingdom newsletter) and our online OP for our kingdom http://op.wiglaf.org/.

Next what I do, is go to the end of my last update of my OP (why the last entry of my last update?  Simple this would be the last court report I left off with.) From there I go court report to court report and look first for those that are currently on my own OP and update their awards on their entries.  As well, I look for someone that I recognize that would need to be added to the OP.  Let me deter on this part for a second and just say, this is where having a census of your local group would be handy, not having any personal information, or anything like that, however the ability to look at a list of current sca names for your local group would be able to say “ok this person received an award of arms and is in my local area” helps to identify everything.

Once all the entries are in there, now you get to play shuffling the deck.  Shuffling the deck means that many of the awards many people can receive, now changes there position on the OP.  For example if one Lady or Lord who has their AOA receives a High Merit (for example in the East Kingdom, an Order of the Silver Crescent, Order of the Maunche, etc.) now has to move to the bottom of the high merit section of the OP.  Here is the trick; it also goes by date, so someone who has received an Order of the Tygers combattant in January will be higher on the OP then a person who receives that same award in April.  Also if someone receives a Court Baroncy, or becomes a peer (Laurel, Knight, Pelican), or heaven forbid Crown Tourney. The order of which can be an all-day task within itself.

The OP is one of those things that may not seem important for those within your local group, however if you do keep track of this can be a very rewarding part of being a herald, as you in a sense are carrying the rolls of your local groups history.

Yours in most wonderful Service to the dream

Conall an Doire

P.S.  Now to go update this year 🙂