Psst! 

If you haven't gone through the step by step process to become a Grey Tavern volunteer, we recommend doing so before reading this page. The details below will make more sense if you do.

You'll find the steps under the Tavern Volunteer Opportunities above.

If you have become a volunteer and are learning about the Volunteer Role Paths, please continue!

What You Get from this Role

Being a Bar Keep is a very important role. As a Bar Keep, you will have many opportunities to work with others, be a common, friendly face for Grey Tavern patrons, and help patrons with their needs, questions, and food and drink requests while they are within the Tavern.

You will work with Bakers, Sophers, Confectioners, other Barkeepers, and many others with 1 overarching and imperative goal that all Bar Keeps share:

As a Bar Keep, you get to:

• Introduce new patrons to The Grey Tavern
• Assist patrons in learning Grey Tavern games
• Providing them with a warm experience through food and drink
• Coordinating with volunteers, primarily Bakers and Confectioners, on tavern proper needs, such as fulfilling a drink order, fixing a broken decor piece, etc.
• Communicating to Sophers and Order leaders both exemplary and poor behavior of patrons and volunteers
• And much more

WANT TO GET STARTED AS A BAR KEEP?

Responsibilities and Reporting

As a Bar Keep, you are the face of not only the Barkeepers but The Grey Tavern in the local community. As such, this is the only volunteer role that a volunteer must interview for. 

In this role, you will have many, many opportunities to help others within the local community and to help them enjoy their interactions with The Grey Tavern. However, in this role, you do NOT have the power to:

• Make promises for and on behalf of The Grey Tavern. You must communicate the question to The Grey Tavern so they can address it. Your primary contact for that is Septimus Jack.
• Change the lore
• Change the rules of Grey Tavern games or rule for Tavern
• Change Bar Keep style guides, parameters, etc.
• Edit, critic, or change other Bar Keep’s work
• Offer food or drink for free without Grey Tavern permission

• Start a project of your own without Grey Tavern permission

You can, however, bring up ideas and suggestions on Bar Keep issues, improvements, etc. with your Vice Mixers.

Who Bar Keeps Report to and What They Report

Bar Keeps report to a Vice Mixer, a tier 2 Barkeepers. 

What your report should include is described below in section “1. Report to Vice Mixers”

What to Expect

As Veracity and Dragon Merit points are given on a weekly basis, we’ll be talking about Bar Keep tasks on a weekly, and sometimes monthly, basis.

Working on Assignments

Calendar

Example:

This example calendar shows the 3 primary types of tasks you should expect on a weekly basis. Each is described in more detail below.

1.  Report to Vice Mixers (Host Meetings)

You will be expected to report to a Vice Mixer that you are assigned to twice a week. There will be 2- 8 Bar Keeps reporting at the same time as you. This group is called a Vice Mixer's Host.

Vice Mixer’s Host

Wednesday and Saturday are the default days to report to your Vice Mixers. These days can change on a Host by Host basis, but the Vice Mixer needs to let the Chief Vice Mixer know.

Purpose of Host meetings:

• Report on Bar Keep projects’ and tasks’ progress
• Report on Tavern flow, foods and drinks consumed during a Bar Keep’s serving time, in-tavern successes as well as struggles and issues with patrons or with the tavern
• Brainstorm ways to improve service
• Ask Vice Mixers questions on how elements should be crafted or otherwise handled
• Communicating on how working with your assigned Lorekeeper, Sopher, fellow Bar Keeps, or other volunteers is going

If you need to report someone breaking a Grey Tavern rule, treating others poorly as described in Grey Tavern rules, or someone being physically hurt by another volunteer or Grey Tavern patron, report these to your assigned Sopher, not your Vice Mixer.

2.  Bar Keep Duties

Shifts

Vice Mixers will manage the Bar Keep schedule with your committed hours in mind. Usually a Bar Keep’s time bar keeping will be in hour and ½ sessions.

Unconsumed Food and Drink

Reporting at the end of your shift how much food and drink was consumed will greatly help the Baker, Confectioner, and Mixer volunteers. This is because one of their duties is to deliver unconsumed goods to the community if their goods have been in the tavern for 3 days and are unconsumed.

Please report the decrease of these items as accurately as possible! These groups will be looking at your report.

You can help them deliver their goods to the community, if you’d like to.

 3. Veracity Report

Veracity Reports are listed under each “calendar” event for a reason.

Here’s a meta tip:

• Filling out an Order Veracity Report after every activity will get you more Veracity overall.

The Report takes 5 minutes or less to complete! We strongly suggest that you wrap up every activity by filling out an Order Veracity Report.

Grey Tavern Property Damage

If any Grey Tavern physical property is damaged as a result of your actions or during an Order activity, you are expected to:

• Report the damage to The Grey Tavern
• Replace or fix it
• If you don’t, it will become something for your Order to replace or fix
  
  
• If the thing is too expensive to replace, you may:
• Submit an item request to a Generative Order
  
  
•  If you don’t have the skills to fix it or the resources, you may:
• Submit a request to an Eternal Order to help you fix it

Making Changes or Ascending the Hierarchy

There are 2 ways of moving things forward:

1. If you see an issue, an opportunity to make an improvement, or something that can be done, you may propose a project to The Grey Tavern.
2. You may apply to ascend to a higher position in the Barkeeper hierarchy. You could only apply to be a Vice Mixer when you are a Bar Keep.

Use the links above to see the details of how to do these 2 things and to access the forms.

Intellectual Property

When you first became a Bar Keep, you signed a Volunteer Appointment Agreement. Within it, there was an Intellectual Property release section. Here, we will clarify some of what Intellectual Property you are giving to The Grey Tavern as part of that release.

• All Bar Keep projects and tasks that are assigned to you by the Grey Tavern as well as those projects and tasks that are part of an Original Content project you submit and get approved or an Original Content project you participate in

• Creator and authorship rights

• Game, story, costume, etc. ideas, assets, materials, skills, or time contributed to any The Grey Tavern project or event

Volunteer Time

As a Grey Tavern volunteer, The Grey Tavern requires volunteers to communicate with them what their minimum and maximum hours they can donate per week are.

This is done when you sign the “The Grey Tavern Volunteer Rules and Policies” agreement. However, if you need to change these hours, you simply need to communicate the changes to your Vice Bar Keeps who will send the message up the chain.

These hours are required because it helps The Grey Tavern as well as Volunteer and Order leaders know how much to expect from you. This will help:

• You not feel overburdened
• Leaders not feel that they have to do everything by themselves

You will receive a strike if you do not meet your minimum hours per week. This can easily be removed by meeting your minimum hours the next week or doing other things to remove strikes (Ways to Remove Strikes).

What Type of Volunteering You’re Offering

Volunteering type is important for knowing what donation or quest type you should generally be reporting for your role.

As a Bar Keep, you will be spending most of your volunteer service donating Community Assistance. This accounts for your time:

• Helping new patrons get welcomed to and acquainted with the Grey Tavern
• Conducting the rental processes for games
• Teaching people and families how to play Grey Tavern games

A donation type that you will be using second to Goods is Tavern Volunteering  which focuses on time spent. Some activities in which you should log Tavern Volunteering donations are:

• Freshening Drinks
• Preparing and serving food
• Cleaning the tavern
• Reporting on food and drink decreases
• Requesting food, drink, or tavern repairs

You will usually get the greatest benefit, in total Veracity earned in a week, through submitting a Community Assistance Order Veracity Report. However, you should report a Tavern Volunteering Order Veracity Report when that one is more appropriate. If you are found intentionally submitting a Community Assistance Report when you should be submitting a Tavern Volunteering, you will be reviewed and potentially removed from your position.

If you are in an Endless Order as well, the Community Assistance you donate will have the greatest effect as far as Veracity earned per week. However, your Bar Keep service will always increase your Veracity, as long as you report it, no matter what Order type you are part of.

What to Expect from Working with Us

We truly want you to have fun as a Bar Keep!

We seek to give you as much autonomy as possible within your role. As long as you keep what’s listed in the following list, we wish for you to thrive, imagine, and make this role yours.

• Keep your commitments
• Keep the guidelines expressed in this document
• Keep the rules of The Grey Tavern
• Stay within Bar Keep rules, expectations, style guides, and other Bar Keep parameters
• Stay within Grey Tavern lore
• Fill out your Order Veracity Report regularly
• Treat others with respect and kindness
• Do not intentionally damage Grey Tavern property
• Communicate with The Grey Tavern when your commitments need to change or if you have a Legitimate Excuse (Link) for why you weren’t able to keep it
• Approve your projects with The Grey Tavern BEFORE starting on them