How are player assignments decided?
After long success with a manual system for ACUK and ACNW, the current organizers have moved to a manual system of game assignment.
For the organizing geeks among us, here's how it works:
- Everyone who gets their game selections in by the deadline has their name entered for their first-choice games.
- When selection closes, we do a "First Pass" schedule. We simply see which games are over-subscribed. Returning players are given priority in those games that require it. GMs and volunteers are given next priority. Folks who put in their selections early are given next priority, and so on. Each person who gets "bumped" has their name moved down to their second choice game; rinse-repeat for third choice games; rinse-repeat for "assigned at random game.
- We analyze the "First Pass" schedules, looking for people (typically late registering, non-GMs, but also folks who just happen to have the bad luck to choose many popular / small games) whose schedules are borked, and rejig them, starting with people with 3 or more bumps, or 2 or more bumps to 3rd choice or below, and working our way up.
At this point we take into account the following:
- comment fields like "this is my FAVORITEST GAME IN ALL THE WORLD"
- whether the person got into other games with the same GM
- whether a bump helps a 2nd or even 3rd choice game to run that would otherwise be cancelled, causing the Slot to "fail" for numbers of spaces for players
- whether the person is playing only a few slots
- whether the person wants to play with the same group of people all the time (which usually leads to the whole group getting a bump)
- etc.
Finally we do last passes, phone folks to see what games they might prefer when they don't have better choices, beat ourselves ritually with sticks, and then sprinkle in the members who did not submit choices.
This sounds time-consuming, and it is, somewhat. It takes about 8 hours to do the first two passes for a 90 person convention. Then there's the time waiting on responses to questions, and the last pass. On the other hand, we do get very good schedules as a result. In 2008, our "worst" schedule was one for a non-GM who got 4 first choices, 2 second choices, and one 3rd choice out of 7 slots. Frankly, when a six-player game has 18 people sign up for it, you will have some bumps. The goal is to minimize the bumps to any one person, and to appreciate the extra time and effort our GMs and volunteers put in to make the convention happen.
AmberCon US, like all AmberCons in my experience, strives to value all attendees equally and to welcome new players to our community. The committee values your feedback on any stage in the process of putting on the convention.
--simone, 3/12/2009