Choosing what to play

Most of my experience of tabletop RPGs has been with my home group.  And deciding who plays what game has more to do with which days of the week people are available and how many people we can comfortably fit around the table than anything else.  Deciding what we're going to play comes down to what one of us is interested in running and is able to sell the rest of the group on.

We've played a lot of Pathfinder.  Because we all like Pathfinder.

But conventions, and the MK RPG club, are very different situations to my home group.

The club

Games at the MK RPG club run in eight week blocks and three week short blocks.  On the second week of the short block, all the people offering games for the upcoming long block present their game pitch, and then we all write down our top three choices of game.  One of the club committee then has the unenviable job of attempting to assign everyone to a game, taking into account additional factors like the fact that returning players get priority in games that span multiple long blocks, and that minors have to be in the same game as their responsible adult.

By some magic, most of the time people do get into their first choice of game, and those who don't know that things have been done fairly.  But I'm glad I'm not the person who has to decide who doesn't.

The best thing about the club for me is the large pool of players.  I don't know if we can sell my home group on Coriolis, but out of the 50 or so club members there's enough people interested that the game can run.

Conventions

It constantly takes me by surprise how many people want to play D&D 5e at conventions.  I like 5e, but part of the fun of a convention for me is to be able to try out different games.  The last thing I want to play is the thing I already play regularly, when I could be playing something I've never played before, or something I like but my home group doesn't, or something that just works better as a one-shot.

But what I actually intended to write about here was sign-up systems.

There seem to be two main ways that this works out - advance booking, or on the day.

I've yet to experience an advance booking convention (although that should change next year) and I'm a little dubious.  Probably because I'm not used to it.  At Concrete Cow, I've made spontaneous decisions to attend, and even to run a game, as well as the spontaneous decisions of which game to sign up for.  Advance booking rules out all that spontanaity.  Is that a bad thing?  Until I've tried the alternative I won't know.  But it was a little irritating to find out about a reasonably local convention on a weekend I was free, and then realise I couldn't go because it was advance booking and I was too late to sign up.

But I can see there could be advantages.  No worrying about whether you're going to get into a game you like when everything's sorted out in advance, and if you've got the kind of personality that likes to have these things nailed down it's probably an easier experience.

What I don't know is how the sign-up process actually works.  Doubtless there will be a sequel to this post once I know more about it.

When it comes to on-the-day sign up, I know of two methods, which I will call Tombola and Shoving.

Shoving is what I've experienced at Dragonmeet.  Sign up sheets are out, and when sign up is called, a horde of locusts descend.

I don't like it.  It means your chances of getting into your first choice of game are entirely dependent on your ability to shove your way through the crowd and get to the sheet before it fills up.  This means anyone smaller or weaker than the average gamer isn't going to get their first pick, which is inevitably going to disproportionately affect women, children, and people with physical disabilities.  I don't think that I should get last choice of games every time just because I'm not as strong as the average gamer.

Tombola is what's used at Concrete Cow and Spaghetti ConJunction.  Everyone gets a ticket with a number.  Numbers are called out in a randomly generated order, and you sign up for a game when your number is called.  The number order is reversed for the second session, so if you were last in the morning, you'll be first in the afternoon.  Golden tickets are usually available for first-timers, people who offered a game in advance, and children.

This is my preferred way to do it.  At least half the time I'm going to be signing up near the start without having to fight my way there, and have a good chance of getting into the game I want.  I've seen complaints that when you're in the bottom half you end up playing a mediocre game - but that only happens if there are actually mediocre games on offer, and even when I've ended up in a game that was way down on my list of preferences, it's never been mediocre.

The only downside I've found of the tombola system is that several times I've been one of the first to sign up, picked the game I want, and then when sign-up finishes it turns out nobody else wanted to play that.  So I then have to pick a game from what's left over after everyone else has chosen, rather than what I might have picked if I'd known my first pick wasn't going to run.

So it's a good thing there haven't been any mediocre games.

Maybe that's way 5e games are so popular.  It's a safe option.  When I sign up for a game I've never heard of with a GM I don't know, I'm taking a risk.  What if I hate the setting?  What if I hate the mechanics?  What if I'm just no good at playing this game?  When you play 5e you know what you're getting.

I don't go to conventions to play it safe.  But not all gamers think like me.