A Weekend With Good Friends uses a lottery system to assign players to games. This is different from the “first come, first served” sign-up system most conventions use. When your number is picked, we will try to assign you to a game that you are interested in playing with an open seat. As long as you submit your choice of games before the player sign-up deadline, you have the same odds as every other player (or GM-and-Player, if applicable) of getting into games. This system gives players plenty of time to read through the game descriptions and pick what they want to play during the convention.
The AWWGF lottery attempts to assign a fair and even distribution of games to players based on interest levels from 5 (most interested) to 1 (least interested). It does this by running through multiple waves of assignments, each wave going down the entire list of players and attempting to assign one game to each player in each wave.
For each wave, the system checks your highest-interest games first, in a randomized order within each level, and places you in the first game it finds that has room. If a game it checks is full, you’re added to that game’s waitlist (unless you’ve chosen to disable that feature in your submission) and the system moves down to check the next game on your list.
The system will move from interest level 5 down to 1, checking every game you’ve selected, until it runs out of games in your list. The system will repeat this process so every player has a first game, then every player has a second game, etc., until the entire list of submitted game preferences for every player has been processed.
Once you’re placed in a game, you are done processing in that wave. The system stops trying to assign you games or add you to waitlists in that game’s slot, and also skips any games in adjacent game time slots based on your “max games in a row” setting. You’ll continue to process in future waves until your entire list has been processed, and no more assignments can be made.
Additionally:
- If you have signed up to run a game, you are placed into a special, one time wave of GM games. Every GM will participate in this wave as a thank you to our volunteer game runners for the convention. If you didn’t choose to run a game, don’t worry! Only one slot per game is allocated for GMs, so no games will fill up during this special wave. Once the GM wave is complete, normal processing will begin.
- You can be waitlisted for multiple games per slot, and it’s totally fine to mark all your games at interest level 1 if you are flexible. The system uses your numbers to know what order to check your game choices in, it doesn’t compete with other player’s choices by their level.
- How quickly you submit your game choices has no bearing on the lottery. Being last to submit is as meaningful as being first.
- Because each wave attempts to assign a single game to each player, it’s also counterproductive to limit the number of games you submit in a given slot.
- For example, if you choose a single high demand game for a couple slots, and nothing else, you could be bounced out of the lottery in the first round if you do not get randomly assigned to those games in the first round.
- A player that chooses a large number of possible games for each slot they can play in will instead have many more chances to land a game to play.
- One simple strategy to capitalize on lottery mechanics is to pick one or two games you are most interested in playing, and submit them at level 5. Then for every time slot, including those level 5 game slots, you want to play a game in, load up those slots with every single game that sounds interesting at preferences other than 5. Having a lot of games submitted gives you a great chance of getting games as it keeps you in the running into the later game assignment waves. And your limited level 5 game assignments means the first wave(s) you participate in will only attempt to grab the specific game(s) you choose.
Good luck, have fun, and may the odds be ever in your favour!
