The Lottery: What did you think?

[ping]

What did you guys think of The Lottery? There was a pretty huge turnout which I thought was awesome. Should it be something to do again? Would you recommend it to story gamers every where?

[skinnyghost]

What did you guys think of The Lottery? There was a pretty huge turnout which I thought was awesome. Should it be something to do again? Would you recommend it to story gamers every where?

I thought it was a pretty fantastic idea. It could fail if nobody was ready to run or facilitate, but I think it went really well!

[cwilbur]

When Ben mentioned the lottery, I thought it was a fantastic idea. But there was a game in that slot that I wanted to play, so I went with that instead.

Since it seemed to work well, maybe a future approach could be to have a lottery in one spot, and the power doughnut in another spot?

(EDIT: I mean having a lottery and a power doughnut each session.)

[Ice Cream Emperor]

It sounded awesome enough that I seriously considered moving my Ribbon Drive game to another slot -- but eventually decided against it. When I first saw the 'Lottery' posting on the board I just assumed it was a game title/system, and only found out it was actually a Super Awesome Thing after my game was already up (with two people signed-on.)

[Blankshield]

The only thing I would note is the same thing I first mentioned to Ben when he told me about it - make sure there's some board/card/casual games kicking around. We were well served in that regard, and it looked to me like every table was having a good time.

James

[Carl]

Wait. The Slot Lottery (Slottery?) and Power Donut were different things? What was the Lottery, then?

I didn't like the Power Donut at all, but it was fast, and people seemed happy with the results, so OK.

[cwilbur]

The Lottery happened in the second Saturday afternoon slot. The participating people tossed their badges into a hat, and then someone pulled out four badges at a time to create a story gaming group. The people in the group then negotiated what to play.

The Power Doughnut had some issues. I participated three times; twice, I got good games, but the third time, nothing that was pitched appealed to me, and it was closer to DO NOT WANT than "not interesting." (I felt bad about not being interested in what Jonathan Walton was pitching on Saturday night, because I've played in really good games with him before at JiffyCon, but I don't generally care for the superhero genre or for Mist-Robed Gate. Jonathan, if you're reading this, it's not you, it's me!) On the other hand, it got me into a game of Danger Patrol that I really enjoyed, which I probably would not have signed up for otherwise.

I'm trying to think of a good way to fix the Power Doughnut that makes it possible for someone in the northeast quadrant to find out about a game in the southwest quadrant that he or she really wants to play but that doesn't sacrifice its speed. Maybe something like this: if the players aren't interested in the games in their quadrant, they can move one quadrant clockwise, and if the games there are looking for more players they can continue to recruit. That might add 5 minutes to the whole process, but would increase the chances of players finding a game they really want instead of just the least bad game in their quadrant.

[John Powell]

Maybe "let's play a boardgame" should be stated as an explicit option for folks in a power donut or lottery group that isn't coming to a consensus on what rpg to play.

Or maybe re-mix two or more groups that are having troubles.

On the whole both the donut and the lottery were certainly faster than the attempts in previous years to leave no gamer behind. They should stay a feature of GPNW!

[Ben Robbins]

Wait. The Slot Lottery (Slottery?) and Power Donut were different things? What was the Lottery, then?

The Lottery was a completely last minute idea. Literally the night before the event. We tried to take people's temperature about it during the Feast (one on one), and I don't think we even decided to do it for certain until late that night.