[Shaphron]

While at Coneption, a lot of us talked to other club mebers about their clubs, and it turns out that the vast majority have a rota system of some kind. I know this has been floated before here, and rejected for a couple of reasons, but I htought I'd suggest it again, now I have evidence that it does work and isn't too complicated (two of the previous objections).

My proposed rota would be: 6 weeks gaming, 1 week board game night, 6 weeks gaming, 1 week board games night. I am personally in favour of saying that you cannot run the same game for 2 adjacent 6 week periods, to allow people to run long-term campaigns at the club without taking out a large number of players for a year (yes Paz, I do mean you ). Just to be clear, no-one owuld be forced to roleplay in the 6 weeks - you oculd choose to board game for all of it. And games would not have to be the full 6 weeks long, you could run 2 3-weeks, or just 1 for 4 weeks and have 2 extra weeks of board gameing, etc. But it would be understood that games would be starting on th first week, and games can't run over (obviously, they could take a break and then re-start in a leter period).

This is advantageous to me for a couple of reasons:
> first, the reason we have the random game shuffle is to mix-up the people who we play with, as we normally all play with the same people. This would help prevent that, as games would all be starting on the same week, so it wouldn't be necersary to have a game shuffle.
> It helps GMs, as they can have nice, episodic games planned, and it keeps the pressure off them, as they have a long 6 weeks with which to plan the next 6 weeks. This would be good for me presonally.
> It would generally help planning, as you would know what day new games would be starting, and what days would would be board gaming.
> You could both run and play in different campaigns simultainiously. One period you run a campaign, the next period you play in one run by someone else.
> There would be more variety of games run, as people would feel more confident of when they oculd run. I know both myself and Matt have games we would like to run, but find it hard to run at the club, as we never know when other games are running or who we can ask to be players. If we had this structure we would know when it was available to run games, and when players would be free.

I can see possible problems: Firstly would be organisation. However, I am willing to organise this, and make sure everyone knows of the dates and such. I can also see people objecting because they want to run a game for as long as it takes, with no limit on it. I can understand this, but I really feel that the situation we have att he moment does more to prevent people running games than it does to help it, so I honestly think this doesn't work. A campaign, run regularly every other period, wouldn't be too interrupted, and it would promote more and different games for us all. A game which owuld run for 9 weeks is easy - run the last 3 weeks later, or flesh them out to another 6 weeks (if possible). Harder is the one which would take 7 weeks - GMs would have to be careful to time games so there wouldn't be just 1 week left to go (or, expand on that one week to make it longer should that happen).

Basically, I think imposing this small amount of order would give us greater flexibility and a more fun experience, with more games being run and a greater variety available for everyone. I've put this post as a poll, so people can say if they agree or not simply. If you have any objections, ideas or modifications, please say. This poll will not say "yes" or "no" definately to the idea, but will help in the decision-making process, which will be ended by a vote of the whole club on a monday night. So don't worry about that. I just thought I'd air the idea here first, and get peoples opinions.

Shell

[paz]

Just to ensure people are aware, similar topics have already been discussed in this thread and in the annual meeting as noted in this post.

[Shaphron]

As a further note, I owuld like to say this differs, as it is not about retricting the length, but in having a raota. Games could be as long as desired, but we'd have some structure, and there may (or may not) be breaks between a long campaign.

[paz]

That's why I said 'similar', not 'identical'

Maybe 'related' would have been better.

[Kamikazegerbil]

It has been discussed before but back then I was left with the impression that people intended "Games should last no longer than X and then finish" which is the main reason I railed against it.

Also having talked to people using this sort of system at Conception I've warmed to the idea. I might not have gone along with it before then.

One thing I'd suggest though. At conception there were those who mentioned the idea of no more than two adjacent 6 week periods for one game rather than no adjacent 6 week periods at all. So a game could have 12 weeks on followed by 6 off instead of 6 weeks on 6 weeks off. This I believe was the model we heard about and really 6 weeks isn't very long for some games and might leave things feeling very stop-start.

For games without that problem then they can just run 6 weeks and change.

The biggest advantage of this is having games all start at the same time. I've seen it happen time and time again that I've been in one game that's finished and gone into another that's at least 60% (not an actual statistic just a rough idea) made up of the same people. Every now and then luck will have it that two games end around the same time  allowing a bit more variation but there's still some people I've been seeing at the club for nearly two years and never played with. I think this might help with that.

Also as a point for GMs with longer games this actually makes taking breaks easier. I had a game a good while back that went on hiatus and never got to restart simply because poor luck meant that I couldn't get enough returning players free at the same time. With this system it'd be as simple as going to all the players and saying "I'm thinking of starting X up again in the next block you up for it?" Not saying this would always get all the old players every time but it'd yield enough that it is still the old game rather than a new group stumbling through a story their characters weren't actually in.

I'm in favour though.

[Teflon Billy]

I’m personally very wary of any kind of 'centralised organisation' - no matter who does it (no offence Saphron ). (Does this mean I'm arguing against myself? Ooh! Paradox )

I think Ian's laissez faire policy has served us pretty well so far.

[paz]

I don't mind having a games schedule written down and published, but I'd propose two significant changes:

1) Drop the board game nights - I imagine that most games won't fit into the 6 week periods exactly and will finish early, so week 6 will often have a lot of people looking to play board games anyway. Alternatively, reduce them to every 12 or 18 weeks.
2) No limit on consecutive terms for the same campaign.

Personally I derive the greatest pleasure from long-running campaigns, and the games club is my only chance to play. The very reason I started the Curse of the Crimson Throne game was because I was getting bored of playing games lasting just a few weeks with no chance for progression or advancement. I've missed 6 months of the club and we have just restarted the campaign, so the thought of having this strung out further by having 6 weeks on, 8 weeks off (or 12 weeks on, 8 weeks off) is not very palatable.

Despite this, having a rota might be a workable plan; it would at least give the rest of the club an idea of what was going on and when it was likely to finish. I make an effort to be open with what's going on in my game on the forums, but I know precious little about some other campaigns. This seems to dovetail with Ian's weekly bulletin idea.

[Gileh]

Would the rota be optional? If people wanted to continue an RPG on the 7th week, could they?

[xorsyst]

I'm very worried that having a rota would result in there being weeks when I couldn't find anyone to board game with, especially with Dave looking less likely to turn up now.

[annoyinglizardvoice]

I've been in a society that used six-week rotas, and that got messed up very easily. Not only does six weeks seem a little short, but delays in character creation, ill players, varying times of arrival/departure can all mess up a game pretty badly.
I also don't want to be breaking for boardgames every six weeks. That's far to often for my tastes.
I do however agree that there would be some advantages to a rota system of some sort. There does seem a tendancy for players to gravitate towards the same groups and a bit of variation would be nice if done right.

[paz]

[paz]

The responses to this suggestion have been mixed, although mostly constructive with some good concerns/suggestions raised.

However, I think we may be getting ahead of ourselves. Rather than coming up with a solution, the first step should be to identify the problem. Can we get a clear statement of what people think the current issues with gaming at the club are? Anyone want to make an attempt?