neinteractiveliterature
Fallback Buckets
I have a game where one Character must absolutely be cast for the game to run, and this Character has additional responsibilities above and beyond that of other characters.
I would like to avoid the situation where of N signups, all N players do not wish to play this Character.
But if I make a bucket set of:
- 1: A
- (N-1): B
Players are discouraged from signing up according to their preference. Why? Because in first-round signups or any sort of "more interest than spots" situation, a strategic player would try to sign up for bucket B because they have a greater chance of making it in; there's only one A, and lots of B spots. The penalty for signing up for A and not being the only one is going to the waitlist, while the penalty for signing up for B while preferring A is that they don't get an ideal role but still get to play.
Ideally, I'd like it if I could toggle a bucket "A" that would, if full, drop players by default first to B, and then to the Waitlist if B is full. This bucket may get a new color or additional button flavor to indicate this will happen.
This would also be useful for games where one has N "Male" roles, M "Female" roles, and X "player-decides-gender" roles (e.g., only some characters have writer-assigned genders because of backstory reasons), because then players could sign up as "Male" or "Female" and fallback into "Player-Chosen" and still be happy.
What if various buckets are full?
Let's consider a system with buckets A-->B, B, and Waitlist.
If player 1 clicks B, and B is full, they go to Waitlist listed as "B". If a "B" spot opens up, they get put into "B". If an "A" spot opens up, they do not go to "A"
If player 1 clicks A, and A is full, and B has spots, they go to B but from the GM view are listed as A-->B. They are not moved into A from B if A opens up.
If player 1 clicks A, and A is full, and B is full, they go onto the waitlist as A-->B. If A opens up, they go into A. If B opens up, they go into B, but they still have the GM view tag of A-->B, and will not be moved automatically into A if A opens up.
The GM can use the annotation of "A-->B" vs "B" on players as needed to manually shuffle players if A drops and there's no waitlisted players willing to go to A.
