TOPIC: Pay-it-Forward runs?

There's been a lot of bandwidth devoted to the question of "taking slots from newbies" and also people wanting to "buy" treasure. I have no idea if this is a good idea or not, but I wanted to toss the idea out to people to poke holes in.

What if we could establish a Pay-it-Forward system, where a TD player could either show up with a hard ticket or enough generics to cover a slot, and give it up to the Wait List... and in exchange, they could get a certain number of treasure chips (or treasure draws, if you want to conserve chips).... Make it a set number of draws (15?) or a number equal to their Treasure Enhancers (so, 11-14), whatever. Dont include the "Participation" rewards, since they didn't really participate... tho maybe the Treasure Draws could be increased to compensate.

Then the Wait List could offer an adventure for free to the next person in line.

It could be a way of resolving the problem with folks specifically ghosting for Treasure, while simultaneously lowering the barriers to entry for those new players who want to try TD, but find it a very expensive proposition.

Possible Pro's:
*Less hard feelings to vets/token-wealthy players
*brings in more new players
*vets not overpowering runs which they may not want to go on

Possible Cons:
*increased treasure consumption/boxes running low if insufficiently stocked
*people buying Tix they don't intend to use
*What to do if there's more PiF purchasers than folks in Wait List
*More hassle to administrate

I think this is a good start. Since I have started playing TD seriously I have brought at least 1 to 4 new players into the game each year.

Pay it forward is good too. If you remember we had a no show for Grind and my son ran out looking for some one to take the spot. Was willing to just give it away if need to just to fill in the spot. Everyone had fun that run too!

I guess my questions are:

1. Would the right people end up with the tickets? Not everyone in standby are noobs by any stretch. I'd worry someone might buy a lot of tickets to do this taking tickets out of the system that someone new might have gotten, but that person doesn't even know about the wait list.

2. Would people be willing to pay to draw from the treasure boxes (basically what you are suggesting) and is it something TD really wants to do? I'm sure for some people, money isn't a concern, and the number of runs they can do at Gencon is just limited by time...this allows them to potentially do less runs but get more treasure...again, I don't know if this is good, bad, or otherwise.

JesterSB wrote: I guess my questions are:

1. Would the right people end up with the tickets? Not everyone in standby are noobs by any stretch. I'd worry someone might buy a lot of tickets to do this taking tickets out of the system that someone new might have gotten, but that person doesn't even know about the wait list.

Good point.
You could limit it to "the next Brand New player in the wait list" but that might cause people to lie about their experience, or mean that people trying to play a second adventure end up with Zero hope of getting into another run.

I'm not sure there's any way to effectively leave tix in the GenCon system for new players tho. Fans will always buy tix if they're available. Unless we're making the event so expensive that it no longer sells out.

Raven wrote: I'm not sure there's any way to effectively leave tix in the GenCon system for new players tho. Fans will always buy tix if they're available. Unless we're making the event so expensive that it no longer sells out.

Well with the $4 increase each this might be a possiblility for some. I cut my runs down this year. I know a few others did too.

Just buy the tickets and bring noobs for for their treasure pulls. No mess no fuss.

Honestly I feel like at best your going to take tickets away from the people who want buy them using the gencon website and give them to the folks on the wait list for free. At worste you'll get called out over somekind of misunderstanding. It's a noble idea but IMO the only way to ensure newbies get more tickets is to buy less ourseleves. And that isn't likely to happen. As was pointed out even if you got the entire forum onside were only a small fraction of the playerbase.

A quick look at the final state of available tickets on the gencon web site shows 56 runs had at least 1 ticket available. One full run was listed.

That doesn't reflect the wait list people who got slots with generics of course. But it does put a bit of a dent in the newbies could not get tickets thoughts.

I for one really like the idea... though make it only available when there is say 5 or more people on the waiting list. It would get the list to move much quicker and give new players a chance to play.

I say give it a go for a year and see how it shakes out.

mike coon wrote: I for one really like the idea... though make it only available when there is say 5 or more people on the waiting list. It would get the list to move much quicker and give new players a chance to play.

I say give it a go for a year and see how it shakes out.

I don't think it would help speed things up at all. Everyone on the wait list is as I understand it there with genetics already. If there are say 5 empty spots then 5 people get put into them. If say raven turns up and offers 5 tickets to the wait list line the only difference is she's paid for those peoples runs.

And getting back to those misunderstandings I was mentioning, what happens if there are six folks in line. That last person might be offended everyone else got to play for free and they had to pay.

I actually have been doing this for a couple years. I once advertised on the Gen Con forums that you could play TD for free with the understanding you had never played before and I got all your tokens. I had more people wanting to take me up on the offer than I had tickets available. This year it was some random guys I met at Gen Con.

Haven't had any issues yet. New people want to know what the fuss is about without having to commit the money. After the run the folks are either hooked and want to know if I have any other tickets available which they sometimes offer to pay for or they realize that it is cool but they don't want to commit that kind of money for.

Harlax wrote: A quick look at the final state of available tickets on the gencon web site shows 56 runs had at least 1 ticket available. One full run was listed.

That doesn't reflect the wait list people who got slots with generics of course. But it does put a bit of a dent in the newbies could not get tickets thoughts.

Exactly. I made this point in another thread.

I purchases a ticket for a run from the website sometime Thursday, and there were a tonne of them that had been released at that point.