Would you like to know how we find the players for this year’s Fastaval scenarios? And would you like to help?
Curious to know more about the process of how individual programs are added after registration closes?
Then read on!
First step: Team planning
As soon as registration closes, team leaders start creating teams for the different scenarios. These teams are based on participant priorities, venue capacity and ensuring that all scenarios have a minimum of five runs. Many teams, but by no means all, will have game leaders who have signed up in advance. This is either by agreement with the author or authors, or because they want to play that particular scenario for some other reason. We call these potential teams.
Second step: Game leader distribution
Once the potential teams are created, the work is handed over to the player managers. It’s their job to find as many players as possible so that as many potential teams as possible are finally created.
The puzzle is placed with the following caveats:
- All authors have been asked to find game managers for at least five teams themselves. This list will be prioritized if there are too many players signed up for a scenario.
- Some registrants have signed up for more scenarios than they want to play. They let the GMs choose which scenarios they want to play. They will typically prioritize the scenarios with the most missing gamers, the scenarios with the fewest total teams, and the authors who have the hardest time recruiting more gamers themselves.
After this, the GMs have an idea of how many managers are actually missing. This is often somewhere between 60 and 90. The GMs have about 10-14 days to get as many managers as they possibly can.
The resources they draw on will be Facebook posts. Both in the official Fastaval and Alea groups, but also in Scenario: be a game leader at Fastaval, on RPGForum and on Danish Roleplayers.
In addition, someone has signed up as a Super Game Leader, which means they need to be contacted to possibly take on more duties.
Last but not least, there are personal relationships, where they either ask people they know or look through participant lists for people they know from previous years can be persuaded to play instead of playing.
Third step: Assigning activities
When the game leaders have found as many players as possible, the task goes back to the team leaders, who finally assign activities to all participants. The more you help at Fastaval, the more karma for activities you get. This means that if there is a scenario you really want to play, the best way to secure your spot is to lend a hand yourself!
We can always use another game leader!
If you want to be a game manager, we would love to hear from you! Write to the game managers at spilleder@fastaval.dk, they welcome all the help they can get.
If you are a new player and don’t quite know how to play, the player managers also have a great guide and advice to help you feel comfortable playing.
