How to Warhorn

I started playing Pathfinder Society and had to get Warhorn to sign up for the games. It seems to be a pretty terrible tool. It took numerous searches of the group name to finally find the people creating events for the local PFS group. And one it’s biggest flaws is that there is no way to search based on geography as far as I’ve found. So, great, I search for PFS 2.0 games and see one listed for the next day. Too bad it’s 1,000 miles away.

This is a very welcome blog, I am curious to see if this is printable or something that is easy to share for new players.
New players are prone to register for the event but forget to register at the particular session.

This is great.

If I may contribute a resource as well, VC Joel Hager and I also wrote more in-depth guides on how to use Warhorn:

⠀➤ How to use Warhorn for Players
⠀➤ How to use Warhorn for Organizers

The developer makes unannounced changes to the UI all the time, but we do our best to keep up and there are solid best practices in these guides for all.

I've used Warhorn for years now and I know that I'm not alone in this. If you enjoy the benefits of this website, think about supporting it.

https://www.patreon.com/warhorn/membership

Seriously, with the number of us that do PFS around the globe, theres no reason to not contribute to the site that allows us to connect with and play with so many other people.

Very cool.

I've found Warhorn to be an invaluable tool for both finding games and for setting up Society games at my FLGS. It does take a bit of getting used to where the search functions are, but once you've got that down you can find all kinds of games.

The lottery system looks like it might be very problematic. Let's say 10 people sign up for a 6-seater game. Each of those 10 players has to then take time out of their lives for that game, preventing them from signing up for any other games scheduled at that time. Four of those players would be guaranteed not to get in, and there doesn't seem to be anything in place to allocate those players to another game instead. With games that fill up fast, at very least those players who miss out could then find alternative games to play at that time instead. That makes it an 'either you get the game you gambled on, or get no game', which really doesn't appeal to me, so I'll personally not be choosing to put my name down for any lottery-based games.

That makes it an 'either you get the game you gambled on, or get no game', which really doesn't appeal to me, so I'll personally not be choosing to put my name down for any lottery-based games.

Is there a better way to do it? I’m hard pressed to think of anything, and a lotto seems far more equitable than rewarding fast clicks. They could do the lotto a few days out as well so those who aren’t picked can find something else.

There may be people for whom the risk isn’t worthwhile but that seems ok too; these are high demand tables after all.

I'm in total agreement about lottery games, and having to make space in the schedule and then not getting in makes me not choose any either.

That said it's probably a more fair allocation for high demand games then whomever can load the page fastest on the April 17th.

I will note that it does run the lottery on May 15th, so you've got a week and a half to resort plans. I think I'd prefer if it pulled on say May 1st.

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A more perfect solution probably involves running lottery before first come/first serve, to avoid locking yourself out of future choices because they filled up while you were waiting for lottery.

An even more perfect solution probably involves starting all games effectively in a lottery. Everybody submits the games they want to play, ranking their choices and then at a known time the schedules are processed.

Everybody is randomly ordered and then it gives everybody their first pick that's available. Then it reorders people, first by which pick (so if you got you're first pick you're now behind people who got their second, who are behind people that got their third), and then by reverse order, so if you were after somebody in round 1 and got the same preference in pick you'll be ordered before them etc.

Continue this process until everybody's schedule preferences are exhausted and then open all remaining slots for first come first serve after that.

This of course requires a massive technological investment and of course is potentially problematic for people less technically savvy. (In a perfect world this might be my preferred version though.)

Hello all,

We've received your emails about being unable to sign up for games on Warhorn. Thanks for your patience while we worked to get it fixed as quickly as possible so everyone can sign up for games.

If your Warhorn account has the "Badged" role, you're all set for signups. You can check this by going to https://warhorn.net/events/paizocon-online-2023/registration; if the "Badged" role is checked, you're good.

If your Warhorn account does not have the badged role, please go to your E-tickets page in your Paizo.com account (https://paizo.com/paizo/account/etickets) and add your Warhorn email to your badge. This should automatically sync your accounts within 15 minutes.

If you have done this and you still do not have the Badged role after 15 minutes, please reply with the above information to paizocon@paizo.com so we can get it fixed.

If you haven't bought a ticket yet and would like to play games, you can purchase here, https://paizo.com/products/btq02ehj?PaizoCon-2023-Online-Badge

Follow the instructions on the product page "After completing your purchase, please navigate to the E-Tickets Page in your account and customize your badge to include your Discord and Warhorn information. Some Discord channels and events will be restricted to ticketholders." to make sure your ticket gets linked with Warhorn.

They could do the lotto a few days out as well so those who aren’t picked can find something else.

That would be preferable, at least personally so, and that'd give time to find an alternative adventure.