So the rash of posts lately where people have said they are running out of scenarios has got me thinking. A lot of these posts have talked about how people coordinate their game days and I am interested in hearing how other people coordinate their games days and why it works for them. I am particularly interested in the contexts that have been discussed recently, with many people requesting more low level scenarios. I really haven't seen the same problems that others have, but I am wondering if it's because of how I coordinate my game days, the nature of the local gamer population or some other factor I haven't considered. I also want to encourage us to share how we coordinate our game days to pick each others' brains a bit...
I coordinate at a store in Poway, CA which is about 20 minutes north of San Diego proper. I usually run three game days a month there (one on the first Saturday of the month which I have turned over to someone else so I can start coordinating another store) and one every other Monday night. This usually works out to 3 game days or 4 game slots a month. Including the other local game store in San Diego proper, there are up to 6 games available per month.
So, a little about how I organize game days, since it seems from what I have seen others post, they try to coordinate scenarios based on who has played what. I have never really tried to do that. Well, except I sometimes schedule scenarios that I know people who routinely judge for me haven't played as a return favor for all their judging. In other words, I don't have lists of what people have played, I simply schedule scenarios based on what has or has not been played in the area recently and my judgement of how much overlap there is between the Poway store and other stores in the area (there's a little overlap with Temecula and a slightly larger one with the San Diego store). I always schedule a 1-5 (or 1-7) for newer players and then schedule a 5-9 or 7-11 for the more experienced players. Once in a while one of the high tier tables doesn't get enough players, but other times I get surprised by having two tables of the high tier game seated.
The advantage of this method is that I don't have to keep track of who has played what scenarios. It also means I always have scenarios available for new players because I run a 1-5 (or 1-7) in every slot. There are always higher level games for people to play once they reach level 5, making it less likely that they will run out of low level scenarios as quickly. Usually the minimum number of tables I get during a single slot is 3, so this method works well for me. This works really well in an area where I get a constant influx of new players as well as people coming and going as their schedules permit.
One of the downsides to this is that sometimes new players don't get to play with older players until they hit level 5-7. However, this happens less often than you might think as it seems like there's always that one scenario that an older player missed and so sits down with the newer players... Sometimes players look at the schedule and realize they can't play anything. Sometimes that means they step up and judge, and sometimes that means they do something else that day. But, as far as I am concerned, that's OK, you can't please everyone all the time, so I do my best to please as many as possible.
So, I am curious. How do you coordinate your game days? What's the same? What's different? What can I blatantly steal to make my game days better?
