Anyone else having this issue?

[Asthmatic Kobold]

My local PFS group plays every other weekend. Lately, when games are posted on warhorn, there is one slot reserved and the other slots fill up almost immediately no matter when the session is posted. If a session is posted at 8 am on a Monday, it's full by 8:45. If a session is posted at midnight on Sunday, it's full by 1 am. Many of the players sign up within minutes of the posting and each other.
I know the guy who runs the group sometimes reserves a slot for himself and/or a family member. I'm fine with that.
Do you think the players are on a text chain with the scheduler? If so, is this "legal"?
I would contact our organizer, but we recently changed to a new one (the old one moved away) and their contact info isn't in warhorn yet.
It's frustrating. I GM a home game and hardly ever get to play as a player (my last time with PFS was early January).
There's a local convention that also uses warhorn for events and many of the same players attend it, but there's still slots open in some sessions. The convention is a month away, but our local group's sessions fill up immediately. The convention is figuratively down the street.
Is this normal for PFS? Is it allowed? Anyone else having issues like this? What can be done?

[cavernshark]

On the surface, there's nothing that indicates anything against the rules is happening here. It can be frustrating, but if it's an open public game and you can sign up but just don't get in on time it sounds like there's significantly more player demand than GMs. There's a problem if the GM is making a 'public' game but then explicitly never allowing public players to join, but there is also nothing stopping this GM from playing a PFS table privately. The issue would be advertising and running it as a public game if it's not. I'm not sure that's what's happening here, though, and I'd be loathe to just ascribe bad motives to the GM. This GM may just be putting up tables to run and they are simply filling up quickly.

I don't know your lodge, but is it possible there's a Discord you don't know about? There's a lot of ways these players can be finding out to sign up before you that don't involve private channels and such. At our lodge, a GM can put up a scenario on Warhorn and then often they'll drop a link in Discord. Each lodge/location is different, however. It may be there's a mechanism people use to communicate that you just don't know about?

If you can't get a hold of the organizer, have you tried contacting the GM and say something like: "I've been trying to get onto one of your tables the last few weeks but it seems like whenever you post it fills up so fast. Is there a way I can find out when you're posting or if you're advertising that it's up somewhere so I can try to join?"

You may also want to ask the game store you're playing at if they can help you get in touch with the new event organizer. I'd also advocate signing up for waitlists even if you don't get to play. At our lodge, wait-listed players can trigger calls for additional GMs and consistent wait lists can signal a need for potential growth to new tables in a given session.

[Asthmatic Kobold]

Thanks for the advice. I don't want to think ill of the organizer either. He's a good guy. It just gets a little frustrating being left out week after week (the same 5 players get in every time). I'd considered volunteering to be a GM, but I GM for my friends already and I would like to be a player once in a while.

[NielsenE]

If the game is full, it can be worth signing up on the waitist, since that can help show the demand for more slots and/or help people realize the some people are being consistently left out.

[Alison-Cybe]

Honestly, it sounds like the reliance on Warhorn is something of a hurdle the local group in question here have put in place. I started to have the same issue, which ultimately caused me to drop play with our local Society group. Just ended up that I didn't ever REALLY know if I'd be able to get a seat or not, and waitlisting can often mean ending up with nothing else to do for your whole day. The site's designed for larger-scale event bookings, not small clubs like this. Sorry you're on the same situation.