Shift Balance

Shift Balance

Shift balance is how the game tries to keep the number of players on each shift roughly even.

If there are too many PC's on a shift this results in very few people who can play NPC's, these shifts are slow without a lot happening at once, and the NPC's burn out and run out of energy very quickly. When there are too few PC's on a shift there is a massive horde of NPC's. During these shifts the PC's tire out or can't handle the volume of plots that might come out. Meanwhile the NPC's get bored and don't get to have any fun either. Neither of these situations is great.

Our solution to this is a program we call shift balance. The first step is for players to organize themselves into adventuring groups. You don't have to join a group, but there is preferential treatment for groups because we want to encourage them to exist. Groups are easier for GM's to create plot for, generally a plot aimed at one member of the group provides entertainment for ALL members of that group. It also makes it easier for logistics staff members to organize shift balance.

Once players have had a chance to join an adventuring group they apply for the shifts they want. This will typically be a window of time that opens every 6 months or a year. Groups and those wishing to remain solo request what shifts they would like to play. The logistics marshal then does their best to fill those requests.

Obviously not everyone will get what they request. If they did, we wouldn't need shift balance. But we will do our best to get you some of what you are looking for.

Considerations that impact shift balance include (but are not limited to):

• The Daylight Shifts (2 and 3) are more popular than the Night shifts (1 and 4)
• Some players have complicated make up to put on and prefer 2 back to back shifts (2 and 3) or (3 and 4)
  • Everyone experiences this to some degree, so only very heavy make up (races) will get preference for this.
• Groups will always be prioritized over solo players, solo players will fill in the holes.
• Requests for 1st and 4th are generally easiest to fill.
  • Groups requesting 1st AND 4th as their two shifts are very likely to get what they want.
• If possible no one will be forced into all night shifts (1 and 4)
  • In order to make sure everyone can have a day shift, getting assigned to 2 AND 3 is very unlikely unless this isn't possible for some reason.
• While all efforts will be made to treat staff members with the same priority as everyone else, if staff schedules make certain combinations impossible they may end up in unusual combinations.

Related Rules

Adventuring Groups

Creating encounters that are just the right amount of difficulty is an important part of the job game masters do. In order to make this very challenging job a little bit easier to handle, players sometimes need to organize themselves.

There are three concepts relating to collections of player characters that are related but not exactly the same. These are independents, adventuring groups, and adventuring parties.

Adventuring groups are important DURING games. Independents and Adventuring Parties are important for planning BETWEEN games.

The people who respond to a plot temporarily form an adventuring group. An adventuring group does not need to have a fixed roster of people, it can be anyone who happens to be standing around the inn at a given moment. What matters is that if a group goes off in search of adventure or to answer the quest of an npc they are limited to 6 players. This restriction ensures that game masters always have a rough of idea of how challenging a plot? will be. You are expected to respect this limit even if you aren't acknowledged by the group or they aren't aware of you. Which is to say if you tag along with a group that didn't invite you, and they are already at the group limit, if they then encounter something, creatures, a plot, whatever, you are expected to stay uninvolved in the encounter.

In order to help new players interact with adventuring groups, a group may bring one additional character that is under level 20, plus a further character under level 20 for each full 100 levels any player among the first 6 players in the group has.

Between games players will sometimes join together out of character in an effort to PC on the same shift so they can play together. We call this an Adventuring Party. Parties will often get preferential treatment when organizing special events (like dungeon crawls) so that the party can play together at the same time. Each party is limited to eight players. Character level has no impact on party size. When a player makes a new character they should not rejoin an adventuring party they were previously a part of. There are several reasons for this. Meeting new people is an important part of community building and avoiding cliques. Also because a new character should be distinct from an older one, rejoining an old party is going to cause many players to treat you much like the same character. Finally because there are weird power gaming shenanigans that can arise from changing characters and rejoining a group.

An independent is any person who is not a formal member of an adventuring party. Independents may collaborate with other independents or adventuring parties as they wish. They are free agents. While an independent might be in the same adventuring group as a party for an encounter, they are not formally affiliated with the party after the conclusion of that encounter.

Tinkering items that affect a "party" work on the items owner, plus 5 other people designated regardless of how many people are in the adventuring group or party.

Shifts

A shift is a 5 hour block of time during which the game is taking place. During each shift a player must choose to either be a player character (PC) or a non-player character (NPC). Players are expected to NPC for at least as many shifts as they PC.

If you are going to be late for a shift or need to leave early for some reason, that shift should be one of the shifts that you PC.

Categories: Real World Rules