Campaign Poll Modeling
From Tab Wiki
Many times now I have debated the options when preparing to run a new campaign. Often, in order to aid in the decision, I write up a list of potential games I wouldn't mind running and ask people to rank them. I them often weight the ranks and use that as a good suggestion when deciding (more on the final decision process in a minute).
This last time, I listed three possibilities: Traveller, D&D 4e and Supers, and asked people to rank them. I then weighted the ranks, 1, 2 and 3--the lower number being the better. This is a simple, straight-forward model, but in retrospect, I think a different weighting system would have served better. And here is my reasoning:
As I've babbled about before, running a campaign for a group of people seems to be more about consensus-building than simple majority-building. Therefore, while it's great to have players who are absolutely enthauiastic about the choice of game, it's probably more important to not have any players who are particularly loathsome about the choice of game. That is: Having one player who is absolutely enthused does not cancel out having one player in particular loathing of the campaign choice--the loathing is a bigger factor than the enthusiasm.
The weighting then should reflect this. So the difference between the weights on the less-liked end of the scale should be bigger than the difference between the weights on the more-well-liked end of the scale. For example, during this last choice, where potential campaigns were ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice, the weights might have been 1, 3, 6 (lower being better), respectively.
Of course, modeling decision-making like this is probably best left as just a suggestion. Other factors that can't so readily be modeled are important to consider, too. When trying to make final decisions I often sit down and start to try to write out a potnetial campaign outline for each possibility. If I find myself short on ideas when writing one, I take that as a sign that the choice I'm having difficulties with may be a bad one.
Anyway, just thoughts.
