:-) I, myself, have voted for challenge-style play every year. So, as always, we have diversity of preferences even among the our most ardent. :-) That's FK! :-)
Yes, you're right: skipping a year would be risky, if only because it would break an established pattern and create confused expectations. The break in style last year may have been risky in the same way.
What do you think of the mechanism of posting exchange sign-ups publicly, for other players to see what requests are in the pool, as many other games do?
Follow-up: What would you think of "ranked-choice claiming" of such public sign-ups, where each player would privately give me a list of the order in which she'd like to write the available requests, and I'd try to give everyone as high-ranked a request as possible? (More likely to increase or decrease satisfaction...? Someone could end up with a low-ranked choice, no matter how hard I try.)
Regardless, I feel that we must rework our sign-ups and/or our shared expectations. (I can't deal anymore with people listing other people's identities as Do Not Wants; it's rude and it's painful to match.) Maybe the thing to do is make the sign-ups public, and/or maybe adopt a structure more like the HL exchange sign ups or expectations more like Yuletide.
The HL exchange sign-up template structure encourages emphasizing the positively liked over the negatively disliked:
Request: 1. Preferred characters: [names] 2. Preferred types of relationships: [gen, m/f, f/f, m/m, canonical relationships, non-canonical relationships, etc.] 3. Preferred themes, tropes & elements: [whatever] 4. Dislikes: [whatever] 5. Optional: Scenarios/Dear Author Letter: [link] Offer: 1. Characters I won't write: [names] 2. Themes, tropes & elements I won't write: [whatever] Crossovers: 1. Happy to read: [series/work titles or Not Applicable] 2. Happy to write: [series/work titles or Not Applicable]
no subject
Yes, you're right: skipping a year would be risky, if only because it would break an established pattern and create confused expectations. The break in style last year may have been risky in the same way.
What do you think of the mechanism of posting exchange sign-ups publicly, for other players to see what requests are in the pool, as many other games do?
Follow-up: What would you think of "ranked-choice claiming" of such public sign-ups, where each player would privately give me a list of the order in which she'd like to write the available requests, and I'd try to give everyone as high-ranked a request as possible? (More likely to increase or decrease satisfaction...? Someone could end up with a low-ranked choice, no matter how hard I try.)
Regardless, I feel that we must rework our sign-ups and/or our shared expectations. (I can't deal anymore with people listing other people's identities as Do Not Wants; it's rude and it's painful to match.) Maybe the thing to do is make the sign-ups public, and/or maybe adopt a structure more like the HL exchange sign ups or expectations more like Yuletide.
The HL exchange sign-up template structure encourages emphasizing the positively liked over the negatively disliked: