Economics and drama.

[corrvin]

I suppose the place to start is that if you have two children fighting over something, like a piece of cake, everyone in the world knows "cut and choose."

"okay Jimmy, YOU cut the cake and then Suzie will choose which piece she wants. Or, she can cut the cake and you'll choose which piece, or I'll flip a coin to decide."

There's an alternate method for dividing things among more than one person-- one randomly selected person begins slowly choosing their portion (taking items one at a time, slowly moving a knife around a cake measuring off a bigger piece, etc). The portion is determined either when they stop, and take that bit for themselves, or when someone else tells them to stop and takes the bit instead. No one can complain on this because they chose how big a piece they wanted.

I just know there's GOT to be a method similar to this for dividing up in-game items in some way; I'm thinking that the guild preference for the Suicide Kings loot system may be close.

The loot system goes like this: You make a list of everyone according to some random number generator mystical criterion. This is your starting list.

Now, take your first piece of loot. The person in Spot #1 can choose to take it or pass. If they take it, then they receive the item, AND move to the bottom of the list (so that #2 becomes #1 and everyone else moves up). If they pass, they don't get the item, and #2 gets the same choice. (If #2 accepts, then #2 goes to the bottom of the list and everyone moves up-- EXCEPT #1 stays in position, and still gets first dibs on the next thing.)

A modification for people who can't always attend events is in place-- if only the people in #2, 4, 6, and 8 positions can make it to an event, then highest on the list gets first choice-- and if #2 took the item, then 4 would get 2's spot, 6 would get 4's, 8 would get 6's and 2 would drop down to #8-- with all the other people on the list staying in exactly the same place.

Can anyone find a way to cheat this system? Keep in mind that many of the items one might choose are, once you've picked them up, unsellable to other players.