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#### How to Hold a Visible, Verifiable In-Game Prize Drawing?

I'd like to be able to hold contests that end with a prize drawing which occurs in-game, is interesting to watch, and is done by a method that's visibly random. I've come up with a method that seems workable if there are no more than 20-30 contestants, but my method doesn't scale up very well. I'm posting about it because others may find the method of interest, and also because I'm looking for a better way.
THE METHOD
To award three prizes by random drawing (without replacement) from 16 contestants, I created one note for each contestant, writing the simple message "[NAME] is the winner!" I then put 16 SDBs on a wall, one for each contestant, and put one note in each box using a random ordering. I set prices to assign each box a number, using high prices (10000, 20000, etc.) to avoid having someone purchase my notes while I was setting up. For the drawing, I had two helpers. One helper used a 20-sided die to select a random number between 1 and 16 (ignoring ineligible numbers, if they came up). The other helper removed the note from the corresponding SDB (after I'd lowered the price to 1c) and read out the name of the prize winner.
I made a video of this prize drawing, which you can view if you wish at youtu.be/xp0Yyr5BM-o. The video has been edited to speed up the pace and to remove most (but not all) of UI interactions that would not be visible to onlookers. My thanks to those who participated in the event. I will not name them here, but you will see them if you view the video.
SCALING UP
Of course one can hold a larger drawing simply by assigning each contestant a number, selecting a number at random, and then announcing the winner -- but this doesn't give viewers much to see and there's not much verifiability. Any ideas on how to hold a random drawing in-game for a large number of contestants using a visible and verifiable process?

Posted 4 months ago by Splendora | Permalink

### Replies

- First thing that came to my mind was that they could somehow modify a Charades Potion to do something similar, or you could actually use a Charades Potion. You could make your question be "Pick a number between 1-50" and the answer would be your winning number.
  Posted 4 months ago by Serra | Permalink
- Cubimal racing - unless I'm mistaken and those results are not in fact random. Each person gets an identical cubimal, and the one with the most planks wins. If several are identical, make a tie-break with those. You don't need the actual participants, of course - you could just have someone race a cubimal on their behalf. As the chat shows the plank numbers, people definitely can see quite a lot of the process, although it might get tiresome with very many participants.
  Posted 4 months ago by Not a Princess | Permalink
- Serra - Do you have in mind that the answer to the Charades would be a number picked at random and the first one to call it out wins? If so, that could favor faster typists with faster computers.
  Not a Princess - You've given me an idea. If there were, say, 100 entrants, there could be 10 boxes, each containing the names of 10 randomly selected contestants. One box would be picked at random, and then cubimals could be used to select the final winner(s).
  Posted 4 months ago by Splendora | Permalink
- You could use cubimals for the first picks, too, of course - race one for each box and pick the winning one, and then again for the box contents. So, twenty cubimal runs would suffice for 100 people.
  Posted 4 months ago by Not a Princess | Permalink
- I would use the charades option personally.
  Everything else seems very drawn out & would bore me as a viewer.
  Typing a number and hitting enter isn't so demanding that it should impact people based on typing speed or computer grunt, is it?
  If that is a concern you could limit everyone to a single number guess, and if no-one got it in the first round people could guess a second time, etc.
  Posted 4 months ago by xombiekitty | Permalink
- @Splendora- I agree with xombiekitty, I don't think that the game is graphics intense enough to sway the outcome of someone with a faster computer or slower one. And yep, random number and first one to get it wins. I was also going to suggest what xombiekitty did, single number guesses with multiple rounds until someone gets it.
  Posted 4 months ago by Serra | Permalink
- I don't like the "pick a number" idea because human beings don't choose numbers randomly. They tend to cluster around the middle of the range, prefer threes and sevens, avoid the first and last numbers, and so on. I think using an RNG like the in-game dice is a much better idea, though I have no idea how to scale it past what a d20 can do... which means I don't actually have an answer to your question! Sorry :)
  Posted 4 months ago by Pale Queen | Permalink
- dice scale fine. Assume you have under 555 entrants. you can assign them numbers from 111 to 666. Then roll the dice three times. If a valid number isn't chosen, roll them again until a number from the assigned pool appears. A four-digit roll will handle up to 5555 entrants. A two digit roll will handle up to 55 entrants. etc, etc.
  -- that's for a single die. two dice get you numbers between 11 and 66, right? So one die roll should handle 55 entrants. Two rolls of two dice should get you anywhere from 1111 to 6666, so that handles 5555 entrants , numbered 1111 through 6666.
  Or am I all screwed up here... ?
  Posted 4 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- what about a pair of dice? can't everyone see what the roll is? sell raffles with possible number combos and do live rolls
  Posted 4 months ago by Green Meanie | Permalink
- There is research showing what Pale Queen says -- people do not choose numbers randomly even when they are trying to do that. So if the winning number is in the middle of the range, the chances increase that more than one person will choose that number, making the outcome based on a race rather than a purely random selection.
  Another thing about the Charades approach is that it requires all contest participants to be present at the same time and in the same place. I like to run contests that people can participate in without having to arrange to be in the game at a particular time. There's also the issue of lag when there are lots of players in the same place at the same time. So what I'm looking for is a method that will allow people to be present for the drawing if they wish, but would not require that.
  Posted 4 months ago by Splendora | Permalink
- walurz - great minds think alike....some just type faster :)
  Posted 4 months ago by Green Meanie | Permalink
- Use the 12-sided die. Divide entrants into groups of 12, assign each a giant. Roll with all 12 present. If you have 10 prizes, allow 12 entrants per prize (120 total).
  If you need to accommodate more entrants, have a couple of elimination rounds (like a sports tournament), with the winners of the early rounds getting a small prize. Have that small prize increase a little bit in value for each round.
  So, let's do an example of >12 people for one prize. Let's say you have one big prize and 48 entrants. Divide them into four groups of 12 each
  Assign giants to the people in each group.
  Roll the die. If it comes up Tii, and you have Frank from group 1, Bob from group 2, Marsha from group 3, and Sally from group 4 all assigned to Tii, then they move on to the next round AND get a tiny prize. The rest are eliminated and get a booby prize (or nothing).
  Assign three giants to EACH of the four remaining people. Roll the die. If Marsha's assigned Mab, Humbaba, and Zille, and it comes up Humbaba, she wins. :)
  Posted 4 months ago by MG Botia | Permalink
- I appreciate all the suggestions. Here's my takeaway:
  1. There are various ways to make prize-drawing fair and cheat-proof.
  2. There are various ways to make prize drawing into an interesting event.
  3. It may be difficult to do both.
  Technical Comments (WARNING - CONTAINS MATH)
  I do like the idea of using the in-game dice, taking what's on the face of each die so that each outcome is equally likely. Since there are two dice, one roll can have 36 different outcomes: 1 & 1, 1 & 2, etc. It's 36 outcomes rather than 55 because a six-sided die cannot show 0 or 7-9. If we use two sets of in-game dice (or roll twice), again reading what's on the face of each die, that gives 1296 possible outcomes.
  So let's say we have 140 entrants. We could assign each one of them a number between 1111 and 6666, leaving out all the numbers that contain 0, 7, 8, or 9. Now we roll two sets of dice. There's about a 1-in-9 chance that the dice will come up with of the 140 outcomes we've assigned, and about an 8-in-9 chance that it will come up with one of the outcomes between 1111 and 6666 that we didn't assign. So, on average, we'd have to roll the dice about 9 times to get a winner.
  As suggested in other comments, we could reduce the number of dice rolls required by assigning multiple outcomes to each player or by having elimination rounds. I did something similar to this with the Plop Hunt I held back around Easter time, though rather than assigning numbers or giants, each contestant had a type a seed, an ID phrase, and a secret code. However, I did the drawing offline, and so people simply have to trust that I did it fairly.
  Posted 4 months ago by Splendora | Permalink