Player Auto-Surrendered, would like to keep playing - how?

[Paul T.]

Due to out-of-game circumstances, a player in our "Friends" game auto-surrendered.

However, we'd all like for the player to come back and to keep playing.

What should we do?

(I believe there is a rule against surrendering and then re-joining the game, so I'm asking here.)

[Petunia]

Yeah, that player is not going to be able to re-join the game. And if he creates another login and uses that, he'll be banned from the site if caught. Not a whole lot to be done about it at this point short of finding an 8th friend. In future, keep in mind that deadlines can be extended by admins on an infrequent, case-by-case basis, if every player in the game posts in the shoutbox that they agree to push back the current deadline to whenever. That helps to avoid this kind of thing.

[asudevil]

Ill weigh in from a mod side. This isn't possible in our system. Also, please don't have him make a second account, as it just makes more work for us and then we will just have to ban him anywya.

[Paul T.]

Ouch. I see!

What if an 8th player joined in and took over the surrendered player's country? Could he name the original player as his alternate, so as to let him play out most of the game, or is that against the rules as well?

[super_dipsy]

Not sure if the substitute request would work - it might get messy. But you bring up a good point - this is not the first time this has happened in a Friends game, and while we have the rule in place about not rejoining games for normal games for obvious reasons, Friends games are different beasts. I can well understand that if a group of friends want to play a game together and one gets surrendered for missing a couple of turns in a row, the others might want to let him back in.

I think I will put a suggestion up and see what others think.

In the meantime, I have zapped your game so your friend can now rejoin.

[Paul T.]

Wow, thank you!

Unfortunately, I just asked another friend to come join the game, and, in any case, we still don't know if the friend who missed two turns has internet access for the next few days (we can't reach him--hopefully nothing serious has happened!).

Could we go ahead with the plan of bringing in the new player, and then revert to the original player when we hear from him in a few days? Presumably then the substitute could surrender and the original player could take over again, correct?

Thank you very much for your help, and please let me know if you ever reach consensus on how to deal with this sort of issue in the future. Maybe something as simple as a checkbox option for anyone starting a Friends game ("Surrendered players may rejoin") would do the trick? It would certainly save you guys the trouble of dealing with it case-by-case.

Thanks again! The support on this site from the admins just blows my mind: you guys are fantastic.

[super_dipsy]

When your absentee player comes back you will have two choices. Either you ask your new player to surrender and your previous player will be able to join, or you could get your new player to use the Name a Substitute option on the Active Games display, in which case the previous player can then play out the rest of the game. However if you go the second route (which avoids someone getting an unnecessary surrender on their stats ) then when the game finishes the result will appear as for the substituted player - when you use a sub, the game still 'belongs' to you. But for a Friends game I don't see why this would particularly matter, so I would advise the substitute approach.

[Paul T.]

Wow, fantastic!

So either option works. Really glad to hear that, and thanks again for the help!