Adding a Player

It happens. Real life intrudes and sometimes even the best players get burnt out or bored and drop from a game. I expect that, particularly in PbP. It's the nature of the beast. And it's usually pretty easy to introduce new players. But here's my problem.

I have had a couple of slots come open in a game I am running here. I have six applicants and only three slots. How do I fairly decide who gets the spots? Should I have each of them send me a PM with a character and pick those that best suit the party (I'm leaning heavily in this direction.) Or should I take the first-come, first-served path? Or should I have them fight it out amongst themselves and give the slots to the three who emerge on top? On my other PbP site (Paizo.com), we have recruitment threads for exactly that purpose, but there is no such mechanic here.

The problem with recruitment threads or requiring the application process while you might get a better role-player (which again is a maybe) you might get one that hops from game to game (aka they are really good at applying but sux when it comes to playing or staying with a game) where as the newbie or the one whose application did not look as good might be the one that sticks it out long term

Basically in my experience its a crap shoot. Nothing you can do on your side is going to guarantee that you get someone that will join and stay all you can do is play the numbers the more you get the better your chances are you will get a group of quality players willing to take the full ride

Another thing you can do is keep a list of players that you noted tended to drop especially if they dropped without any hint they were going to do so. This way willy-nilly droppers eventually have their actions come back to haunt them