Secret Santa on 20/11/2011 at 18:26

---

Hello everyone! With December almost upon us, it's time to put up the proper thread for the first TTLG Secret Santa of the holiday season!

>Who Is This For?

All are welcomed here, whether you're a GenGaming regular, a taffer, one of the TTLG Elite Kru or from any other part of our boards!

>Awesome! What are the rules?

Just read on below!

Names will be taken until 2359GMT ON SATURDAY 11TH DECEMBER 2011, at which point no further names will be accepted. In the day or two following that date names will be picked at random and assigned to individuals, one name per entrant. The name you receive will be the person you will be gifting - and the point of this event is that you are a Secret Santa, so please don't go spouting off to all and sundry. Based on the preferences that your recipient will give when they register to be a part of the event, you will then be prompted to buy whatever you deem suitable for a gift.

You will then be able to buy whatever is being sent - this may be by way of a physical gift or by digital download, of course. The deadline for your recipient to get his gift is going to be 20th January 2012 - that leaves you with plenty of time to put together whatever it is and gives each Santa the opportunity to take advantage of the post-holiday sales.

HOWEVER, THIS DOES NOT MEAN TO START THINKING ABOUT MAYBE BUYING A GIFT A DAY BEFORE THE FINISH, PLEASE. If anyone fails to provide a gift within a reasonable time (or at all), they will be summarily barred from the next event - or possibly worse. If you are using physical shipping, please order sooner rather than later so you don't get screwed by some store/shipping/internet crash/natural disasters.

I will be offering an incentive: when your recipient posts that they have received their gift, you may PM me and I will disclose the identity of your Santa. This means that if you get your stuff sent out and done early, you get to know who is sending you a gift. Some of you may not want to take advantage of this option and ruin the surprise, which is completely understandable, but it may help motivate a little bit.

>What would constitute a suitable gift?

This is where we unfortunately get subjective. I'd like to think we all have the good common sense to pick good gifts in this regard. For guidelines, I'd suggest something like $10/£6 (or $15/£9-ish with shipping) as a minimum. The minimum price on the gift is there to mostly prevent someone from sending like Limbo of the Lost. If you wish to do so then by all means go as far above this minimum limit as you want, it'd be awesome to see that sort of thing on the whole. You will basically be held to the honour system (and the threat of being pointed at and beaten with internet-sticks) to ensure that the person who you are gifting does not feel cheated. By all means, send the entire Valve back catalogue to your Santee if you wish!

You are free to use your discretion and judgement but please however bear in mind what your Santee wants. A Thief gamer who's never touched shoot 'em ups is probably not the right person to give Borderlands to. On the other hand, they might greatly appreciate receiving an interesting adventure or strategy game.

Be careful though - it's no use having an amazing plan if your Santee never actually gets the gift. Don't go crazy and end up never getting anything sent.

>I live in [insert country no-one has ever heard of]. Can I participate?

ABSOLUTELY! Ideally, we would get a few people from all over to participate. Even if physical shipping is difficult, digital download gifts can usually be sent to you quite easily!

>How do I sign up?

Entries are not considered official until I (Secret Santa) receive a PM from you containing the following:

1. Your name;
2. If you are willing to accept physical purchases, your address - PLEASE MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE COUNTRY SO I DON'T HAVE TO GUESS;
3. Suggestions - 'I play FPS games' doesn't help your Santa much in narrowing down what would be a good gift. Saying something like, 'I play Fallout and have been very interested in expanding into real-time strategic warfare simulators' gives your Santa an idea of what you wants, and helps Santa if he's not familiar with your chosen genres.

If you do not send this PM, you will not be entered in the event!

DO NOT SEND ME A PM JUST SAYING "I'M IN". I need to explain something - when your Santa gets your information, they receive it in the form of THE SAME MESSAGE YOU SEND ME. I literally forward your contact information and game preferences to the person giving you your gift, so the reason to make you all jump through the hoops of filling the information out is so that I have something to supply to your Santa. I also want to make sure I have up-to-date information.

When you sign up, please put some money aside for the gift right then. If you do not have said funds, do not sign up. The overwhelming majority of excuses that we always get are from people not having enough money to actually purchase a gift for their Santee, so I want to nip this in the bud. I realize most of you won't know at the time of sign-up who you're getting or what you're going to be gifting, but it's not unreasonable to put twenty-ish dollars or fifteen-ish pounds aside for the event right at the off.

After you've sent the PM, I'd recommend you post the games you collect or are interested in in this thread, as well. Too specific makes the gifting process a bit silly. List the games you wouldn't mind receiving, as well as genres you might already collect, so your gifter will have some starting point.

>How do you assign Santas?

Utilizing super-secret scientific method and a crack team of genetically modified English muffins, we assemble the Santa Master List™ at a classified military installation fourteen fathoms down in the general vicinity of the Marianas Trench.

As I don't have a swanky enough hat, Operation 'WHERE'D ALL THE MONEY GO 2011' will probably be run using the old staple of bunging your name on the back of one of my business cards and fishing them randomly out of a cardboard box.

It's all done in one completely random shot. I don't tamper with it in any way (UNLESS I REALLY NEED TO) though I do take some requests into consideration in setting the names in the box up (location, for example - if you have a real problem with postage, I can tweak this a bit).

>What do I do when I send/receive my gift?

A few suggestions for sending the gift:

* Include your name (forum name) so people have some idea of who is sending them this wondrous bounty! It really shouldn't be all that hard to just write your handle on a piece of paper and throw it in if you are sending a package, or slapping it in the covering note if sending a digital download gift.
* Consider using Delivery Confirmation/Tracking so you can track your package and make sure it gets there.
* Check in with your recipient via PM a few days after sending to confirm receipt if you don't hear anything.


Also, some guidelines for receiving the gift:

* Let your Santa know it arrived! One less thing they have to worry about.
* VERY VERY IMPORTANT: Post in the thread that the package or game arrived, and show off what you got!
* Take some damn pictures or screenshots! We're all dying to see what's being exchanged.

One last final point: While lurkers are welcome to participate, I reserve the right to use absolute discretion in ruling people out of participation. If you have absolutely zero posts or a bare minimum number and you register on the boards to try and take part in this, I probably won't let you participate. Past events have shown that these users have been the most likely to vanish off the board never to be seen again, or otherwise welsh on their end of participation.

And if you DO try to mess around with the system, Santa will have your address. And a crew of trained hunting reindeer. WITH SHARES IN LEHMAN BROTHERS.

Matthew on 20/11/2011 at 19:42

---

Oh sod it - it must be because the Secret Santa account is too new and hasn't had PM privileges attached to it yet. I'll PM the mods and ask if they can tweak it.

Please note that for now I am Santa's Little Helper, so you can send me any PMs in the meantime.

june gloom on 21/11/2011 at 06:28

---

I'm in.

To give my Secret Santa an idea of what I'm looking for, here is a sampling of games I enjoy:

If it says Fallout on it and runs on PC, I like it
Call of Duty
Zelda - I own every Zelda game from Wind Waker and onwards, plus Ocarina of Time 3D
Metroid and Metroid-style games
Mass Effect
Silent Hill 1 through 3 (Shattered Memories is okay too though)
Stalker
Left 4 Dead
Deus Ex
Cities XL
FEAR
Bioshock
Half-Life series

Exploration and horror are big draws for me, obviously. A little bit of fantasy here and there to spread out all the sci-fi... nothing too generic though.

Sulphur on 21/11/2011 at 08:05

---

Me too. It's slightly embarrassing, but I think I already have most everything I want.

Link your Steam wishlist in your PM, that should help.

gunsmoke on 21/11/2011 at 21:17

---

I am in. I will send Matthew my stuff later (though I gave you my address last week). I am going to have to be paired with someone who can send a physical copy of a 360 game, if that is possible. I can gift out whatever (physical or digital games), though. Hopefully, Matthew can match me up with someone. I will post my collection later, it is only 20 games or so, and some types of games I like.

This is a weird request, so if I can't be accommodated, I get it.