Draft Simulator

Deciding who picks first is one shuffle, and this site has had a tool for it since last year. A draft is what happens next: a pool that gets smaller with every pick, an order that reverses on alternate rounds if you want it to, and a record of what each person ended up with. That state is the difference — a draft order forgets itself the moment it is generated, and a draft cannot.

The pool

One item per line. Anything draftable — cards, roles, map areas, jobs.

Who is drafting

One per line, in the order they sit.

Rounds

The pool supports 2 full rounds.

Pick order

Seed (optional)

A word gives the same shuffled pool again.

Over 2 rounds this order leaves a pick-position spread of 0 — perfectly even.

The draft will appear here.

What this generator does

Keeps a finite pool across a whole draft. The fantasy football draft order generator already here answers 'who picks when' and stops; this runs the picking. Items leave the pool as they are taken, the order follows whichever scheme you chose, and each participant's haul is kept beside the others so the state of the draft is visible at a glance.

How to use this tool

Paste the pool, one item per line.
List who is drafting, in seating order.
Choose the number of rounds and the pick order.
Press Start, then click an item to give it to whoever is up.

Understanding the controls

The pool: One item per line, anything at all. Duplicates are kept and treated as separate copies, because a pool with three identical slots is a real pool.
Rounds: How many picks each participant gets. The page says how many complete rounds the pool actually supports, because a draft that runs dry halfway through round three is a worse problem than one round fewer.
Pick order: Snake reverses each round, so whoever picks last in round one picks first in round two. Linear repeats the same order, which is simple and favours the first picker. Rotating shifts everyone up one each round. The page shows the measured advantage each leaves rather than asserting which is fairest.
Seed: A word makes the pool shuffle reproducible, which is what you want when replaying a draft or setting the same one for two groups.

Worked examples

4 people, 2 rounds, snake: Picks run 1-2-3-4 then 4-3-2-1 — spread of 0, perfectly even.
The same, linear: 1-2-3-4 twice. The first picker is 6 positions better off in total.
A 20-item pool, 4 people: Supports 5 full rounds; the page says so before you start.
What is never shown: The same item in two people's hauls.

Common use cases

Drafting map areas, factions or starting resources before a board game
Splitting a pool of jobs, shifts or chores where order matters
Running a fantasy draft without a spreadsheet
Picking teams from a group where each captain chooses in turn
Any situation where several people take from one finite pool

How this generator works

The pool is shuffled once and then picked over; nothing is drawn twice because each pick removes the item rather than sampling from the whole list again. The pick sequence is computed before anybody picks, so the order can be shown up front. Fairness is measured rather than claimed: adding up each participant's pick positions gives a spread, and over an even number of rounds a snake draft comes out at exactly zero while a linear one does not. Every action returns a fresh draft rather than editing one, which is why Undo is simply restoring the previous value.

Randomness and fairness

Randomness decides one thing: the order of the pool before picking starts. After that nothing is random — the pick sequence is derived from the order you chose, and each pick is yours. With a seed the shuffle is reproducible: that path uses a documented non-cryptographic generator, so it is for reproducibility, not for anything that needs to be unguessable.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

Each line of the pool is one draftable item, and participants pick in the order listed.

Limitations and good to know

It manages the draft. It does not know whether a pick was a good one, and it has no opinion about value.
Everything is visible to everyone — there are no hidden picks, so it suits a group round one screen.
Nothing is saved between visits; closing the page loses the draft.
Undo steps back through this session only.

Common mistakes

Using a linear order for something valuable: Linear gives the first picker the best of every round, and the page shows exactly how much that is worth. Use snake unless there is a reason not to.
Setting more rounds than the pool supports: The draft simply stops when the pool empties, mid-round. The page states the number of complete rounds available before you start.

Practical tips

Seed the draft when two groups should face the identical pool order.
For a snake draft, an even number of rounds is exactly fair; an odd number is not, and the spread figure will say so.

Privacy and your data

Your pool, your participant names and your seed never leave your browser. Nothing is uploaded or stored, and nothing is written into the page address. Analytics records that the tool ran and the pool size, never the contents.

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from the draft order generator?: That one tells you who picks first, second and third. This runs the draft: the pool shrinks as people take from it, the order reverses if you chose snake, and at the end you have a record of who got what. One is a permutation; this is a session.
Is a snake draft actually fairer?: Over an even number of rounds, measurably yes — the sum of each participant's pick positions comes out identical, which is what the spread figure of zero means. Over an odd number it is fairer than linear but not exactly level, and the page will show a non-zero spread.
Can I draft from a pool with duplicates?: Yes, and they are treated as genuinely separate items. Three copies of the same card means three people can take one, which is how a real pool with duplicates behaves.