Adventure Summary Incentives

[Rae ArdGaoth]

Much of this has already been discussed in the Gen. Disc. thread, but I'll repeat the important bits here.

In order to make Living ENWorld more cohesive and consistent, I propose offering DM credits to anybody willing to compile all the information in an adventure into a brief. The summary should include:

# geographic information presented
# information about NPCs
# organizations
# a brief outline of events

At first I proposed only a few DM credits per summary (I was thinking only one, actually), but B4cchus and Rystil suggested rewards based on the quality of the summary. Boddynock suggests this reward table:

Per adventure                     DM Credits
150 posts                         1
Fully detailed NPC                1
Fully detailed location           2
Fully detailed institution*       3

*e.g. thieves’ guild, wizards’ school, government, culture

Boddynock comments on his reward system:

Originally Posted by Boddynock

Hmm, I've just looked at "Strange Case of Aif Jenkins Farm", which just finished. Using my suggested formula of 1 credit per 50 posts, I would receive a minimum of 17 credits for summarizing the adventure - but Manzanita only received 10 credits for running it. Well, that's right out of whack, so let's rethink.

If it were 1 credit per 100 posts, then that would be 8 credits (possibly more) for summarizing it. I still think that's a bit generous (it seems to me that there's more work to be done in running the adventure than in summarizing it), so what about 1 credit per 150 posts? That would give a minimum of 5 credits for the summary (which is half of what Manz received). I know that there's at least one NPC & institution in there, so that'd be another 1 or 2 points. Hmm, that's more like it, IMHO.

'Nock

Personally, I still think 7 credits is way, way too much. The story compiler shouldn't be getting too much out of this, it's just kind of a little "Thanks for doing us a favor, mate!" rather than a "Thank you for your service, now here are your wages." My real beef with it, though, is that it takes the DM months of dedication and planning, and he only gets 10 credits, while the compiler spends a few hours at most and receives almost as much, if not more (if the adventure is particularly loaded).

So I'm thinking a flat 1, 2, or 3 DM credits per summary.

[Boddynock]

Thanks for posting the proposal, Rae.

The problem with a flat rate is that there'll be disparity between the amount of work involved in summarizing a light-weight adventure and a heavy-weight one. Now, while that is to some extent picked up in the range of awards (1, 2 or 3), there'd still be a big difference between something like "Alvar Thorne & Associates, Part 1", which is only meant to be a sidetrek, and, for example, the "Aif Jenkins" thread I mentioned previously.

Perhaps we could re-jig the figures:

Per adventure                                       DM Credits
Per 500 posts                                       1
If there are any fully detailed NPCs                1
If there are any fully detailed locations           1
If there are any fully detailed institutions*       1

*e.g. thieves’ guild, wizards’ school, government, culture

I do think that longer threads require more work, and therefore should receive some greater reward. But this would reduce the rewards significantly. A 1000 post game, for example, with two detailed NPCs, a detailed location, and no detailed institutions, would garner 4 credits.

The other thing I think we would do well to acknowledge is that, while DMing the original game is (we hope) fun, summarizing the thread is much more like work!

[Rystil Arden]

there'd still be a big difference between something like "Alvar Thorne & Associates, Part 1", which is only meant to be a sidetrek, and, for example, the "Aif Jenkins" thread I mentioned previously.

Yup. It's worth mentioning that ATfL, which I keep using as an example, has somewhere around 2400 posts filled with info. Many more than a sidetrek would have. It's probably the most extreme example of length + info.

[Manzanita]

I'd be more for a flat rate. 1 DM credit for the summary, or 10% (15%?) of the DM credits awarded for the adventure, whichever is greater.

I think most DMs want the NPCs, history and structure that they created to be perserved and reused by others. I think we should keep the formula really simple.

Hopefully, eventually, the adventures whose DMs don't go back & do their own, will be done by some enthusiastic volunteer.

In general, I certainly believe this is a good idea. Having a short summary of each adventure would be a big plus for LEW.

[Rystil Arden]

Originally Posted by Manzanita

I'd be more for a flat rate. 1 DM credit for the summary, or 10% (15%?) of the DM credits awarded for the adventure, whichever is greater.

I think most DMs want the NPCs, history and structure that they created to be perserved and reused by others. I think we should keep the formula really simple.

Hopefully, eventually, the adventures whose DMs don't go back & do their own, will be done by some enthusiastic volunteer.

In general, I certainly believe this is a good idea. Having a short summary of each adventure would be a big plus for LEW.

Hmm...that falls into the time trap as well, I think--let's take a look at both plans, shall we?

I'm going to use my two adventures Bounty of the Endless Sands and A Teacher for Laynie. Both earned me 9 GM credits to run because they took 9 months.

Bounty of the Endless Sands is 600 posts long, many of which were just for combat, and has no new NPCs (all were present in IA or ATfL) or organisations. The summary would take about two to five minutes to write thoroughly and well. Under Manz's plan, I get 1 GM Credit for this because 10% of 9 is less than 1. Boddynock gives me 1 also (< 1000 posts and no news stuff).

Now look at A Teacher of Laynie. ATfL is 2000 posts long, and almost all of it is new fluff. It has I think over 50 new NPCs, a goodly amount of details on Medibarian history, magical theory, cultural notes, and fleshes out the Academy itself as well. The summary would take at least four hours to write thoroughly and well. Under Manz's plan, that would earn me 1 credit because 10% of 9 is less than 1. Under Boddynock's plan, I get somewhere around 60 (4 for length, nothing for historical facts or culture, 1 for the Academy, 1 for Medibaria, 50+ for NPCs). It's actually perfectly commensurate in the amount of time it would take me to write it and the length of the summary (it would take about 60 times as long), but that's still a rather huge amount.

[Rae ArdGaoth]

I think with 'Nock's new plan, you'd only get 7 DM credits for ATfL (2000/500 = 4, +1 for all the NPCs, +1 for all the institutions, +1 for all the locations). That's more like it, in my opinion. But I see where Manz is coming from, trying to keep it simple.

One thing we should clarify: Where all this is going. There are several places I can think of:

# El Jefe's Thread Recompilation thread
# The Enworld World Guide (Accessible only to Judges)
# Volidar the Bard's Tales of Enworld
# The BluWiki page

My personal favorite is the BluWiki page, because it's all inter-linkable and easy for anybody to go in and add whatever. Downside is, of course, that it's not local.

I love the flavor of Volidar's tales, but I feel like that medium won't be very good for storing raw information. Perhaps the event summary should be "from the mouth of Volidar"?

The World Guide is nice and organized, but only judges can edit it, and it's a pain. The annoyingness factor of updating any "Living Enworld Judge" account threads is part of what has stopped this from getting done in the past, I think.

El Jefe's Recomp thread was impossible to sort through. It seemed more like someone's notes on the world, rather than a repository of organized information. That being said, it's at least a place on the forum that anybody can post to, unlike the World Guide.

[Rystil Arden]

Originally Posted by Rae ArdGaoth

I think with 'Nock's new plan, you'd only get 7 DM credits for ATfL (2000/500 = 4, +1 for all the NPCs, +1 for all the institutions, +1 for all the locations). That's more like it, in my opinion. But I see where Manz is coming from, trying to keep it simple.

One thing we should clarify: Where all this is going. There are several places I can think of:

# El Jefe's Thread Recompilation thread
# The Enworld World Guide (Accessible only to Judges)
# Volidar the Bard's Tales of Enworld
# The BluWiki page

My personal favorite is the BluWiki page, because it's all inter-linkable and easy for anybody to go in and add whatever. Downside is, of course, that it's not local.

I love the flavor of Volidar's tales, but I feel like that medium won't be very good for storing raw information. Perhaps the event summary should be "from the mouth of Volidar"?

The World Guide is nice and organized, but only judges can edit it, and it's a pain. The annoyingness factor of updating any "Living Enworld Judge" account threads is part of what has stopped this from getting done in the past, I think.

El Jefe's Recomp thread was impossible to sort through. It seemed more like someone's notes on the world, rather than a repository of organized information. That being said, it's at least a place on the forum that anybody can post to, unlike the World Guide.

Oh, you're right--there's just 1 'if there are fully detailed NPCs' and not per NPC. I do have to say, I would not be tempted to try to summarise ATfL for 7 GM credits, and certainly not for 1 (yeah GMing takes longer, but GMing is fun. Whereas I dislike both collecting and consolidating info, even if I invented it originally, and writing summaries)

[Someone]

What about rewarding the lenght of the summary itself (1 point every X words, or some other method)? This method has some drawbacks, but rewards directly the lenght and quality of the summary, which in turns is a good measure of the parent thread(s) lenght and peculiarities. If the DM points are not automatic and must be approved by a judge, it'd limit abuse.

[Manzanita]

We went through a similar discussion w/regards to the DM credits themselves. Should they reflect the number of players? The speed of the game? The number of posts?

Eventually we just went with the simplest formula. Just 1 credit/month. I'm pretty happy with this too.

I don't want to go overboard with the DM credit thing. Most of a character's progression should be through adventuring. DMing, playing, even admin, must ultimately be done for pleasure, and not for credit. While the credit is a good incentive, at this point I still favor a simple, and fairly small reward for this summary. The fact is, the character judges do a ton of work, and currently get no in game 'credits' for this. If we're really serious about making significant rewards for the administrators (which I'm not necessarily opposed to), we should do it consistantly.

I also think this summary is best put in the first post of the adventure, to be edited in there by the DM once the adventure is over. That way it can not be lost. It would also be also nice to copy it to a section of the wiki.

[Boddynock]

How about this?

For the person summarizing the adventure:
Per adventure                                       DM Credits
For the adventure                                   1
If there are any fully detailed NPCs                1
If there are any fully detailed locations           1
If there are any fully detailed institutions*       1

*e.g. thieves’ guild, wizards’ school, government, culture


For the person judging the adventure:
Per adventure                                       DM Credits
For the adventure                                   1


For the character approval judges:
Per month                                           DM Credits
Each judge                                          1

Actually, I misread Manzanita's comment above - I didn't realize he was speaking about the character approval judges (a bit embarrassing, that ) but now that I've put it in, how about floating the idea of a reward for people judging games?

Rewarding the character judges is a bit more tricky, since it's very much a team effort, and different judges are available at different times (as RL makes its ever-present demands on our time and energy). Perhaps 1 DM credit per judge per month? (Credits per approval could just lead to a scramble - probably best avoided!)

BTW, I think the term "reward" is an important one - we are wanting to say "thank you" to people who put in a lot of time and effort, and who do it for love of the game. It's not a "wage" of any sort - more like an acknowledgment.

Edit: Oh, and of course I should acknowledge that I have a vested interest in the reward for character approval judges, since that includes me.

[LogicsFate]

Originally Posted by Rae ArdGaoth

El Jefe's Recomp thread was impossible to sort through. It seemed more like someone's notes on the world, rather than a repository of organized information. That being said, it's at least a place on the forum that anybody can post to, unlike the World Guide.

Yeah,
El Jefes thread was never meant to be an end all place for the information. If I remember correctly, El Jefe wanted to get all the thread done as current is possible then organise all the info somewhere(s) else.

[Rystil Arden]

I don't think we should reward Judges for doing Judge stuff. Their reward is their position of respect and power in the community. I think we should reward GMs who help out with summaries though, Judge or non-Judge alike.

[Rae ArdGaoth]

I agree with Rystil. I'm strongly opposed to Judges receiving anything like DM credits or Judge credits for doing their judgly duties. I'd feel like a congressman voting to increase my own pay. I judge because I love D&D and LEW, not because I want anything back. And I especially don't want the non-judges to feel underprivileged or whatever.

That being said, I think that offering a small incentive to all people equally, judges and non-judges alike, for helping with a massive task (such as summarizing adventures!), is a good way to get some administrative duties done without adding more people to the judges team and/or overburdening the judges.

The operative word being "small". I think that A) people are doing it already anyway, for free, and B) the primary means of improving your character (as Manz said) should be through adventuring.

To give an extreme case, let's look at ATfL on Rystil's misconceived 'Nock-scale. For giving up a Saturday afternoon, I get 60 DM credits. (For perspective, that's equivalent to 5 years of DMing an adventure.) So now I apply that to Razh, my L5 dwarf. 10 DM credits gives him 2500 XP ( [5*50]*10 = 2500 ), bringing him up to L6. Then I spend 17 more to get him 5100 XP ( [6*50]*17 = 5100 ), bringing him up to L7. Then I spend 20 more to get him 7000 XP, which jacks him up to L8. Then I spend my remaining 13 to give him 5200 more XP.

So suddenly, in one day, my L5 dwarf is now L8, and half way to L9. What?! I don't care how good my summary is, it took me 3 years to get him to L5, it should not take me one afternoon to get him to L8 and a half.

So I'm pretty strongly opposed to anything more than a few DM credits.

B4cchus raises an interesting suggestion, about rewarding based on summary length. I have three problems with this, though. A) Quantity does not equal quality. (But a judge will look at it, you say. See B.) B) A judge will have to look at it. I'd rather not have a judge position be "reviewer of summaries". And C) Even if a judge looks at it, this is still volunteer work, and it's very hard (and usually rude) to tell a volunteer, "Uh, thanks, but no thanks."

Hmm... So I guess, in summary, I prefer a small, simply determined amount of DM credits, based on either real-time duration or number of posts.

If everybody really likes 'Nock's table of values (which is very fair, I think, but a little complicated for my tastes) you can outvote me. Or persuade me and tell me that I'm being dumb. Either way. =D

[Boddynock]

Thanks for that feedback, Rae.

I'm not sure why you would use the example of 60 DM credits for a summary - that's so over the top that it's never going to happen anyway. As you can see from the last table I posted, the maximum reward for summarizing an adventure would be 4 credits. So if you want to garner your 60 points, you'd have to spend not one Saturday afternoon but fifteen to achieve it. (And if anyone is that desperate for bonus points, well, good luck to them! After all, any application of DM credits has to be run past the judges, doesn't it?)

Still, I agree with you that we don't want to hand out huge rewards. And note, I've used that term "rewards" again, rather than "pay".

I widened the scope of our discussion in response to Manzanita's comment about consistent rewards for the administrators. Personally I'm happy either way. Like all of you, I've put up my hand for the judge's position because I want to help out around here - not because I wanted an edge for my own characters. (That's not to say that I won't work hard in game to achieve that. )

Perhaps, though, it would be a good idea to drop discussion of judges' rewards for the time being. If anybody wants to pick it up again, we can do it in another thread.

I do agree with your responses to B4cchus' suggestion, Rae. The last thing we need is to make more work for the judges.

So, if we drop the idea of "paying" people for their hard work, and stick instead with an expression of grateful thanks, perhaps we can acknowledge that what we're offering isn't an adequate return for the time they've spent. Then we can stop worrying about whether or not it's fair to award equal credits to two people who have summarized two quite different adventures, and just say, "Thanks!"

And if you want simple, then simply give them a reward equal to a percentage of the DM's. (In that case, I would suggest we look at somewhere between 20-50%, with a minimum of 1.)

'Nock

[orsal]

Originally Posted by Rystil Arden

I don't think we should reward Judges for doing Judge stuff. Their reward is their position of respect and power in the community. I think we should reward GMs who help out with summaries though, Judge or non-Judge alike.

I agree. Since judges control DM credits, to have DM credits specifically allotted to judges qua judges smacks of oligarchic privilege.

[Trouvere]

Once you guys have sorted this out, perhaps you could work on the mechanics for my proposed monk-cleric PrC, the Wrestler with Death, which rebukes undead by grappling them.

Yes, Captain Sarcasm says "Just make it 2 DM credits per summary. It'll all even out in the end."

[Manzanita]

I actually would support giving the character judges DM credits, because I know how much work it can be. Of course, if they don't want them, that's the end of that. You 4 do have my thanks, though for a job well done.

I'm becoming more of a minimalist on this proposal. I suggest either assigning a single DM credit for the summary, or simply requiring it from the DM before he/she collects the DM credits for the adventure.

[Boddynock]

Do not require it of the DM before collecting DM credits! DMs already do enough work - to demand that they do extra before picking up the rewards we have previously given freely is very discouraging for them.

[Rae ArdGaoth]

I agree with that, Boddynock.

Regarding the DM credit equation, maybe we can please everybody with a simple, small formula, like this:

1 DM credit for a summary of events, 1 for all NPCs, and 1 for all locations/organizations.

Each credit is separately awarded, that is, 3 people can do a single thing and get a DM credit. So if one person does the summary for 1 credit, another person can come by and do the NPCs and everything else for 2 credits. Then we can leave it up to the Wikimonster to fix grammar and whatever.

It's small, max 3 credits, but it's something, and it allows people to be acknowledged for the extra work they did.

And also, we could always start low and raise it later if we deem it appropriate.

[Boddynock]

Summary rewards (may be to different individuals)            DM Credits
For summarizing the adventure                                1
For summarizing fully detailed NPCs                          1
For summarizing fully detailed locations & institutions      1

Just because I like tables.