Adventure Summary Incentives

I'm probably going to use GM credits to help my characters catch Lasair catch up with those of her old friends and peers to whom she has fallen behind (which is pretty much every other character that was created at the same time as she was except the ones whose players went missing). The trouble might be if SiS ends while the high-levels are all in one of my games for the Mega-Adventure....hmmm, maybe Patlin's tangential BBEG adventure would be open then, although based on adventure endings, it looks like Zaeryl might get out at a better time for that anyway.

Hmm... I think agree with Trouvere on the DM credits for summaries thing. I think we may have blown this way out of proportion. (Think of all the adventures we could have compiled instead of arguing over the formula to use to reward that very act!) My main goal with offering some kind of a reward was, as I said at the beginning, a tiny thank-you, not payment for services administered.

My real, true goal is actually to get summarizing adventures to be standard operating procedure. Giving it a reward, no matter how small, puts it in the official rules, and everybody will say "Hey, that's what you're supposed to do, so I'll do it." LEW will become so much more accessible, and more alive, if all this information floating around out there is put in one spot. The general consensus, though, was that we can't ask DM's to do any more than they already are without some kind of compensation.

Then we got sidetracked into making that compensation fair. ATfL keeps coming up as an example, but I imagine that ATfL is very unique and probably contains way more information than most other adventures. If Rystil doesn't feel like doing it, I'm sure somebody will. Maybe I will, just to get rid of an exception!

Anyway, what all this boils down to is this: I started this proposal with the intention of granting 1, maybe 2 DM credits for a summary, mostly just to get something put in the official rules about summarizing adventures. Then we started talking about fairness and proper recompense, and I lost sight of that initial goal.

So let me propose this simplest of formulas, and see what kind of reaction I get:

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I propose an addendum to The Guide to Living ENWorld rules. This will be added to the Dungeon Masters section, after this paragraph:

The Guide to Living ENWorld said:

After the adventure is completed, the DM will give final awards for experience and treasures, and resolve how the PCs leave the adventure if it is site based. If there is an option for a continued adventure, it is important to plan for some players to be able to leave and for new members to join a group, because this is the nature of the forum.

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Proposed Addendum:

After the final rewards have been distributed and the PCs have left the adventure, a summary of the adventure should be written and posted to the adventure thread, to allow other DMs and players access to the information. The summary should include:

• The events that occurred.
• The people, places, and organizations introduced during the adventure.
• Any new information about existing people, places, or organizations.
• Unresolved issues or loose threads left at the end of the adventure.
• (Optional) A flavorful retelling of the adventure, in the words of Volidar the Bard.

The summary should be posted to the adventure thread and put on the Wiki in the Recent History section. The retelling by Volidar (if it is written) should be posted in Volidar's thread.

The DM who ran the adventure has one month after it ends to write the summary. After one month, anybody may write the summary. The person who writes the summary will receive 1 DM credit for doing so.

Alternatively, we could just add the summary thing to the rules without any rewards attached and hope people just do it. People are doing it already (El Jefe, Logicsfate, Manzanita, me), and I'm thinking maybe people (DMs included) just don't realize that there's a desire for this information.

Having just started to DM in LEW, I have greatly appreciated the Wiki, so I'm very keen to encourage more summary information as a resource in developing adventures.

I am, however, strongly opposed to loading yet more work onto our DMs, which could become the de facto standard if we adopt Rae's alternative suggestion.

I still think that a single DM credit is too little - but I definitely agree that we have spent way too much time on this issue.

I therefore vote Yes to the proposal as given.

I vote No to the suggestion that we just add it to the summary rules without reward and hope that people will go ahead and do it.

I agree with the simplicication of the reward down to 1 DM credit.
I still feel that there should be something extra for those very big adventures by awarding 2 DM credits if the adventure passes a certain threshold (be that measured in number of posts or total runnign time). So i'll ask one last time (because i agree this discussion has been runnign out of hand):
should be add a reward for bigger adventures of an extra DM credit?

Rae said:

ATfL keeps coming up as an example, but I imagine that ATfL is very unique and probably contains way more information than most other adventures. If Rystil doesn't feel like doing it, I'm sure somebody will. Maybe I will, just to get rid of an exception!

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Unfortunately, a good portion (not a lot, but a good portion, maybe 10%) of the information that Vanitri thinks is true based on the adventure is not, plus a lot of important information (maybe 50% of it, actually) was not directly posted and is just in my head, so if someone were to summarise it just from reading without being me, it would be a summary plagued with errors and missing a lot of cool info. That said, as a TA, I only have a limited on ENWorld each day. I've been using that time to make sure my LEW games move at a healthy pace. If I sacrificed all of that time to write summaries, putting all my games on hold for about a week, I could probably do ATfL, but I'd really rather not do that! And when the games end, I don't want to delay the Mega Adventure (and all the many many people who want to play in it) for an additional week to write the summary...but during the Mega Adventure, I'll have even more work to do on LEW and even less time.

If I lose significant sleep over this (literally, not the expression) and extend my daily time on ENWorld stuff because of it, I might be able to get up a summary somehow while still maintaining all my games, but I'd have to be tempted by the GM credits award to do that because it is inconvenient and even physically unhealthy, and speaking as someone who performs introspection, I know what it takes to motivate me (frex, I've noticed that I'm motivated to try to get 100% in my classes in which I'm a Listener, so all the credit doesn't count at all). Realistically, if I don't have a shiny goal to strive for, even if I honestly wanted to do it and said right now that I was going to try, I just wouldn't finish.

That said, if someone were to put up a satisfactory rudimentary sketch of the adventure (a satisfactory rudimentary sketch would basically be an utterly thorough description of the adventure as posted here, including all fluff on characters (this includes all names mentioned in the adventure), books, historical events, culture, places, etc), I might have enough to work with to get it done in a more reasonable timeframe (editing the 10% that is wrong and adding some of the 50% that is missing)

B4cchus said:

should be add a reward for bigger adventures of an extra DM credit?

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I say no. No matter how we determine whether to give the larger reward the longer summaries, it won't really be fair. I can imagine a few scenarios:

2000 posts warrants an extra credit.
-But I did one of this 1999 post adventure and it's way bigger than that summary which got 2 credits!
Okay, a 2000-word summary warrants the extra credit.
-Okay. Medibaria is very, very, very, very.... [etc...] old.
Okay, 2000 words which comprise a good summary warrants the extra credit.
-How's this summary, Judge? I think it's pretty good, good enough to warrant that extra credit, eh? Nudge, nudge.
... Alright, fine, thank you, here's your extra credit.

And in the end, that extra credit isn't even worth that much. If we're worried about big long adventures involving too much work, I think we can depend on the more dedicated members of the community to take one for the team and just doing it, reward or no. I put that wiki together because the old one was unusable and I wanted to know everything I could know about the Silverwood (which isn't that much, =P ), not because I wanted DM credits. Somebody will summarize ATfL, someday, I'm sure of it. And then, hopefully, Rystil Arden will still remember all that crap in his head, and we'll have a detailed history of Medibaria for all DMs to use.

So no, I think it should be a flat, 1 DM Credit.

Rae ArdGaoth said:

...
Proposed Addendum:

After the final rewards have been distributed and the PCs have left the adventure, a summary of the adventure should be written and posted to the adventure thread, to allow other DMs and players access to the information. The summary should include:

• The events that occurred.
• The people, places, and organizations introduced during the adventure.
• Any new information about existing people, places, or organizations.
• Unresolved issues or loose threads left at the end of the adventure.
• (Optional) A flavorful retelling of the adventure, in the words of Volidar the Bard.

The summary should be posted to the adventure thread and put on the Wiki in the Recent History section. The retelling by Volidar (if it is written) should be posted in Volidar's thread.

The DM who ran the adventure has one month after it ends to write the summary. After one month, anybody may write the summary. The person who writes the summary will receive 1 DM credit for doing so.

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YES! Perfect. I love it. Thank you, Rae!

Rae ArdGaoth said:

.

I propose an addendum to The Guide to Living ENWorld rules. This will be added to the Dungeon Masters section, after this paragraph:



Proposed Addendum:

After the final rewards have been distributed and the PCs have left the adventure, a summary of the adventure should be written and posted to the adventure thread, to allow other DMs and players access to the information. The summary should include:

• The events that occurred.
• The people, places, and organizations introduced during the adventure.
• Any new information about existing people, places, or organizations.
• Unresolved issues or loose threads left at the end of the adventure.
• (Optional) A flavorful retelling of the adventure, in the words of Volidar the Bard.

The summary should be posted to the adventure thread and put on the Wiki in the Recent History section. The retelling by Volidar (if it is written) should be posted in Volidar's thread.

The DM who ran the adventure has one month after it ends to write the summary. After one month, anybody may write the summary. The person who writes the summary will receive 1 DM credit for doing so.

Click to expand...

I vote a YES to this porposal.
As a side remark, I do suggest that exceptions should remain possible (like for those very, very big adventures).

Well, that's three yes, no no, and it's been 48 hours. (or is it 24...?) In any case, that's that! I'll add this posthaste.

Regarding extra points... sure, I think it's certainly up in the air. We can cross that bridge when somebody decides to summarize ATfL.