DM rewards for running Adventurer's League - what are your thoughts?

pogre said:

Dumb question - what if you only want to DM? What is the value of xp? I'm kind of interested in the AL, but have my hands full with my regular groups for now.

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There should be rewards other than XP, certainly, but allowing a DM's PC to reach levels so he or she can participate in the same adventures as his or her players should be possible.

That said, it's tricky to give rewards out that actually benefit DMs without costing the AL a lot of money. (It really doesn't have that much funding, we're playing for free!)

In my store, we have a small donation from players every session, the money gathered goes to buy the published adventures for the DMs. At $1 per player per session, it's a small amount that adds up to a proper "thank you" for all the hard work the DMs put in.

Cheers!

I would like to see experience, gold and certificates for magic items. I DM (quite a lot) but my passion is playing. I find that when I do get the opportunity to play, I can often dump DM reward experience and gold to get the proper level character for the adventure, but I have no magic items. I would really like to have some.

pogre said:

Dumb question - what if you only want to DM? What is the value of xp? I'm kind of interested in the AL, but have my hands full with my regular groups for now.

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It's not a dumb question at all! If you only want to DM, you are a truly wonderful person. I guess you'd accrue a pile of XP, which pales in comparison to the gratitude of your players.

IMO, and this is just me, AL is a lovely addition to home games and regular players. Me and my husband are in two home games and we love them and wouldn't give them up for the world. AL is something we go do sometimes and it's an excellent vehicle to meet new players locally and a reason to go to conventions and catch up with friends across the nation. It's sort of a way (for us at least) to *add* another option to our regular games.

Paige

This was also a conversation on the Wizards forums, and I'll say what I said there.

There are three types of DMs in AL that I've run across.

1. DMs who are in the stores to run games. This is their preferred seat at the table, and for them, rewards like XP and gold are usually less valuable. Yeah, they may play once in a while, but giving them something like a cert which gives them early access to a module might be nice.
2. DMs who run because they have to. These are the folks who seem to get stuck running most/all of the games since no one else will volunteer. (We have this at our store...while there's supposed to be a round robin DM going on...whenever it's certain people's turn, "work is crazy" and they just don't show). XP and gold is nice, but these are the DMs we really want to say THANK YOU to. "Neat stuff" would be more appreciated by many of these DMs...whether it's a cert allowing them to play a death cleric, or some other limited character option.
3. DMs who manage to get into a true round robin DM game group. The XP/Gold thing actually works best here, since theoretically, most everyone is advancing at the same pace.

So my thought was a cafeteria style reward system. You earn X points by running a game which is reported through a WPN store. Somehow "internet magic" happens, and you get to use these points to purchase rewards which might include:

• XP / Gold Bundles
• Completion of a Secret Mission
• Early Access to some Expedition Module
• A cert allowing you to use a specific "closed" character option on one PC
• Some minor magic item

And yes, I recognize that it's not a simple thing to enact, and could very well represent a lot of overhead for the AL coordinators. But the underlying thought to my idea was that most DMs would want a reward which they believe says thank you...and many people don't believe that 200 XP for running a table of 7 people really says that.

I would rather DM. I DM alot. So the standard rewards are not really for me.
Though the non standard ones that are there already are pretty big for me.
Early access to the story line and adventure via the encounters PDF and access to the mods. This, for me, is huge.
Access to certs to hand to players. It's the main reason I'm involved with a store for conventions. Having certs for players at a convention is awesome!

What other things do I want? In no specific order, and yes, some of them are selfish.

• More early access, in digital form would be fine, preferred even. Exclusive early access based on how many games I've run would be enticing.
• Content for players at my table that I've earned by running games.
• Content for DM's that run at events I organize.
• Digital access to maps for the events formatted for easy large, minis scale, printing. This would be amazing and save me a TON of time.
• Access to buy exclusive items, like special t-shirts and miniatures and printed content would be very cool.
• I'd love it if things like signed books could be sold to DMs and organizers.
• The ability to run a custom mods, given certain strictures, and only available to the best DMs, and maybe subject to approval?
• Discounts to conventions. I would go to many more regional ones or big ones if I could earn some sort of up front discount. And I'd do nothing but run games!
• A common place for DMs to discuss things and organize amongst themselves. There are a lot of local DMs that run encounters, but so do I, so going around on Wednesday nights to say hello is difficult.
• A spelled out way to earn special events and visits by the trading post and other WotC employee's and AL staff.

darjr said:

• More early access, in digital form would be fine, preferred even. Exclusive early access based on how many games I've run would be enticing.
• Content for players at my table that I've earned by running games.
• Content for DM's that run at events I organize.
• Digital access to maps for the events formatted for easy large, minis scale, printing. This would be amazing and save me a TON of time.
• Access to buy exclusive items, like special t-shirts and miniatures and printed content would be very cool.
• I'd love it if things like signed books could be sold to DMs and organizers.
• The ability to run a custom mods, given certain strictures, and only available to the best DMs, and maybe subject to approval?
• Discounts to conventions. I would go to many more regional ones or big ones if I could earn some sort of up front discount. And I'd do nothing but run games!
• A common place for DMs to discuss things and organize amongst themselves. There are a lot of local DMs that run encounters, but so do I, so going around on Wednesday nights to say hello is difficult.
• A spelled out way to earn special events and visits by the trading post and other WotC employee's and AL staff.

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Those are some great ideas for DM perks, darjr. Thank you for the brain-fodder. I'm absolutely no one official with D&DAL, but my husband and I do run conventions and game days, and we will try to put some of those ideas into practice.

Paige

The rewards seem too few - players don't want to cross the divide, even experienced DM's.

For me, they aren't the motivation. Sure, I've a 5th level PC. Big whoop. I've played him in two sessions. I've since stopped tracking my DMing experience. I prefer to DM, anyway.

To be honest, this has always been an issue with ANY Roleplaying experiencing. Horribly slanted Player to DM ratio. Im the local LC and basically the Encounters and Expeditions DM at my local store. Id like to play But Ive had nobody step up. Playas wanna Play. I record my DM Experience. Ive got a level 5 fighter, level 5 Necromancer, Level 4 Cleric/Rogue and my new formless level 2 guy.

Like Aramis above I dont really do it for the rewards (although yes they should be better: and esp targeted at those stores who dont get the Encounter kits), but I really do it so people in my area have a chance to game, so I get to dm (which I loved) and so I get to meet new players/ people.

darjr said:

I
Access to certs to hand to players. It's the main reason I'm involved with a store for conventions. Having certs for players at a convention is awesome!

• More early access, in digital form would be fine, preferred even. Exclusive early access based on how many games I've run would be enticing.
• Content for players at my table that I've earned by running games.
• Content for DM's that run at events I organize.
• Digital access to maps for the events formatted for easy large, minis scale, printing. This would be amazing and save me a TON of time.
• Access to buy exclusive items, like special t-shirts and miniatures and printed content would be very cool.
• I'd love it if things like signed books could be sold to DMs and organizers.
• The ability to run a custom mods, given certain strictures, and only available to the best DMs, and maybe subject to approval?
• Discounts to conventions. I would go to many more regional ones or big ones if I could earn some sort of up front discount. And I'd do nothing but run games!
• A common place for DMs to discuss things and organize amongst themselves. There are a lot of local DMs that run encounters, but so do I, so going around on Wednesday nights to say hello is difficult.
• A spelled out way to earn special events and visits by the trading post and other WotC employee's and AL staff.

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A lot of these are interesting (and some might be things we are already considering, but let me address a few of them.

Early access: This would assume that the files are ready much earlier than they likely are (as we edit and playtest pretty much until they are released, and in fact sometimes edit after the premier if things are noticed and we have time. This means that in order to do this, we would have to push premier and release dates back further, so I'm not sure that it is a likely choice.

Your own content: This has been talked about and we're starting by having special content for the Admins (with the thought that if it goes well, we might look at expanding to the RCs and then who knows). If we come up with a DM ranking system somehow, you might even someday see an adventure that only DMs who run a lot are allowed to run.

Maps: Most of the maps are hand drawn by our main editor (Travis). I'm not sure how easily it would be to format them for largescale printing.

Exclusive items for purchase: Under discussion

Signed Items: The AL doesn't have access to the book authors, but we do have the Expeditions/Epic authors? Would you still want it if it was those people?

Con discounts: The AL doesn't control cons, so there is no way for us to get you a discount other than paying for your badge out of non-existent budget. Fortunately most conventions give you free badges (and often even rooms) if you run events for their conventions, so that might be something you can get without our help.

Place to chat: So many social media options here

Special events for you: Actually this already exists. WOTC staff and AL Staff do travel to conventions and bring the trading post and some times special adventure previews as well. You just have to invite them (note that it also assumes your convention pays for their travel costs).

When talking about xp for DMing, what do people think is better? Some fraction of the adventure's max xp (less than half) but you get the xp every time you run an adventure? Or max xp, but you only ever get it once per adventure? The first (which is what we do) is meant to encourage DMing, especially at cons. The second might get players to DM a mod or two occasionally.

We have gone with the first (which we continue to tweak, lately adding gp) because we wanted to encourage people to DM more than once. I frequently run into problems with judges at local cons for PFS judges because they only get the judge xp the first they run an adventure, so they have no interest in more than one slot of the same adventure.