Adventure Summary Incentives

[Manzanita]

Personally, I think this award set up is excessive, and somewhat arbitrary. As RA and Wik point out, some summaries are going to be better, and/or more extensive than others. I don't think we should put the judges in a position of having to make a decision how many credits to award. I think it will end up being a bit of a freebie for DMs to get more credits.

Often it's not even appropriate to post complete NPC stats. Sometimes they're hostile, and it's better that the PCs don't know the breakdown of their stats. Other times, it's nice to describe them only generally, so future DMs can make them their own. Either way, NPCs can advance levels, change equipment, etc, between appearences, so I don't know that it's really worth fleshing them all the way out unless they were for the adventure itself. A simple class/level/physical description is often sufficient.

I think most of us enjoy describing the geography and NPCs we create. And I think a proper summary of an adventure should include both of those. I think it's a good idea to encourage DMs/players to do this by giving a DM credit award.

I think it should be a 1 DM credit reward to writing it up. Keep it simple for the judge. I think I'd vote no to the proposal as it stands.

 

[Rae ArdGaoth]

Are we ready to vote, then?

I guess not!

4 DM credits is more than I was originally thinking, it's true. And it's a little complicated. But I felt like the general consensus was that we weren't giving enough credits. 4 would be my absolute maximum, I'd prefer 2 or 1. As for the complexity... well, the easiest would be to give a flat rate, obviously. But as RA points out, that's not very fair. The problem is, it's tough to be fair when the reward units are so tiny. I think that with 'Nock's last proposal, pretty much anybody who writes a summary will get all 4 credits, so actually, when you think about it like that, it's basically a flat 4 credits per adventure. Hmm...

Maybe we were closer to the target when we were rewarding by post. A simple 1 DM credit per 500 posts. That's much simpler, and possibly even more fair than 'Nock's last method. Adventures with more posts generally mean more world information, and the exceptions... well, we can't catch every exception.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Often it's not even appropriate to post complete NPC stats. Sometimes they're hostile, and it's better that the PCs don't know the breakdown of their stats. Other times, it's nice to describe them only generally, so future DMs can make them their own. Either way, NPCs can advance levels, change equipment, etc, between appearences, so I don't know that it's really worth fleshing them all the way out unless they were for the adventure itself. A simple class/level/physical description is often sufficient.

Zounds! Do you think that's what they actually meant by 'Fully detailed NPC'? I figured that since they used the same qualifier for locations, it must mean that the NPC has a lot of fluff detail. I certainly don't want to quantify in a full rules block almost any of the NPCs I use, particularly the ones who don't take action and are supposed to be mysterious (Umbryn Albion, frex). And if I quantified Elektra (one of the few that is basically fully open in ATfL) correctly, she would not be available to Vanitri as a cohort, since we're going to have to handwave her down in stats.

 

[Ashardalon]

Zounds! Do you think that's what they actually meant by 'Fully detailed NPC'?

I suspect (and hope) that is not what was meant, for exactly the reasons you and Manzanita provided. Plus, a player in the adventure or a 3rd-party summarizer simply won't have access to the stats. Rather, it should be the "fluff" that was mentioned in the adventure, and if the DM is writing the summary, he might add a little bit extra that he knows.

 

[Boddynock]

Bored now!

1 credit per 500 posts. 1 credit for posting summary to Wiki.

I vote yes!

 

[Rae ArdGaoth]

Okay, so we have 2 versions now. The complicated, essentially flat 4 credit version, and the simple, scaled by post count, plus wiki post version. I think the former is really... not an option. I'm officially proposing these two options:

Option A: 1 Yes, 0 No
Make a summary and post it in the thread. 1 DM credit per 500 posts. 1 additional DM Credit for posting to the wiki.

Option B: 0 Yes, 0 No
Make a summary and post it in the thread and on the wiki. 1 DM credit per 500 posts.

 

[Knight Otu]

I'm wondering - considering the catastrophic crash, how is that affecting the per-post measure? Multi-thread adventures seem pretty much obvious, of course, but some adventures went through both the crash and multi-thread posting.

 

[Boddynock]

The problem with Option B is that, although we acknowledge that we're not trying to recompense people for the work they do, making it a combined reward means that we're saying, "We want you to do some extra work. Oh, and before we say thank you for doing that extra work, we expect you to do some more."

I'll stick with Option A.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I'm wondering - considering the catastrophic crash, how is that affecting the per-post measure? Multi-thread adventures seem pretty much obvious, of course, but some adventures went through both the crash and multi-thread posting.

Oh wow, that's true! I think of the currently active adventures, that would only affect IA and ATfL. If the GM (me in this case) plans on summarising what happened in the lost posts, it's only fair if we do the math to basically give credit for them (calculate the average posts per month, and award those over the missing months).

 

[Wik]

I like option A, although, as it's been said, I think there should be something of a "cap" on it. Maybe "per 500 posts, but with a limit of 4" or something like that. But I like the idea of posting it all on the wiki being mandatory for the points, since the reason we have the points being awarded is to allow GMs to access the information - and if the info isn't put in a central place, it just makes things harder for every other GM.