zingbobco000
Explorer
Ah, I see, now I understand thank you.
DM rewards for running Adventurer's League - what are your thoughts?
Ah, I see, now I understand thank you.
RadioKen
Villager
Not better. Different. It is a different experience in ways that cannot simply be measured by numbers, hence qualitatively rather than quantitatively different. And there are times when I would most definitely rather have that experience than the responsibility of prepping an adventure and wrangling a full table of players for an evening.
And if everyone felt the same way you did, it would be player seats rather than DM seats I'd be having trouble finding butts to fill.
EDIT: And the original post is still up.
Last edited:
PCs are not getting 'compensated' for the player putting in time and effort to play the game. It is simply a game mechanic to indicate that a character gets smarter and better as he does more stuff. So to say the DM should get the same, makes no sense to me. There is no PC doing anything, so technically, there shouldn't be any 'rewards', because no PC is 'doing stuff'. Looking at this as 'compensation' for the DM for his time and effort is non-sensical.
Running a game is more difficult and demanding than playing in one. Providing an incentive to those willing to put in the effort to run things is a good practice. If a DM can be coaxed into stepping up to the plate for the promise of granting one of his characters some rewards without the risk then great. If the DM is getting the same reward as a player then it would be easier for a group of regulars or semi-regulars to rotate as DM without seeing their characters 'fall behind' and risk being excluded from play. The more DMs there are available, the more players are able to get a seat at a table rather than what's going on in the following link, where we have 9 on the active list (though one guy is an admin for organizing the meetup postings and isn't attending, or I haven't seen him attend yet) meaning there's 1 DM for 7 players and 5 on the wait getting shut out unless someone decides to run a second table.
http://www.meetup.com/DnDMontreal/events/227526472/
You may disagree with the practice and that's totally your prerogative. I have opinions of my own that are out of step with current practices like how non-lawful good Paladins shouldn't be a thing. However, despite one's disagreement there is sound reasoning behind it. This is an instance where reality trumps realism.
http://www.meetup.com/DnDMontreal/events/227526472/
You may disagree with the practice and that's totally your prerogative. I have opinions of my own that are out of step with current practices like how non-lawful good Paladins shouldn't be a thing. However, despite one's disagreement there is sound reasoning behind it. This is an instance where reality trumps realism.
skerritthegreen
Explorer
That's not really true. PFS rewards you with an equal amount as the players the first time you run and nothing after that. AL rewards you with a part of the rewards every time you run, thus increasing the total rewards you can get. That said, we have plans to greatly increase the DM rewards.
Two potential issues:
1) We're aware that the admin team has been discussing this for some time. In that sense, I'm not really sure what the point of asking the players is, at this point, as it seems that most of the actual decisions about how the program will change have likely already been made. I could see doing an 'idiot test' to make sure the game doesn't change in a way that players clearly don't want, but without actual details on how the program might change, it's hard to get a good reading on what players don't want; many times, people don't know what they want or don't want until they're told, after all.
2) My biggest problem with giving DM awards that are equivalent to player awards for a given module is that it seems to justify the idea that DMs don't actually need to play. The nice thing about DM awards being less than PC awards is that the DM can legitimately get someone to fill in as DM so that she can play from time-to-time. If that equalizes, the DM will have a character that's exactly the same level as the PCs she's running -- and might never actually get to play the character. I think upping the XP for DMs would have an unintended negative consequence of making it more difficult for DMs to get out from behind the screen, increasing DM burnout and causing an even greater shortage of Organized Play DMs than we're already seeing.
With that said, I don't really see a way to reward DMs in a way that doesn't either a) cost a fair amount of money or b) leads to the problem noted above. Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious that will be revealed when the actual revised DM award program is announced.
--
Pauper
1) We're aware that the admin team has been discussing this for some time. In that sense, I'm not really sure what the point of asking the players is, at this point, as it seems that most of the actual decisions about how the program will change have likely already been made. I could see doing an 'idiot test' to make sure the game doesn't change in a way that players clearly don't want, but without actual details on how the program might change, it's hard to get a good reading on what players don't want; many times, people don't know what they want or don't want until they're told, after all.
2) My biggest problem with giving DM awards that are equivalent to player awards for a given module is that it seems to justify the idea that DMs don't actually need to play. The nice thing about DM awards being less than PC awards is that the DM can legitimately get someone to fill in as DM so that she can play from time-to-time. If that equalizes, the DM will have a character that's exactly the same level as the PCs she's running -- and might never actually get to play the character. I think upping the XP for DMs would have an unintended negative consequence of making it more difficult for DMs to get out from behind the screen, increasing DM burnout and causing an even greater shortage of Organized Play DMs than we're already seeing.
With that said, I don't really see a way to reward DMs in a way that doesn't either a) cost a fair amount of money or b) leads to the problem noted above. Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious that will be revealed when the actual revised DM award program is announced.
--
Pauper
It's true that the DM will only be rewarded once for running a particular adventure in PFS. However, this results in the DM/group purchasing more adventures to run which benefits the publisher. In turn, the DM gains access to a wider pool of rewards to draw from for his/her character, including magic items. If I was part of Paizo I would simply respond to your observation by referencing General Mill's Total cereal ads that used to say something like "It takes (x) bowls of your cereal to match the nutrition in one bowl of Total." Point being, the rewards are substantially greater in PFS than AL. You would need to run an AL adventure several times to equal the gold and XP rewards compared to a PFS adventure, let alone the value of the magic items or other adventure rewards (PFS liberal attitude regarding magic items is a whole separate issue).
It's good to hear that DM rewards for AL are being increased. Coaxing more people to sit behind the DM screen is a good thing that enables more players to participate.
Alphastream
Adventurer
I had a fantastic Winter Fantasy. The two things I heard as I played at a variety of tables were 1) Big conventions should provide magic item certificates for all adventures and not just premieres, and 2) DM Rewards should be greater. I would say those topics came up at more than 1/3rd of my tables!
I used to be really against rewards for DMs... DMing is its own reward. Over time I increasingly favor DMs getting everything a player would get. I just haven't found the downside to it - those programs that have done so seem to not suffer any problems at all from it and seem to have motivated DMs.
I used to be really against rewards for DMs... DMing is its own reward. Over time I increasingly favor DMs getting everything a player would get. I just haven't found the downside to it - those programs that have done so seem to not suffer any problems at all from it and seem to have motivated DMs.
Similar Threads
