Adventure Summary Incentives

[LogicsFate]

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]

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]

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

Just because I like tables.