Land of the Lost Judges (The Players' Manifesto)

[Son of Meepo]

A few people (myself included) have submitted adventures for approval without response from the judges. Proposals have gone unanswered, new adventures don't have assigned judges, and the approval queue hasn't been touched in months.

I'm going to assume, for one reason or another, that the judges have abandoned the game.

If this campaign is to survive, we need to do something.

Option 1 - Immediately appoint new judges.

I am willing to do it, but I'll need a few more volunteers.

Option 2 - Forget the Judges

This would mean:

1. No adventure approvals. You want to run something, go for it. Let's just make an agreement that we won't hand out an artifacts that stick around beyond the scope of an adventure and found items are limited to PC level +4.

2. No adventure judges. This means that there is no more senior authority in a game that the DM (though DMs can always seek opinions from the community). If a game is abandoned by the DM then the players would only earn rewards for completed encounters and time rewards up to the point the game was last active.

3. No character approvals. Mistakes would be handled as they are discovered. I've played other shared world campaigns that didn't have approvals. The game didn't blow up because someone discovered they've been doing something wrong, even if they've been doing it for a long time.

Option 3 - The old judges show up.

Anyone? Anyone?

 

[Rapida]

Of the three I think #3 would be the best, but otherwise I would tend toward #2.

 

[Voda Vosa]

I like option 2, but I'll be willing to contribute as a judge if needs be

 

[Son of Meepo]

Of the three I think #3 would be the best, but otherwise I would tend toward #2.

I agree, but that's not really in our control unless someone knows how to get in contact with them and find out what's going on.

 

[Neil1889]

If the judges can't be found, then unfortunately Option 3 - The old judges show up isn't going to work.

So I think maybe, Option 1 - Immediately appoint new judges could be workable, but with adventure approvals and maybe, maybe not adventure judges active (I'm undecided as I type).

Character approvals could fall by the wayside, but it is really useful. I would have likely participated in the character approvals if I was bothered about subscribing to the offical online builder, though I freely admit I do need and appreciate some cover myself to pick up on useful options I don't have or silly errors, but the DM's have spotted some of those for me before.

Letting DM's grant approval for characters in their games would help, whether they be judges or not.

(Thanks for the heads-up, Son of Meepo).

 

[Neurotic]

I would like to see some oversight over adventures so SOME judges should be around. Rules questions can be solved by asking community. But DMs abandoning players...it means at least one other person has to have adventure and adventure quest XP sheet. Players cannot be for obvious reasons

Anything else goes (obviously, no artifacts without senior reviewer/judge consent) - DMs within their adventures may go whatever they like as long as the players are informed on custom rules up front.

 

[Son of Meepo]

The last few adventures I saw that I was in that were abandoned, the judge had no idea what the xp values of the encounters were. I usually had to infer monster levels based on their game statistics and present an educated guess to the judge.

 

[MetaVoid]

I would actually prefer number 1, but the boards are slow since the crash and there may not be enough knowledgeable people with enough free time.

So, #2 seems as logical solution.



And if encounter XP levels aren't known to the judges, then adventure format for submission needs to change in that DM either creates encounters in advance or sends the encounters to thread judge as he makes them (if he ends the adventure, he can give XP, if not, judge has all XP of the encouters to the point of abandonment.

 

[Mewness]

I think that anyone who actually has submitted an adventure and not heard back should just go ahead and run it. L4W needs more stuff going on.

 

[Neurotic]

Same for LEB, only more so