Judge Incentives

suggestions like they should all get to play Valinor or elder elorii will likely end up dismissed as unfeasible.
Likely? As in, it might happen?

To clarify, are we talking about convention judge incentives here, or judging in general? I was under the impression that there was already some sort of a reward system in place for judges; in addition to receiving player rewards, I had thought that if a judge sends in proof of GMing 10 games they received some sort of a mystery reward. I was actually thinking about sending in my certificates soon to see what that reward was…if it still exists?

Judging for conventions is another matter entirely, especially considering that your judges are paying money to be there. I do think the rewards should be significant for anyone willing to judge multiple slots at a con. I know that in years past people have received hard copy books as rewards, but it is likely that most of the regular judges already have the books. I would think that you could have some sort of a reward scheme that can be applied to a character of that judge, possibly something like the following:

Judge 2 slots: Free fine quality rune applied to one weapon or armour OR +1 fame with a faction of your choice
Judge 4 slots: Receive a CP with bonus gold/xp (in addition to what was gained from running the individual adventures)
Judge 6 slots: Pick one item from the FiM (from a pre-approved list)
Judge 8 slots: Play as a Valinor or Elder Elorii (maybe? No? okay.)

To clarify, are we talking about convention judge incentives here, or judging in general?

Both. At the core, I want to bring more judges in and give our current ones a little bit of a break to actually play. At the same time, one of the biggest impediments to growing the Arcanis community seems to be an unwillingness for people to step up and GM. I know groups that would play Arcanis, if someone were willing to run it… but no one is.

I’ve never heard of this judge 10 slots and send in proof before.

I’d never heard of it until recently. I assumed it was a new thing as the only place I’ve seen it is on 1-2 of the very latest judge certs.
I thought someone from PCI (Henry maybe?) posted a thread on the forums about this last year some time. It was pretty vague, basically just telling people that if you were GMing a module to put your player’s names on the cert, and once you had ten then you could send them to a member of PCI for an unnamed reward.

I just did a search through the forum threads and couldn’t find it…hopefully I’m not going crazy here.

I do not believe convention judges should get something completely unbalanced to the mods that they are judging, because then it throws off the power curve of the campaign (more than it is). That said, if there are items in the mod which there is a reasonable chance of the GM picking up if they were playing, they should get that item (or a reasonable percentage of its market price).

Another option, which I know has been done, is offer ‘special tables’ where the GM’s get to make decisions such as the BI judges for the 6th year deciding who is the new Emperor, Matriarch, etc. Give them an XP reward, a favour, or something fairly low-level but unique, and I think that is also a good thing.

Since I already judge a lot at Cons I’m not sure how much this applies to me. Unless Tony has plans to retire me and other workhorses? For the time being, to be safe, maybe I’m not joining him on tours to a glue factory.

The first Arcanis BI I judged was way back at Enpyben where I met Hat among others for the first time … and did bad bad things to his character (and the rest of his loyalist table.) Though I guess he still talks to me at cons so it must not have been that bad.

I continue to judge a lot of (though certainly not all) special events. Mostly this is because I’ve never had a bad experience judging a special event. The players always appreciate that you took the time to run everything. I go home with a sense of satisfaction for doing “something” well that was a little more demanding than usual. And as a judge I often go home with a deeper understanding of the event than i would have as a player. All pluses right there.

I don’t entirely recall but I don’t think the judges got anything for doing Enpyben…except that I think we probably got the same rewards as other recorded on a log sheet. That was fine with me. Sort of like a val in the campaign, I don’t think you’re *supposed* to lobby for big rewards up front…though like any greedy adventure I also appreciate swag and character bling from the organizers when I get it. But I’d like to think I’m primarily motivated to serve the campaign. I wouldn’t stop judging if swag or bling dried up.

…snip…although suggestions like they should all get to play Valinor or elder elorii will likely end up dismissed as unfeasible.

Wait was this even halfway on the table? I take it all back! And you think too small! The reward I want is … to play Kassegore…

For normal modules I think that GMs should get full rewards for the module if they are eating it. There should never be a punishment for eating a module.

For special events judging, that becomes even more critical. I have never judged Arcanis, and I figure I am right in the target audience for these changes, as I was a frequent convention judge back in 3.5, but have yet to judge even once since starting the new system. I feel that it is my duty my judge and give back to the great GMs and campaign that I’ve already gotten so much from. I’m certainly not ready to judge at a convention yet since I haven’t even judged at home yet, but I suspect that since I will be making it to Origins, that I might be judging those modules back home for people who can’t make it whenever those modules do come out for homeplay.

So when I am ready, will I judge conventions? Its a hard question. I feel like I should, but the think I absolutely love the most in a campaign is when you get to do the crazy things the modules did expect or allow for – and the only place you can do that is the campaign administered events. Want to try to eat a Malfean soul? Probably not going to happen in a home mod, but if I can get my character up to tier where it is reasonable he might know how to, and play a special where we encounter a malfean I can get off alone, I expect to try! So I hate to think I’m losing all that chaos making goodness by judging (even though it gives so many others the change to make chaos).

So, not only do I think that judges should get full rewards for modules they eat (including specials), it seems to me that after a campaign staff run event they should either get a special table, or they should be able to report in (if they want), “I would have done this” and have the campaign staff react to it appropriately. Obviously this has its limits, since they can’t have done anything that would have retconnned the entire event, but it still seems like they should have the opportunity to dig their characters into deeper trouble if they want…