Revisiting Judges Rewards

Well thought out Paul. One frustration I have as a judge is running the same mods for different people over and over. I think I’ve run 1000 words some 10 times….

1. If you eat a mod, you get a full cert. I think this is fundamental and absolutely needed. Getting games started in new places shouldn’t be a burden on people starting things up, and their “thanks” for doing so, shouldn’t be to miss out on cool stuff the players at their table get. Con GMs rarely get to play the mods in advance. In those cases they aren’t just eating the mod, they are giving up time at the con which is often a vacation to run for others. Again, their thanks shouldn’t be to miss out.

There are occassional mods that have multiple item rewards that become more problematic in the case of eating a mod. If there are multiple rewards then I would recommend either making a separate ruling on a case by case basis or have a general rule such as: Pick any one available item. If there are 2 truly story appropriate items on the list, you may select 2. However, if you select 2, they may never be traded or sold.

Overall, I do get upset when I miss out on cool magical/story-important gear, but I’m not sure that if a player gets it the GM should too. My favourite GM certs so far have been the ones that do give SOMETHING of note, though (magical items, runes, etc). As such, I generally agree with this.

2. Allow GMs to cash in volunteer certs for other mods volunteer certs. This one may seem a bit odd, let me explain why I think this is needed and helpful. I know of one GM at Origins that ate and ran the soft point 5 times. Maybe it was only 4, but I’m pretty sure it was 5. For it he got 5 volunteer certs. I think he has 3 characters. Maybe he’s got a 4th. Most people play 1 or 2 characters. After enough copies of the cert to cover the character or characters you want to play, there’s very little incentive to run that mod again. GMs are the life’s blood of the campaign. Without them the game doesn’t happen at all.

I am not proposing that with this that all cert packets include all volunteer certs. That would be a logistical nightmare. Having a single 1 page document that lists the other mods XP, monetary and other volunteer rewards I think is completely doable. Worst case they reference an online list after the fact. On the cert they would write something like “Redeemed for X mod’s volunteer reward.” This allows a GM to fill in certs for an additional character and catch a new character up on volunteer certs to where other characters are. In terms of what qualifies for what, here are my thoughts in order of least complexity to greatest complexity.

1. Pick any mod’s volunteer cert
2. As #1 except a standard length mod only counts as 1/2 of a 2 round mod and a 2 round mod counts for 2 rewards
3. If running a hard point, pick any mod’s volunteer cert, if running a soft point, pick any soft point mod’s volunteer cert
4. As #3 except with the round caveats of #2
5. Pick any volunteer cert whose XP and Gold rewards are equal to or less than the volunteer cert of the mod you ran

Of the above, I would select #2. It is simple and rewards GMs for the time they invest.

If the above items are unworkable or ill advised, I’d like to understand why. I’m happy to entertain other options that encourage people to GM and to share that responsibility. I tried to limit the benefits to what a player can achieve / receive now.

If you want to really add an incentive to GM to the list, consider putting just the XP and Gold rewards for the past specials events on the list as options to take. Any specials from those events in terms of items, favors, etc. wouldn’t be included. That would be limited to the people who were physically present. A BI such as with Origins would require 2 rounds worth of volunteering for example. It would though allow folks who can’t travel to eventually catch up rank-wise to people who’ve been to everything. To do so though would require them volunteering their time and helping build the campaign for others.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Possibly start an economy where you can ‘cash in’ Volunteer certs for money on a 1 cert to 1 Gc basis? Basically, if I played HP9 at Origins 3 times, I get 1 Volunteer cert to level my primary, and 2 others. I can then have those voided to provide my character with 2 more Gc, which puts me halfway to a Fine Rune? You could even do an economy like “cash in 10 volunteer certs to get a Tier 1 magical item from a set list”. This gives an incentive to the person to GM, but doesn’t ‘break’ the economy.

2. Allow GMs to cash in volunteer certs for other mods volunteer certs.

Possibly start an economy where you can ‘cash in’ Volunteer certs for money on a 1 cert to 1 Gc basis? Basically, if I played HP9 at Origins 3 times, I get 1 Volunteer cert to level my primary, and 2 others. I can then have those voided to provide my character with 2 more Gc, which puts me halfway to a Fine Rune? You could even do an economy like “cash in 10 volunteer certs to get a Tier 1 magical item from a set list”. This gives an incentive to the person to GM, but doesn’t ‘break’ the economy.

The “coin” of the game if you will is XP. I really like the fact that the character matters far more than their gear. Players get XP for a character they’re using for their time invested. I think GMs should be compensated in the same way.

If my thanks for 15+ hours of my time is 3 Gc on a character, I’ll probably look for something else to do with my time.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I can hopefully offer some insight here since I am directly involved in organizing Pathfinder Society play and have seen the good and bad of several different systems.

I do think that a GM should get the same reward a player would get, this only makes sense. They are sacrificing their time and ability to be playing the game instead, so they shouldn’t get less of a reward for doing so. I understand that in some mods there are choices to be made, and sometimes a chronicle can have a negative aspect associated with it, and this is an important part of the campaign. But if you want to encourage more GMs to run games you need to incentivize this beyond getting a reduced chronicle with no special items in most cases.

Just to use a comparison, in Pathfinder Society the GM always gets full gold, full exp, full fame, and any of the boons or items located on their chronicle sheet, as long as the character the sheet is being applied to is eligible for that reward. On top of that, we reward our GMs for convention games they run by providing a boon (special cert) just for the GMs. This is usually a cert that can be applied to a new character to play a special race. And then, GMs earn credits for every reported table they have ran. After 10 tables they earn a star, at 30 tables they get a second star, and so on until you hit 150 tables, which is the fifth star. These stars are both a form of “bragging rights” and status among other GMs as well as a method to add additional rewards for those GMs who have went above and beyond to help the campaign.

Doing these things insures that you have GMs who are eager to sit at a table and run a game, because they know they aren’t hurting themselves by doing so. They will likely see a better reward than if they had played the scenario, and therefore you can bet you would have many more people willing to branch out and try the GM seat. You will also likely have more enthusiasm from people running games, which means more tables being ran and more chances to introduce new players to the system.

Just my thoughts and experience!

Hi all

One think I noticed that people we saying that is you GM a module you get a volunteer cert for each time you run it.

I thought you only got it once and that was if you had to eat the Mod.

Hi all

One think I noticed that people we saying that is you GM a module you get a volunteer cert for each time you run it.

I thought you only got it once and that was if you had to eat the Mod.

You are correct that you only get the Volunteer when you eat the mod, and the Replay everytime after that. I personally dislike this, and I guess this can be my continued campaign against something I deem unduly unfair and kind of crappy for people sacrificing their ability to play mods

In the original campaign judges got … nothing. They ate the mod unless they’d played it before. Sometimes that sucked. But it also worked. There were enough mods that you could count on more coming around the bend so taking turns eating one wasn’t a big deal. Plus there was the various xp caps that occasionally forced the tempory retirement of PCs till the story arc caught up with where they were. See Sean Smith and the old Cap’n Jack. This has been the traditional model in Living campaigns like Greyhawk, Living City, Living Death, Jungle, Force etc etc. And perhaps worth it’s mentioning that you couldn’t (legally) replay those mods either. Certainly not a perfect set up.

I strongly approve of the changes in Arcanis and other systems that result in judges getting “something.” (And less relevantly note that I grudgingly approve of allowing the replay of mods).

But I also believe that the real reward is the 4 hours with friends and the enjoyment of running/playing the mod.

I don’t particularly object to the ideas that judges should get the player rewards or have the ability to turn their “generic” GM rewards from one module (X) into another module (Y) if there is a blank line that can be filled in. But if we tinker with rewards, what is most important to me is that the end product is simple and elegant. There are already a number of things the campaign does slowly…maybe too slowly. I worry about putting anything new on their plate. So I think simplicity HAS to be key to any proposed changes.