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Jan 10, 2010 -- 6:50PM, kenobi65 wrote:

Generally speaking, I don't see any fees to play in games around here, outside of conventions.  Similiarly, I don't see DMs getting paid / bribed / whatever, except, again, for conventions (where they will often be given minis, Player Reward cards, etc.)  I don't generally see a big problem in finding DMs, either, especially not in LFR, where "eating" a module doesn't mean that you're forever barred from playing it.

I don't think the incentives in LFR work out the way you seem to think they do. At least from my perspective, the ability to replay mods means that I always am able to play whatever adventure is being offered in a particular venue (provided I have a character of the right level, which I usually have). There will be few if any situations where I will say, "Oh, I've already played that one, but I could DM it for you." Consequently, DMing always has to compete with playing--combine that with a gamer population that prefers playing to DMing and you have a recipe for a DM shortage.

As for DM incentives in my area, one game store offers $5 store credit IIRC per game DMed. Another game store doesn't offer anything tangible, but publicly thanks the DMs before every slot. In both cases, the organizers often have last minute requests for DMs.

Jan 10, 2010 -- 7:09PM, Elder_basilisk wrote:

I don't think the incentives in LFR work out the way you seem to think they do. At least from my perspective, the ability to replay mods means that I always am able to play whatever adventure is being offered in a particular venue (provided I have a character of the right level, which I usually have). There will be few if any situations where I will say, "Oh, I've already played that one, but I could DM it for you."

Right.  My past experience was that the largest source of new DMs were "judges of opportunity"--players who had already played the module being ran, so "Hey, you don't have anything else to do this slot, so why don't you DM a game?"

In LFR, that's likely to be met with, "Thanks, but I'm looking forward to playing it with my secondary/tertiary/quaternary character."  Thanks to the tiering rules, just about any serious LFR player is going to have a stable of characters, and odds are there's one they'd really like to get up a level.  Replayability gives DMing an opportunity cost.

The replay rules make it easy to grab your "old faithful" DMs to run a game, but that's just a short-term gain.  In the long run, those DMs still want to play, so you still need the same total number of tables and DMs, it just gives you flexibility as to when those tables need to be run.  The problem is that this increased flexibility means you can lean on the same group of DMs over and over again (and you will probably have to), right up until they burn out on you.

As far as DM availability goes, I think the replay rules are a net (and rather large) negative.

For the groups I play with, there really isn't any incentives to DM such as store credit etc. The main incentive for DMing is you get invited to play in convention slot zeros (and this can add up to a considerable amount of play) and usually a piece or two of swag from the prize support. Other than that, its just a taking your turn thing. 

As far as getting judges in general, LFR has invigorated our local judge population. We seem to have enough judges to easily staff 95% of our events via warhorn without senior gms hasseling people. It was harder to do this during LG I feel.

Thats just one area though (greater Los Angeles) but its not small, roughly 450-500 tables a year, and not a general representation of the entire LFR population.

I haven't been to Northern California for a bit, but it seems like the conventions up there (at least from viewing Warhorn) have a harder time staffing with DMs (the Game Castle conventions seem to be an exception).