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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 7:42AM
#71
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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Which is weird, since four four games you get free GenCon tickets, for 7 or more a free stay at the hotel and above that for each slot you DM you gain a point and with two points you get a product like one box of Dungeon Command or Menzoberanzan book.
Makes perfect sense to me.
A Gencon badge costs $80 if you buy it at the door, and the two books you could get for judging four slots would cost $42. If you do the absolute bare minimum (zero preparation before sitting down at the table to run the module cold), four games will cost you ~20 hours of time, which means you're getting paid $6.10/hour.
If you judge seven slots, that's ~35 hours of your time (and means you're basically working for most of the con). A hotel room split three ways at the cheapest hotel for four nights will cost you $105.33; a badge will cost you $80, and the two books and a game you could get as rewards would cost you $68.
That means that you're basically working for $7.24/hour, slightly less than minimum wage, and that's even assuming that you're running the modules cold without spending any time in preparation.
Generally speaking, judge rewards like this are simply a sign of appreciation, the icing on the cake. The only people that these kind of rewards will induce to DM, in and of themselves, are broke college students or others who simply couldn't attend Gencon any other way. Worse, once you make it a straight economic issue like that, you're now incentivizing your DMs to spend as little time as possible, since any time you spend on preparation just makes the numbers even worse.
It's possible to use rewards as an inducement to DM, but they need to be non-economic rewards--in-game rewards they couldn't get otherwise, access to slot zeroes that they think will be more fun than playing at the con, that sort of thing. If the only reason to DM is to receive something they could just pay money for, then a rational potential DM is going to consider whether he'd be better off just spending the money.
Personally, I see DM rewards as down on the third level of ways to induce people to DM, and if that's your starting point, things probably won't be going well. (The fourth level, appealing to altruism, is an even worse sign, since you're now really going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. The first two are simply that the person believes they will have more fun DMing than playing, and that they enjoy the shared experience of being part of the group of convention DMs.)
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 8:56AM
#72
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2008
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LFR is dying, in my opinion, from a lack of support for DMs. Special awards at the big cons are fine, if you take even better care of your DMs at these cons. If players can bid on a special moons hard, DMs should earn it with one or even all of there characters.
That's part of the story.
It seems to me that LFR is struggling because of lack of players overall, and not just DMs. From my experience, it's not a big leap from playing a PC to DM-ing a game, especially with the LFR adventure format. If you get more players, some of them will surely be willing to run games for their friends.
That's why I advocate making it as simple as possible for new players to join the campaign. And I don't mean changing the rules (to allow higher-level starts, etc.) -- I mean organizing the campaign documentation so it's all in one place, and revising the documentation so that even a first-time D&D player can figure out on his own how to make a legal character.
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 9:56AM
#73
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Date Joined:
May 29, 2001
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That's why I advocate making it as simple as possible for new players to join the campaign.
That's been the stated goal of Organized Play for LFR for at least two years now.
Either the activities OP is taking aren't moving LFR toward that goal, or the goal isn't working.
--
Pauper
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 10:53AM
#74
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2008
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That's been the stated goal of Organized Play for LFR for at least two years now.
Either the activities OP is taking aren't moving LFR toward that goal, or the goal isn't working.
Considering that posts like this exist, we still have a ways to go.
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 11:57AM
#75
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That's been the stated goal of Organized Play for LFR for at least two years now.
Either the activities OP is taking aren't moving LFR toward that goal, or the goal isn't working.
I think a big chunk of the issue is that the other WotC OP programs (like Encounters) are being geared towards that goal, and are getting more of WotC's attention (and publicity).
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 12:09PM
#76
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Date Joined:
May 29, 2001
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That's been the stated goal of Organized Play for LFR for at least two years now.
Either the activities OP is taking aren't moving LFR toward that goal, or the goal isn't working.
I think a big chunk of the issue is that the other WotC OP programs (like Encounters) are being geared towards that goal, and are getting more of WotC's attention (and publicity).
That's an excellent point.
In our own area, Lair Assault is dead (I think we only ever ran one session of the first season) and Encounters is mainly seen as a gateway into LFR. I can only imagine our experience isn't typical, as it doesn't seem to sync up with the idea that people will start with Encounters, then transition into a home game and continue to be D&D consumers without necessarily ever coming into contact with LFR.
--
Pauper
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 12:15PM
#77
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Date Joined:
Jun 14, 2009
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That means that you're basically working for $7.24/hour, slightly less than minimum wage, and that's even assuming that you're running the modules cold without spending any time in preparation.
And to bgibbon's point, it's not just $7.24 an hour, it's $7.24 an hour during GenCon, which is some of the most valuable hours during any gamer's year. Everyone you might recruit to DM as a ton of other enticing ways of spending his time during GenCon.
Personally, I see DM rewards as down on the third level of ways to induce people to DM, and if that's your starting point, things probably won't be going well. (The fourth level, appealing to altruism, is an even worse sign, since you're now really going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. The first two are simply that the person believes they will have more fun DMing than playing, and that they enjoy the shared experience of being part of the group of convention DMs.)
I think this really hits the nail on the head. There needs to be a culture of LFR regarding higher levels of responsibility as more awesome, not more work. So people want to be DM's, they want to develop Maptool mods or run online games, they want to organize gamedays and small cons, they want to be authors or editors or whatever other volunteer staff the campaign needs, and that guys like Keith and Sean Molley are regarded as frigging rock stars, or at least thrown in the same view as a Chris Perkins.
For the record, I have no idea how to develop that culture. I just know that right now, most people want to show up at the game day/convention, play their awesome character, and go home, knowing that the next one will simply magically happen with no effort on their part.
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 12:37PM
#78
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Date Joined:
Aug 21, 2008
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..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />I think this really hits the nail on the head. There needs to be a culture of LFR regarding higher levels of responsibility as more awesome, not more work. So people want to be DM's, they want to develop Maptool mods or run online games, they want to organize gamedays and small cons, they want to be authors or editors or whatever other volunteer staff the campaign needs, and that guys like Keith and Sean Molley are regarded as frigging rock stars, or at least thrown in the same view as a Chris Perkins.
Dan Anderson for President.
I killed Aleena.
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 12:42PM
#79
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2008
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That means that you're basically working for $7.24/hour, slightly less than minimum wage, and that's even assuming that you're running the modules cold without spending any time in preparation.
And to bgibbon's point, it's not just $7.24 an hour, it's $7.24 an hour during GenCon, which is some of the most valuable hours during any gamer's year. Everyone you might recruit to DM as a ton of other enticing ways of spending his time during GenCon.
Bgibbons is being generous by not including travel costs for GenCon.
I'll just add my + to the rest of the last few posts. You're not going to buy good DMs and volunteers, there's not enough money in a free campaign to do it. So you have to go to the intangibles.
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9 months ago ::
Aug 31, 2012 - 12:55PM
#80
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Date Joined:
Mar 17, 2005
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I'll just add my + to the rest of the last few posts. You're not going to buy good DMs and volunteers, there's not enough money in a free campaign to do it. So you have to go to the intangibles.
I know we've this discussion before, but what do you think the intangibles that DMs should get are? I know there have been issues in the past with growing a large number of bad DMs due to offering these sorts of benefits (and by comparison with the campaign doing it now, I had some god aweful PFS judges at Gen Con and Origins that are making me strongly consider giving up on that campaign at conventions).
I guess my question is, given that the Baldman keeps track of comments for and against DMs, and by extension funnels judges into events their style can handle or refuses them entirely, do people thing that giving out special DM rewards would cause the same have/have not issues that we saw for LG players when some DMs may be told that they are not allowed to volunteer for whatever events give the special DM benefits?
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