I am sorry but I should point out a flaw with your logic, mith. You state that con goers are being unfairly penalized compared to non-con players. However, you are coming out of an adventure 100 XP ahead of the non-Con players, have a benefit (however underwhelming it may be for your character), and had an experience non-Conplayers didn't have. You received no less XP than non-Con players did (presumably) for the other mods which were included at the Con. Overall, Isee no way that you are being singled out among the community as a Con Player, but simply unhappy that you received less than you believe you are due. I am sorry, but while I can appreciate your position, I cannot fully share it as it seems to me that you are massively LESS penalized than I for being too poor to attend the con.

Please do not let this become a haves and have-nots discussion insofar as con attendance is concerned. Just a nudge - Eric

I understand completely that there were bad lines of communication and that people are surprised and upset (at least in some cases) that the "rewards" from this BI are not in line with rewards from past BIs ... or the rewards from other special events such as Arcaniscon and last years Delve. I agree the campaign would be better off to have a standardized plan for these "special events," effectively communicate it, and then stick to it. We could all then make intelligent decision about what events we want to play at big Cons (I am also a HUGE fan of NSDMG and CoC) and there would be no unwelcome surprises.

I also complete get why the campaign staff wants to minimize any power gap between people who can regularly fly out to big cons and people who can't or don't. There was a fairly poisonous debate on this topic in the last campaign between between regular joes and people accused of being "paradigms pets." There were accusations, with some truth, that the people who could go to the Big Cons got cooler stuff, more xp and were dominant at "mixed tables." I would prefer not to repeat that mistake again. I agree in principle that the campaign should be aware that at least some people who don't make it to the big cons can feel like second class citizens who are missing out. The campaign doesn't want that and should take reasonable steps to address the issue. Finally I also want to acknowledge the hours the campaign staff puts in, and express sympathy to them because its clear to me after reading these posts that they're going to get an unpleasant earful no matter what they say or do on this topic.

I don't get what some people are saying. Your PC got slapped around? You favorite approach to combat (tactics or mechanics) only worked in some of the many scenarios? At times it was frustrating or scary for your PC? It was a BI. I don't have much sympathy for any of these comments or complaints. (I do have some sympathy for someone who says their PC got dropped unheroically by minions in a warm up fight).

I also don't see what any of the above has to do with rewards at the end of the experience. The real reward was the experience. Saying the value of the experience is based on the numbers on your cert is a disservice to the men and women who judged the BI and the writers and map makers who organized it all.

I don't remember anything about the rewards I got for for the Battles of Enpyben or Solonos Mor...two of my all time favorite Arcanis experiences. (Since I judged Enpyben I may not have gotten anything for it back then). Thing I do remember: At Enpyben I remember Hat and Matt Riecks (among others) struggling to carry out the loyalist agenda, while uncomfortable with their General (Dorjan val'Mehan) and "grumpy" about being given some no-win mission assignments. And Il'Huan. Lots and lots of Il'Huan. I also remember playing with Steven Johnson and the two Marys at Solonos Mor and how Steven smirked at one point when we realized one encounter was fighting nothing but Nierites, and he whispered to me, "Nierites. Guilt-free-killing." And we laughed at a light moment before we got scared again about our PCs maybe dying.

I don't want to condone cheating. But if +/- 400xp is the make or break thing to makes you feel good...then quietly make a clerical error in calculating your total xp for that character and just don't tell me. I'm certainly not going to audit people as a judge unless someone tries to tell me something ridiculous...like here in the summer of 2014 you're already Tier 3.

I'm a little surprised too. It's the internet though and a bad medium for accurately reading emotions. The discontent is real. But I'd take the vehemence with a grain of salt, people may have been posting "in the moment."



Yay for 1st time BI players!!! We need more - so if you had a great time spread the news. As for the rewards, the campaign is a little schizophrenic at the moment on the topic. One way or the other I hope the scale of rewards are "harmonized" so the campaign has a coherent policy and people know what to expect.



That's probably the praise the campaign staff most likes to hear.

Although I am sure there are many others who do as well, I need to say thank you, Eric, for "getting it" and saying so.

Well said.

Thanks to Eric Gorman for giving me some perspective. I admit to being a "whiny git" when first hearing about the xp award for this BI. But in the long run IT is the actual experience of the BI that I remember. I played in the first BI (Battle of Semar) and then judged every BI after that. In the new campaign I have elected to play until I feel comfortable enough with the system to judge. I can barely remember what certs I got out these, but boy do I remember what it was like. The battles of Solanos Mor and Enpebyn went a long way to shaping the arc of my main character. I remember the fun of running a APL 2 (yes they were level 1) table of brand new characters at the Battle of Seremas at GenCon. We had a Mourner and an Illirite priest at that table and with good roleplaying and a lot of healing the Mourner decided to join the LLT after the BI. I understand and appreciate the desire for reward but in the end if we had fun that's all that really mattered. And I DID have fun at my table this year. Eric was an excellent judge and we had the "Armand" experience to lighten the mood.

Not sure why you are interpreting it this way? Unless it's for RP reasons, then there's nothing I can do to help you there. There's nothing written in the cert as it stands to exempt non-PoM folks (be they Elorii, Kio, or otherwise). Also, I'm not familiar with the other magic items you mentioned (outside of many of the Vault Items) that are restricted to the PoM.

John

You guys were a great table! I had a good time judging. The Armand experience is just one part of the Peter Parker experience. Sir Jaeger did a delve and a LARP with Arbelos in the last campaign and I watched Pete's character dynamite himself in the Scourging of Cornwall LD battle interactive. I knew what was coming!

The characters ranged from 1.5 to 2.7 which presented challenges to put appropriate challenges in front of the right characters. But you guys rolled well with everything including cut ropes, giants knocking people off bridges and being "elected" to go on the special mission to jail break everyone (which was essentially a 10-11 person table with all sorts of craziness ... including a VO). Next time you bump into James Zweirs thank him too for double teamng with me to run that small slice of insanity.

As one of the people behind the decision (in-as-much that I made suggestions and attempted to pass-along the benefit of past-experience as campaign director), let me explain my thoughts behind my suggestion to limit XP/material rewards.

1. XP. The previous iteration of the campaign (the d20 one, for clarity) suffered some significant problems in the latter years that were side-stepped by the judicious application of GM-fiat hand-waving. Specifically, the ~5 level gap between players who could attend the big shows, and those who could not.

There are two solutions to this: make every event available everywhere OR limit the rewards from playing unique events.

We have tried the former now for a few years, and it has not brought about the type of results we (PCI) are happy with.

2. Material rewards. Honestly, it is my view that this battle, more so than most others we have ever done, needed to have limited material rewards. No side got away from this even remotely unscathed. For those who didn't hear, the battle was effectively a stalemate and the final 'victory' was not won by a sizable margin. Yes, there may be tons of spare weapons etc lying around, but few armies can afford to equip their stock soldiers in anything except normal quality gear.

In short, while some BIs / events are likely to give significant materials rewards, they do need to reflect the reality of the result of the event.

3. Time played / money spent.

I definitely commiserate with people on these points. I personally understand the investment that people make in attending Origins. However, when it comes to single-run events, it is also my view that simply being there (assuming it meets the 'fun' test) is some level of reward.


As stated previously, I, and PCI as a whole, do intend to learn from the lessons that were made obvious to us this year. In general, if you ever feel that you are not having a good time (ie, something has failed the 'fun' test), do feel free to let someone on the campaign staff, or any PCI member, know (whether by email, forum PM or even just walking up to one of us at a convention and telling us). Without hearing back, we cannot change.


Some have tried to compare with the delve from last year's Origins. That is another of those mistakes (perhaps?); my intent when I wrote/ran it was that it would eventually get released for home play. Rewards were designed to be in-line with that.

I understand the reasoning for keeping xp low for con-exclusive events and I support it.

The only two things I'm unclear on:

1. Why did the Vault of Larissa give out good xp and good (depending on how you look at the mostly cursed items) rewards? That was only a few months ago. It seems like the xp policy change would have made far more sense to implement then (or to make retroactive). As I said, I don't mind the xp reduction but I do mind that it was not in effect for ArcaniCon (which I was unable to attend at the last minute) but was in effect for Origins when the cons were so close together.
2. Why wouldn't the Khan give out better rewards for the BI? The victory was narrow but the story was that without us "irregulars", the battle surely would have been lost. Given that, I would expect a kingdom to give a generous reward (honestly, 2Gc doesn't seem like much at this point looking at how much I need to buy anything useful). This may be just me not understanding something in the story (I've only played a little under half of the arc 2 mods) but it seems odd. If we had actually lost the BI, I would expect minimal material rewards.