Hat wrote:
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.
Quote:
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.