Journal Rewards


Advice


My new campaign is kicking off tomorrow morning, YAY! Now I like to document my campaigns by keeping a journal log of some kind. Lately, I've been writing these, but I'm just burnt on it so I'm going to turn it over to the players.

Last time I did this I allowed everyone to write an entry, and I picked the winner. One guy from that game is playing though, and he nearly always won (he is a great writer) so decided I'll just randomly pick people, and if they don't want it go down the list until everyone gets a chance.

For doing the write up I wanted to grant a small boon. Here's what I have so far:
You will randomly (equal chance of all) gain one of the following boons for your journal write up:
1) +1 HP
2) +1 SP
3) 100 XP/character level
4) A hero point

I'm not actually using hero points, so this would be the only way to earn them. I am rather unfamiliar with them (used them as a player once in a game that lasted 3 sessions).

What do you think? Have any good ideas on choices? Do you think any of those are OP?


My personal take, if they're writing journal logs that you can just publish, grant all of them the reward for taking the time & effort outside the game to help. Adding the random element risks making them feel it wasn't worth the effort (at best), or that you're playing favorites (at worst, assuming the random selection keeps coming up with the same person).

Personally, if it's the only way to gain hero points, just don't use hero points. My advice, use hero points as written, it's an easy system with a lot of benefits to it.

As to the reward, either rotate (not random) through the rewards, if you're concerned about balance. Or, just let them pick (I'm willing to bet they'll choose the XP near every time).

The big reason to avoid random (as much as I love random) is that some people will get disheartened if they keep getting skill points and stop caring.

As to "OP", assuming they don't end up all accruing to the same person somehow (easy to avoid, grant the bonus to everyone who contributes), they're all reasonable. Except, that 100 XP/Level is straight up better than any of the other three.

It's still a reasonable reward, given the level of effort they're putting into it. It's just better than the rest by a wide margin.


For my current campaign, to add an incentive for out of game writing and contribution, I offered Retraining (as per UC) 'credits' for journal entries/out of game contributions.

Basically, writing something and posting it for the group gets you the time/gold cost of one minor retraining item (feat/hp/skillpoint/spell) waived (max of one per session to keep it from being too fast).

It lets people adjust their characters, or barring that improve their HP and such within a laid out framework, which seems to work out ok and has gotten me a bit more interaction than I might otherwise get from my group.


I'm interested in that. How do the credits work? Do they decrease the gold/time component of retraining? I was allowing retraining so that may be a good idea.


Under A Bleeding Sun wrote:
I'm interested in that. How do the credits work? Do they decrease the gold/time component of retraining? I was allowing retraining so that may be a good idea.

Well, as I didn't necessarily want to slow things down in the campaign in general (and because the base times for retraining CAN make it a bit hard to use in some campaigns that set deadlines and such), I replaced the 'time' component in general with just declaring that the shorter retraining options could be done once per session (regardless of time passing), and that the bigger retraining options (class levels, archetypes) could be done once at the end of each book. If they needed to, they could spend time in addition as per the normal rules.

Completing out of game/away from table stuff then waive's the gold cost of retraining one thing, regardless of what it was.

Scarab Sages

What I have seen as a good boon (for backstories in my case, but no reason you couldn't use it for journals) is one free re-roll per session on any one d20 you roll, after you hear the results. Screw up a diplomacy check you really needed? Reroll. Will save? Re-roll. You can save them up however, you only get 1 at a time.

It proves to be valuable enough that most sessions they go unused, what if the next encounter is really bad and I need it more then than now? It also helps save the PCs from the odd bad-luck death, which arent fun for anyone.

I would say have, if possible, give the party the bonus unallocated and they can choose which character gets the bonus (or roll in my example). Also have it so they can choose who writes the journals, someone might actually enjoy it and actively want to, or they could all choose to do it in turns.

Silver Crusade

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If someone's not interested enough in our game to do something without being bribed/paid, I don't try to dangle incentives. For some players, there's a hard time tracking NPCs and details. What you could do is hand everyone an "NPC/story" sheet (there's a couple out there for campaigns) so they can track anything important. You could also try going around the table asking for a volunteer, having last week's person be the last one you ask.

The Exchange

That's a little too "show and tell" for my taste, but it's not a bad system. Among other things, players who failed to notice Enormous Freakin' Clues when they were staring right at them occasionally notice them when somebody else describes their point-of-view.


In short, reward everyone for writing. It will get them all more invested in the game, and the fact is some people can write better than others. I see no reason to reward just one person if they're all doing it.

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