To begin, I'll say that I GM for a few reasons (in no particular order)
1. It gives me a chance to practice leadership skills that I utilize at work.
2. I enjoy the operational side of running a game, and learning adversary mechanics
3. I love it when players get really into a scenario and have a lot of fun
4. Our lodge is amazing and it only exists because people volunteer to run games, so I want to contribute to that.
5. The bonus ACP, GM credit, glyphs, replays, community recognition, and extra lore in scenarios is great, but pales in the first four points.
I expressed the "I don't know the game well enough" before running my first game, and I've heard others say it as well. One way this gets addressed in our lodge is our VC makes sure that new GMs have a more experienced GM (usually himself) at their first few tables when they're just getting started. Additionally, our entire lodge, GMs and players alike, support everyone else (from top to bottom) in understanding and knowing the rules. Immediately after running my first game, I was ready to keep going because I felt confident in the support I would get from my community.
This mainly works because we have a large, consistent group of core players/GMs, but for lodges that don't have those same things, a mentorship program where experienced GMs got some sort of minor bonus for sitting at a new GM's table might support this. Some ideas for bonuses would be implementing one of these:
- 6 ACP instead of 4 for a GM with more than one glyph sitting at a table for a GM with no glyphs.
- A boon program in line with the bonus that the Promotional Boons program grants (like +1 to rolls with Hero Points)
- In-game boons that grant the experienced GM a character bonus, similar to the existing faction mentorship boons but in reverse.
It doesn't have to be something big, just a little boost to say thank you for helping spread the game to others.
I'd like to second Wendy and Abigail's comment about GM re-running for extra GM credit. Even if it's just being able to use replays as a GM instead of as a player would let me bring some of the character ideas I have to fruition without pulling the access from another character.
Also, I get all of this ACP for running games, but I struggle to have the character slots (that I can actually get time to play) to use the ACP to buy boons for. Adding in more late-game boons to give established characters more options and flavor would be great. Ancestry and Heritage boons don't do my level 6 character much good. (I know that item/spell/summon access boons do some of this, but I'm looking for more of it).
