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Another FLGS charges $6 per person to play...the judge gets it all!
Not sure how I feel about this... Actually, this would make me feel icky both as a player and as a GM. Store credit is one thing, and then only if it isn't taken from the players' pockets. I think I would refuse payment if I knew it had been taken from the players, and I would certainly refuse to game at a location that charged me for it.
I understand the arguments for, including that a fee based system attracts the type of player who wants to get their money's worth, but it just doesn't sit well with me.
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Another FLGS charges $6 per person to play...the judge gets it all!
Yeah, that's messed up. You shouldn't need THAT much incentive to GM a game. Heck, the college PFS group I help out (because their officers' are long-time buddies of mine) just charges a buck or two per player and that goes directly to the group's funds, used to buy more PF books or society scenarios because we're college students, so money is not exactly abundant.
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What can I say? The owner really wanted to push PFS play. And wanted judges.
I'm not saying it's good or bad for the gamestore for the offer rewards like that, but that you don't need to do the same to acquire and maintain quality judges.
Money and stuff-in-kind rewards get people to judge for the wrong reasons and last only as long as the judge has value on the stuff, while focusing your judges on the *real* rewards (giving back to the community, becoming a better player, etc.) of judging are going to have better, longer lasting results.
-Pain
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Money and stuff-in-kind rewards get people to judge for the wrong reasons and last only as long as the judge has value on the stuff, while focusing your judges on the *real* rewards (giving back to the community, becoming a better player, etc.) of judging are going to have better, longer lasting results.
-Pain
Many of my newer judges are young, some unemployed, but experienced gamers. The money and stuff-in-kind awards allow them to pay their own way on nights when they play and maybe even support another gamer that otherwise wouldn't have the funds to come out. These people help our tables go off, they give excellent word of mouth. They're not judging for the monetary rewards, but the monetary rewards let them play, without having someone's "mommy" pay their way in. Our area has an unemployment rate of 16.9%, even higher in the 18-24 age group.
Don't misunderstand me, the real rewards are vitally important, but these guys already know that. They *want* to give back. They want to be better players, and to help others become better players. They positively love getting to know the bigger community and talk with people that "get them". The money let's them do that, and let's them hold their head up as an adult.
Similarly, the store we're in now is very supportive but it takes money to run the lights and explain to the family why it's worth staying at work until 10:30-11:00pm at night instead of coming home to them. The little bit we pay them ($3.00/player, first time players are free) let's them do that. It's a thrift store that we've sort of lucked into letting us play; a few bucks a person doesn't seem too much for what we get.
Finally, for those of fortunate enough to have a job and judge, our GM rewards work their way right back to the table, whether it's buying me a soda and chips, a Beginner Box, or paying the way of someone not in a position to play otherwise. Because every dollar I'm able to do that with GM credit, is a dollar I free up for printing materials (like nearly $70.00 print bill I had recently), Hero lab data pack additions, maps, pens, pencils, etc.
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Money and stuff-in-kind rewards get people to judge for the wrong reasons and last only as long as the judge has value on the stuff, while focusing your judges on the *real* rewards (giving back to the community, becoming a better player, etc.) of judging are going to have better, longer lasting results.
-Pain
When I was in Atlanta, I set up a GM rewards program, not to bribe GMs as it seems you are alluding to here, but to thank them for all their hard work. Just because a GM is given a shirt, a cup, or some other physical item as a reward doesn't mean they are doing it for the wrong reasons. In fact, I had the opposite reaction. New GMs came on board, not because of the stuff they were going to get -- that was really inconsequential. They felt appreciated for their efforts and receiving a GM reward (aka.. a gift) was just icing on the cake. If I gave them a folded paper airplane to thank them or nothing at all, they would have been happy with that as well. Afterall, the first 4-5 months of Georgia PFS, we didn't have any reward system and we had more than enough volunteers at every game day (and we had game days on 48 of the 52 weeks last year -- sometimes multiple events at different locations on the same day).
I think it is shortsighted to label all physical GM Rewards as getting GMs to judge for the wrong reasons and put it in the context of a bribe and not a thank you. I think Kyle and Nani and other GMs in Georgia can back me up.
Many places and organizers are not in the position to offer physical GM rewards, or anything more than a thank you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Almost every GM I have ever met agrees that a thank you is all they need because they do it for the love of the game. I earned four stars and never received anything but thank yous. That was certainly enough. But, you shouldn't be denigrating those areas and coordinators that want to go out of their way to thank their local GMs by providing GM rewards.
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Many places and organizers are not in the position to offer physical GM rewards, or anything more than a thank you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Almost every GM I have ever met agrees that a thank you is all they need because they do it for the love of the game. I earned four stars and never received anything but thank yous. That was certainly enough. But, you shouldn't be denigrating those areas and coordinators that want to go out of their way to thank their local GMs by providing GM rewards.
Money and stuff-in-kind rewards get people to judge for the wrong reasons and last only as long as the judge has value on the stuff, while focusing your judges on the *real* rewards (giving back to the community, becoming a better player, etc.) of judging are going to have better, longer lasting results.
-Pain
Yes, like what verdigris pointed about above, I agree. I don't have problem with gamestore-based rewards (we get $5 store credit...and I recognize that that's a nice perk), but I hope the never become the centerpiece for judge recruitment. However, even my OP shows that different people will respond to different enticements to judge. (Some will respond to an emotional appeal, others to a challenge, etc.)
And I sure as heck don't have a problem with offering great judge rewards as a thank yous. Surely, you remember the Kublacon Judge coins, yes? Or the Kublacon Kublacon Cookies of Awesome for my judges? I encourage personal thanks yous from local coordinators to judges. Heck, I LOVE public thank yous and shout outs to my judges.
I think we agree on that.
Of course, these are apples and oranges discussions. I'm a huge fan of treating and thanking my judges repeatedly. However, I recognize that more rewards really isn't going to increase judgery compared to other methods and the costs associated with such aren't likely to be worth it.
That said, I hope that the results from the PFS Community Survey provides some interesting topics to discuss. We'll see.
-Pain
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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(edited)
I asked the Colorado playing base: Why do you volunteer to GM?A good response (one that I didn't really think about, but that makes perfect sense) was the fact that a player had already played all the offered modules, so was volunteering to run one, as he still wanted to come to the shop and play with his friends.
(Jumping late into this conversation)
That's the reason why I'll probably be running my first table in a couple of weeks - the scheduled module is one that I've played. But my wife hasn't, so she wants to play it.
We've only just joined the group of PFS players at that store, but that has pushed the group size up so that a single table isn't ideal. I've offered to run a second table for that scenario (with some help from the event coordinator) so we can keep the group size at each table at a comfortable level.
But (to get back to Painlord's original post) I very much doubt if my wife would ever want to run a table herself - she just wouldn't enjoy it. Of course there are other things she might step up to do (she's detail-oriented, so would probably do a very good job of handling all the paperwork of signup, chronicle awards, and submitting the results to PFS), but at the table she's purely a player.
Admittedly my offering to run scenarios isn't entirely selfless. While I'm not new to the role of GM - I ran my own weekly game for a decade or so - I'm fairly new to Pathfinder. I'm planning to run my own AP game later on in the year (probably Skulls & Shackles), so running a PFS scenario is a way to find out what skills I need to polish up.
Oh, and one last point: I don't agree that a player necessarily has to contribute directly to the local group in any way. If they are buying rule books, miniatures, etc. they are contributing to Paizo as a whole (and if they buy them from a store hosting PFS play rather than from Amazon, this encourages the store to continue hosting PFS events). And just increasing the head-count at local PFS events, conventions, etc. raises the visibility of the region to Paizo, which can have indirect benefits.