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Hey CrimsonKnight --
Mu's player here.
Do you think that because of the nature of a Con ticket price and possibly a hotel room that the attendees are more likely more dedicated to the games and also more likely to have GMed in the past vs a FLGS? If so, would it be fair to assume that those who have GMed before are more likely to GM again (especially if they had a positive experience) rather than if they never have?
So let's go through the circumstances:
1) This was a local convention so desperate for programming that they were willing to waive registration costs for our GMs. They got free badges if they GMed. The convention was downtown, so our GMs either carpooled or bused there each day, no hotel room needed. That meant they just had to pay for meals, parking or bus fare. This made it the perfect circumstances for us to recruit players to become nascent GMs.
2) The week before, Bret and I ran through the quests as a GM 101 session at Dreamers, offering to loan our flip mats to make this transition even easier.
3) Was the possibility of a boon the reason brand new GMs signed up? Absolutely. It motivated them to overcome their nervousness, travel downtown and volunteer their weekend time GMing for others. And oh my gosh, they loved the heck out of that herd of nuars. They strutted and charged everything in sight.
4) Now here's the important thing. Having GMed on and off all weekend, every single one of these players gained confidence in their nascent GMing skills. Each one went on to be a regular casual GM at Dreamers, coming in once every couple months to give us breaks. This became the start of the idea at Dreamers that everyone GMs at least once in a while, and made it more comfortable for other players to step up as GMs.
This is why I want the ACP system to continue... Boons are a tremendous motivator for the casual or nascent GM. That said, I am totally happy that Starfinder now has 34 legal races without ACP, and hope to see PF2 just legalize kitsune and tengus and iruxi. Having some races with furry appeal that players can just play would be good.
But you better believe that I still want the ACP incentive, because more GMs means a healthier ecosystem for Organized Play. I love GMing, but it is fun to be able to play 1 out of every 4 games too!
Hmm
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Ferious, they each did about 8-10 hours of GMing over the entire weekend. And yes, I agree that Conventions don't entice nascent GMs the way they once did. On the other hand... GMing for your regular venues does offer double ACP, so there's now enticement for helping to GM most of the time.
Crimson, I hear you. We've got a few conventions like that locally too. We pulled Organized Play from one of them because most of our GMs couldn't afford to come. But I will agree that Minnesota has more convention and regular play options than most places. Pre-Pandemic, you could find a place to play on every single day of the week. We're still rebuilding what we had, but we still have games available in the Twin Cities metro five days a week. We're an outlier, and we know it.
Hmm
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Ferious, they each did about 8-10 hours of GMing over the entire weekend. And yes, I agree that Conventions don't entice nascent GMs the way they once did. On the other hand... GMing for your regular venues does offer double ACP, so there's now enticement for helping to GM most of the time.
And GMing at a local venue as someone's first experience is probably better than being thrown into the chaotic environment of a convention, potentially with a table of players they don't know and aren't comfortable with. So it's not all bad, for sure. But in terms of helping get GMs for the convention, the main draw related to Achievement points is that they can get a lot in a short amount of time by GMing several tables. Which is going to attract a different kind of GM than in the past, where 1 table was enough to get the boon, so someone could try it out without committing their whole weekend to GMing and get a pretty big reward.
As for the double ACP incentive for GMing in general, that's going to exist regardless of the cost of the boons, and it's still going to have value regardless of whether or not two or three additional Ancestries are made freely available, because there are many other things that you can spend ACP on now.
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While I like the cantina-feel for Starfinder, I'm not convinced I would similar love for that in pick up Pathfinder games as that does make more sense to me in the space traveling setting of Starfinder. I do support adding more freely available ancestries though.
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I do think the GM rewards for running at conventions are a worse now for getting a new GM through the door and run those first few games.
The current system works very well for me because previously when I went to conventions and got my first ancestry boon, I thought it was awesome. After time though, after the fourth or fifth time getting that same ancestry boon of those same options, it had lost that same allure.
Now instead of getting that same ancestry boon over multiple events, I have a wider variety of options (in theory, in practice I'm still not sure when I will use them). I even get more controllable rewards for running more or less at an event. I also continue to accrue these rewards for running outside conventions which make up a lot of my game time.
Despite all of that working for how I run, the current system is worse for other situations like rewarding GMs for running at one convention. Beforehand they got a small selection of ancestries for a relatively small amount of time (with respect to TTRPGs). Now instead of maybe getting an uncommon ancestry while running two slots at a convention, one would need to run two slots at that convention, then run two slots at the next convention, then run a couple more scenarios for their local group, and then the remaining points they have earned as a player should be enough to get one of the uncommon ancestries.
On top of that, I would say that GMing does not earn you more AcP if we were just counting hours. For me, I think I take around 3 hours to prepare a scenario (some take more or less), so while I'm getting double AcP per game, I'm still getting the same amount of AcP per hour. For me that is fine and I love running, but for newer GMs they might need even more time and effort (like learning bestiary rules or learning how to use an online tool as a GM if they run online).
While I'm good for rewards, I do think they could be better for more casual GMs as I don't think there is a significant incentive to try out GMing (with just AcP).
Edit: To add an actual suggestion to this, I think that having some ancestries start at 20 AcP would mimic that aspect of the previous system. Running two slots at a convention would be enough for players to achieve with just running two games at a convention (Premier event).
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On top of that, I would say that GMing does not earn you more AcP if we were just counting hours. For me, I think I take around 3 hours to prepare a scenario (some take more or less), so while I'm getting double AcP per game, I'm still getting the same amount of AcP per hour. For me that is fine and I love running, but for newer GMs they might need even more...
Minor point, but do you not rerun scenarios? Or reuse prep?
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On top of that, I would say that GMing does not earn you more AcP if we were just counting hours. For me, I think I take around 3 hours to prepare a scenario (some take more or less), so while I'm getting double AcP per game, I'm still getting the same amount of AcP per hour. For me that is fine and I love running, but for newer GMs they might need even more...Minor point, but do you not rerun scenarios? Or reuse prep?
That’s sometimes not an option at smaller venues, excepting the repeatable scenarios. When everyone has played a scenario, you can’t really count on being able to run it again. At least until/if more players join in the area.
Online does open that up, for sure, but as always, not everyone plays/GMs online or wants to, and that isn’t a requirement, so the rewards shouldn’t be based around it. Which is weird to say after years of waiting for online to be treated the same as in person.
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On top of that, I would say that GMing does not earn you more AcP if we were just counting hours. For me, I think I take around 3 hours to prepare a scenario (some take more or less), so while I'm getting double AcP per game, I'm still getting the same amount of AcP per hour. For me that is fine and I love running, but for newer GMs they might need even more...Minor point, but do you not rerun scenarios? Or reuse prep?
Yes, but since I jump between running in-person, online by VTT, and online by PbP, there is a bit of different prep for the games. Even then it does make it far faster. When I was most coordinated on what I was running, I generally ran a given scenario two times. Sometimes less or more if I didn't enjoy it or also ran it during a convention or outside home games.