Do you want to be an FG Champion? FG Volunteer Reward System Draft

[ddavison]

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback. I'll try to broadly address the theme of the posts more than any individual post. In general, the points awarded are not meant to compensate for the amount of time or effort required and are more set up to incentivize the activities we want to see more of.

1. FG as a brand was built in large part thanks to the contribution of the active Community members. This has taken many forms and I don't want to discount any one form or escalate any others above another. This is still in the proof of concept stage and the program may evolve over time; however, we are very aware of the contributions of people who have been with us for a long time and these people will get first consideration for becoming an Immortal if they are not already.

2. Rewards for permanent additions to FG: Many of our permanent additions, such as extensions, rulesets and module conversions already have a built-in compensation factor for future sales. One issue that was pointed out above is that having a great product or add-on is only cool if people know about it. One of the things we would like to encourage Immortals to do is to actually showcase existing products on Social Sites and gaming websites. This in turn will provide those Immortals with access to even more product and then it can be rinsed and repeated.

3. Videos: These are similar to point #2. The video itself can be very time consuming to make. Spreading the word about that video and getting people to watch them is something that we want to focus on here. With a video which has been properly broadcast to the various outlets, you can earn a decent chunk of points here.

4. Con Games: I wouldn't expect people to host a game at a con they weren't already planning to attend. These are valued, but they won't have as great of an impact as something that is broadcast to 1000s or people.

5. Gaming the system: We will be very selective in who we choose for the Immortals program and continuation in the program is not guaranteed. It will be a small group of folks originally who will be selected because they have the best intentions for the growth of FG. The rewards are nice, but we believe most people who volunteer and get selected are doing this because they love FG and want to see it grow. The rewards are mostly secondary for these folks and many of them are already doing a bunch of these things today. To be honest, I don't really want to manage and track points and have to validate whether or not someone really did what they said they did. We will be extending trust to these folks to report accurately based on the guidelines we've set forth. If someone abuses that trust, it would become obvious at some point and we would thank them for their time and remove them from the program.

6. What is okay to post on social sites? It depends. I don't want to give a list of everything that is okay but I will give Immortals some general guidelines. A lot of our great ideas came from our community and I expect the Immortals will have great ideas. Nothing that can't be hashed out with a quick "Hey, what about a post about X...?" email followed by a response like "Sure. That sounds like a great idea." The goal is not to micro-manage, but to allow the Immortals to expand our presence online. I'm pretty much posting about new products as they come out. Roll20 is our strongest competitor and they are doing a much better job at this than us. I hope this will help remedy that situation.

7. Support tickets: This is more of a guideline. If you post at the same time as someone else then use your best judgement on your points sheet at the end of the month. It's more of a general guideline than a rule. I won't want all the Immortals answering the same items, so we may look to assign moderators to specific topics, systems, etc.

One concern is that people who already contribute to FG will be discouraged from continuing those things if they aren't in the "Rewards program". I hope that is not the case and I hope they will see that this program will help bring in new users - new GMs, new Players and new contributors. An Immortal might essentially "advertise" and show off something you built. If it is something we sell as an official add-on, then you should see a positive impact from that. In the end, my recommendations if for people to continue doing what they enjoy doing. If you build extensions, you probably enjoy that aspect of the hobby. Keep doing that. If you enjoy talking to gamers about products, then the Immortals program might be in your future.

BTW, pretty much everyone who has posted here is someone I view as being a valuable member of the community (with RTFallen being newer than most but still valued.)

[ddavison]

It has been raised that since we already have the title of Immortal through our forum for significant contributions to the FG Community, we will be looking to change the name of the program to something else. For now, the working title will be FG Champions. Please feel free to submit other ideas for alternate titles.

[Blacky]

I support the name change; not the same thing, not the same name; good idea.

[Oberoten]

Arriving a bit late on this discussion no doubt. Getting married and being on vacation will do that to you. The points... Hmm. Why per month? Cumulative over a time period might not be a bad way to do it. 50 pts / month is a game session / week. Heck most of us doesn't even manage that for our our gaming group.The community as it is today would be far less without the work of the many people who develop and maintain the free rulesets and extensions. Yet, I see and hear nothing about rewarding this. In fact I was not even asked if my Ars Magica ruleset could be posted to the library. Saithan, Valarian, Joshuha, Toadwarth, Doc Venture, Unerwünscht just to mention a few. All have contributed copious amounts of value for the customers that come in. I don't think we can afford to alienate major contributors. Yet some of these people have left. I think that perhaps an aknowledgement of what they have done should be a priority over having us move out and spam facebook.Especially with API changes meaning that the older rulesets these people have made needs to be maintaned and updated regularily.- Obe

[damned]

Getting married and being on vacation will do that to you.

Getting married will do a lot of things to you!
Congratulations

[dulux-oz]

Getting married and being on vacation will do that to you.

Getting married will do a lot of things to you!
Congratulations

Ditto - Congratulations Obe

[Griogre]

Best wishes Obe.

[ddavison]

Thanks Obe and congrats on your wedding.

The work that has been contributed by these and many other folks are very welcome. In fact, that is precisely where John and I came from before we purchased SmiteWorks in 2009. There is a difference between supporting the hobby/community and doing work, in a sense, for some form of payment. When I played Warhammer Fantasy Battle and 40K regularly, I painted a number of armies and brought them up to game stores to play. This was hard work, but it also provided me with satisfaction of what I had built. It had the added side effect of making WFB and WH40K look more appealing to customers of the local store. I didn't view this work in the same light as the GW Outriders who scheduled games for new-comers, put on demos, modeling workshops, etc. I view many of the creative aspects with free rulesets and extensions as falling into this category as my own personal work.

Commercial rulesets are a different beast but I think those are already covered with the current commission model. I wish it was more, but that is only partly in my hands. This is a step that we hope will bring in more commissions for past work.

The reason this is monthly is because we want dedicated people to regularly promote FG. Two months of activity followed by a lengthy lull doesn't produce an active outreach program. We have plenty of existing material that we should be able to keep a steady stream for some time to come. It is more like salesman work and it may not interest some of our other contributors. The volunteers we have so far are quite good and known in the community already. This is probably not the first thing they would choose to do with their own free time though, so we feel this should be rewarded.

I hope that distinction makes sense in a non-offensive manner. We generally try to improve the product for everyone involved with constant updates, improvements and the occasional freebie. The more successful and widely adopted FG becomes, the more of this we can do. Since we don't charge a monthly subscription fee, the only way we continue to generate revenue is to sale the product to newcomers and sell add-ons to existing users.

[Zeus]

Just to add, for those community members who have developed a ruleset system and would like it included in the Wiki/Library, PM me a basic description of the ruleset, along with links to, any credits and where the ruleset can be downloaded from and I'll happily add it to the community rulesets section (following a quick sanity check/review).

[Valarian]

Will do. They're all in my rulesets folder, I just need to come up with a description of each,