A Note about Rewards During Large Events

[Howlando]

There appears to be some confusion among the player base about what is the EFU tradition regarding large, plot-based story events.

Generally speaking, we try to keep EFU a place where the risk matches the reward. DM quests and scripted quests are given plenty of consideration and DMs try to set things up so characters are rewarded appropriately.

Large events such as Saturday evening's event are an obvious exception to this principle. With 60-70 characters participating, it is completely impossible to micro-manage and tailor every player/character's experience. Having run many, many of these sorts of events this is how I prefer to do it:


1) No respawns until the event is over. Respawns are usually allowed afterwards but some of my colleagues think that is being too soft!
2) The characters that win/survive all the way through to the end receive a very large and generous amount of XP.
3) Most characters who participate will receive some kind of item to remember the event by (in this case, it was a Campaign Medal with a minor spell/day - thanks JM)
4) Characters can submit accounts of particular heroism or valor to NPCs on behalf of other characters to receive additional recognition, or in this case write an IC account for a large gold reward
5) Characters and players that engaged meaningfully with the actual story of the plot and involved others in such will be remembered by myself and other DMs and gradually receive additional rewards.
6) Tracking down every PC who participated to fairly hand out some XP would be a gigantic waste of time and will not happen.

Large events like these are usually extremely laggy, deadly, and only start to really get fun as more and more characters die off and the lag is reduced. If you go into with them the right relaxed attitude I think they can be tremendous fun but it is very dispiriting for myself and other DMs when players have unrealistic expectations about simply showing up to such an event as being a quick ticket for XP and loot.