Organized Play: RPGA and Pathfinder Society / How to Become a DM for the RPGA / RPGA D&D meetup Karma

How can you see what info on your characters you've been playing is reported? I completely forgot how much exp and gold my character 1 should have.

You can log in to the DCI site with your membership code and password and click on "My Characters" on the menu. Then click on the D & D Private Play logo and then the LFR logo. A list of your characters will pop up.

A member recently emailed me. After he took the Herald test, he tried to schedule a "Dungeons and Dragons Wizards Play Network" game, but got a message stating he had to be an organizer.

To become an organizer, follow:

http://www.wizards.co...

then click the first link. "To become a WPN Organizer, please click here." (click "here") Later, if you follow the above link, you can find out more information on the RPGA, etc.

From there, you log on to the same site that you did to take the Herald exam (Log on, follow "Exams" on the new page, then "Click Here to Get Started" at the bottom of the next new page. At the next screen, instead of selecting "Dungeons and Dragons", select "Tournament Organizer". Follow through, clicking the appropriate language / selections.

The test is SUPER easy. Once you've passed it, you should be able to order your events online at the RPGA ordering site and set up Wizards Play Network games yourself!

Hurrah!

The LFR RPGA D&D Meetup .xls sheet for Seating Priority points:

DMing is an important part of the game. Without DMs, there are no games for players to play in. New players aren’t expected to know how to DM for a while, but it’s expected that new players will learn enough of the system to know how to be DMs after their first three or four games. Since players that keep playing know they’re going to have to DM, they can always ask questions of veteran players/DMs to prepare.

If you don’t know if you want to keep playing D&D, don’t worry about DMing for now. But if you show up for three or four sessions, you’re going to be asked to DM, so if you like playing, remember to prepare to DM!

For the LFR RPGA D&D Meetups, everyone starts with 5 points, earning 5 points for each game DMed, losing 1 point for each game played. Players scheduled to play lose 2 points for cancelling RSVPs with less than 48 hours notice before the Meetup. DMs scheduled to DM lose 4 points for cancelling RSVPs with less than 72 hours notice before the Meetup. The higher your points, the better your priority for seating will generally be when seating is determined, and vice versa, although the organizers James Leivers and Jim Lee can and will exercise discretion regarding seating.

Why is this necessary?

1: New players start with 5 points so they will have a higher priority for seating that players that have played for a while, but that have not DMed. This is to help new players get a seat for games. The organizers can use their discretion to help new players get a seat, if everyone RSVPing for a particular day has more than 5 points to begin with.

2: Players lose 1 point for each game played and gain 5 points for each DMed. So, the more you DM, the higher your Seating Priority points will get. The less you DM, the lower your Seating Priority points will get. This is to reward DMs for DMing. Without DMs, there are no games. We have found that if we don’t keep track of who DMs and who plays, that players just expect whoever DMed last week to DM this week, and the next week, and the week after that, and so on. This is horribly unfair, so we have put this system in place to make sure that all the veteran players DM.

3: Players lose 2 points for cancelling with 48 hours or less notice; DMs lose 4 points for cancelling with 72 hours or less notice.

RPGA tables consist of 1 DM and 4-6 players. No more, no less. If the DM cancels, no game, and the players are left with nothing to do. If too many players cancel, no game, and the DM and other players are left with nothing to do. When people are left with nothing to do, they are unhappy. They made the time and effort to come to the meetup, then find out that because someone decided to cancel, they can’t play. Just because someone pops an RSVP change in five minutes before the Meetup’s to start doesn’t mean the organizers are going to whip out Blackberries and shuffle everyone around, or that players are going to whip out iPhones and find out they suddenly don’t have seats.

Finding DMs at the last second is even more of a pain, as DMs need time to read and prepare the adventure they’re DMing. If a DM cancels, that means we need to find another DM quickly, which may or may not even be possible on such short notice.

4: The organizers, and to some degree the DMs, have discretion that they can and will exercise. Suppose someone with a Seating Priority score of -1 has offered to DM for the group plenty of times, but never actually got to DM. (say there weren’t enough players to assign to that DM, or that players didn’t show up that week so tables got changed around leaving the DM with not enough players for a table). Now suppose that there’s only one seat left to fill, and there’s a player with a score of 1, who’s never offered to DM. The player with the -1 is probably going to get that seat, as that player’s on board with DMing. The player with the score of 1 is not. Who’s going to get that seat; someone that has offered to, and plans on, working with the rest of the community, or someone that just wants to hang back and let someone else do the work?

Or, suppose a DM that’s really an awful nasty person has a score of 10, but a nice new player has a score of 5; we would rather give the last seat to someone, again, who’s going to potentially help the community, rather than someone that isn’t going to be so good for it.

Who determines what’s good for the community, and what weight discretion has when determining seating priority? James Leivers and Jim Lee, because they’re doing the bulk of the organizational work! Of course, we’re generally going to follow the Seating Priority points that people have; that’s what they’re there for.

In general:

15+ points: Pretty good rate of games DMed. Don’t stop DMing, though; the higher your Seating Priority points, the more likely we’ll pay attention to whatever adventures you request to play on a particular week, and the better your chance to get a seat at a table that’s in demand.

6 to 14 points: Not too bad, but think about DMing soon.

3 to 5 points: Think about DMing sometime in the next few Meetups. If you think you can do it, speak up and commit to a particular date/time/location/adventure code that you can DM. If you don’t have a preference for adventure code, great! We’ll ask you to DM a particular adventure. (We may ask you to DM a particular adventure regardless of your preference).

1 to 2 points: It’s time to start offering to DM.

0 to -4 points: You can be ejected from playing a game at any time; the fact that your score’s that low is reason enough. You won’t get kicked if you’ve made serious offers to DM before the Meetup – not vague promises, but identifiable times, locations, and adventure codes that you were willing to commit to in the near future.

-5 points: You won’t be seated as a player until you DM for the LFR RPGA D&D Meetup.

You know, I'm still not able to report events as WPN, just as private play. I get the error that I don't have any venues, but when I go to the form that's supposed to let you add a venue, it just says it's a page error!

If you've passed both:

1. The Herald Level test
2. The organizer test (the really easy one)

you *should* be able to report events as Wizards Play Network (WPN) games. If you can't, try calling up Wizards customer service and let us know what happens.

When I tried adding venues via the online report system about June 25-26th, 2009, or so, the system worked for me (after the requisite 48 hours or so of processing time, of course).

Thanks for taking the tests, Mat. Good job DMing too. (Also, thanks to the other fine DMs that have taken the DM test and started DMing for a group - there's rather a lot of you by now, so I won't go into particular names.)

Thanks Jim.

And yeah, I'm gonna have to contact customer support. I made sure I passed both tests first. The form gives me the same error no matter what browser I use (and I tried 3!) and whether I clear my cookies or not. Those were the only message board answers I could see, other than "contact CS".

I am experiencing the same errors. If you happen to find the solution, please share

I am experiencing the same errors. If you happen to find the solution, please share

I finally got around to getting this fixed. Basically, post a message on the Wizards forum thread for problems at http://community.wiza... . I told them the error and they fixed it.

Having trouble finding info on the site to become a DM....


Steps I've taken:
1- https://membership.wi.... < Site that enters my DCI number and password
2- log on to the site, and click on the link: "Judge Certification"
3- This leads me to the following: http://www.wizards.co...
which seems to be a judge page for magic:the gathering.

Question: WHere is the test for rpga dm'ing? I was under the impression it was an online test....?

Also: once you become a dm, how does one go about obtaining adventures...?

thanks.

Step 1: Try going here for the DCI login https://webapp.wizard...

Step 2: try going here http://judge.wizards.... which can also be reached from the "Judge Center" link in Step 1 after you login into the DCI center.

then click on "Exams"

It will ask you to create an exam, then you can take the exam.