DM Rules/Benefits

Becoming a Dungeon Master

Anyone can apply! There is a reaction role in the roles channel that will allow you to become a Trial Dungeon Master.
Trial DMs become full DMs after running a couple games in the server. We require a DM or Staff member to be in a Trial DM game, not necessarily to regulate you, the Trial DM, but to assist with Rules Knowledge and Abdicating Rules, and to assist with managing the players if issues happen to arise.
Speaking of Rules knowledge, we have a DM-guide in the discord channels if you need help getting started. We recommend reading through the articles that we've provided there.
Once you have the Trial DM role, you will then be free to ask for permission to use Azure Crest Public Rooms. Alert the Server Owner either in their DMs or our questions channel
If you have your own FoundryVTT license feel free to run games out of your own room.

After you become a Full Dungeon Master, you essentially retain the role forever. Staff will only remove the Dungeon Master role if the DM in question asks for it to be removed or if the DM creates consistently bad experiences for the players.
Regardless of being a Full DM or not, you are still eligible for DM incentives, which are discussed at the bottom of this article.

Quest Post Templates

You'll notice that the Quest Board has a template. This is for your convenience, and you are not required to copy it in its entirety. It may change from time to time, but please treat any future changes as suggestions or experiments, not commands.
There are separate quest boards for Voiced and Text games.
Make sure to post a Quest in the right channel for the game you want to play when you want to run a game.

Your Rights as a Dungeon Master

You're stepping up to drive games in this server, and we want to make it clear that it is appreciated. You're an unpaid volunteer, so if you're wondering why the DM rules are so minimal, that is why. We are not paying you, and being a DM can sometimes require work equivalent to a job. So we are not going to tell you how to do it if we don't have to.

Game Reward Guidelines

After you run a game, your final responsibility for that game is to post the rewards for that session in our Quest Rewards channel.

Experience

In this server, we award experience in the form of Hours. They are exactly that, the amount of hours it took to complete any session. We want to make sure that people's time is valued here, so we are literally valuing their time in this way.
If you are running a Text Game, this relation is less intuitive. We ask that Text DMs notate when and why they are giving experience in the text-channel that is used for the text game. This is usually at the resolution of a scene.

Money

Money is assigned in accordance with the universal income chart.
We recommend that, if you're planning a session that takes place over multiple meetings, consider giving less than the full amount in the chart. (50% is often fair and has precedent already in the server)

Additional Player Reward Incentives

There are 2 additional ways players can get extra experience after a quest. Each is worth 1 hour/experience

• Session Journals
  The player writes a record of what they experienced in the quest from the perspective of their character. Whether you offer Session Journals or accept a Session Journal that has been made for your quest is up to your discretion.
• Roleplay Rewards
  The player recounts what they experienced during your quest to another character. Also, two or more characters from your quest can roleplay with each other either as a continuation of the roleplay related to the quest, or just meeting up for a drink afterwards. As with Session Journals, whether you offer Roleplay Rewards or accept a player's application for them is up to your discretion.

Dungeon Master Rewards

Whenever you run a quest, you can give one of your own characters experience appropriate for the quest you ran. That character also gets gold appropriate for their level.

Banking/Declining Rewards

Instead of immediately deciding for a character to gain rewards from a quest, you can instead choose to "Bank" the rewards and accept them at a later time. Do note that you will need to go back and retroactively modify your Reward Journal post if you later accept a banked reward. If you are eligible for additional reward incentives, you can list them separately from the banked reward.

Additional Reward Incentives

You are free to run quests whenever you'd like and only when you have the time to comfortably do so, this often leaves some of the playerbase without games. While we will never force people to run an amount of games, or games within a certain time zone, we do have incentives to encourage this behavior.
These Incentives stack, and all grant Event Tokens.

Running a Higher Tier Game This incentive is based on the lowest-tier character in the quest. For example, if you run a quest that is Tier 4 and Tier 5, you would only receive the reward for the Tier 4 mission.

• 3 Tokens - Tier 4 (Levels 10-12)
• 6 Tokens - Tier 5 (Levels 13-15)
• 9 Tokens - Tier 6 (Levels 16-19)
• 12 Tokens - Pathfinder (Level 20)

Restoring Player Attendance
Sometimes, a player lives in a timezone that does not align with the active DMs, or has a job that prevents them from attending many games.
When a player goes without a game for a week or more, we say that they are Truant from games.
Ideally, all players in the Azure Crest get to play a game every now and then. This reward was made with the hopes of DMs helping these players stay active in the server.
This incentive can stack if you have multiple Truant Players in a game, and stacks with other incentives.

• 1 Token - 1 week Truancy
• 3 Tokens - 2 weeks Truancy
• 6 Tokens - 3 weeks Truancy
• 12 Tokens - 4 weeks Truancy

Please Remind players to update their Trunacy Roles if they had put them on and you are receiving these rewards.

Running Games for New Players
New Players are Players that have only one character, and that character is in Tier 1.
New players, more often than not, require more effort as you may need to take time to teach them things about the system in the middle of the session, and there is the additional risk of New Players causing bad experiences.
We understand how this can be frustrating for DMs to deal with, and we do not want the extra effort to be thankless.
This incentive can stack with itself and other incentives.

• 2 tokens - per New Player

Running Text Games
There are two different types of Text Games: Live Text games
are Text Games that are completed in a single sitting. These demand constant player attention, so players cannot join these games while also participating in a Voiced Game. PBP (Play-by-Post) games
are completed over several days or even weeks. These do not demand constant player attention, so players may join several at once, and may join one while they also participate in Voiced Games.
We understand that Text Games require more effort from everyone involved. Typing out a scene description takes far more time than verbally communicating the same information.

• 3 Tokens for each Live Text game
• 5 Tokens for each PBP game

Contributing to the Living World
We desire and want to prioritize Quests that utilize the server's existing lore, and also want to encourage engagement with other dms and between our players.
The true reward for this is the accomplishment of that itself. We strongly belive that when Quests feel like they Matter and the Living World changes and develops a narrative, the quality of everyone's experiences gets better.

• 3 Tokens for each Game run in the Living World setting.

Running Games for Active DMs
DMs are players, too, and we want them to be able to play and experience the world that they helped construct.
GMs are be sorted into 4 categories based on their level of activity.

• Trial DMs
  are Players who have shown interest in running games.
• Dungeon Masters
  are Players who have proven themselves to be reliable and are trusted by the server to be DMs.
• Dungeon Underlords
  are DMs who have run at least 2 games within the last month.
• Dungeon Overlords
  are DMs who have run at least 4 games within the last month.

We want to value and reward those who contribute the most to our server's activity, but also note that Underlords and Overlords hold no authority over other DMs and even players.
This Reward does not Stack with Truancy, but is overlapped by it when the Truancy reward is greater than this reward.

• 2 Tokens for each Dungeon Underlord
• 4 Tokens for each Dungeon Overlord