Awards

What sorts of awards and recognitions do you give your players? My XO and I have been considering this very topic, and the end of our first plot is drawing near, so we need to finish up.

Obviously, in character awards established by our setting (star trek) will be a thing, but we're also looking at other things like campaign ribbons for each plot, and out of character awards for things that help the sim.

 

I have a good conduct medal that is given to the character who was the most effective at bringing fun and plot advancement to the RP and a morale award for the character who was most social with other characters.

 

The Stargate game I'm the aGM of used to have several (and here is our list which isn't linked on the site anymore). Ultimately, we did away with it. Not because it was too much work, rather, because the awards were for the players, and the players never nominated anyone, no matter how many reminders we gave, we figured the players were no longer interested so we stopped it. After all, what's the point in forcing anyone to do things that are for them? I think awards are only helpful if people actually want to win them, rather than a "hey, that's cool" type of thing.

 

We do awards for events, awards for posts that are certain lengths (500, 1000 and 2000 words currently,) characters of a certain rank, etc. I'm mostly a fan of the event awards.

 

Aelyria features a badge program that, while some of them are a little outdated, are mostly just ways to thank people for contributing to the site in a number of ways. Some of them are relatively simple, such as the Vanguard badge for sticking around for a year. Others are a little more involved, such as the Guardian Badge for those who have "[offered]invaluable assistance and mentorship to both new citizens and veteran adventurers alike" or the Realmcrafter badge for those who have helped write up locations for the game. There are also badges for specific awards that the site gives out, or for very important story events that can change the site-wide plot.

 

That sounds like a fantastic idea. I love awards that encourage members to really get in there and mix it up.

I've done awards before, and at the end of every year we would have a little awards season based on various categories that the members voted on. It was always a heap of fun, and we always got a good spread of awards across the membership.

It can be tricky finding a procedure that works well with your community, so I'd advise speaking to your members and find out what would motivate them and what sort of awards they would like to aim for.