Posted by Fleet Captain Jerome Davis (Presidential Candidate) in Question to the Candidates - GM Issue

Posted by Geoff Joosten in Question to the Candidates - GM Issue
Good afternoon,

Jerome, you touched on this briefly, stating, and I am paraphrasing here, that the current training regimen for GMs is to onerous. I also see you aren’t a licensed GM.

Sarah, you have made major contributions to the GMDept in the past, including writing the original OGRE, but since your return haven’t been as active in the department.

Both of you are aware that we are struggling to find people interested in the program. Linds and I, mostly Linds, have streamlined the process as much as possible while still attempting to keep the integrity of a program that ensures the best trained GMs out there. The issue has come to something of a head which pressure being put on FComms to find resources that aren’t there.

So, simple question, what is your plan to help the GMDept address this issue?

Geoff

Our plan for the GM issue:

The current system is NECESSARILY onerous to get through, but that ensures we have high quality GM’s, so it it necessary. That being said, we would like to see another segment of the GM program. Apprentice GM. Apprentice will differ from GM Trainee in that the Apprentice will be, should a GM feel comfortable doing so of course, tasked with running a already designed and developed SIM. This will be overseen by the authoring GM, and will allow that established GM to move to a ship without a current GM and assist there. The GM will maintain admin rights on the sim the Apprentice is on, and will be able to direct and do what is basically OJT for how to run a sim before the Apprentice can design their own. To move along from Apprentice, one has to successfully run the sim AND complete the exam. Then the program goes as is established.

This will, we believe, add to the GM roster immediately without a loss in quality. In essence, it will allow a GM to exist on more than one ship without splitting their full attention.

Thanks for a great question!

Davis/Sinclair 2020
Improve, Reform, & Engage

Hi Jerome,

I have some follow up questions for you about this that I would like to keep separate from the other discussion about it… which seems to have moved a bit past people actually asking questions. James can chime in here too, if he wants.

I think an idea like this, as well as some of your other platform ideas, presume that there is a large number of underutilized people in the club who… are just sorta waiting for something to happen before they get involved at a deeper level, and if we just do something to get them to stop waiting, they’ll start volunteering and things will just turn out OK eventually.

Specifically here, the idea here is that there is some significant number of people in the club who aren’t in the GMT program, but would become a GM Apprentice, and this is a stop-gap measure so it’s not as open ended as “OK eventually.” But… this is kind of an empirical question, isn’t it? I mean, even if the club now has a 110 people in it instead of 80, there are only so many people who are available to do these things, a smaller number who are interested in doing these things, and an even smaller number of people who will actually follow through and do them.

What number of people do you think would actually volunteer for this? Can you identify actual people besides yourselves who would suddenly volunteer to be a GM Apprentice? On the other side of the ledger, how many “Senior GMs” do you think would be willing to hand a totally cookie-cutter pre-made sim off to someone and not really do much with it at all?

I have guesses for both, but I’d really like to see what your answer is first. If there’s a significant difference maybe I’ll ask you about that.

Joe