The leaderboard project - Measurements

First, a brief progress report on where I am with this little RPG leaderboard project. I setup a free hosting provider account this weekend and began investigating php based social networking platforms to use as a base.  I then ran into issues installing the tools I needed to access said hosting provider. I hope to have that corrected this week, and plan to put up a mockup of the leaderboard by the weekend.

Now, into the meat and potatoes of this post.  Last post, I introduced the concept I was going for.  This post I want to focus on measurements.  Computer games are natural fits for leaderboards, because the things that these measure (k/d ratios, points, kills, deaths, etc.) are objective criteria.  In a table-top RPG, what
constitutes heroic or legendary actions (or even alignment actions) is by the very nature of the game - subjective.  This creates issues when trying to put a subjective set of criteria into an objective
framework.

Even in sporting games (such as ice-skating or diving) a lot of the points are based on objective criteria.  However, some portion of the points are awarded based on the subjective judgment of the panel of judges.  This is what I envision for this project.  This leads to a few questions/issues:

1. What are the objective criteria for each of the measurements?  How do you define heroic?  What types of rules/guidelines should be laid down for such measurements?

2. Who should make these judgments? Should it be the player's GM, should it be a third-party panel comprised of community participants with an averaged "decision" to determine if a particular story submitted by a player is worth a point? Should it be a hybrid - with a
panel making the determination, but the GM being the one that nominates a story?  Or something else entirely?

3. Should there be caps on frequency of point awarding? Should only one point per game be allowed? Per encounter? Per week?  Maybe it depends on the type of measurement - e.g., heroic points versus legendary points.

4. Should there be appeals or community nominations/voting?

These are all issues that need to be addressed to create a system that
will rewarding for all participants and community members.  If you have ideas, I would love to hear them.

Until next time, game on!