tfw no DM

> tfw no DM
> tfw no group
> tfw you ocasionally have a group, but you're forever DM
> tfw your country is the only one in the world, where the practice of paid DMing is a not only a thing, it's overwhelmingly popular
> tfw even roll20 autists don't want you
I never asked for this. DMing is fun and all, but I want to play once in a while.

> tfw your country is the only one in the world, where the practice of paid DMing is a not only a thing, it's overwhelmingly popular
Where? I'm guessing somewhere in SE asia or western europe

> tfw your country is the only one in the world, where the practice of paid DMing is a not only a thing, it's overwhelmingly popular

This is nonsense. Paid DMing is rare everywhere.

Where you from OP?

It really aint so rare, provided two things are true:
> 1) You don't play with NEET neckbeards or Students
> 2) You Play with fully employed people who know to value work

I don't DM under 50€ an hour for two different groups.
5 Players á 50€ an hour: Everyone pays 10€
( though my hourly wage is way below that: Every 1 hour on the gaming table consists of easily: 1 Hour @ the Gamingtable, 1 Hour @ Music and Image preps, 1 Hour @ Maptools Preps, 1 Hour @ Storypreps, 1 Hour @ Handouts and Writing OC for different NPCs ), so my effective Hourly Wage Storytelling is about 10€ an Hour.

Now, why do people pay this?
Because people who have proper jobs,
people who work 9 to 5,
decent people,

they can appreciate the above. They know, that every hour on the Tabletop equals a very taxing and hard presentation you are holding to a quorum of 5, and they understand the work that goes into that.

I am storytelling 3 groups,
2 of these pay me my 50€ an hour,
the third one is the group with my best friend. These guys pay me not hourly, instead they pay the cabride, they provide all the snacks, one of the women always preps a properly delicious cooked meal, and I am always provided all the booze I could want.

What I prep while Gaming:
> I custom photoshop maps as needed
> I provide a portable beamer, two laptops which run maptools ( the player one running fullscreen mode for presentation purposes ), and said maptools campaigns operate at the very fucking upper end of what that shitty java shit can handle in terms of number of graphics, objects, images, scripts, macros, lighting etc
> I get written Handouts for magical analysis, asking around town, prophecies and visions
> I write shortstories detailing what some PC will learn if he goes off alone
> I sort out some fucking music to go with the gamenight
> I have a proper and modular scene plan written out, just the same way I would be preparing for a class I am holding at school / college

New to the thread, but I play in a group where everyone is a working professional, and no, we do not pay our GMs. Yes, we do print out maps, notes (sometimes hundreds of pages of notes) music, and gameplay plans.

I have never heard of a place where paid GMing is the norm.

Question: Do you rotate DMing such that everybody gets to play?
If yes: Good for you.
If no: Some poor sod is forever a DM, and if he is putting in as much work as I am, being the autistic sperg I am, then he's really a beta faggot, and you guys really should consider yourselves lucky.

Consider this:
You are entertained for 6hours. This costs you 60quid. What would a night out cost you? Dinner 30quid, Cinema 15quid, have a single cocktail ontop and you're way above that.

Me personally, I can't DM for plebs anymore. I'm too autistic and perfectionistic and want to have a proper awesome experience at the table. I put in lots of work, and I would not be putting it in, were I not being recompensated for my work.

I would then be pursuing another hobby in my freetime, as I couldn't fathom doing 25hrs total work for free for some freeloading beggars.

It's Russia.

Most people only have one game a week, not 3. And they don't take them that seriously. Most DMs don't even do much prep at all, let alone a 3:1 ratio between prep and playing

>Question: Do you rotate DMing such that everybody gets to play?

On a hardly even basis. Me and another guy named Ian DM about 95% of the time in a group of about 7 including the two of us.

Consider this: DMing is fun, if done right. You aren't working for the playgroup, the playgroup is monkeying around in a world that you built, which should be an enjoyable experience.

> as I couldn't fathom doing 25hrs total work for free for some freeloading beggars.

You are definitely autistic. And I don't mean in the Veeky Forums colloquial sense. I mean in the "I have no idea how human relationships work and have something wrong with my brain" sense.

I mean for fuck's sake, do you charge your friends for hanging out with them? For going to a movie together that you didn't like? For going on a hiking trip together? If you're not enjoying the group activity, you are again putting work in for your friends.

you crazy?
how would I be doing 3 games a week, having just accounted for you that one gamenight equals 30hrs total of my time? when would I be sleeping?
I have games 3 saturdays the month :)

yeah you fuck right off. I provide a service, and the service I provide is superb, I put in the time and people can either pay for it - or not play in my groups :) I do not charge my friends for hanging out with me - because I don't need to put reallife workhours into that :)
I have however, after having been foreveraGM for almost a decade, stopped taking shit from ungrateful and unreliable players. My players, those who pay me for my service, ALWAYS turn up on time :) And then they lean back and enjoy a fucking ride :)

That user is right, you actually do sound autistic.

> or not play in my groups :)
Believe me, just the phrase "paid DM" would be enough to convince most people, and your posts here would only increase the confidence on their choice along with driving away a significant amount of your already small pool of potential customers

the way I approach art is autistic.
The way I approach payment for services rendered is not :)
As you might have noticed: I do tell one game where I am "only" fed and watered for my troubles - but these I am very well.

For Friends, that is allright.

However, I definitely have a trauma from my university years and disappointment after disappointment in so many regards :)

you can't know that never having tried it :D
I do assure you, it would be worth your time.
Were we to enter into an agreement of rotating DMs which proves reliable, then that would also be allright with me :) However, experience teaches that rotating DMs never works out. People are shit and garbage that way.

I honestly cannot imagine what group could have been bad enough to make you enter in a salt spiral so great it made you into a paid DM

it wasn't just one group,
it was two or three groups over the course of more than a decade. I'm actually a nice guy, you know? I always hold my word, and I always pay my debts. I'm not skimping out on anybody ever, and I don't account for anything given between friends.

Until such a time comes, when I keep on being the guy investing into a relationship, and I keep on being the guy who does not get anything out of it. :D

It's all good though, the way I do my pen and paper now is okay. I know that I can't ever expect anyone to do storytelling for me in any quantity, quality or reliability that I would be trusting to upfront my own part.

I would give a nonpaid group with rotating GMs a chance - given that everybody else goes before me and I go last.

But truth is, most people don't put out in any which way I could enjoy it. Imagine the way I prep for a gamenight as outlined above, and then run this against what most people do for prep. Truth is, I will get frustrated when things drag on forever, when an entire evening is nothing but filler, when there's no coherent plot whatsoever - and then I'll politely pay the takeoutorders bill for the night for the GM and excuse myself from his games after the game has been run.

On the other hand, me personally? I would be willing to shill out twohundred bucks myself for a gamenight that is just perfect. Aint any more expensive than having a college girl amateur over for a couple of hours.

:)

Not him, but is being a paid DM really that bad if you're DMing for people you have never really met? Just genuinely curious, due to broke college student status

You really should never feel bad to ask something if you put in work. Especially if you meet up with strangers. Explain upfront that you would definitely be up for DMing for them. Then give them the first Session for free - and prep it really fucking well to get them hooked.

If they like your product then you can negotiate prices. And you should not feel ashamed to ask them to pay at least as much as it would cost them to pay for a movieticket. If you DM for 5 hours straight, you can easily ask 30bucks per player in your group and per evening. Now, this would be a pitiful wage, but it's just for getting started.

Now, here's how you proceed from there - or how I did it ( or rather: am doing it: ) - I prep a campaign real fucking well. And then once I'm through or once I have another group, I tell the same campaign with them as well.

If you prep a big sandbox of a game for the groups, you can even have them exist in the same universe. You can reuse your prepwork and keep expanding on it to keep building the world and experience. You can also have multiple groups benefit from each other.

This is essentially what I've done the last decade now, I told 3 major campaigns, one of them a medieval warlord setting, one of them an adventurous pirates of the southern seas, one of them a world of darkness chronicle. Each of those I have told three times or more, and I really enjoy retelling these stories. Each runthrough they change significantly, and each runthrough the campaigns are being expanded upon.

I even once had a meetup of 4 different groups whom had played the world of darkness campaign ( which was crossover nWoD ), and it was great. 4 different people coming together who had played the same archetype of a character. Of course, not every character was present in each runthrough, ( except for two! ), but rather players always had a free choice of playing something I offered up - or something they wanted to play.

and this is really fun. Said character was a bikerbroad who turned brujah later. She was being played...
> first by a Hipster Numale from my schooldays (male)
> afterwards by a IRL butch battle lesbian
> then by a straightface no bullshit banker (male)
> last by a gothgirl

so two dudes and two girls who had played the same character in the same campaign ( which always turned out drastically different and had drastically different tones ) got together. And then they found out that ALL OF THEM had played the Brujah Biker Broad as a mommas girl heart of gold bikergirl who did go through every length for her friends, always befriended one other Player Character ( an Economics Feminist 1%er Woman ), and all 4 of them in the end sacrificed themselves heroically.

It was great. Those guys had such fun :D

To say that you prepare "perfect campaigns", you must be an autistic, egocentric wanker.

nah, I said that my approach is perfectionistic,
and that I would easily pay 200bucks for a perfect gamenight. :) I am by no means perfect. I always run a feedbackround after each session and take notes on what to improve :) There always is room for improvement. I am not perfect :D

>Veeky Forums getting butthurt over pidoraska getting paid to DM while they >do it for free
Obviously if he is getting paid, and by strangers, he's doing something right.

Hookers get paid by strangers too annon.

I cant not even fathom ever paying someone to DM or being paid to do so.

The players bring food, snacks and drinks for all. the DM brings the story. I have never played with a group that did something other then that nor have i DM and the players did not want that.

i mean i guess the DM is getting paid in the sense he gets a free meal and snacks for the night. but if i were to consider ever paying for a DM then the only thing i will bring is my character. and snacks and drinks (non booze) better be provided by the DM if i am paying him.

I GM about as much as I play and I wouldn't want to charge for it.

Paying someone to Gm or receiving payment changes the dynamic of the group considerably. It no longer is a game between friends but instead a service for entertainment and essentially a new job.

Our usual dm does freelance dm'ing in exchange for free drinks and food because he likes doing it.

I would pay for a really good DM...Even as a DM I would pay for a cast of really good players...

But the GM is meant to be a fun social activity with friends, not an enterprise.

If you're putting in so much effort to your hobby that you consider it 'work' that you need to be compensated for, you really should dedicate yourself to something else.

My group has multiple games with multiple GMs, but even when we only have one game going for a long time with a singular GM if they're not having fun anymore then we stop playing the game and do something everyone can enjoy.

All those smilies
Must be german or troll. Either would make perfect sense.