Is there anything more soulless than a GM who makes you pay for sessions?

Is that 15 bucks per player?

How do they even find customers?

They could be the best ever but I'd still rather play with my friends for free than a stranger for a tenner.

Is it really such an alien concept that someone might GM because they enjoy it, and can clearly articulate to their group that they might need a break from it every now and then?

I imagine the players split it.

Circumstances where this would be acceptable:

-Your DM asks for a small fee a month from each player so he can keep his Roll20 subscription and modify the API so you can play your game.

-Your DM has offered to purchase and prepare all snacks so long as you each cover a fraction of the cost.

-You're required to help to cover the fee of the room you're renting.

-He's a famous and/or notable GM or celebrity, in which case you're paying for either quality or novelty.

-Con D&D. Why are you paying to play 5e at a convention?

I'm afraid I don't see the problem. How is GMing for pay any different from doing any other artistic work for pay? He's investing his time and effort to provide an entertainment service, and if he wants to charge for it that's his prerogative. In a perfect world, sure, artists would do their work purely for the love of their art, without respect to payment, but this isn't a perfect world, and people have bills to pay. It'd be one thing if he's charging his friends in this way, but this looks like something he's advertising to the general gaming public.

Not to mention, given that a typical session of gaming is usually AT LEAST 3 hours, what he's asking for is a pittance. Especially given that he's probably investing even more of his own time before the session to prep.

>first session free
>then it's 15 per session
This doesn't sound too bad. Maybe I should try that.

A player who makes you pay for the privilege of having him.

>playing with randos
>paying money to play with randos

Oh go suck a dick, you humungous pile of faggotry. I dm for two different groups because i want to. It's a bit intimidating at first, sure, but dming is fun as hell when you get into it. I doubt anyone is fucking forced into it for strangers.

Someone who doesn't understand WHY a DM can and will charge $15 per session.
This guy is right: What he's doing is basically putting out his services as a private performing artist for a guaranteed and (hopefully) higher-quality product.

>I dm
Ugh, kill yourself please. You are actively making the world a worse place, leave it at once if you have any dignity at all.

2/10 got me to reply

Whoa, that was sudden.

Take your deendee-rone faggotry with you when you go, waste.

He said soulless, not retarded.

...but i don't even run inna dnd system. Dm is just a common phrase for it.

No, fuck you. Fuck you.

If you're using that disgusting term, you have to be running some awful d20shit D&Dclone pile of garbage like the subhuman scumsack you are.

Fuck off with that /v/-tier attitude.

Well, if they're charging $15 per session, they sure as hell aren't doing it just for the money.

Trying too hard, 3/10. But just for fun, let's see what else you've got.

Not him but you're down to a 2/10. Fucking one trick pony.

I don't really see the problem.
People have the right to be paid for whatever they do as long as it is legal, and people have the right to pay them if they want to.
Nothing wrong with "professional" GMs and those willing to pay for their services, and the GMs GMing for free and those who wouldn't want to pay a GM.

I dont see the problem. If someone's willing to pay, why not? I wouldnt personally do it but then i have friends into this stuff, they might not.

Oh man, I thought it said $15 per hour, $15 per session would basically only cover snacks.
Unless he charges each person, then a 4 person group for four hours works out to $60 either way.

If I could get $60 a game, and run like four or five a week, I could maybe quit my job and DM all the time. It'd be a bit of a scrape financially, but it'd be kinda sweet.

Not a bad idea. If you're a good enough GM, why not charge randoms for it?
You offer:
> A world for the players to play in, along with novella-length primer for them to read
> Higher-quality GMing than 'the uhh orc uhh attacks you', possibly with a battle map and/or a projector.
> Right of refusal of business to any player.

Hell, why not offer full-service GMing, and throw a meal in as well? It's like a dinner theater, only interactive.

Hell, people willingly pay for babysitting, and GMing is basically babysitting adults anyways.

I'm sure there are plenty of parents and spouses that would be willing to throw a few bucks a week to you so they can have an evening to themselves.

>$300 a week
I think that's on par with minimum wage, putting you dead into starving artist territory.

Great, another butthurt player thread.
I hope they all catch on and start charging, if only to squeeze out all the poorfags who insist that they shouldn't have to pay for someone to indulge their fantasies

Yeah, it wouldn't be bad for a part time job, but it's not enough to live on alone.

They better be some Matt mercer level shit

Trust me, he's just as good.

-Your DM is fucking amazing, and builds props and 3D maps, with ambient music and proper lighting and everything, and the money is for the cost of supplies and additional labor.

>implying retards have soul
Hello tumblr.

>He's a famous and/or notable GM or celebrity, in which case you're paying for either quality or novelty.

Why would you be friends with someone like that? Is that you Will Weeton?

I regularly post under such posts telling people that I'll do whatever the faggots who want to charge are offering for free.

All "customers" are satisfied, but I'm more downright orgasmic when I ruin the swindling

>>implying retards have soul
>Hello tumblr.
6/10
made me exhale with force

>people pay others to DM for them

I would pay people to play in my fucking games. I was thinking about putting posters up at my community college to play World of Darkness with me (for free of course)

I pussed out because I was kind of fearful that someone would spread my number around and relentlessly prank call me

Poorfags who want everything for free.

If I'm still passionate about DnD/GM'ing when I'm an oldfag I'd do this when I retire desu

Could've gotten a dedicated email for it instead.

I'm horrible about checking emails, even my main one

That sounds fantastic. Keep doing the Lord's work, user.

What's the matter, butthurt that you're stuck in a job you hate?

>starving artist territory

Yeah, that's about where I'm at financially right now, only minus the artist part. So if I could keep at the same level of cash and DM instead of doing shitty jobs for it, I'd consider that a step up.

Nah, just love ruining it for idiots that ask money for stuff you get for free.

I'm glad to see that it also tickles you the wrong way. Maybe it will motivate you to get an actual job, ya bum.

Glad to hear that someone else does this. I've sniped about a dozen different groups away from this one fag at my LGS who tries to make money off of GMing.

I'm honestly baffled that he keeps trying, but I guess the handful of sessions he typically gets before I find out are worth it.

>Who the hell's forcing them to do anything? GMing is something you do because you want to do it.
It can be. But it can also be an introduction to eternal hatred.

Do you also steal from shopkeepers who sell products you don't approve of?

I mean, I'd never pay to have someone GM for you, but if someone can actually make money doing something they enjoy, all the better for them. It's not like they're swindling or robbing people.

>This guy says it's done because you want too.
>Obviously has never been forced into ForeverGM territory because no one else in the group wants to run a game.
I envy you, I really do.

If they are selling canned air and bottled toilet water then yes.

Protip: Most grocery stores do, in fact, sell bottled tap water under various brands.

And these GMs aren't doing anything of the kind. They're selling entertainment. Just because some people do magic tricks as a hobby doesn't mean professional magicians are somehow scamming people.

>GMing is something you do because you want to do it.

So is cooking. And playing sports. And painting pictures. And acting. And dancing. And doing stand up. And playing video games. And gardening. And walking your dog. And writing poetry. And playing the guitar. And fucking. And a thousand other things that many people do as a hobby for their own enjoyment, but which other people do professionally. I can't see why you would think that GMing is somehow different, unless you are just suffering from sour grapes, or for some reason think tabletop games are somehow more sacred than any other profession in the world.

I'm just not used to it yet, our hobby is becoming increasingly more mainstream and I'm not ready for it to be yet

I don't like change

This, right here.

Our hobby has enough cancer without faggots like OP.

If you can get people to pay you to take a shit, then you should make every penny you can shitting everywhere they'll pay you.

I play with friends so the idea of charging them wouldn't work but, when we were young and equally poor, I did get everyone to chip into a fund to help with costs. As forever GM, I was always buying books and it was costly. So after we started chipping in, i'd pay for half the cos of a book (since it would be going on my shelf) and take the rest from the till. At some point, we'd accumulated enough money to buy a nice folding table and some chairs. I just realized that I still have that table!

And, fortunately, I still have those friends. We've been gaming together for 26 - 31 years (I am an oldfag).

Players are the cancer killing games. If GM's making them pay helps keep their bullshit to a minimum, then I'm all for it.

Ok lets look at this another way.
You are a fantastic GM, the one talent you've been given on this earth is running RPGs.

How do you make a living doing it?

So far i've got:
Start a Twitch channel
Publish a game
Publish a series of modules.

Anyone got better ideas?

>GMing is basically babysitting adults
underrated post

>Publish a game
>Publish a series of modules.

It's worse than that. Being a good GM does not translate into being a good author or game designer. (See Dave Arneson, by all accounts an incredible god-tier DM, who struggled just to get jack shit down on paper)

Well shit, that's out.

Your college doesn't have a games club?

>Players are the cancer killing games.
1/10
what are you doing

Money for sex.

Write books or get into scriptwriting, dumbass. If your fantastic GM skills aren't even transferable to that level, you're not a fantastic GM.

If you're not a huge railroad engineer, then the skills you use as a DM are very different from those of a writer. Sure you've got NPC characterization and motivation, but a great DM is about reacting to players and improvising believable results on-the-fly, and managing player-player conflicts, and player-GM conflicts, and being a good host, and having a good head for rules and numbers, and multitasking well.
Honestly you can be a fantastic GM even if you can't really write a story for shit. "Writing a story" just isn't a prime skill for GMs.

Fantastic GM skills would probably mostly transfer to improv acting, if anything. And I'm not sure that pays much more than what OP posted

I think you're right. If your a good DM you'd probably be a good teacher maybe even a politician

I recently was paid to DM. I don't feel I did a good enough job, to be honest.
My rate was $5 per person per 2 hours, and we were supposed to get 6 people for 6 hours, but the 6th person had other plans, which really screwed things up, surprisingly.

If anyone is interested I could write it out.

yeah for the sake of my own curiosity please explain how and why money came into it at all?

A bad GM who makes you pay for sessions.

No, in a way he's right. The more nuanced truth is that the rapidly decreasing quality of players is the cancer that's killing the game. Nobody has an attention span any more, they're lazy, they feel entitled to 'win' at PnP all the time, and they're in the majority so they think this is normal. Good players are diamonds in the sewer these days.

People have just learned how to spot shit GMs and call them out on it.

>Player paying GM
>not the other way around

So, I'm good friends with the local game store owner, who heard from the gentleman who wanted to play (We will call him J) that he would like someone to run a game for his birthday. The owner has played in games with me and by me before, so he recommended me (it also probably didn't hurt that I had just lost my job and was being a whiny ass, but that's another story).
Because I wasn't running this game for my own enjoyment, I was running it as a service, and because J offered to pay, I asked for what I did. I also asked for what I did because J wanted to do an 8 hour game, which was not going to happen, so having it be in 2 hour increments gave me a reasoning to change it to 6 hours and everyone was still happy (J and one other person ended up almost yawning their heads off towards the end, so I think this was the right decision).

I spent about 10-12 hours gathering maps, designing a story, creating characters, and conferring with J as to what sort of game he would be interested in (which did not go so well, as he took my question of "What sort of things are you interested in, example being the Battle of Helm's Deep from LotR" as "Do you want to play out this exact scenario with no deviation." I ended up going with a generic dungeon crawl with room for expansion.).
I also provided character sheets and cheat sheets for everyone, as well as dice, pens, scrap paper, etc.

>Continued

In terms of the actual game itself, we ended up with the one person who had actually played RPG's before not showing up, and he was going to be the primary combatant of the group, so combat was a bit more painful than it should have been. I also misjudged how long combat would take overall, and should have pushed the "this is something that is not right, you should go up to the city and get reinforcements/rest after being attacked" aspect more, but they managed to muddle through adequately.

This meant that rather than being a decent mix of combat and non-combat encounters, as well as letting everyone have room to shine, it ended up being combat encounter, combat encounter, puzzle encounter, oh shit, these guys are just forcing their way through the problem, hastily constructed non-combat encounter, combat encounter, boss fight.

If I was to do it all over, I would have gone rather harder on the cliche. Start the game in a tavern, have a fight break out, lawful half of the party needs to figure out what's going on, criminal half of the party wants to get out of Dodge, and allow it to somewhat organically gravitate the way the plot desires, rather than what happened, which was "While investigating the sewers/trying to escape through the sewers, you are attacked by rat cultists. Working together will give you the best chances of figuring out the problem/escaping."

So in the end, J paid me for the time, energy, and resources I brought to the table, as well as quite a few years experience DMing.
I'd like to think it was worth it, as most of the players seemed to have fun.

That J guy just seems kinda sad.

I think it was more "I wanna do something interesting and fun I read about in GQ or whatever for my birthday that doesn't involve hookers and blow or athletic activity, and doesn't require all that much effort on my part."

But to each their own.

That's how it sounded to me. Dudebro wants to play a real deeundee like how the nerds do, and only knows one guy who's ever played it, so he gets a dm from that nerd game store, yo.
I think user is just projecting his own sad.

Actually I kind of like this idea. If the GM were paid up front and could end the session at any time, it would make jerk players think twice before fucking up the game for their own purposes. Myself, I wouldn't want to keep the money, though, it feels cheap. Maybe do it like some intramural umpires do, take the fixed rate money up front himself, ref the game, then deliver the money to the league office.

Hmm, a GM league... a league of umpires... preparing adventures and resolving disputes where your authority actually has some bite to it, for a nominal compensation that you spend on pop and a decent seat cushion...

Do any of you fuckers actually have friends to sit down and play with in real life? Because I'm pretty sure if you all did this would be a non issue.

Some game stores have a thing where to use the space, you pay a token amount, I've heard from $1 to $10, and the GM gets a portion of that in store credit, nominally to buy books and stuff.

That depends, is the GM any good?

Perhaps they know it's stupid and they've just given up on caring about anything

Nah, GM's have been upping their game for decades now. Just look at all the blogs, tools, learning sessions, etc.

Meanwhile, nobody is training players how to be less spastic fucktards.

Well, a quality GM that's known in circles? Yeah, that's worth paying.

Paying to play with Wil Wheaton or some other celebrity? The way I see it that's just the stupid tax.

>Offering a service for free that others charge for is the same as stealing from shopkeepers

That's not true at all. There are all kinds of articles & videos about becoming a better player. Players may not have all the resources for growth that GM's do but there are still plenty out there.Of course, I only know this because I was actually looking for the information.

I thought this was a bad thing until I started reading 'looking for GM' threads on Roll20. There are enough entitled faggots looking for someone to run their special snowflake setting using their special snowflake system that I don't mind someone taking their money.

>that entire post
jesus fucking christ. I'd charge upwards of $100 dollars/hour with a sign-on fee of $500+ to account for prep.