Paying for someone to GM for you

Computerized RPGs have been a thing for about 40 years now...

But D&D receiving the influence of D&D-interpreted-through-vidya back unto itself is less than 20 years old.

Yeah, fuck content creators. How dare they charge money for stuff they worked on?!

Who pissed in your juice box, bro?

See: 4E... You know, the near universily joked and dwerided version of the people love to hate on? They wound a lot of that shit back for 5e. I would say that that "trajectory" has been diverted for a while.

Yeah, fuck an open and collaborative community. How dare I work with the good of the hobby in mind and not break mutually beneficial standards in the interest of lining my own pockets?!

>Yeah, fuck content creators. How dare GM's charge money for a campaign they worked on?!

You want to sell your shit? Make it into a book and sell it. Charging money to DM is some greedy shit, and sets a weird expectation.

I remember when this practice was loathed on Veeky Forums.

But now fun is a buzzword and charging for having fun is ok. I wonder if I could organize game nights and charge for teaching normal tabletop games while a group of people play with me my favorite games, it would be so dope.

Take a quick look at the steam store. Most "content creators" are a bunch of self-righteous retards that couldn't make flappy bird without it bricking every computer it's installed in.

Most of the assholes that feel entitled to get paid for shit they do on their free time for fun are like this; talentless hacks.

Friendly reminder fellow GM that you must always offer your GMing services for free, so the hobby doesn't become infested with shit

3e was accused of the exact same videogame influence when it was first released. 5e retains a good amount of the cancer though they are the closest D&D has come to the original chemo since WotC took over. It's still stuck with power creep, player coddling, GM as 'storywriter' and official support for Hickman style LotR heroism and railroads in campaign design, however, all of which encourage that mall-shop predictable/safe play.

That's what people used to say about home-brews and videogames coming out of the independent community. Now is the word of the day. It's only a matter of time.

WotC is already running official, standardized Adventurer's League games. We'd see them first they'll normalize it as the only 'real' way to play D&D, then start charging for it, which players will be happy to pay for as they seek out even more pure official followers of the rulebook, perfectly balancing their "fun" without any complications - with indies and the online community goose-stepping right alongside the whole time since they stand to profit too from the newfag LCD market.

Hell, maybe in the most dystopian scenario, we'll see WotC declare home games are unofficial piracy, wouldn't that be a riot.

Assuming you are this guythat's what everyone is trying to say but you keep shitting on them.

youre paying what 10-15 bucks for a shit tonne of a strangers time so long as their good at it i dont see any issue with that at all

I feel like people complaining about this are similar to people who complain about artists's commission prices

>paying GM's is now reasonable
What the fuck has gone wrong with the hobby?

It's not a hobby anymore, it's an industry and we're its customers.

How dare things cost money!

I know what you mean. Doing things free is fine for a hobby, but if the hobby gets popular enough to become more than just a hobby then you'll see this sort of thing.
I know if I had a line of people all waiting to play in my games I'd gladly quit my job and start charging so I could GM all week long. Play tabletop every day? Fuck yeah! But I got bills to pay so it ain't happening as it is.

Money isn't dirty, hippie. There's nothing wrong with charging for services, unless you charge more than you're worth. In that case the market will fix your ass shortly.

I mean, my players usually pay me in pizza and beer, so...

I have no problem with a group paying a very good GM to run a campaign for them, as long as it's a campaign the players want to run and the GM is a professional storyteller who puts in a lot of effort into it.

Paying some random schmuck to participate in his campaign is bullshit, though.

PFS got that ball rolling before WotC stepped in with AL. Standardized play in a fucking TTRPG is just downright blasphemous.

Placing money over all else is cancer in a medium built by hobbyists as a labor of love. If we start charging people to join our tables, we'll turn the industry even more towards soulless corporate control, dragging down the games further while locking out true hobbyists in favor of even more shallow casual entryists. But I get that selfish, parasitic assholes like you put your own entertainment ahead of the hobby, despite it being contingent on either out of being too dull to recognize the consequences or too short-sighted, how else do you think we got here?

>Placing money over all else

Who said anything about that, you dumb hippie?

>true hobbyists
>shallow casual entryists

Oh pardon me, you're actually a hipster, just one with anti-money hippie tendencies.

>anyone who complains about LCD casuals is an elitist pretender!!
why are you even on Veeky Forums? Complaining about newfag cancer, like you, has been the order of the day since the beginning and for good reason. We were here first, why should we have to shut up and settle for their lazy, entitled misinterpretation of the hobby?

You'll know how much it sucks when shit degenerates even further in front of your own eyes.

poor bunny is deceased, why do people do this? inb4 teh furry supremacy

>>implying RPG's were invented by middle aged guys with full time jobs, wifes and kids
no he wasn't. he didn't say anything about the invention of RPGs. have you any reading comprehension at all

4E had it down before PFS unfortunately. 3E had it's own version of standardized play before that. "Living Campaigns".

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one on Veeky Forums who plays games with my friends instead of at my LGS with a group of autists that I hate

>weren't*
He's possibly suggesting a sociological development (players growing older) is responsible for changes in playstyle, when the new form is far less appropriate for the conditions he describes.

Possibly not, but it doesn't change my post. Ignore the industry context and just look at him - the idea that his obligations are a good fit for pay-for GMs is a mistake when the old form was specifically designed to accommodate those obligations; you only need pay-for GMs if you're trapped to the new form, which require large investments of time as GM. It's putting a bandage over a gaping wound, and the bandage's made of poison

By the looks of it he's spending the money on in game "props" like maps and textures. I mean, I wouldn't join his game or anything, but it's practically the equivalent of telling people to bring snacks or something.

Why is it a secret what your "dues" will purchase?

Depends how long he's been at it.

After a year or two, I can see the GM just using it as snack money after they bought enough books and minis and landscapes.

Didn't we already have this argument, with the exact same OP pic?

Fuck capitalists.

Okay, but then half your cut should goto WotC since "why should you make money off MY work?"

Because they can get away with it. They'll trick some of the new LCD retard casuals until it becomes more normal, and then all of the next generation of LCD retards fall for it, and then everyone is forced to pay for it or find no games because the LCD directs the industry.

Send him a private message and he will explain?

Why it's a secret is a secret too? what the fuck!

It's just anons looking for easy shit to stir up.

I think many people here do, but you won't hear about it because successful groups tend to make boring stories. Like last session two of the other players and I got together and jammed on backstories and had a lot of fun, but that makes boring thread material.

>all this inarticulate "yeah services!" "fuck money!" debate
Paying your GM is bad(?) because it fundamentally changes the relationship between the GM and his players. He's not your equal and friend anymore, he's someone you contracted and you're his clients. It's the difference between having dinner at someone's house and having dinner at a restaurant. The restaurant can be cozy as hell and lack a sophisticated menu ("whatever the wife felt like cooking today") and the owners friendly and you can have a really enjoyable time there, but it's not the same thing. See also sleeping at your friends' house vs farm stays and other hostelry models where you're treated much like a guest.

Thankyou!
I came here to say this

>He's not your equal and friend anymore

It's nice when he is, but as Veeky Forums shows on a daily basis, it's not often the case.
But bravo for making a sensible and articulate post. I'd say paying a GM isn't bad, but it is, as you say, a fundamentally different relationship.

This is all a moot point though, since our hobby is still too small to support pro GMs anyway.

Just like there's nothing wrong with going to a restaurant when you want to enjoy a nice meal with your friends and family, there's nothing wrong with paying a professional GM to run a campaign for your group to get an enjoyable experience.

So I work in a spa. We do massages there. Before you ask, no, we don't. We're a reputable business.
We've gotten complaints in the past about certain therapists being a bit too talkative. Sometimes clients want to talk a little, some talk through the whole service, others don't talk at all - it's all about tailoring the experience to their needs.
It is constantly reiterated at staff meetings that while you can and should be friendly with these people, they are not your friends - they are clients. They are paying for your time, and like and suggest, that fundamentally changes the relationship dynamic.
More than once, a therapist has been complained about for being a little too comfortable in their speech and saying something out of turn. In a friendly context, this could be no big deal. Hash that shit out and move on. But in a client-sales dynamic, this could be the difference between having a repeat client who requests your schedule so they can book with only you and the receptionists having to recommend someone else because they sure aren't coming back to you no matter how good your hands are.

This faulty logic leads to paid mods.

>Before you ask, no, we don't. We're a reputable business.
Gay.

>3e was accused of the exact same videogame influence when it was first released
>people in this thread don't remember Diablo edition
It's kinda pathetic how the exact same complaints get leveled every time.

Watching Gaben get so thoroughly blown the fuck out was pretty satisfying.

What exactly is an LCD?

"lowest common denominator." IE plebs, rabble, the unwashed masses who aren't cool like the poster thinks he is.

Liquid crystal display, like a simple calculator would use
They want the "dollar store handheld game thingy" demographic

And here I was legitimately starting to think he meant It makes a good slur for gamers

I overheard some lgbtetc hipsters talking about "playing" D&D and in the campaign they fought a goblin king who took off his cloak to reveal a luchadore mask underneath who challenged them to wrestle. They seem like the kind of people to pay for something this dumb.

>Casual is anything I don't like abloobloobllo muh hardcore 500 pages of rules

>"playing"
Is this Virt, or a warmup for The Angriest user?
What's the difference?

>What's the difference?

Sexualized elf murder and an obsession with Dungeon World.
Wait, does The Angriest user hate 5e? If not, then that too.

Based on the way they were talking, I didn't believe for a second that any of that actually happened. I'm not normally 'bad wrong fun' but you know a lie when you hear it.

Since when this is a work for GM and not a hobby? I am a GM myself and I look with disgust at those jewing out fucks, especially tismos from roll20.

You're supposed to make money doing what you love.
That was the big secret to life success, didn't you hear?
So, do what you love. Then charge people for it.

I applaud hired GMs and hope to see much more of this in the future.

as a dm who creates modulals this is fucking infuriating

I'd bet every penny I have on it actually occurring.

I can see them now, all the dregs of society gathering around the table: but not to have a meaningful experience with the hobby. To tell a sophomoric fucking joke that isn't even worth one petty chuckle in a normal setting. But there that DM is, and he's giggling like a little schoolgirl probably for weeks and fucking weeks as he comes up with "LOL HES A LUCHADOR XDDDD THATS SO RANDUM!!!", scratch the weeks. He's been brewing this idea for years because there's no way this sack of human excrement could muster up a group of people to sit in while he squats and wrestles some verbal "gaming" turds straight from his troglodyte ass. The group gathers around, all of them as wretched physically and mentally as he is and cackle for hours at the mere thought "LOL A LUCHADOR MASK I DIDN'T EXPECT THAT IT'S JUST LIKE SOMETHING I SAW ON REDDIT", and not only do their childlike wired brains think it's funny and unique in the moment but they have the gall to reference that at a later point in time like they struck some kind of gold and subject anyone within earshot to the equivalency of getting fucked with a broom handle.

Put these people in camps and keep them away from tabletop games.

You're still a faggot, virt.

Good paying work is harder to come up with these days, so people ask money for things like this. It's sad, but true. When more and more jobs are replaced robots it's going to get even worse.

Then again your GM might be a robot in few decades. Don't except "him" to be free though.

Because if the food isn't good you can send it back.

They are free to charge money but I sure as shit am not spending money on a GM. Fuck that.

I see your point, but if we keep this thread on topic - Technically, in a ttrpg, every player is also a content creator.

Entryist and proud! We deserve rights too!

So here's how it'll go down. The GM charges the players, and each players charges the GM and the other players in turn. So It all balances out! Except WotC takes a 20% cut of all the money exchanged because why should you make money off MY work?

I agree wholeheartedly. As someone who started playing at 10 with adults, was inclined to cohesive setting/atmosphere from early on. That type of play is obnoxious unless you're scrapping together in 5 minutes when drunk/high with friends.

On that note I find "Old Man Henderson" one of the most annoying 'tg classics'.

[autistic screeching]

what is it with newfags and accusing any long-form joke or long-form post as autism? are they just trying to shame us into using Veeky Forums as low energy as they do ttrpg's?

>GMs vastly outnumbered by players in D&D circles
>outside D&D it's hard to find players and even harder to find GMs
>GMing is a specialized skill
>planning setting materials, hooks, metaplot, etc. takes time
>it's wrong to make money off of the use of skills and time

Seems pretty dumb to hate paid GMing. More than likely, it's because you're jealous that you didn't think of it first or you aren't good enough to actually make money from it.

As a content creator who's made several Homebrews (settings & systems) in the past, I have never charged anyone for it
Sure, I could try to get published but why would you go and charge people for playing your shit, especially if it's digital, that's just absurd
The only thing that you have to look after is when people try to sell your work online (yes, this happened), but there are ways to deal with that

>More than likely, it's because you're jealous that you didn't think of it first or you aren't good enough to actually make money from it
How have we fallen so far?

Yeah right, you're probably just too dumb to have thought to charge for it earlier

My dick is even now still a little hard from that roasting

>How have we fallen so far?
The fact that everybody only wants to run D&D probably has something to do with it.

>Hey, can you GM [rules-lite game]?
>Nah let's just play B/X instead!
>Hey, can you GM [rules-heavy game]?
>Nah let's just play PF instead!
>Hey, can you GM [non-D&D game]?
>Nah let's just play 3.5 with all the unofficial splats instead!
>Hey, can you GM [modern setting game]?
>Nah let's just play d20 Modern instead!

And the OSR is full of D&D house rules being sold at a premium.

Don't call it grave, it's the future you chose.

Been here since 2004, kiddo

you just described a videogame

Nah, I'm gonna second his post: That guy's long-winded diatribe can be boiled down into nothing more than "Some people enjoy playing in ways I do not approve of and that makes me furious!" That's nothing more than "autistic screeching." Fuck him, fuck you, fuck everything.

>you're probably just too dumb to have thought to charge for it earlier
Alright, I'll take the bait: but why ? I'd much rather have a random user on Veeky Forums thank me rather than 100 bucks. I make these modules and stuff as a hobby, you don't make money out of those, that's what my job is for
If you really think that all content creators are just craving for money, just think about all of the stuff that Veeky Forums has created in the past. Should they have banded together and forced people to pay for it ? The answer is obviously no, because they actually care more about creating, having fun doing it & sharing it than making money out of it
If you think that everything should be marketed then wtf are you doing on Veeky Forums, where most of the content is free by nature

Nobody's saying everything should be marketed. (Unless that guy you responded to's implying it, in which case I think he's baiting you) just that there's nothing wrong with charging for something that someone's willing to pay for.
I get that some folks, like you, would like to keep it as just a hobby you do in some of your free time, or see the hobby as just an adjunct to "hanging out with friends." That's cool.
But then there are other folks, like me, who love the games for themselves. If you told me I could quit my day job and just prep and run games all week long, and meet lots of great new people, and still be able to pay my bills, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd love to be able to do my favorite Veeky Forumss more without ending up homeless, but the hobby is too small and niche to support me that way. That means I only get to run a fraction of the games I could, and I have to see all those folks who don't have a game to play in and stifle the urge to offer to run a game for 'em.

>must speak English
>not trying to offend

>muh fun
It boils down to a joke. Some people being furries, we're still going to make fun of them and still going to think they're cringe worthy cancer.

It was sarcastic, I was imitating the other post quoted. Imo it's just empt self-rationalization.

>And the OSR is full of D&D house rules being sold at a premium.
And shared online freely, but yes, charging $$$ for PDFs is one thing I wish the OSR would have the nobility to step away from. For some reason, older folk have trouble recognizing the difference between physical products and digital services.

>If you told me I could quit my day job and just prep and run games all week long, and meet lots of great new people, and still be able to pay my bills, I'd do it in a heartbeat
Would you do accept with the caveat that you're normalizing a practice that would strongly damage the hobby? Increasing costs for everyone, putting prices down where there never were before, further encouraging corporate standardization?

>Would you do accept with the caveat that you're normalizing a practice that would strongly damage the hobby? Increasing costs for everyone, putting prices down where there never were before, further encouraging corporate standardization?

No, because that's a big steaming load of alarmist bullshit. I can get my cousin's garage band to play at my party for free because he does it as a hobby, just like people did before there was money in music. Literally nothing has changed, except the amount of hipsters whining about money in music.
And "corporate standardization" in the music field has more to do with people putting up with Clearchannel than anything else. (Communities that rejected them in favor of local stations have much livelier and unique radio atmospheres) Unless someone figures out a way to record a handful of DMs and then mass-broadcast their responses to players over the internet cheaply, there's never gonna be a Clearchannel in tabletop, it's a bad analogy.

>there's never gonna be a Clearchannel in tabletop, it's a bad analogy.
It was your analogy, what the fuck?

How about you look at indie videogames before and after they started imitating AAA industry?

He's reasoning from other fields and applying it to tabletop, which is a vague form of analogy. But he's not using specific examples because if he did his reasoning would look stupid. That's why I gave him a specific example.

"Corporate standardization" is never gonna happen in tabletop. It's impossible. The kind of environment that makes it happen is that of Clearchannel where the corporation can move in and replace everyone. You cannot replace DMs with anything, so "standardization" is not something to worry about.

Except corporate standardization is already happening and first started with the attempt to make AD&D 2e official RAW. Players who only want to play D&D 3/4e according to the rules with the system written to minimize GM rulings, AL/PFGS style standardized modules with the entire game experience being paced.

Charging for DMing is a very ill-thought idea, for multiple reasons. First, at the current time, there are two main kinds of DMs. You have the DMs who want to take advantage of the players for satisfying something on THEIR end, such as a fetish, a God complex, or a need to copy down some dialogue for a book, what have you. Then you have good DMs with a genuine love of the game and making players happy, giving them a good time and challenging them properly. These kinds of DMs, while obviously would prefer making money to spending money, DO NOT CARE about buying minis or modules or whatever, because the fun of being a DM is enough to cover the cost. These DMs are not always perfect, but they are willing to learn from their mistakes, and will always do it for free.

Now when you introduce payment into this process, you are attracting other demographics into this hobby. Despite what people may claim, it is a VERY slippery slope. "Help pay for the module" becomes "Pay me for my time" to "I want to make a profit on this venture." You are opening a market for DMs.

Economically? You can't compete with free. But what's valued in a DM market is very different than a non-market environment. When it's free, I'll put up with nonsense players, I'm fine with DM mistakes, I'll tolerate my character being killed off, and I don't care about DMing style. However, now that we're talking about charging for their services, you're talking about an environment where you're trying to avoid buyer's remorse. I don't want to regret my purchase of this guy's time. So if he kills my character, or doesn't give me enough loot, or another player who also payed is pissing me off, I can't do shit.

Let me explain each one. First, character death stings, it really does. Parts of these games will sting, they will suck, they are by design supposed to be this way. Now imagine I just paid a guy money to run this game and I’m really attached to this character. By the luck of the dice, my character ends up failing that last saving throw and dies. This displeases me, because I’m an idiot. Now, as an idiot, I am going to bitch about this endlessly to the DM, in private or at the table, until I get my way. You know what? If the DM values my money, and he does, he will let my character live. So congrats, we have eliminated risk entirely.

Now, this annoying player paid just the same as I did, and the DM won't give a shit, he's making bank. If he does give a shit and wants to keep the other players, now we have introduced a clause saying you can be kicked from a game for any reason, at any time. That means you will have to pay, enter the game, get kicked based on majority vote, and find the right group over time, losing money all the while. Think you’re safe because you’re a good player? Wrong. You haven’t played with more than one group before, have you? You can just as easily have a bad group as a bad player. In their group you ARE “That Guy” and they will kick you for this reason. You’ll want to leave, anyhow, and unless you subscribe to the sunk cost fallacy, you’re going to be cycling between groups on the regular. Think it’s bad enough keeping players around when the game is FREE? Imagine now it costs fucking money to stick around. Players will come and go and your group dynamics will change constantly.

Don’t even get started on DM style. Players benefit in obvious ways, as they don't have to pay for things. Now they have to pay money for this guy to DM for them, and they will always be looking for things that negate the value of the money they spent. I could have way more loot with the other DM that was on the DM craigslist or whatever. So how do you stay competitive? Why, not by improving your style, but by making your players more powerful. And people with little experience in DMing will enter the industry with the hopes of making money. That’s right, you don’t think it will happen? It will. Anyone with a taste for money will enter this industry to make money, invest some money in books, watch some videos, now I am a freelancer. People have entered your hobby to make money and the service they provide will always be subpar than someone who does it for fun. They will never be a player, so they will never know what a player wants. You have invited the greedy to your hobby. Congratulations.

I hope you realize the damage this does. I hope you realize how actually fucking BAD charging for DMing will do. It won’t be quick, either. It will be slow. You will become frustrated. You will leave. And it will only return to normal after maybe a decade. Kill this cancerous shit before it infects the entire industry.

Speaknig as a perma DM, it's a service, finding someone in your group autistic enough to do all the stupid bullshit you probably should be doing is difficult, and it's even more difficult to find a DM that's any decent, and it weeds out little kids from online games.

Still fucking bullshit though, and you're a bit of a scum bag if you're in it for the money and not the joy on the face of your players and sipair when the session's done.