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Old 12-10-2019, 12:46 PM   #1
copeab
 
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Default The professional Dungeon Master

A somewhat interesting article appeared recently on Bloomberg news about some DM's getting paid up to $500 a session.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...-hosting-games

I remember a letter in an issue of Dragon in the early/mid 90's where a DM said he was considering charging for his services and was not-so-subtley warned thar lawyers would soon be involved.

Interesting to have such a radical shift in one generation.
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Old 12-10-2019, 02:38 PM   #2
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

My experiences as a paid GM are mixed...

Paid by the store? had a reasonably good time. 3 problem players, only 2 of whom were at my table. One got banned, one got warned about either picking a different table, or accepting that no one else shared his view of events. The third was ejected by the owner for making threats.

Paid directly by players? The one group I ran for (this was early 90's, I was paid around $30 per session) was a totally toxic group of narcissistic jerks, each of whom was trying to out-jerk the others, all while intoxicated on various substances.

Food and petrol: I have run a few one shots where the players filled my tank with petrol and my belly with dinner. Those were more "establish the how to play by example"... and were quite fun.
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Old 12-11-2019, 10:04 AM   #3
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

I've found running games to be a good way to get a free con membership. Even non-gaming-focused cons often have a gaming room and want to list some scheduled events in it.
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Old 12-11-2019, 04:42 PM   #4
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

I saw these guys on Indeed offering a paid job as a GM for kids. They say they're an educational non-profit.

https://www.thegameacademy.org/
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Old 12-11-2019, 05:36 PM   #5
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

Beyond some food and drink during a session, the only "payment" I ever got for running a game was in the early 90's, a softcover gaming book (BattleTech Rules of War, for a GURPS Space campaign). I don't think I could do it for cash, mainly because of the expectations of paying players.
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Old 12-12-2019, 02:52 AM   #6
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

When I ran games at GenCon in the 1980s and 1990s, the GM got a share of the game ticket price, though it wasn't very much.

Many for-profit conventions will give free memberships if you're running games since that helps to get in more paying customers, though in the UK they're getting more stingy - at Games Expo you have to run so many games for the free ticket that you end up not having any time to do anything except run your games.
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Old 12-12-2019, 05:35 AM   #7
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

I've read about "professional GMs" before. More important, I've met a few.

For most people who do this, it's a sideline and not a living – a way to defray the cost of rulebooks, minis, dice, and perhaps dedicated gaming furniture, as well as geeky paraphernalia such as books and DVDs, swag, costumes, and replica (or real!) weapons. It's the GM with a room or home filled with stuff to use as props who most often makes this work. Personality, storytelling skills, rules knowledge, etc. matter, too, but less than you might expect. A lot of the time, clients are really paying to visit the "geek cave."

Anybody considering this should look at their investment in stuff: If it's big enough, they might just have an impressive enough space to make this work after a fashion! "Make this work" means earning enough to help pay back some of what they've poured into the money pit, not actually earning a living. :)
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Old 12-12-2019, 09:16 AM   #8
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

It seems to have really taken off on the various Virtual TableTop setups. There are people who don't have a local group, who just want to play, usually with minimal wait times.

Quality of the GM doesn't seem to matter all that much.

For comparison, a lot of VTT games can be quite picky about adding players and so people can wait for quite some time before finding a game, and the handful of "Will take anyone who can make it at <insert time/date>." open games tend to fill very rapidly (within minutes, even for games that won't happen for a month or more).


Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Anybody considering this should look at their investment in stuff
This would seem not to be important for the online games. So I wonder how that compares, but I don't think there will be any sort of data you could just look at for some time, if ever.
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Old 12-13-2019, 12:33 AM   #9
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

I've done this for a little over a decade - not so much in the past couple of years - but I was earning quite a bit to run campaigns for high-paid professionals who wanted to be able to blow off steam with their friends without having to do extra work.
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Old 08-11-2020, 06:43 PM   #10
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Default Re: The professional Dungeon Master

Old thread, but I gotta brag about the sweet gig I had in high school back in 1981-3.

This guy started a company to teach classes for park districts that couldn't come up with instructors for classes their community wanted. I was initially hired to teach AD&D to grade school and junior high kids, but ended up teaching tennis, soccer, computers and random craft junk. Best of all, $6 an hour when minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. I only got about 5-10 hours a week. It would never have been enough for an adult to live on, but it was glorious for a 16 year old D&D geek.
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