Which is more challenging because if we move into a system where the only DM's are paid DM's that's not a good thing for WotC. The hobby can't grow (and sell more books) if we create a paywall into playing. Right now the only paywall is the purchase of a book or two. Heck you can play, right now, for free using tools on DDB, between the "Basic rules" and the free adventure.
I wouldn't worry about that. The existence of professional musicians hasn't ended the popularity of playing as an amateur. If anything it's enhanced it, by giving a bunch of teenagers dreams of fame and fortune. And the line is blurry. You have mostly amateur bands who identify as professional because they play a gig every once in a while. But it's not their day job. A similar structure could arise for D&D, where some professional DMs are elites doing streams and hosting one-shot dungeon parties for celebrities and billionaires, others are full-time DMs and your local game store, still others run a paid game for a friend of a friend from time to time. But still most tables are just groups of buddies one of whom asked them to play a game.
So if we figure a DM wants 45k per year. They work 48 weeks per year to get some time off for fun. Call that $950/ wk.
So if a DM can do 4 sessions per week with 5 players each that’s 20 players they’re managing. That’s about $45 per session per player. Do 5 sessions and it’s down to $38/session per player. Pretty steep but not totally out of reach in the right area. To get down to $20 per session the dm would need to manage 47 players or run 9 5-player games. Do-able if hard to schedule.
So if we figure a DM wants 45k per year. They work 48 weeks per year to get some time off for fun. Call that $950/ wk.
So if a DM can do 4 sessions per week with 5 players each that’s 20 players they’re managing. That’s about $45 per session per player. Do 5 sessions and it’s down to $38/session per player. Pretty steep but not totally out of reach in the right area. To get down to $20 per session the dm would need to manage 47 players or run 9 5-player games. Do-able if hard to schedule.
Sure. But 45k is not a lot to live on in some regions. So you might be able to find a paid DM for your game in Oklahoma but not Seattle.
And whenever you're an independent contractor like that, you have to factor that you won't be at capacity every week. Some of your players or whole games will cancel. So you either need to have 6 groups and most of the time one cancels, but half the time you're overwhelmed with too much work, or have 5 groups and risk having weeks where you don't get your full paycheck. And if it's your paycheck and you're struggling to make $1800 rent for a 2-bedroom apartment, you're gonna choose to be overwhelmed every time.
And the kind of person who can memorize 80% of the rules and craft a creative and organized story can probably also get a bachelor's degree and earn more than $45k. College students might make a good pool for paid DMs, though. Would be fun to hear the story of a kid who paid their way through college by working as a DM. Some of their relatives would get the wrong idea about their niece working as a "Dungeon Mistress" to pay for books. But of course, you're talking about almost a full-time job. Let's say you run 5 4-hour sessions. That's 20 hours. But you need to prep for about as much time as it takes you to run each game. So that's a full-time, 40-hour job. Maybe you could cut some time if you require all your groups to play the same module. But even then they'd get out of sync and have to prep different monsters and NPCs for each group each week. You'd have to be a pretty hard-working kid to do that kind of work while keeping up with a full classload. Better to just take a job in the university bookstore.
"It's not the DM's job to make the game exciting/good/interesting. It's the DM's job to make the game happen. "Interesting" comes from everybody." The DM's job is to put a game in front of the players; it's the players' job to play that game and do interesting things with what's in front of them. One of the reasons nobody wants to DM is that too many tables try to put EVERYTHING on the DM, and do no real participating of their own. Spread the load a little bit, remember that you do not even remotely have to be Critical Role and trying will ruin your experience, and you'll get far more people willing to DM.
I haven't gone through the entire thread. However, everything in the above^ quote speaks to me given the situation I was recently in.
Basically, my friends and I enjoyed D&D a lot, and I happened to wake up one day with a pretty fun idea for a demon-inspired campaign. I created it on roll20, custom-made maps, NPCs, adventure hooks and even a world map with lore. It was a lot of work but hell, I had a ton fun with it! I go to explain all of what I did to my one friend and the amount of work I put into it for the group and before I even finish, they just go,
"Hmm, it sounds boring. I might try a new character build in a one-shot but this sounds more traditional in the sense of one-dimensional."
Oh...my work for a campaign I wanted to run as a new DM was just boring? Without even trying it? Well, of course as it is on the internet many might also jump at me to say reading that "It probably did come off as boring!" Maybe it did. So, then I kicked them out of the roll20 group of players and listed it publicly, never having DMed before let alone a homebrew game. I made it a one-shot of the session 0 and brought in just 4 players. If it was truly boring, then I wanted something empirical to back that up.
It ended up being a nice 3 hour, level 1 session of the players talking to my home-built NPCs around the first hub-town I made. Did a few encounters, did a small dungeon, and got the bigger adventuring hook at the end of it as reward. They told me it was one of the better-to-best games they've ever played.
Frankly, I didn't fire back at my friend after that. What I did however realize is the insane-to-ludicrous expectations players have of DMs. Why would I wanna bother to go and convince my friend to play in my game as my work was criticized and labelled as boring, **without even giving it an honest try,** if literal randoms on the internet without any expectations in the **same** situation as many honest-and-willing newer PCs just wanting to play genuinely enjoyed it? You can also say it depends on the person and/or people. Of course it does. The fact is, why would I want to *incessantly* change *my* vision to have fun as a DM just to appease someone's *unrealistic standard*?
I am dandy candy to change things up to help for example, a ranger with an emphases on the survival skill or a rogue that genuinely wants to use thieves tools more in and out of dungeons. It is to put in the time, passion, dedication, and at many times the straight-up **heart** into the game for the **Dm's own creative vision** that many self-centered players either take for granted and/or totally disregard it for their own definitions of what constitutes someone as a "good DM". This is the pressure and real expectations many new DMs, such as myself, face.
Honestly? It can be very heart-breaking, and hurtful. For my own story that I introduced? Not to go into details, but it was the beginning of the end for our friendship after many years. Started over being a DM in a game that was never even played together. However, if you never do and go after the things you truly want to do and others wish to stand in your way to change you into what *they* want? Don't let anyone get in the way of what you want to accomplish.
I was posing myself this inquiry when I saw a post on the LFG discussion of a baffled player discussing how they can't track down a non paid DM to play under after a decent time allotment. I saw certain individuals concur with this client till the discussion string vanished, and I am interested on what every one of you players and DMs think about the proportion of players to DMs?
So if we figure a DM wants 45k per year. They work 48 weeks per year to get some time off for fun. Call that $950/ wk.
They apparently don't pay taxes. ;-)
They could probably get away with that. But I think pangurjan meant they would earn $45k annually before taxes.
Yeah...
You gotta assume that Uncle Sam is gonna take his cut of this though at under 50k per year, your tax bracket is low.
But even by my math it's hard to make it a good working full time gig. A fair point is that running 9 games a week at 3 hours per game is alone 27 hours of DMing, coupled with prep time easily taking it to a full time job. But that's still dealing with a) the cost of living for the DM and b) the willingness of players to free up 30 hours (give take) a week for gaming around that schedule. As most of your paying players are probably working 9-5 jobs, you'd be hard pressed to get games that start much before 5pm on a week night or you should plan solid 10 hour marathons on weekends, every week.
I think I COULD make the case that with a partner I was pulling my weight, in this area, at 45k/ year. Not to give out too much personal info but Mrs. Noir is a Vet Tech and in our area they're making $18/hour, +/- $3, with a post high school certificate. Full time, without figuring in overtime, that's not $45k/ year....
I was asking myself this question when I noticed a post on the LFG forum of a frustrated player talking about how they can't find a non paid DM to play under after a good length of time. I saw some people agree with this user till the forum thread disappeared, and I am curious on what all of you players and DMs think about the ratio of players to DMs?
I find something incredibly funny about a large group of people all going to the same place and every single one of them complains about an inability to find DMs. It's like if group of people were all in a fully stocked kitchen complaining about how hungry they are and wishing a Chef would just show up to prepare a meal for them. All it takes is one person to say, "Hey wait, I might not know how to use a stove, but I could probably make something".
As one of those who is often the DM, it's not that easy. Sure, coming up with something ONCE isn't that tough...but life will often demonstrate that once you prove that you know how to do something, others will want you to do it more simply because they don't want to.
Most people fear rejection. This goes all the way back to being the last one picked for kickball in the 2nd grade or whatever. What they don't understand is that friends will usually be forgiving if you mess something up. If they aren't, you really don't need them as friends then IMHO.
As others have stated, some of the D&D material isn't very helpful and it's only now that I think WotC is starting to broaden their minds towards material for new DMs. Many of the MMOs I've played in have a sort of roadmap from the beginning to the top levels. You do this series of missions or travel around in that zone until you hit X level and then you can move on to the next one. Keep doing that and eventually, you're at level 50 or 100 or whatever the top is. I think D&D would benefit from having something similar. I've never played the 5e preplanned adventures so I don't know if they follow this format or not.
So if we figure a DM wants 45k per year. They work 48 weeks per year to get some time off for fun. Call that $950/ wk.
They apparently don't pay taxes. ;-)
They could probably get away with that. But I think pangurjan meant they would earn $45k annually before taxes.
Yeah...
You gotta assume that Uncle Sam is gonna take his cut of this though at under 50k per year, your tax bracket is low.
But even by my math it's hard to make it a good working full time gig. A fair point is that running 9 games a week at 3 hours per game is alone 27 hours of DMing, coupled with prep time easily taking it to a full time job. But that's still dealing with a) the cost of living for the DM and b) the willingness of players to free up 30 hours (give take) a week for gaming around that schedule. As most of your paying players are probably working 9-5 jobs, you'd be hard pressed to get games that start much before 5pm on a week night or you should plan solid 10 hour marathons on weekends, every week.
I think I COULD make the case that with a partner I was pulling my weight, in this area, at 45k/ year. Not to give out too much personal info but Mrs. Noir is a Vet Tech and in our area they're making $18/hour, +/- $3, with a post high school certificate. Full time, without figuring in overtime, that's not $45k/ year....
The main difference would be that being a vet tech means a reliable income - you can pretty much count on that money. DMing is essentially gig work, and that's a lot less reliable. Vet techs likely get some extra benefits on top of that hourly wage too; if that DM pays taxes they might be able to swing a few things in a fiscally beneficial way, but that'll still cut into the bottom line comparatively.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I don't think the hobby is able to support full-time DMs, but that is very different from paid DMs.
Considering how many games (maybe 99% of them) are hosted by a friend for free, the cost for compensation is likely to stay very low. But with some money on the table, some more people are going to offer to be the DM. I would assume those games would become free games one way or another within a year. One of the players will offer to DM, or the players will begin to make enough friends in games, that they won't need to pay a DM to find a decent game.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I don't think the hobby is able to support full-time DMs, but that is very different from paid DMs.
Considering how many games (maybe 99% of them) are hosted by a friend for free, the cost for compensation is likely to stay very low. But with some money on the table, some more people are going to offer to be the DM. I would assume those games would become free games one way or another within a year. One of the players will offer to DM, or the players will begin to make enough friends in games, that they won't need to pay a DM to find a decent game.
There are some members of the oldest profession who would beg to differ about the long term potential for being paid for particular services that can also be found for free.
Just. Sayin'.
I also tend to think that if you're the sort to say "you know I don't mind plunking down $20 a week at the hobby shop once a week to play DND" might not also be the sort to say "I'm gonna start DMing myself". I also think that while it's possible a group that starts with a paid DM could move into one where the group plays without the "for the DM" fee, I don't think many would. I mean, once money is on the table, there's a strong incentive to keep the status quo for all parties.
We're also not talking about the other way to be a full time DM and that's with the income coming from someone who's not at the table. A game store (or two) could pay a DM (or two) a full time wage to just be present to run games on a regular schedule. Duties would likely include other things (customer service, stocking, invoicing) but primary duties could easily be "run the game table 3 nights a week". I could see making a decent wage in a decent sized game shop running games 4-5 nights a week or just managing "open gaming" times. Takes away the risks of the gig economy and opens up reliable income.
I think full time paid DM is possible and there's a few twitch streamers who start to flirt very closely with it. Of course that's a lot like being a professional actor. It's not just talent that gets you there.
I used to play Warhammer 1-2 times a month and since we were using the terrain they had at the store, there was a table fee. We gladly paid it because sure, we COULD play at home, but the store was convenient and had better stuff than any of us at home.
If you want to compare 'the world's oldest profession' or even just dating, I suppose it's like renting a hotel even if you have an apartment because the apartment is a mess and doesn't have a hot tub.
Which is more challenging because if we move into a system where the only DM's are paid DM's that's not a good thing for WotC. The hobby can't grow (and sell more books) if we create a paywall into playing. Right now the only paywall is the purchase of a book or two. Heck you can play, right now, for free using tools on DDB, between the "Basic rules" and the free adventure.
That said, it puts a lot of pressure on WotC to find ways to help ease people into playing the role of DM with better and better support products. This could be the time where as 5th sunsets and 6th (or 5.5 or whatever it is) comes up, there is more pressure to do just that and make guides to help new DM's understand their part in the game.
Other notes:
It's not "rail roading" it's "Roller Coastering". If you're literally taking away all options, sure that's a railroad and that's bad. Put putting the game on some rails isn't a bad thing itself either - as long as the ride is worth it. The benefit is that you don't plan 300000 scenarios that never get seen because the players didn't pursue them.
There's no reason to imagine that even 0.1% of games currently have, or will have, a paid DM. You'll see lots of talk online about paid DMs, because it's highly visible there as that's where Paid DM's are advertising, and that's where they find their players. Finding a group of players who want to pay is fine via a VTT, but harder in person.
There are 48,000,000 D&D players worldwide. Assuming that there are 5 players to the average table, That means around 9.6 million campaigns, and 9.6 million active DMs, worldwide. There would need to be nearly 100,000 paid DMs worldwide to hit 1% of all DMs, and the number is not even close to that. I'd estimate it globally at below 1,000. That number is so small as to be statistically irrelevant.
The overwhelming majority of D&D players are happily playing their games with friends, and will go through their entire D&D playing lives without ever even hearing about the idea of paying a DM.
Which is more challenging because if we move into a system where the only DM's are paid DM's that's not a good thing for WotC. The hobby can't grow (and sell more books) if we create a paywall into playing. Right now the only paywall is the purchase of a book or two. Heck you can play, right now, for free using tools on DDB, between the "Basic rules" and the free adventure.
That said, it puts a lot of pressure on WotC to find ways to help ease people into playing the role of DM with better and better support products. This could be the time where as 5th sunsets and 6th (or 5.5 or whatever it is) comes up, there is more pressure to do just that and make guides to help new DM's understand their part in the game.
Other notes:
It's not "rail roading" it's "Roller Coastering". If you're literally taking away all options, sure that's a railroad and that's bad. Put putting the game on some rails isn't a bad thing itself either - as long as the ride is worth it. The benefit is that you don't plan 300000 scenarios that never get seen because the players didn't pursue them.
There's no reason to imagine that even 0.1% of games currently have, or will have, a paid DM. You'll see lots of talk online about paid DMs, because it's highly visible there as that's where Paid DM's are advertising, and that's where they find their players. Finding a group of players who want to pay is fine via a VTT, but harder in person.
There are 48,000,000 D&D players worldwide. Assuming that there are 5 players to the average table, That means around 9.6 million campaigns, and 9.6 million active DMs, worldwide. There would need to be nearly 100,000 paid DMs worldwide to hit 1% of all DMs, and the number is not even close to that. I'd estimate it globally at below 1,000. That number is so small as to be statistically irrelevant.
The overwhelming majority of D&D players are happily playing their games with friends, and will go through their entire D&D playing lives without ever even hearing about the idea of paying a DM.
Agreed.
I'm willing to bet that the main reasons for even hearing about paid DMs are (not in this order), the current health crisis, the popularity of Critical Roles, D&D Beyond, and the increase in the number of online services and methods of play. I knew people that were desperate to find a DM BEFORE the world went mad last year. Now lots of players are craving social interaction. Critical Roles is a good vehicle to get players and wannabe players involved.
And, as you said, we're seeing quite a few ads for pay to play games because the DMs are advertising now. If you walk onto a car lot, you're gonna see lots of cars...
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I wouldn't worry about that. The existence of professional musicians hasn't ended the popularity of playing as an amateur. If anything it's enhanced it, by giving a bunch of teenagers dreams of fame and fortune. And the line is blurry. You have mostly amateur bands who identify as professional because they play a gig every once in a while. But it's not their day job. A similar structure could arise for D&D, where some professional DMs are elites doing streams and hosting one-shot dungeon parties for celebrities and billionaires, others are full-time DMs and your local game store, still others run a paid game for a friend of a friend from time to time. But still most tables are just groups of buddies one of whom asked them to play a game.
Hmmmm. Math.
So if we figure a DM wants 45k per year. They work 48 weeks per year to get some time off for fun. Call that $950/ wk.
So if a DM can do 4 sessions per week with 5 players each that’s 20 players they’re managing. That’s about $45 per session per player. Do 5 sessions and it’s down to $38/session per player. Pretty steep but not totally out of reach in the right area. To get down to $20 per session the dm would need to manage 47 players or run 9 5-player games. Do-able if hard to schedule.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Sure. But 45k is not a lot to live on in some regions. So you might be able to find a paid DM for your game in Oklahoma but not Seattle.
And whenever you're an independent contractor like that, you have to factor that you won't be at capacity every week. Some of your players or whole games will cancel. So you either need to have 6 groups and most of the time one cancels, but half the time you're overwhelmed with too much work, or have 5 groups and risk having weeks where you don't get your full paycheck. And if it's your paycheck and you're struggling to make $1800 rent for a 2-bedroom apartment, you're gonna choose to be overwhelmed every time.
And the kind of person who can memorize 80% of the rules and craft a creative and organized story can probably also get a bachelor's degree and earn more than $45k. College students might make a good pool for paid DMs, though. Would be fun to hear the story of a kid who paid their way through college by working as a DM. Some of their relatives would get the wrong idea about their niece working as a "Dungeon Mistress" to pay for books. But of course, you're talking about almost a full-time job. Let's say you run 5 4-hour sessions. That's 20 hours. But you need to prep for about as much time as it takes you to run each game. So that's a full-time, 40-hour job. Maybe you could cut some time if you require all your groups to play the same module. But even then they'd get out of sync and have to prep different monsters and NPCs for each group each week. You'd have to be a pretty hard-working kid to do that kind of work while keeping up with a full classload. Better to just take a job in the university bookstore.
I haven't gone through the entire thread. However, everything in the above^ quote speaks to me given the situation I was recently in.
Basically, my friends and I enjoyed D&D a lot, and I happened to wake up one day with a pretty fun idea for a demon-inspired campaign. I created it on roll20, custom-made maps, NPCs, adventure hooks and even a world map with lore. It was a lot of work but hell, I had a ton fun with it! I go to explain all of what I did to my one friend and the amount of work I put into it for the group and before I even finish, they just go,
"Hmm, it sounds boring. I might try a new character build in a one-shot but this sounds more traditional in the sense of one-dimensional."
Oh...my work for a campaign I wanted to run as a new DM was just boring? Without even trying it? Well, of course as it is on the internet many might also jump at me to say reading that "It probably did come off as boring!" Maybe it did. So, then I kicked them out of the roll20 group of players and listed it publicly, never having DMed before let alone a homebrew game. I made it a one-shot of the session 0 and brought in just 4 players. If it was truly boring, then I wanted something empirical to back that up.
It ended up being a nice 3 hour, level 1 session of the players talking to my home-built NPCs around the first hub-town I made. Did a few encounters, did a small dungeon, and got the bigger adventuring hook at the end of it as reward. They told me it was one of the better-to-best games they've ever played.
Frankly, I didn't fire back at my friend after that. What I did however realize is the insane-to-ludicrous expectations players have of DMs. Why would I wanna bother to go and convince my friend to play in my game as my work was criticized and labelled as boring, **without even giving it an honest try,** if literal randoms on the internet without any expectations in the **same** situation as many honest-and-willing newer PCs just wanting to play genuinely enjoyed it? You can also say it depends on the person and/or people. Of course it does. The fact is, why would I want to *incessantly* change *my* vision to have fun as a DM just to appease someone's *unrealistic standard*?
I am dandy candy to change things up to help for example, a ranger with an emphases on the survival skill or a rogue that genuinely wants to use thieves tools more in and out of dungeons. It is to put in the time, passion, dedication, and at many times the straight-up **heart** into the game for the **Dm's own creative vision** that many self-centered players either take for granted and/or totally disregard it for their own definitions of what constitutes someone as a "good DM". This is the pressure and real expectations many new DMs, such as myself, face.
Honestly? It can be very heart-breaking, and hurtful. For my own story that I introduced? Not to go into details, but it was the beginning of the end for our friendship after many years. Started over being a DM in a game that was never even played together. However, if you never do and go after the things you truly want to do and others wish to stand in your way to change you into what *they* want? Don't let anyone get in the way of what you want to accomplish.
They apparently don't pay taxes. ;-)
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
They could probably get away with that. But I think pangurjan meant they would earn $45k annually before taxes.
I was posing myself this inquiry when I saw a post on the LFG discussion of a baffled player discussing how they can't track down a non paid DM to play under after a decent time allotment. I saw certain individuals concur with this client till the discussion string vanished, and I am interested on what every one of you players and DMs think about the proportion of players to DMs?
Yeah...
You gotta assume that Uncle Sam is gonna take his cut of this though at under 50k per year, your tax bracket is low.
But even by my math it's hard to make it a good working full time gig. A fair point is that running 9 games a week at 3 hours per game is alone 27 hours of DMing, coupled with prep time easily taking it to a full time job. But that's still dealing with a) the cost of living for the DM and b) the willingness of players to free up 30 hours (give take) a week for gaming around that schedule. As most of your paying players are probably working 9-5 jobs, you'd be hard pressed to get games that start much before 5pm on a week night or you should plan solid 10 hour marathons on weekends, every week.
I think I COULD make the case that with a partner I was pulling my weight, in this area, at 45k/ year. Not to give out too much personal info but Mrs. Noir is a Vet Tech and in our area they're making $18/hour, +/- $3, with a post high school certificate. Full time, without figuring in overtime, that's not $45k/ year....
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
As one of those who is often the DM, it's not that easy. Sure, coming up with something ONCE isn't that tough...but life will often demonstrate that once you prove that you know how to do something, others will want you to do it more simply because they don't want to.
Most people fear rejection. This goes all the way back to being the last one picked for kickball in the 2nd grade or whatever. What they don't understand is that friends will usually be forgiving if you mess something up. If they aren't, you really don't need them as friends then IMHO.
As others have stated, some of the D&D material isn't very helpful and it's only now that I think WotC is starting to broaden their minds towards material for new DMs. Many of the MMOs I've played in have a sort of roadmap from the beginning to the top levels. You do this series of missions or travel around in that zone until you hit X level and then you can move on to the next one. Keep doing that and eventually, you're at level 50 or 100 or whatever the top is. I think D&D would benefit from having something similar. I've never played the 5e preplanned adventures so I don't know if they follow this format or not.
The main difference would be that being a vet tech means a reliable income - you can pretty much count on that money. DMing is essentially gig work, and that's a lot less reliable. Vet techs likely get some extra benefits on top of that hourly wage too; if that DM pays taxes they might be able to swing a few things in a fiscally beneficial way, but that'll still cut into the bottom line comparatively.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I don't think the hobby is able to support full-time DMs, but that is very different from paid DMs.
Considering how many games (maybe 99% of them) are hosted by a friend for free, the cost for compensation is likely to stay very low. But with some money on the table, some more people are going to offer to be the DM. I would assume those games would become free games one way or another within a year. One of the players will offer to DM, or the players will begin to make enough friends in games, that they won't need to pay a DM to find a decent game.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
There are some members of the oldest profession who would beg to differ about the long term potential for being paid for particular services that can also be found for free.
Just. Sayin'.
I also tend to think that if you're the sort to say "you know I don't mind plunking down $20 a week at the hobby shop once a week to play DND" might not also be the sort to say "I'm gonna start DMing myself". I also think that while it's possible a group that starts with a paid DM could move into one where the group plays without the "for the DM" fee, I don't think many would. I mean, once money is on the table, there's a strong incentive to keep the status quo for all parties.
We're also not talking about the other way to be a full time DM and that's with the income coming from someone who's not at the table. A game store (or two) could pay a DM (or two) a full time wage to just be present to run games on a regular schedule. Duties would likely include other things (customer service, stocking, invoicing) but primary duties could easily be "run the game table 3 nights a week". I could see making a decent wage in a decent sized game shop running games 4-5 nights a week or just managing "open gaming" times. Takes away the risks of the gig economy and opens up reliable income.
I think full time paid DM is possible and there's a few twitch streamers who start to flirt very closely with it. Of course that's a lot like being a professional actor. It's not just talent that gets you there.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
I used to play Warhammer 1-2 times a month and since we were using the terrain they had at the store, there was a table fee. We gladly paid it because sure, we COULD play at home, but the store was convenient and had better stuff than any of us at home.
If you want to compare 'the world's oldest profession' or even just dating, I suppose it's like renting a hotel even if you have an apartment because the apartment is a mess and doesn't have a hot tub.
There's no reason to imagine that even 0.1% of games currently have, or will have, a paid DM. You'll see lots of talk online about paid DMs, because it's highly visible there as that's where Paid DM's are advertising, and that's where they find their players. Finding a group of players who want to pay is fine via a VTT, but harder in person.
There are 48,000,000 D&D players worldwide. Assuming that there are 5 players to the average table, That means around 9.6 million campaigns, and 9.6 million active DMs, worldwide. There would need to be nearly 100,000 paid DMs worldwide to hit 1% of all DMs, and the number is not even close to that. I'd estimate it globally at below 1,000. That number is so small as to be statistically irrelevant.
The overwhelming majority of D&D players are happily playing their games with friends, and will go through their entire D&D playing lives without ever even hearing about the idea of paying a DM.
Agreed.
I'm willing to bet that the main reasons for even hearing about paid DMs are (not in this order), the current health crisis, the popularity of Critical Roles, D&D Beyond, and the increase in the number of online services and methods of play. I knew people that were desperate to find a DM BEFORE the world went mad last year. Now lots of players are craving social interaction. Critical Roles is a good vehicle to get players and wannabe players involved.
And, as you said, we're seeing quite a few ads for pay to play games because the DMs are advertising now. If you walk onto a car lot, you're gonna see lots of cars...