I want to start a pay to play campaign to help bring in some extra money and make ends meet but I don't know what a fair charge would be, anyone done this before and Willing to give some advice?
I know my #1 hesitation to sign up for Pay to Play is that they want me to pay for the first session. I'd recommend you give a trial period of 1-2 sessions for free, and then talk with them about how you're feeling as a group to see if they want to keep going, but with payment.
I know there's a principle of that if you can get the product in the customer's hand, they are much more likely to purchase it independent of any other factors. There's a reason people give free samples - "If you try it, you might like it!" I know that the group I'm DMing for right now (who we all met online) likes me so much that if we had had that sort of arrangement in advance, they would love to pay for my services.
I'd say something fair would be related to how much it would cost to purchase the relevant module. If I were running an Adventurer's League module, those typically cost around $5 on DMs Guild from what I've seen. I'd charge each of my 3-6 players $5. But, I wouldn't be doing this as my main occupation probably, and more of a lightly profitable hobby. Depending on whether you pay for VTTs or use a free version, how much preparation you want to do, and whether you want to be paid at least the federal minimum wage, that will change how much you want to be asking. My mother was a high-end professional photographer for about 10 years. She typically charged $250 for a session, and then sold $1000-2000 in prints to each client. You'd think she'd be making a lot of money. NOPE. She made like $3/hour. There was a LOT of preparation, editing, and capital costs (buying a camera, lighting equipment; paying subscriptions for various video editing softwares, or for online photography/small business classes) that went into it. If she wanted to make profit, she would have gotten a job at the local Jack in the Box or something. There may be a lesson to learn here for being a professional DM. Make sure you get most of your income from something more reliable, and then let this be a hobby that is lightly profitable.
Another idea: consider recording a video of you DMing a session at some point, and posting a clip online as a way to show you in action.
I want to start a pay to play campaign to help bring in some extra money and make ends meet but I don't know what a fair charge would be, anyone done this before and Willing to give some advice?
The issue isn't "fair", the issue is "what will people actually be willing to pay". The answer, unfortunately, is "Unless you're a star, not enough to make this a sensible business model".
There are some serious questions about the idea of a pay-to-play game that go beyond price. I know there's a whole thread devoted to the merits of paying DMs, so I won't go into depth, but frankly I find the whole idea a bit iffy, to say the least. Truth is, most people who want to play D&D either make friends into D&D players or D&D players into friends. To a lot of people, me included, the game is about friendship. (As a result it's also likely your clientele will be sleazy basement-dwellers, so be aware of that.)
What are you providing? Is it a full homebrew campaign? Set in your own world or in Faerun? Are you providing miniatures for the PC's, NPC's and monsters? Or paper mini's? Do you use soundscapes/audio? Is your RP tight (voices, mannerisms etc)?
What I'm getting at is how professional is the service you're providing, because that will define the value.
And I agree with KidPenguin that a free first session would be a good way for prospective clients to find out if what you're offering is something worth paying for.
The thing about paid DMing is, you're basically competing for people's entertainment dollars, and the mass market rate for entertainment dollars is generally not that high (upper end generally around $20 for a night's entertainment -- movie tickets in 3d, for example -- and less for most books, video games, and the like), so for five players you're talking a max of around $100 for what is, including prep time, probably 10-20 hours of work (if you're charging $20/session, people are gonna expect pretty extensive prep), plus whatever your investment in gaming materials. This is reasonably likely to work out as below minimum wage.
The actual way a small number of people can make real money off of DMing is by obtaining a much larger audience than just the players (e.g. Critical Role), and that's not trivial to break in to.
I sincerely thank you all for the input, my idea was simply to make some spare change to make back the cost of DMing really so I can afford to do more lax free games and not worry about the hobby being a cost rather than entertainment. The game itself would indeed be a homebrew world custom built to the players and their back stories as for rp I've taken some practice in voice acting and pride myself on the consistency of NPCs. I understand certain things fundamentally change once money is involved but as I'm moving into an new i worry about my DM hobby be coming a cost and having to stop. And as with what's going on in the world it would be online more likely than not I'd likely charge very little just enough to cover back the costs DMing incures me
NaivaraArnuannais quite spot on: To a lot of us RPG is as much about friendship as anything else. That's also why you probably will have quite a few sceptics, but this is my thoughts.
Asking to share costs should be OK. However, that's not what you're asking about, so let's leave that one.
If you have a lot of miniatures and "extra" stuff, you might be able to find someone who wants to pay, but I must say I doubt you will earn enough to get back what you've invested.
The only people I personally know who have earned money on being a DM is people who has been DM'ing for kids as an after school activity. They didn't get rich, but they had some extra income when they where students.
Finally as others have pointed out: You can try to stream online and earn money from subscribers/advertisements.
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I want to start a pay to play campaign to help bring in some extra money and make ends meet but I don't know what a fair charge would be, anyone done this before and Willing to give some advice?
Hey, I'm in Utah too! Anyways.
I know my #1 hesitation to sign up for Pay to Play is that they want me to pay for the first session. I'd recommend you give a trial period of 1-2 sessions for free, and then talk with them about how you're feeling as a group to see if they want to keep going, but with payment.
I know there's a principle of that if you can get the product in the customer's hand, they are much more likely to purchase it independent of any other factors. There's a reason people give free samples - "If you try it, you might like it!" I know that the group I'm DMing for right now (who we all met online) likes me so much that if we had had that sort of arrangement in advance, they would love to pay for my services.
I'd say something fair would be related to how much it would cost to purchase the relevant module. If I were running an Adventurer's League module, those typically cost around $5 on DMs Guild from what I've seen. I'd charge each of my 3-6 players $5. But, I wouldn't be doing this as my main occupation probably, and more of a lightly profitable hobby. Depending on whether you pay for VTTs or use a free version, how much preparation you want to do, and whether you want to be paid at least the federal minimum wage, that will change how much you want to be asking. My mother was a high-end professional photographer for about 10 years. She typically charged $250 for a session, and then sold $1000-2000 in prints to each client. You'd think she'd be making a lot of money. NOPE. She made like $3/hour. There was a LOT of preparation, editing, and capital costs (buying a camera, lighting equipment; paying subscriptions for various video editing softwares, or for online photography/small business classes) that went into it. If she wanted to make profit, she would have gotten a job at the local Jack in the Box or something. There may be a lesson to learn here for being a professional DM. Make sure you get most of your income from something more reliable, and then let this be a hobby that is lightly profitable.
Another idea: consider recording a video of you DMing a session at some point, and posting a clip online as a way to show you in action.
The issue isn't "fair", the issue is "what will people actually be willing to pay". The answer, unfortunately, is "Unless you're a star, not enough to make this a sensible business model".
There are some serious questions about the idea of a pay-to-play game that go beyond price. I know there's a whole thread devoted to the merits of paying DMs, so I won't go into depth, but frankly I find the whole idea a bit iffy, to say the least. Truth is, most people who want to play D&D either make friends into D&D players or D&D players into friends. To a lot of people, me included, the game is about friendship. (As a result it's also likely your clientele will be sleazy basement-dwellers, so be aware of that.)
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
What are you providing? Is it a full homebrew campaign? Set in your own world or in Faerun? Are you providing miniatures for the PC's, NPC's and monsters? Or paper mini's? Do you use soundscapes/audio? Is your RP tight (voices, mannerisms etc)?
What I'm getting at is how professional is the service you're providing, because that will define the value.
And I agree with KidPenguin that a free first session would be a good way for prospective clients to find out if what you're offering is something worth paying for.
The thing about paid DMing is, you're basically competing for people's entertainment dollars, and the mass market rate for entertainment dollars is generally not that high (upper end generally around $20 for a night's entertainment -- movie tickets in 3d, for example -- and less for most books, video games, and the like), so for five players you're talking a max of around $100 for what is, including prep time, probably 10-20 hours of work (if you're charging $20/session, people are gonna expect pretty extensive prep), plus whatever your investment in gaming materials. This is reasonably likely to work out as below minimum wage.
The actual way a small number of people can make real money off of DMing is by obtaining a much larger audience than just the players (e.g. Critical Role), and that's not trivial to break in to.
I sincerely thank you all for the input, my idea was simply to make some spare change to make back the cost of DMing really so I can afford to do more lax free games and not worry about the hobby being a cost rather than entertainment. The game itself would indeed be a homebrew world custom built to the players and their back stories as for rp I've taken some practice in voice acting and pride myself on the consistency of NPCs. I understand certain things fundamentally change once money is involved but as I'm moving into an new i worry about my DM hobby be coming a cost and having to stop. And as with what's going on in the world it would be online more likely than not I'd likely charge very little just enough to cover back the costs DMing incures me
NaivaraArnuanna is quite spot on: To a lot of us RPG is as much about friendship as anything else. That's also why you probably will have quite a few sceptics, but this is my thoughts.
Asking to share costs should be OK. However, that's not what you're asking about, so let's leave that one.
If you have a lot of miniatures and "extra" stuff, you might be able to find someone who wants to pay, but I must say I doubt you will earn enough to get back what you've invested.
The only people I personally know who have earned money on being a DM is people who has been DM'ing for kids as an after school activity. They didn't get rich, but they had some extra income when they where students.
Finally as others have pointed out: You can try to stream online and earn money from subscribers/advertisements.
Ludo ergo sum!