I've been lucky in my time playing D&D thus far. In 20 years, I've always had my family (5 brothers, 1 sister, my parents, and numerous cousins) to play D&D with. However, recently, I've noticed an uptick in people willing to do a pay to play session, where the players are already there, but they are looking for a DM that they can pay to DM their session.
Is this actually a big thing or is this just a small niche of people who do this?
Fairly large. In the modern day lives are hectic. With d&d you can't really go solo in the middle of the quest, you need players and a dm. Paying adds the extra incentive some people need in order to keep their commitments. The players pay, and because they have paid they want the product they have paid for.
The dm then gets paid, uses that money to purchase products such as books and adventures, and gets a small stipend on the side: 5 players $10/player for 3 hours playtime 1 hour prep time = $12.50/hour. Hardly a high paying job. But it is a paying job so now the DM has an incentive to show up. The pay is also incentive for the GM not to slack off and to keep the game interesting.
Remember that we are not talking about a tightknit group of friends rather a handful of complete strangers, in different timezones, who will very likely never meet face to face. Lastly I used the $10.00 because it is middle of the road. One person paying $40 a month for 12-16 hours of other people's time...is not unreasonable.
I've been attempting to do this very thing. Got the players but most are inexperienced. Looking for a high quality DM to pay to set it up and run it. I had considerably higher numbers in mind for a strong DM. The difficulty is that I don't know if a DM is any good unless I find videos of them playing, and then they're typically not available.
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I've been lucky in my time playing D&D thus far. In 20 years, I've always had my family (5 brothers, 1 sister, my parents, and numerous cousins) to play D&D with. However, recently, I've noticed an uptick in people willing to do a pay to play session, where the players are already there, but they are looking for a DM that they can pay to DM their session.
Is this actually a big thing or is this just a small niche of people who do this?
Fairly large. In the modern day lives are hectic. With d&d you can't really go solo in the middle of the quest, you need players and a dm. Paying adds the extra incentive some people need in order to keep their commitments. The players pay, and because they have paid they want the product they have paid for.
The dm then gets paid, uses that money to purchase products such as books and adventures, and gets a small stipend on the side: 5 players $10/player for 3 hours playtime 1 hour prep time = $12.50/hour. Hardly a high paying job. But it is a paying job so now the DM has an incentive to show up. The pay is also incentive for the GM not to slack off and to keep the game interesting.
Remember that we are not talking about a tightknit group of friends rather a handful of complete strangers, in different timezones, who will very likely never meet face to face. Lastly I used the $10.00 because it is middle of the road. One person paying $40 a month for 12-16 hours of other people's time...is not unreasonable.
I've been attempting to do this very thing. Got the players but most are inexperienced. Looking for a high quality DM to pay to set it up and run it. I had considerably higher numbers in mind for a strong DM. The difficulty is that I don't know if a DM is any good unless I find videos of them playing, and then they're typically not available.