With a group of 4 or 5 players? That’s no more than the cost of a movie ticket on a per-hour basis. Probably less if you live in a city.
I thought you meant per individual. You said “I wouldn’t mind paying…”
So, I’ve been giving this some thought.
If the GM is good to great. And I will assume that an average GM is the typical “ok. you’re in a bar. There is a serving wench. The barkeep tells you a round of drinks is 1gp for our party.” Unless I’m damn desperate for a D&D game, I’m not going to pay $10/week a for that. Now, if getting ANY sort of group is impossible, that skews it.
Now, if as mentioned the GM is good. Keeps the game flowing. Keeps the party from getting off track. Does a good job at facilitating and keeping them from arguing for an hour if they are taking the left passage or the right, I could see paying.
Now, if the GM is fucking fantastic. Does what the good GM does, but man he can role play. And if great fucking role-play is what I am after (it’s not for me). He can do all the voices and man, it is a fucking night at the improv. Yes I would pay $10 a week.
The more I thought if it, the closest I can get to an analogy is my old pool league. It’d pay $10/week just in league fees. Not counting the food and beverage. Because I’ve blown $10 a week at the vending machine, no problem.
I would equate great with expert-level use of props. Dwarven Forge, Legos, painted minis, mood music, sound effects, voices, etc. Yeah, I’d think I’d pony up for that. But I would also be much less forgiving and much more critical of the session.
With friends there’s usually more of a leeway because it’s “one of us” taking on the extra responsibility to plan a campaign, and you may be far more forgiving, because for my group, it’s a chance to catch up around a gaming table about everything. The session is fun, but it’s also about good friends shooting the shit over food/snacks/beverages.
“I cast Daving Fire.”
Hail to the Dave, baby.
D&D blows my mind. I’m very happy it seems to be thriving now. I love that people pay to play, and that they fill some gaming stores with multiple groups on D&D night. Critical Role stuns me. My son’s middle school has a D&D club that draws 60 kids. Not 6. 60!! My sister has been calling me a nerd for 37 years, since I discovered the red box in 5th grade, but I’m getting the last laugh now. Wow.
Having said that, I wouldn’t want to charge people to play in my games. I love being a DM, far more than being a player, and while I know I am only a mediocre role player/story teller, I have decades of experience of running a table and keeping the game flowing. My favorite moments are when the game is coming to an end and I get the vibe that everyone had fun. That’s always been worth more than money.
If someone were to pay me to DM, I think it would mess up the dynamic. I was at Friday Night Magic last week and the organizer, who really didn’t know what they were doing, called a vote after the 2nd round to see whether the players wanted to go three rounds or four rounds. A player became visibly upset, and stated that if he was given a prize immediately, then he would be fine with going 3 rounds. He was so clearly in the mindset that the store owner owed him something, and I fear that a paid DM would be in the same bind. If they pay you, you owe them something. And what that something is can be different from player to player. Why screw up something as fun as running D&D with money.
But, having said that, there are some gaming stores in the Boston area that pay the DMs on D&D night. If they were closer to me I would be tempted to give DMing a shot, just to see if my fears are justified. Plus, it would be nice to have some store credit at the end of the session. And I could tell my sister that the nerds have made it to the big time.
Aww yay Rob’s here! I still have great memories of the fifth edition game you ran for us.
Divine Boom!
So, it hit me that I was paid to Gm a while back… sort of.
In the late 90s, AOL used to have a section for people to run RPGs. There was a guy who organized it all, and if you agreed to run a game your AOL sub was comped.
That’s about the closest I came. Was a fun time while it lasted.
Glad to see you on the board again, Rob, and you are far too modest when it comes to your DM storytelling and role-playing capabilities.
This website one of my players found isn’t 5e specific. It looks at older editions and Pathfinder, too. The gist is you search for a kind of adventure (level, terrain type, whether it makes use of a +1 sword, etc.) and it comes up with what’s available. As I have been adapting previous editions’ modules for my game, I think I could find some use out of this.
I have great memories of running games for folks here on Quartertothree. These D&D threads seem to call me back like a moth to a flame.
What do you guys think of the new digital tools like D&D Beyond and the DM’s Guild? I haven’t been playing this year, so I haven’t used them, but form afar they seem very interesting. Is D&D Beyond too expensive? Is there decent content to be had in the Guild?
Rules for dinosaur racing in the new Tomb of Annihilation campaign.
[Edit] I haven’t used D&D Beyond yet, seems expensive. I haven’t bought any of the fanmade material from the DM Gulld yet, but I have made use of an earlier version of it when it was a more obvious corner of drivethrurpg.com. That was and is a good way to get pdfs of hard to find modules, or even Print On Demand in some cases.
I’ve kind of been thinking about becoming a patreon of The Angry GM/DM once my finances allow for more discretionary funds to be disbursed. Behind his shtick is a wealth of good ideas.
D&Dbeyond seems expensive, but if I was in a weekly game it might be worth it, It would also be nice if it stored your AL log sheets.
The DMs Guild is neat where you can buy the modules for the AL seasons. House games that play by AL rules generate AL legal characters for cons and the like. It’s a pretty good system.
D&D Beyond seems expensive, especially if I have to repurchase digital versions of content I already own. And I’m not sure just how much value there is in the product at this point, since there are still features and functionality still forthcoming, that are available with other digital tools.
For someone looking for something similar to DND Beyond, orcpub2.com is excellent. It lets you build an AL legal character all from within the app.
I will enjoy using it until its sudden, yet inevitable C&D from Wizards when Beyond hits.
Looking at the pricing structure for D&D Beyond and the way I think I would use D&D Beyond, I would need to make the following purchases at a bare minimum:
PHB $30
MM $30
Year long DM subscription: $54
That’s $114 for a nifty player character sheet interface that allows the DM to know exactly what is going on with everyone’s character sheets all the time. That seems like a stupid amount of money for what your’e getting. I’m still considering it though.
I am also torn on Beyond. I think it really depends on what happens to Orc Pub when Beyond hits. I don’t really have much of a problem with the per-sourcebook price. It’s impossible to tell who really owns a physical copy of a book to give them a credit for the online version. It’s not like it’s feasible to use a QR code, or take a picture of your book or something.
I would probably get the PHB/DMG/Sword Coast: anything that has the classes I use. What I’m not thrilled at is how they handled the magic items for the adventures. If I play an AL module based off Storm Kings Thunder, I don’t want to have to pay 5 bucks to unlock the magic items for that book just to add the one magic item I got.
As an aside, I ran one of the Season 5 AL modules with my board game group and had a blast. The modules are designed for a 4 hour session and have a good balance of RP and fighting. My one complaint doing the longer, hardcover modules is most of the night could be taken up with “talky talky” setting up the adventure. Then the encounter would run long. We played on Monday nights via Roll 20 and most of us had to get up early. In a 5 hour session we got through 4 of the “one hour” mods. Next week we are going to finish it and do one of the two-hour mods.
After playing around with D&D Beyond, buying a few adventures from the DMs Guild and listening to a few Wizards podcasts, I’ve decided to give the Adventurer’s League a shot. I have a couple of friends locally who want to play, and as soon as we find a centrally located spot, I will start running a few games. I’ll report back here about how it goes.
I am also going to play in a 10 hour long Adventurer’s League game at CarnageCon in Vermont this November. I’ve played some convention D&D games before, but nothing that takes an entire day, so I’m not sure what to expect. The best case scenario is I am time-warped back to my parent’s basement circa 1983 and have a fantastic time. I don’t want to ponder about the worst case. If anyone here is local to Vermont (Merryprankster???) and wants to join me, my table is 406 and there are spots open.