If you were paid to be a GM

[Janx]

Let's take this example by example to show how the cost is factored into the price you the customer actually pay.

Bear in mind, I'm not talking about cost the guy had to learn his trade. I'm talking about the opportunity cost the guy had of not working as a Cisco router guy, or a waiter, or a stripper and that he has rent and car payment. And that he cannot work 2 jobs at the exact same time.

Nobody goes to the theatre and then pays the actors and stagehands and crew thousands of dollars each for the 500 hours it took them to learn lines and rehearse. They pay for the price of a theatre ticket.

This is a volume thing. The theatre is selling hundred or thousands of tickets to the show. Your $10 is a slice of paying the cost of making the show, running the show for you, and profit. how can it not, else the people involved would go bankrupt.

You don't pay a cab driver for his driving lessons or cover the cost of buying his car. You pay $10 or something for one cab ride.

A taxi company pays $20K for a car they will use for 3 years. They computer the projected volume of rides they have to give and then they charge a minimum of the price of the care divided by the number of rides. They may get funky with mileage, but the concept is there. you are paying for part of the taxi's cost, spread out over the lifetime of the vehicle.

Like my magician example above. You pay a kid's magician for a couple of hours, not for 8 months.

You aren't paying for the lessons the magician took. You are paying for the fact that the full time magician can only work nights and weekends. Unless he works a second job, that's the only time he can work. therefore, in order to make $40/K of of 8 shows per week (I made that up), he has to charge $40,000 / (8 shows times 50 work weeks (holidays off)) in order to make his salary.

That's $100/show btw. Which probably is reasonable for a birthday party performance.

If for some reason, $100 was above what the market is willing to bear, then the magician has a problem. If he can't squeeze in more shows per week (and at some point, there are only so many hours in a week), then he is offering a product that isn't viable. His next option is to lower his price, which will lower his living quality.

obviously, the lower price might entice a few more customers, but like I guesstimated, there's only so many birthday parties you can book a week (likely 1 per day of the week plus a few doubles).

 

[Morrus]

This is a volume thing. The theatre is selling hundred or thousands of tickets to the show. Your $10 is a slice of paying the cost of making the show, running the show for you, and profit. how can it not, else the people involved would go bankrupt.

Yep, that's what I said. You're just repeating my own words back to me.

 

[Janx]

Yep, that's what I said. You're just repeating my own words back to me.

well, you didn't say it the way I said it. And what you said read as opposition to my point, which is Math determines how much somebody needs to charge.

The only way to make GMing viable is to get volume and re-use of costs.

In the world of yarn, people get the bright idea that my wife should sell her work.

What they don't get is good yarn is $20-60 a ball (and a project takes a ball or two). And it takes 8 hours or much more to do a project.


The price, as applied to the modeling I describe that she would need to charge in order to "make a living" would be ridiculous. Nobody would pay that much for a yarny-thing they can get cheaper at Target.

As a business, she'd need to lower costs/increase production by hiring off-shore slaves to do the work.
That's the only way to lower the price to something people would pay.

So, she does it for fun, and gives out very nice presents on present-giving holidays.

Pro-GMing suffers from a similar problem, even if the guy could run solely published material. There's only so many games he can run a week (per when people typically consume D&D). And he needs to make a living wage. Which prices Pro-GMing past the consumer threshold for "what the market will bear"

 

[Morrus]

The only way to make GMing viable is to get volume and re-use of costs.

I know! That's the same thing again!

 

[fireinthedust]

Question: Why are any of you assuming full time GM work? This would be part-time freelance, a weekend shift kind of deal tops. Pocket change, really, but possibly enough to cover the costs of the books a worthwhile GM would be buying on their own.


Is the OP actually saying full time work as a GM? Like, do it on skype all day, for people around the world? That I don't see, unless there's something else in it for the players (ie: a certain news cast read by models), other than love of the game. You'd need ot find especially wealthy players otherwise.

Granted, if I win the lottery, I fully plan to start a game company of some sort. One of the jobs of full-time employees would be running a game for staff members, that sort of thing. But they'd also be doing, like, game design as well.

 

[Lwaxy]

I got paid to GM for a group of tech support workers for a while, as part of the company's attempt at building a more efficient group. It worked (and I wasn't the only one doing it, I think I got in because they needed a female GM). They paid € 120, plus prep time, so it usually ended up being 160 - 220. This was a modern setting based on their company so it was difficult to prep at times.

I also got paid to take part in a project for troubled youngsters - they HAD to pay me to qualify for support from one government group or the other, which was kind of funny because I already did it for pizza. They paid the minimum they could to still qualify for the money, which was € 80.

None of it was really work for me as I love prepping games and I don't usually work other than some freelance translations.

I seriously doubt I'd find any such job again though. Being paid means having an obligation and I don't want my hobby being turned into stress, anyway.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Question: Why are any of you assuming full time GM work? This would be part-time freelance, a weekend shift kind of deal tops. Pocket change, really, but possibly enough to cover the costs of the books a worthwhile GM would be buying on their own.

The price would have to be even higher for a weekend occasion. The time I'd spend on the job would have to contest with time spend with the family, and don't forget prep time under the week as well.

 

[Janx]

The price would have to be even higher for a weekend occasion. The time I'd spend on the job would have to contest with time spend with the family, and don't forget prep time under the week as well.

As you point out, for consideration of the activity as a job (GMing), the standard practice is to compare it to the opportunity costs of either hanging out with family (potentially priceless), flipping burgers ($/hour) or moonlighting at one of your skills (varies by trade).


While GMing is more like being a birthday party magician (limited engagements, small audience) and less like an Actor in a broadway show. It is also more like knitting sweaters for friends/family than being a birthday party magician.

In that the prep time and such costs more than the customers are willing to pay, so it is more of a labor of love.


Once you get into the thought that "I don't need to make my regular wage, I can do this for cheap", you risk losing economic insight into what that activity costs for purposes of comparing it to opportunity costs. You also can't grow the business into a full time venture, because you are under-cutting yourself. And if you really needed the money, and can moonlight as a part-time burger flipper for $8/hour, why the heck are you GMing for less than that?

There's a few situations like what Lwaxy had, but by the math, it's basically minimum wage work or less.

 

[Celebrim]

It takes at least 10 hours of work to support a game session of suffiicent quality that you could call yourself a 'professional' GM. Occasionally for an ongoing original campaign it would take 20 hours of work if you have something big you needed to gear up. I'll divide the difference and call it 15 hours, plus a 8 hour sesssion, means that each campaign takes about 23 hours per week of a pro DM's time.

Let's say a pro DM wants a $40,000 a year income (and keep in mind, you'd have to pay your own Social Security and employment taxes, so you'd not be making all that much). For that, he needs to have two paying gaming groups every week paying for 8 hour sessions or 4 paying for 4 hour sessions, for say 50 weeks of the year (two weeks of vacation). So that's $800 a week divided among 16 billable hours, or $50 an hour. A 4 hour session costs $200. An 8 hour session costs $400. Assuming groups are 6 players and the GM, that means 4 hour sessions should cost each player ~$33.33 and 8 hour ~$66.66.

$50 an hour is really not that unusual for a contractor. If anything, it's pretty lowball considering that you aren't directly billing your campaign prep. However, this is assuming the professional DM isn't doing something lame like running a Pazio adventure path straight up. I imagine that a professional DM could offer that sort of service at a bargain price if it allowed him to squeeze in an extra group or two. The bargain price might also apply to one shots, birthday parties, and that sort of thing.

Speaking as an amateur DM, the biggest problem you'd face as a professional DM would be scheduling. The adults who could pay for your service would be very unreliable clients, because they'd always be trying to reschedule on you. It would be very difficult to maintain a steady income because it would be very difficult to keep groups meeting on a regular basis and to find work to fill in the gaps when your regulars couldn't meet at the normal time and wanted to delay a week. I can see that alone forcing you to have a part time job in addition to your contracted labor just to keep the bills paid.

Ideally, you are also so good at this that you can rework your original work into some sort of publication 1-2 times a year and get a few hundred dollars in supplemental income.

 

[Emerikol]

Economics

I think a DM could charge 50 bucks and only run adventure paths in Golarion. That would require minimal prep time. The session is four hours so thats 12.50 per hour. That is about the max you could make in my opinion. I believe maybe I could get a group to pay me that. It wouldn't be that horrible but it wouldn't be worth it for me.

The issue I would have is that roleplaying for me is either a lot of fun or very painful. I'm not willing to work for four times that if it is very painful and if it is joyful then I'm willing to do it for free. I also believe that some players might be even more entitled if they are playing which means the campaign goes to pot because as DM you hesitate to be the DM.

If you are the kind of person who enjoys running encounters sessions then it might be a good way to make a few extra bucks. It would never be a serious job unless right now you work minimum wage. Then maybe four or five sessions a week at 50 bucks a session might be something. Most people I know who are good enough to run a great D&D campaign are not going to stay at minimum wage for the long term. Maybe while in school but not as a career.