D&D General DM with too High Expectations - Advice?

[Charlaquin]

This too. Typically being a face in a growing brand also grows your brand.

Exposure is certainly valuable, but exposure alone is not typically worth the work it’s used to pay for.

here’s my problem. The DMs been DMing the group for free for the last how many years?

It’s been a group of friends playing a game together for that many years. The DM is the one who introduced the idea of monetizing it. If he wants people to do labor to help him grow his brand, he should be expected to compensate them for that labor.

if you all want to view the world in terms of goods and services and needing to pay for them then why are you okay with the DM working for free? It makes no sense.

Typically DMing isn’t a service, it’s a leisure activity. When it is done as a service (when “professional DMs” run games for pay), they are paid for it.

the issue isn’t compensation for him or for the players. The issue is expecting someone to do something they aren’t okay with doing. Be that putting in extra work into their hobby or being recorded for the world to see

That is an issue. Another issue is that this DM apparently wants to try and profit off the extra work they’re expecting the players to do, and not compensating them for the value extracted from their labor.

If we do insist making it a monetary issue then I think there is a pretty good good argument that helping the dm monetize himself is just paying the dm to dm, which in terms of a service shouldn’t be expected to be free either, right?

That’s like saying an employer is doing their employees a service by giving them a job. The players aren’t asking the DM to run a streamed game for them and offering to pay him for it with exposure and ad revenue (which would be a pretty reasonable arrangement). The DM is telling the friends he has been playing with for years that he wants to stream their game to establish a brand for himself as a professional DM, and assigning them work to do outside of the game, in service of his brand.

 

[prabe]

People who can't bother to read houserules material are likely people who can't be bothered to read rules in the first place, and I'm a person who's not likely to run game systems where the players can get by without having a reasonable understanding of the rules.

Yeah. I'm very much on the same page as you, here; I just meant that if a given set of houserules doesn't apply to your character, it's fine with me if you don't read it (such as, in the 5E games I run, the subclasses for classes you're not playing).

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't think most people would want to go over 12 pages of background material in-person, but maybe that's just me.

No, neither would I, which is why I think 12 pages of background material is probably too much. The DMG recommends two pages as a reasonable maximum, an that feels about right to me, depending on the formatting of the pages.

I do absolutely know I've seen some people who consider any outside reading at all "homework" though, and I have trouble having much sympathy for them.

Yeah, I mean I think a certain amount of away-from-table work (“homework”) is pretty reasonable. Read these couple pages of setting info, do your character maintenance like leveling-up, and of course learn at least the basics of how to play. But, that’s all pretty much stuff that could also be done at the table. I think it’s a pretty reasonable guideline that if it seems like too much to go over together as a group at the table, it’s probably too much to ask the players to do individually away from the table.

(This is obviously not the same as "do two hours of campaign support work every week". While I can see games that could benefit from that--I've had games that had fairly extensive bluebooking on occasion, though not to that degree--I don't think they're the routine case even for me.)

It just depends on the group, right? I imagine there are plenty of players out there who would be onboard with putting in a couple of extra hours of work on the game, away from the table. But it’s not a reasonable thing to expect of the group if they haven’t discussed it and agreed to it.

 

[Scott Christian]

My wife, who doesn't frequent these boards or online communities, is having an issue with her DM. Basically, he is putting a lot of time into the game to the point of GM burnout and is getting frustrated that the players (who consist of full-time employees, students, and new parents) are unable to match the out-of-game work he is putting in. He wants to begin streaming their games, start a professional DMing service, and create a "brand" (as he describes it) like Critical Role. He is giving them out of game "assignments" to work on - videos to watch, worksheets to complete, etc. He came in like a dictator for a group of friends who have been playing together for 5 years without consulting any of them about their wishes.
So I know this is definitely all second-hand information, and I don't want us to bash the guy or situation. I have given her my opinions, but I think having other experienced GMs to throw in their ideas might help - knowing they aren't invested in the situation.
What I want are tools to give my wife to help her in her conversations with this guy. Links to videos, articles, etc., she can use to talk to him about these unreasonable expectations.

Wow. This is an odd request from the DM. One question - are they personal friends?

To me, this is the equivalent of having you friend open a restaurant and expecting you to work in the restaurant for free. Does he understand the work put into podcasting or streaming a game? I have sat and listened to two people at a restaurant who have a very successful online podcast for their game. They talked for two hours about how to introduce a magic item into the campaign. Basically, workshopping ideas. I said nothing, but did pay their tab before leaving because I felt bad about eavesdropping. Point is, it is a lot of work. And you wife is not an employee.

A tool for your wife would be to allow this guy to pitch his idea to the group. This pitch needs to have hours of play, hours behind the scenes, any royalties they would receive, directions needed, and the pacing of the game. Then let the players make up their own minds. It kind of sounds like he lassoed them in because they were already players. Once he pitches, then they can, as a group, explain any shortcomings in the plan, such as, I am not able to spend an hour reading on Saturday in order to prep for Sunday's game.

My thought is, once he sees what he is asking (because he has to put this all in writing for them as a business plan), he may be a little more understanding of their positions.

Last thought, it almost sounds like this DM wants actors who will play D&D for a short campaign. Ones that will memorize and know their parts, and follow script. Because in the end, the DM might think it would be the best type of advertisement - a perfectly well run group that has one liners and plays up the story aspect to keep people watching.

 

[prabe]

It just depends on the group, right? I imagine there are plenty of players out there who would be onboard with putting in a couple of extra hours of work on the game, away from the table. But it’s not a reasonable thing to expect of the group if they haven’t discussed it and agreed to it.

I know some are. My wife takes notes (handwritten) and types them up to share with the people at the table. At this point I've become kinda dependent on those notes to keep myself consistent; I'd really not like to have to prep and run without them. (I'm lousy at taking notes while I'm playing, and I'm worse than that while I'm GMing.)

 

[FrogReaver]

Exposure is certainly valuable, but exposure alone is not typically worth the work it’s used to pay for.

It’s been a group of friends playing a game together for that many years. The DM is the one who introduced the idea of monetizing it. If he wants people to do labor to help him grow his brand, he should be expected to compensate them for that labor.

Typically DMing isn’t a service, it’s a leisure activity. When it is done as a service (when “professional DMs” run games for pay), they are paid for it.

That is an issue. Another issue is that this DM apparently wants to try and profit off the extra work they’re expecting the players to do, and not compensating them for the value extracted from their labor.

That’s like saying an employer is doing their employees a service by giving them a job. The players aren’t asking the DM to run a streamed game for them and offering to pay him for it with exposure and ad revenue (which would be a pretty reasonable arrangement). The DM is telling the friends he has been playing with for years that he wants to stream their game to establish a brand for himself as a professional DM, and assigning them work to do outside of the game, in service of his brand.

bad analogies are bad

If you want people paid for their labor then why are you against the idea of a dm being paid for his?

if he decides it’s a better model to get paid via outside revenue than his players directly paying him then that sounds like a win-win situation.

the only bad part of this is that his players aren’t okay with being filmed or doing extra homework and that’s perfectly okay.

solution then is to:
1. Charge the players to dm for them. Probably won’t work even if attempted

2. Find a new group of players that are okay having a free dm in exchange for their use in his brand building and monetization.

3. Forget monetizing himself and keep this is a hobby.

And here’s the thing that seems missed, if he’s ever successful and his monetization pays off then that’s when the players are going to step up and say, I’ve been a big part of this. Give me my fair cut or I’m walking away which will damage your brand.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think @Laurefindel was being facetious. "Do it for the exposure!" usually translates to something like "Why should I give you my money? Just do it for free, you stupid monkey." There's a whole Twitter account called "For Exposure", whose tweets are quotes from actual people asking other actual people to work for free, arguing that the awesome exposure they'll get is worth more than money. To which everyone should respond "No. Pay them."

Are movie stars or their agents/film studios/etc paid by the late night shows to come and be a guest or do they do that to advertise their upcoming film? Ie, for the exposure?

 

[prabe]

bad analogies are bad

If you want people paid for their labor then why are you against the idea of a dm being paid for his?

I think what people are objecting to is the DM in question trying to make money from his game while not mentioning any possibility of sharing that income around the table. I don't think there's any philosophical objection to making money at D&D, either through streaming or paid-DMing; I think there's a belief that A) if a table is going to be streamed, it should be the table's decision--not just the DM's; and B) if there's going to be income from the table being streamed, it should be shared around the table.

 

[prabe]

Are movie stars or their agents/film studios/etc paid by the late night shows to come and be a guest or do they do that to advertise their upcoming film? Ie, for the exposure?

Yes: There are appearance fees that are paid by the shows, and the studios/producers pay the actors to do publicity, either separately or as part of their pay for acting in the film, specified in the relevant contract bits.

Also, in many instances, an actor is getting points of the gross, in which case they have all kinds of incentive to do things to help the film make money.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah. I'm very much on the same page as you, here; I just meant that if a given set of houserules doesn't apply to your character, it's fine with me if you don't read it (such as, in the 5E games I run, the subclasses for classes you're not playing).

I know this thread is in the D&D forum, but a lot, probably the majority of games I run are not class-and-level systems, so its not as easy to separate out what parts of houserules are going to apply to your character and not. Honestly, by the time you can tell in a lot of cases, you've probably already read it.