D&D 5E How many players would use a service like this

[Willie the Duck]

I will also say that a good 1/3rd of clientele for pro games is kids, which I don't see a lot of people in this thread really focusing on. A group of parents will absolutely pay for a DM to run for a group of kids once a week, and in terms of activities you can pay for your kids to do, it's on the lower end in terms of cost and on the higher end in terms of being educational and fostering social skills.

Good point, but also a real distinction. People who would not pay to have a DM for their adult D&D games probably also pay someone to play Red Rover and dodgeball with their kids (plus, y'know, keep them alive for 4-8 hours, possibly with some educational material in there somewhere).

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I wouldn't use this kind of service, but I might offer cash to excellent roleplayers willing to run along my railroaded adventures and bring their stories to life.

 

[ECMO3]

I was directed by another DM friend to a website and he asked me my thoughts.

I don't want to promote these clowns, so not giving the website link, but it promotes itself as: "the largest online platform for players to find tabletop roleplaying games and professional GMs for any game system and any virtual tabletop! " I scrolled through their various GM's, and found one guy who thinks he is worth 40 bucks US a session, per player. At those rates, it is almost a gig that pays the mortgage. The average rate seems to be 25 bucks per player per session.

Not asking for any poll, and I don't even know if a fan website is actually an unbiased source, but this kind of thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I have never charged for my DM'ing skills, nor ever will, and never paid, and never will. But apparently there is enough demand to justify it, or at least some think so.

What I find truly egregious, is that many of these vampires are running a module, not even their own stuff.

I've played in free games and I have played in pay-to-play games.

IME pay-to-play is worth every penny for playing a campaign and I use them a lot as a player. In free games it is rare to find random people to keep a campaign game going. The problem is mostly players who either are not serious or who are not going to be there. If you are willing to pay $25 that means you have skin in the game.

Also being a GOOD DM takes a lot of time, at least 3 hours prep per hour session if you want to do a good job. Add that players can turn your well laid plans upside down - "I think we will just take a few days and teleport everyone to the other side of the mountain instead of going through the mines of moria." So I don't mind paying IF it is a good DM.

I have played with 8 different pay-to-play DMs. One of them was not fun (for me) so I quit her game. One was Ok and I only played 1 session. 3 were good, well worth it and I enjoyed playing with them. 3 were awesome, the best DMs I ever played with.

Of the three awesome DMs they are so different in playstyle. One runs a combat-heavy game, he has role play, he has traps and exploration but it is a combat oriented game and you can tell that is the part he loves. He is going to run the campaign mostly as is and not going to mod it much for the specific players. The backstories and backgrounds are there but not really part of the story.

One of them really molds his campaign around the PC backstories. He has a basic idea but then everything in it has to do with the players. His game is heavy on RP, light on combat and light on rules. He is not really a rules-lawyer.

The third is a really descriptive DM. She is probably the trueist in terms of game design. Her game is well balanced and she knows every rule off the top of her head. It is very much RAW, but she has voices and describes every swing in detail.

 

[Reynard]

Also being a GOOD DM takes a lot of time, at least 3 hours prep per hour session if you want to do a good job.

I don't disagree with your overall points, but this ^^^ here is not a truth, it's a statement of personal experience or preference at best. Prep times vary wildly between different GMs and different playstyles.

 

[Hussar]

I don't disagree with your overall points, but this ^^^ here is not a truth, it's a statement of personal experience or preference at best. Prep times vary wildly between different GMs and different playstyles.

I would say though, that there is a considerable correlation between investment in the game and how well that particular DM runs that game. D&D is a pretty prep heavy game. It's not a game that rewards improvisation very well - too complicated for one. So a good improv D&D DM needs to be REALLY, REALLY good. OTOH, a decent DM can be a lot better if the DM has spent some time laying the groundwork and doing to preparation.

Now, 3 hours/hour of play is a bit extreme. That's 9 hours of prep for a 3 hour session? I have spent that much time, from time to time, but mostly that was because I was doing art stuff for my online games. But if I already have the art ready to go? Prepping on Fantasy Grounds is ridiculously fast. It's mostly drag and drop. I don't have to futz about writing out stat blocks or things like that, so, it does dramatically reduce prep time. But, again, if I'm playing online, as I do, trying to improv the whole thing will suck very badly, regardless of how good the DM is, simply because there will be so much dead air time while the DM scrambles to get something to use.

3:1 is too much. .5-1:1 is probably reasonable though. Or, if you're expecting me to prep for 9 hours for your 3 hour session, you better be paying me a LOT more than 25 bucks. If that's the level of prep you're expecting, I'm expecting about 150 dollars per session then or it's just not even remotely worth my time. I better be getting paid more than my freaking babysitter. 10 bucks an hour? That's not even minimum wage.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, I think I'm prone to overprepering, but 9 hours seems like more than I usually do (I run one three-hour game per week). If it's more than that it's probably because I got carried away making something arty, rather than something really essential. And you can run a perfectly good game with minimal prep. Sometimes my players do something unexpected, all my prep goes in the circular file, and I end up winging it.

 

[Reynard]

D&D is a pretty prep heavy game. It's not a game that rewards improvisation very well - too complicated for one. So a good improv D&D DM needs to be REALLY, REALLY good.

This is not my experience at all. D&D, especially 5E, less so 3.x, and definitely OSR editions are pretty easy to improv for (I'm not erasing 4E, I just don't have the experience). I run ongoing multi session convention games with a 1:4 prep to runtime ratio (not counting pregens) and that's broad strokes outlining and what-ifing.

 

[Oofta]

This is not my experience at all. D&D, especially 5E, less so 3.x, and definitely OSR editions are pretty easy to improv for (I'm not erasing 4E, I just don't have the experience). I run ongoing multi session convention games with a 1:4 prep to runtime ratio (not counting pregens) and that's broad strokes outlining and what-ifing.

For me that depends on medium and style. If I have to run a game online it takes me far, far, longer than in person. I run a very dynamic game with a lot of free-form decisions from the PCs. If I'm in person I can describe most of it either in theater of the mind or if we need a grid I just throw out some premade reusable things for stuff like trees or draw some quick lines. On a VTT? I have to create detailed maps ahead of time, think of possible environmental factors and light sources both in the environment and set up vision for individual PC tokens. It's a lot more work.

Then there are the people who detailed set pieces prepped ahead of time for even in person games like Matt Mercer does for Critical Role. Admittedly part of what they do is because of sponsorship from Dwarven Forge, but even in campaign 1 he always had his maps pre-drawn for pretty much every possible scenario.

So I think there's a lot of variation. I spend a lot of time thinking about the campaign, but a lot of it is just while I'm doing other things and then I go off to jot down notes later. Do I count shower thoughts as prep time? Or just the time it takes me to figure out the specific monsters and numbers I want to use that fit the theme of a potential encounter?

 

[jmartkdr2]

For me to it's mostly art that eats up prep time, but even online where I want to place all the enemies on maps before we begin it's usually about 1:1 prep time to play time. This can be mitigated by doing a lot of pre-prep (ie gathering all the art assets you want to use in one place) but that just reduces the weekly workload by adding a pre-campaign workload.

However, if I'm paying for a dm one of the things that would draw me in is really good art assets - online that would mean a really consistent art style (rather than stuff that's obviously from many sources) or in-person that means painted minis and sets. Both of these take extra time to prep.

 

[Reynard]

For me that depends on medium and style. If I have to run a game online it takes me far, far, longer than in person. I run a very dynamic game with a lot of free-form decisions from the PCs. If I'm in person I can describe most of it either in theater of the mind or if we need a grid I just throw out some premade reusable things for stuff like trees or draw some quick lines. On a VTT? I have to create detailed maps ahead of time, think of possible environmental factors and light sources both in the environment and set up vision for individual PC tokens. It's a lot more work.

Then there are the people who detailed set pieces prepped ahead of time for even in person games like Matt Mercer does for Critical Role. Admittedly part of what they do is because of sponsorship from Dwarven Forge, but even in campaign 1 he always had his maps pre-drawn for pretty much every possible scenario.

So I think there's a lot of variation. I spend a lot of time thinking about the campaign, but a lot of it is just while I'm doing other things and then I go off to jot down notes later. Do I count shower thoughts as prep time? Or just the time it takes me to figure out the specific monsters and numbers I want to use that fit the theme of a potential encounter?

I agree that if you are spending time putting set pieces together you are going to spend a lot more time prepping. That said, preparing set pieces is antithetical to improv IMO. I'm not saying it is a bad way to play or anything, just that if you are essentially locking the PCs into set piece, you are going to guide them to it rather than just react to what they are doing.

I do think that it takes more prep time to run a prewritten adventure than to create your own or improv. You not only have to mine the paid-per-word prose for obfuscated important information, you have to personalize to your group. I never used to run prewritten adventures until I started running on Fantasy Grounds, because I found improv on the VTT very difficult.