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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5895713" data-attributes="member: 4937">1) Yes, it is more expensive to be a DM, but in terms of hours of enjoyment per dollar spent, it's still a fairly inexpensive hobby.2) The amount of money you spend on books is nothing in comparison to the time disparity you'll put in running a game.  If you were a professional DM, you'd need to charge each player like $15 an hour for a session.   Being a DM is an enormous burden if you want to do it well.  However, if you are going to DM, you have to actually enjoy preparation and consider it part of the fun or you are never really going to be a DM.3) I personally don't spend all that much on RPG books.  You don't need all that stuff.  You just need a pencil, some paper, and a bag of dice.  DM screens, a battlemat, and a good word processor also help a lot.  In terms of derived value per page, most supplements are a bad investment.  Monsters, classes, feats, advice, and such that you never use is wasted money.  Often I'll pick up a Monster compendium and realize that I'll use no more than 5-10 pages of the entire book.  After stealing the core idea of the 5-10 monsters that are reasonably well thought out, I put the book down and perhaps create some variant monster with that core idea shaped to my tastes (but often not).  If someone let me buy monsters by the page, that I might be worth it, but in general you're better off just making things up yourself.  The same is certainly true of magical treasures as well, and as far as player options go, there are several reasons to be skeptical about adding them to your game.  For example, I've banned all PrC's and most non core classes, most non core spells, and review every feat allowed into the game.  It doesn't hurt the game; on the contrary, it enhances it.4) In one of the better groups I was in, the DM was not allowed to help pay for the pizza and snacks.  Rather, the group always paid for him.  This in my opinion is a very good custom which, in honor of the effort and money outlayed by the DM, should be adopted by all groups.  You'll occasionally hear me using the phrase, "any DM worth his pizza", in regards to this tradition.  In my opinion, if you are enjoying your game, but you haven't started paying for your DM's "pizza" you really aren't showing your appreciation how you should.  In the context of this post, this show of appreciation would help offset some of the cost disparity between DM's and players.</blockquote>

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