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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Theocrat" data-source="post: 2320100" data-attributes="member: 16778">Related Poll and IdeaHi all- I saw a related poll about paying DM to run a game. I'm sure that there are many of us out there that spend thousands of dollars a year on D&D related products, but as a DM I'm certain that a fair number of us spend more than our combined players do. My "free" group has played at my house for the past 12 years. I have the minitures, the mat's, the books, the books and then a bounty-load more of books. And that is just the 3.0-3.5 stuff. There are so many books from non-WotC publishers out there, that I now limit my intake to Green Ronin's Advanced Players Guide, Game Master Manual, and AEG's Mercenaries (Good and Wild incldued). Otherwise, with WotC's (Paizo's Dragon/Dungeon incldued as WotC) new stuff coming out alone, its too much. Of course the players are more than welcome to purchase Mongoose's or another company's books to get ideas and concepts as well as tactics - I know I have them for that reason - but not to use. Now on this, should I require the players to pay for the space? No. Becasue I do not want to carry my books somewhere, or to IHOP. The local gaming stores should welcome players there, but then you have the time limit there (when the store closes). Now to tie the 2 topic togeather, I run a game for a company Wednesday night. I carry all my bounty to them, create and maintain their PC's (eTools helps here). We use their confrense table and it is nice. It's also nice becasue they pay me $150 a session. This is to cover the 5-6hrs of game time, the 1-3 hours of prep and whatever else. Think about it. My "Free" group - I spend about 6-8 hrs a game session preparing, 8-10 hours of gaming and thousands of dollars in books. Why shouldn't the players pay a small portion to play or to play at my house? Is $5 a game too much to ask? At $5 for 4-5 people, that's $20-25 and doesn't even pay for the latest WotC book. From this experience, I will no longer offer a FREE game at my house or anywhere else. Each game session will be $5 per person. Just the pick up from the people playing is enough to pay for it. Before each session, I have to set up the table (which I paid for jsut for gaming), vaccumme, and clean up. Yeah, everybody else is driving home, and I'm cleaning up - so its about the same time that we all go to bed - but $5 is not going to break the bank and how many times did you drink the host's "X"? Yeah, with the rising prices of the gaming related books (and minitures - the players have 1 or 2, while the DM has hundreds - 1 reaper mini is $5 [+the hours painting, the paint {i have 423 paints}]), we are going to enter a new era and domain with pay-for-play. I own <a href="http://www.GreyhawkOnline.com" target="_blank">www.GreyhawkOnline.com</a> - which hosts other related gaming sites (CanonFire, Realms of Evil, others) - at $30/month with no help from the hosted. I'm not complaining, but I am saying that, pay-for-play will become more widespread and tolerated within the next 5-10yrs. In fact, as I'm writting this, I think that my next campaign will be $10. At 27 games for my last "Free" campaign, that would have been $270 per player x 6 = $1620 - I'm sure I spent more than that over the year in books...just ask the wifeFIEND. Be well, and start to support your DM's better. At least, all pitch in and buy them the DMG II for gosh sake!Theocrat Issak</blockquote>

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