D&D General Professional DMs making $45k/year off it?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you are serious about this being a backup plan, I strongly suggest you start now.

I have no intention of getting laid off and I turned down a job offer at a competing organization months ago. I was being tongue in cheek about it being a back-up plan.

That said, it wouldn't be a terrible way to pick up a little extra cash if this is still a thing when I retire.

 

[darjr]

There are also DM agents out there. Yea you read that right. And DM leads that have a group of DMs working for them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The floor is below that - you're gonna need to spend a bit up front.

That's true of any job, isn't it?

 

[Morrus]

The Roll20 Forums, etc., and other meeting places cited in the article serve the same function.

Good luck!

 

[darjr]

Demiplane is trying to be like an Uber of DMs

Demiplane

Find Your Next Adventure On Demiplane - Matchmaking, Video, Voice, Shared Journaling, And Much More To Come!

app.demiplane.com

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

You can DM, sure. But the hard part — like any business — is building the business, the customer base, etc. I would imagine that it’s a a lot of hard work to build the business up to the point that this person has.

I think it's a lot easier to make money DMing on Roll20 and similar platforms than it would be for physical gaming. For online gaming your customers can be anywhere in the world, and as long as demand for (paid) DMs outstrip supply the business should grow naturally as long as you're able to put on games good enough that players keep coming back. There are already effective online tools for finding players.

Now, if DMing for pay becomes popular then DMs might have to start competing for players, then the job could quickly get brutal.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

…. And all of your D&D books are business expenses.

 

[Stormonu]

I had a discussion with my son just a few months ago about this very subject. He wanted to set up a Patreon sort of thing where’d he would DM, so I sat down with him and we worked out what he’d have to charge and do to make a living at it, and at what level he’d be comfortable with.

—————————
Assuming a 40-hour work week, 4 or 6 hour game session, plus prep time.

Desired: $15 per hour pay ($600 per week; $31.2K pretax).

Assuming Needed: 6 players per session. 2 sessions per day, 5 days a week - 60 players needed (that’s a lot of people right there).

Cost per player - $10 per session.

Not bad, but would you pay $10 per game session?
——————

This was a very basic napkin math, not including costs for materials (books, minis, computer, VTT, subscriptions, etc.), travel, medical, taxes, prep time (factor in prep time of 1-2 hours per group, you lose a day’s worth of players and cost per player rises about $2 per player). Likewise, a smaller play group would increase the cost too.

It’s definately one of those things that‘d be great if you can do it, but you’d certainly have to build up a client base - and it’d be a LOT of work to keep up with (10 game sessions worth of notes a week?).

 

[payn]

Yeah 40-60 dollars a month locked up of your disposable income is a lot. People pay it obviously, but I cant imagine there is an overabundance of paying customers.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It’s definately one of those things that‘d be great if you can do it, but you’d certainly have to build up a client base - and it’d be a LOT of work to keep up with (10 game sessions worth of notes a week?).

I suspect, although it's not spelled out in the Polygon article, that a lot of these pro DMs are recycling the same content over and over again, so they get a lot more out of those prep hours than an amateur DM would, who's unlikely to run a given adventure for different groups more than once or twice, especially in the same month.