Professional GM: Possible Return

[tallyrand]

A suggestion for additional sources of revenue as a Mercenary DM, don't overlook the lucrative world of Corporate Sponsorship and in-game Product Placement.

Player1: Crap, that last orc nearly killed me, I drink one of my healing potions.
DM: As the cool refreshing taste of the Grape Jolt hits your throat you can spend a Healing Surge and gain an additional 2d6 hp.
Player2: We are still down pretty bad, is there a safe place around for an Extended Rest?
DM: You could always stay at an Econo Travelodge, there are hundreds of convienient locations and always reasonable rates.

 

[timbannock]

I was just reading for my MBA course about some "cognitive biases" in negotiations. You should really pay attention to this stuff:

- Irrational Escalation of Commitment: becoming more commited to a goal or stance when doing so is more and more likely to become a path to failure. Have you put more time into this storytelling idea than you have to applying at other jobs and really concentrating on improving your interview skills? If you can't interview well now, what are your chances of doing so later on, when you want to make more than $900 a month (you know, like when you want to move out on your own, maybe have a sweet new ride, some women, kids, and all that glory?).

- Anchoring & Adjustment: creating a false standard (an anchor) by which you measure adjustments in your processes. Basing your prices on local entertainment would be an anchor, in your case.

- Overconfidence: what are your professional achievements in team-building exercises again? How long have you been a business consultant? What other family-friendly events have you pulled off for the price you are asking? Have you ever worked at youth center with children, or at a school?

- The Law of Small Numbers: drawing conclusions from small sample sets. You are basing your pricing on tickets to go see a Broadway show or a movie. These are two things that are in demand by thousands upon thousands and even millions upon millions of people EVERY DAY. How much demand have you received based on your pricing and marketing scheme thus far?

- Endowment Effect: over-valuing what you own or believe you possess. Exactly what are your marketable skills again? More importantly, who are your references, and why should I trust either you or them?

- Ignoring Other's Cognitions: how much have you really looked at the arguments put forth by the folks here on ENWorld and over at RPG.net about your plans?

When you researched pricing, did you just go online and look up "Broadway Tix" and "Movietickets.com," or did you find out the REASONS why these things cost what they do?

And more importantly than anything else I've said so far: exactly how do you execute your team-building exercises? You have a project plan with measurable goals, or do you mean "playing D&D will help your company's employees work better together." Because that's awful nebulous...

 

[Mircoles]

Paying someone to Dm for a group seems really repugnant. It's like paying someone to be your friend.

I play RPG's to find friends and people with similiar interests, not only for just playing a fun game.

I mean seriously really repugnant. It puts a sick feeling in my stomach just thinking about it.

The idea of getting paid by a store to bring people in seems interesting, but gaming stores oftan have tables for gamers to use and gamers fill them. These gamers also rarely seem to buy anything and if they were to be charged to play in the game too, I doubt that they would buy anything at all.

The whole concept just bothers me.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Paying someone to Dm for a group seems really repugnant. It's like paying someone to be your friend.

I play RPG's to find friends and people with similiar interests, not only for just playing a fun game.

That's you then. Many convention-goers would disagree with you. Of course not many of them would be willing to shell out what he's asking for a single game.

 

[Captain_Commando]

1. Irrational Escalation of Commitment: becoming more commited to a goal or stance when doing so is more and more likely to become a path to failure. Have you put more time into this storytelling idea than you have to applying at other jobs and really concentrating on improving your interview skills? If you can't interview well now, what are your chances of doing so later on, when you want to make more than $900 a month (you know, like when you want to move out on your own, maybe have a sweet new ride, some women, kids, and all that glory?).

2. Anchoring & Adjustment: creating a false standard (an anchor) by which you measure adjustments in your processes. Basing your prices on local entertainment would be an anchor, in your case.

3. Overconfidence: what are your professional achievements in team-building exercises again? How long have you been a business consultant? What other family-friendly events have you pulled off for the price you are asking? Have you ever worked at youth center with children, or at a school?

4. The Law of Small Numbers: drawing conclusions from small sample sets. You are basing your pricing on tickets to go see a Broadway show or a movie. These are two things that are in demand by thousands upon thousands and even millions upon millions of people EVERY DAY. How much demand have you received based on your pricing and marketing scheme thus far?

5. Endowment Effect: over-valuing what you own or believe you possess. Exactly what are your marketable skills again? More importantly, who are your references, and why should I trust either you or them?

6. Ignoring Other's Cognitions: how much have you really looked at the arguments put forth by the folks here on ENWorld and over at RPG.net about your plans?

7. When you researched pricing, did you just go online and look up "Broadway Tix" and "Movietickets.com," or did you find out the REASONS why these things cost what they do?

8. And more importantly than anything else I've said so far: exactly how do you execute your team-building exercises? You have a project plan with measurable goals, or do you mean "playing D&D will help your company's employees work better together." Because that's awful nebulous...

1. First of all, job openings that require my skill set that are also in my borough don't pop up every single day. In addition, there are others competing for the same jobs. I'm also not looking to get a full-time position so my options are further limited. I had one bad interview because they were looking for someone to make a longer commitment than I was willing to. My resumé was also quite terrible until recently I started receiving help fixing it. There's a lot of dead time between applications and interviews. The business I'm starting is a side income in case things remain dry on the job front. There are plans to grow the business to make a lot more than $900 monthly.

2. Entertainment is entertainment. My primary targets for marketing are people who can afford spending $21-25 per person on a night of entertainment. Geez, a corn beef sandwich can go for that much in a Manhattan eatery. The Broadway ticket price is just one example of many to illustrate how pricey things can get in the city yet people continue to spend on those things.

3. On the gaming front, I'm building up my skills and reputation through the local gaming community. Anyone can go to the meetup.com site to see that I'm being active in practicing and improving my craft. On the storytelling front, I have been a volunteer children's Sunday School teacher/children's play director. That service will be ready next week. I'm still tweaking the site (it's only the first week the site has been up after all).

4. Yeesh, I just started the site up. The full service menu won't be ready until next week. Ask me again the week after that.

5. Exactly how much personal information do you expect me to share here?

6. Have you SEEN the differences between this plan and the one before it? I've taken A LOT of the arguments (the ones that were valid anyway) into consideration as I've developed this current venture.

7. The reasons for the costs are not as important as the fact that people in NYC pay them anyway plus even more like snacks, t-shirts, etc. I don't know about where YOU live but life in THIS CITY can be a lot more expensive than other places.

8. The team-building benefits of playing a team-oriented game where you have to work together to overcome obstacles and solve problems together are kind of obvious. I'll be posting some more on the business site to elaborate further (again I emphasize that this is only the first week that the site has been up). A lot of team-building exercises don't tend to be very complicated in their structure (word games, board games, building a car together, etc.). Build trust. Build cooperation. Build communication. It's pretty straightforward.

 

[Dathalas]

Captain,

You've got a lot of really good feedback in this thread to your idea, even though some of it might sting at times.

The best ideas I've heard in this thread for actually making a legitimate income from your DMing skill set are:

(1) Organize Game Days
(2) Write adventures and sell them as PDFs.

Why not just focus on these two ideas and see what happens? The benefit is that you've got a clearly defined market this way (current 4e D&D players) and have a way to actually reach them (PDF sale sites, forums).

If I were in your situation, here's what I would do:

(1) Write a couple of adventures for a Game Day.

(2) Grab a couple of buddies to do the same.

(3) Find a place that will let you host a small Game Day (about 12 to 15 people) for free. I've done them here in my area at friendly local game shops, coffee shops, and community centers.

(4) Advertise the Game Day and charge $5 admission to play two games in one day with an hour break in between. Just explain the admission is a small fee to cover your costs.

(5) Use the feedback from the Game Day to improve and playtest your adventures.

(6) Now put those adventures in a PDF format with pretty maps that can be printed out and sell them through RPGNow and DriveThru RPG for $3 to $5 a piece.

(7) Repeat the cycle as often as you can manage.

If you run fun events, your Game Days will just keep growing. You'll attract both quality DMs that want to be a part of it (test your DMs out ... have them run a game for you and some friends) and players.

The nice thing about this model is that you've got your adventure PDFs constantly up for sale and you can market those to the players at your Game Days.

Other random business advice:
(1) Drop the "Captain Commando" moniker and just use your real name. You will get a much better reception and come off as more real.

(2) Make sure you're friendly and introduce yourself to every new player at your Game Days. Hand them a sheet with information about the adventures you have available in PDF and where to buy them (if they like your Game Day, they'll probably pitch the adventures to their own DM or buy them if they are DMs).

(3) When you're talking to new players, don't talk about yourself. Ask them questions about themselves. People like to talk about themselves a lot. So if you ask them questions and encourage them to talk about themselves, they'll appreciate your interest and tell everyone you're a great conversationalist.

I really wish you the best of luck, but it seems pretty clear from your answers that you have zero clue who your market is for your current business model. You're trying to create a market that doesn't exist for your product.

Shift your focus a little and tap into the market that does exist and wants what you have to offer. You'll certainly increase your chances of success.

Take care and good luck.

 

[Maggan]

Paying someone to Dm for a group seems really repugnant.

I have no problem paying for services. That can be a haircut, a movie ticket or a really good DM. I'm lucky that I don't have to pay for a DM, but on principle I see nothing wrong with the concept, whatsoever.

It's just someone offering a service to those who would like to pay for it, for whatever reasons. Nothing repugnant about that, IMO.

That said, I don't think there's much mileage in offering DMing for money, but I don't have a problem with the concept, and I really have a hard time understanding why it would be repugnant to offer the services.

/M

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

2. Entertainment is entertainment. My primary targets for marketing are people who can afford spending $21-25 per person on a night of entertainment. Geez, a corn beef sandwich can go for that much in a Manhattan eatery. The Broadway ticket price is just one example of many to illustrate how pricey things can get in the city yet people continue to spend on those things.

This is where I think you haven't done your market research. "Entertainment is entertainment" is like saying "pizza is pizza." Maybe in some areas of the country where a person can choose either Pizza Hut or Dominoes that might be true. But a city like Chicago (where we love our pizza) makes a huge distinction between types of pizza.

Similarly, NYC is a center of entertainment and different forms of it will rate differently. That's why it costs so much more to see a Broadway play than it does to see a movie. You have basically priced your services at the cost of two movie tickets (assuming a full group) for a 4-5 hour session. So you are saying your form of entertainment is roughly equal to that of a movie. Really? Can you match the sights and sounds of a professionally produced movie?

And, as much as I love D&D, one has to admit that the game of D&D carries both a social stigma and in some people's eyes controversy. Companies are unlikely to hire you for team-building because of the controversies, real or imagined, that D&D carries. They can't risk placing a person with strong beliefs into something like that who might sue them for hostile workplace issues. And how many non-gamers do you expect to market "that game where you pretend to be an elf in your mom's basement" to? Again I think your services are only going to appeal to existing gamers or those already interested into getting into gaming that haven't yet. And your competition is all the DMs that do the job for free. You need to be infinitely better thatn the average DM to compete with free.

I think your only shot at making this work would be to form an after-school program or summer camp that caters to parents of young teens. That way you don't need child-care credentials, it would just be a club activity to keep teens out of trouble in their parents eyes. Of course for this you would need a stable location to pull off. I don't know if NYC even has park districts, but you might want to see if you can run a youth RPG club through them and earn your money that way.

 

[timbannock]

My primary targets for marketing are people who can afford spending $21-25 per person on a night of entertainment. Geez, a corn beef sandwich can go for that much in a Manhattan eatery. The Broadway ticket price is just one example of many to illustrate how pricey things can get in the city yet people continue to spend on those things.

- I don't know a single person living in NY that doesn't complain about the pricing either. If you want to get started with a job that is reaching out to a demand that isn't even really there (at least not 100% guaranteed to be there in droves), you need to start at the LOWEST possible price point for it to be worthwhile. That doesn't necessarily equal the optimal price for you personally.

4. Yeesh, I just started the site up. The full service menu won't be ready until next week. Ask me again the week after that.

- That's a problem right there. These threads (at ENWorld, RPG.net, and the several other sites you've posted to) should serve as some indicator of the demand, not just that website. How much is questionable, but they should not be wholly disregarded. You've done other marketing research aside from your site as well: meetup.com and all that. What has the reception been like there? Has anyone bitten on your ideas yet? Don't just focus on your website, believe me. I work in eBusiness. As an analyst. Every stinkin' day.

5. Exactly how much personal information do you expect me to share here?

- My point isn't to ask for your references names and numbers. My point is to have YOU look at how many references you have, what kind of source they are, and if they will actually help you in the sense that if someone asks them "Hey, is this guy good at running team-building sessions and all the other stuff he says he can do?" that they will turn around and not just say "Yes," but also say WHY you are the man for the job. I don't care if your references are any good, because I'm not your target audience. But your target audience will sure care in a big way!

7. The reasons for the costs are not as important as the fact that people in NYC pay them anyway plus even more like snacks, t-shirts, etc. I don't know about where YOU live but life in THIS CITY can be a lot more expensive than other places.

- I'm living in a really expensive city, and moving to one of the top 10 most expensive cities in the U.S. And if I live in NY and my rent's expensive and the food's expensive and all that...doesn't that mean I have LESS disposable income? Doesn't that mean I want to watch my spending THAT MUCH MORE?

Or, think of it this way: you're offering your services to businesses as well as gamers (and other folks). Why would a business hire you? Businesses always think about bottom line: what RESULTS will you bring them for the money you are charging?

A lot of team-building exercises don't tend to be very complicated in their structure (word games, board games, building a car together, etc.). Build trust. Build cooperation. Build communication. It's pretty straightforward.

- Whoa, that's operating under some faulty information. Team-building exercises are often VERY complicated. Maybe not in the end-user's view, per se, but in how they get people interacting, building trust, etc. Team-building exercises specifically have to have measurable results, actionable items. You can't just say "being in the room together and playing a game is team-building." It's so much more complicated than that.

If you want to ignore everything else I've said, then at least take this away from my posts: "Don't be so scattershot about your ideas. Focus your market really tight at first, and then expand it afterward, after it's succeeded with a single market. Currently you're trying to be too many things."

Moreover, I think the idea of running your business VERY closely in tandem with a few local game stores is probably one of the best ideas ever. That and/or publishing some adventures as PDFs. These two options have built-in, focused markets for you to tap into, where there is already demand. They would make great springboards for your business ventures later!

Please note that I come off as antagonistic sometimes because of my nature. I don't mean to be. I still have faith that your idea has merit, but I just want to point out potential real-world business pitfalls. I have no beef with you personally, and frankly, your constant posting about this shows that you are nothing if not dedicated to this idea. No matter how tough I am (or any other posters), nobody can take that away from you or deny it, and that's worthy of respect.

So please take all of my criticism in the most constructive light possible, as that is how it is meant to be. Hell, if you don't ever respond to my posts, I'm not going to cry. I just want you to reflect on what you're doing and do what's best for you and your intended business. As a student of business and business-related subjects, I feel that I do have some expertise in the field.

 

[Hereticus]

By the way Captain, have you considered what would happen to your game if you killed a paying player's character?

.

Geez, a corn beef sandwich can go for that much in a Manhattan eatery.

I'd rather pay for the corned beef sandwich, and then play a free game of D&D.