@Distracted DM thanks for stopping by! This is very interesting to me. I was just talking to another local GM for hire. It’s def getting more common.
If you mean thanks for stopping by the thread you're welcome; if you mean enworld, I've been here a while
. I was a little surprised when they announced the event with DDB, but it makes total sense. I'm just a GM on there! It
is where most of my players found me.
To be clear, I am well aware of the site's purpose, I just think $20+ per session is a lot. Apparently there are enough people willing to pay the price.
Oh yeah, it's definitely a person-to-person value thing.
Is it for online games only?
Does location matter then?
If any of you run in person does location make a difference for you?
AFAIK it's the same as all the other TTRPG promotions: the adventure's provided for free, GMs that want to participate can put scheduled sessions up on SPG like any other session/game, except marking it as part of the event.
It doesn't have to be online, but I the vast majority of games on SPG are. SPG really just handles payment processing, lets you post your sessions, scheduling etc. and gives visibility since it's the big place for pay to play games. It's not like GMs are managed or advised or anything like that.
In-person games usually charge more than online, but as I said most SPG games are online.
Wow. So you're able to do this full time? How many games a week do you tend to run?
Do you run published adventures or homebrew?
Do you run the same adventure for multiple groups?
Yes, full-time. At my peak I run 5-6 games/week, ~4hrs each session. Most of them online.
Personally I tend to use older adventures as a framework in my own setting and go from there. I have tried running Curse of Strahd a couple times because that's always been the most attractive adventure to players, but I really had to "make it mine" to enjoy running it.
I don't run the exact same adventures for multiple groups because it's all taking place in my own setting that I've been running in for about 10yrs. Before that I ran games in various established settings, depending on the system etc.
But it doesn't really make any sense to run Red Hand of Doom or The Night Below multiple times, by the book, in the same setting. How many times are the aboleth going to try the same plan to take over the world? I can't stick to the book anyway with adventures; I'm very improvisational and reactive to what the characters do- and I riff on their ideas as well as my own... so adventures always get heavily modified and expanded upon based on who's playing and what they do.
For example, I did try running The Night Below twice:
The FIRST time the party had finished Against the Cult of the Reptile God and wanted to do TNB, so I fast-tracked Book 1 (of 3) and got them into the Underdark (book 2) in probably 4-5 sessions. After that I used most of the adventure material for book 2 and added a bunch of stuff that the players were interested in and that made sense in the context of my setting. Sort of an ongoing narrative thing that crosses through different games.
By the time they got to book 3, in 2e the characters are supposed to be ~lvl10... but our 5e party was ~lvl14 due to the 5e XP curve. They did some of the optional stuff, but then beelined for the big boss stuff and we finished the campaign at ~lvl18.
The SECOND time I had one or two players from that first group
also playing in this group so I knew I'd have to change it up a little- but I didn't actually run book 1! So I figured I'd try to stick to the book and go from there... but then maybe 6 sessions in the party totally left the planned adventure track to pursue some little side thing that I put in and I ended up having to make it all up on the fly as we went, using some material from different sources as inspiration and framework. They've now made it into the Underdark and "book 2," but at this point it's not really TNB as the adventure but more TNB-inspired
the players from the first TNB campaign haven't seen ANYTHING the same, in fact they've seen some things that are direct or indirect results of what they did in the first game.
And once we finished a campaign I'll write little pitches for adventures that I'm interested in running, take suggestions from players, and take a vote on what the players want to do for the next game.
...
OK jeeze that's a huge wall of text.