#paid gm

[thegiftofgabes]

The Gift of Dice - Intro Post

I am Gabriel Caetano (they/them), and I am a queer, Latine parent, TRPG creator, audio producer, and game facilitator (aka GM) from Brazil.

Roleplaying Games

I make tabletop Roleplaying Games, as well as TTRPG-adjacent experiences.

I like fantasy, science fantasy, and weird fantasy the most and I have been more and more invested in looking at games as enablers of social experimentation and questioning.

I like to say that every game I make is a product of excellent taste and developing skill.

You can find my games at https://thegiftofdice.itch.io/

Indie Games Facilitator for Hire

I run and facilitate (aka GM) roleplaying games as a gig.

I have over 100 session under my belt, and growing, and a large catalogue of indie, alternative games to facilitate for players anywhere out there in the world, including Masks, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Nibiru, Apocalypse Keys, Noctis Labyrinth, Troika!, Blades in the Dark, CBR+PNK, and many more.

You can browse through the dates I setup, or make a custom request.

Politics and Ethics

All TTRPG content has a price tag, except when I think it shouldn't, and all of them should have alternate methods of access for anyone who does not enjoy the privilege of earning dollars, euros, pounds, and other hegemon currencies.

Yet, non-white people, non-het, and non cis-male people anywhere who cannot afford to buy anything I make without putting their safety and well-being financially are welcome to get my stuff for free, one way or another.

I also offer seats for free or at a greatly reduced fee to people in the Global South, where the dollar exchange would make access to my game sessions absolutely crushing.

None of the content I create is compatible with Hasbro or Paizo products, or products by any company or individual that shares their ethics and predatory approach to industrializing an art form, on principle.

Additionally I do not use or rely on artificially generated content to create my games or run my sessions.

Game Design Principles

I've come across this game design manifesto and I've decided to adopt it for my own game design as best as I can and let it evolve as I grow as a game designer and writer.

against coercion: a game design manifesto by JPLeBreton

let players wonder about things and trust them to find answers;

connect players with patterns they find intrinsically fulfilling;

never treat a number going up as an inherently positive or meaningful even;

teach respect for the autonomy and boundaries of all things;

posit alternatives to fantasies of accumulation and extraction;

do not think of emotional responses as something you extract from players;

produce and distribute ethically;

aspire to more than escape.

Whether I'll succeed or fail at following these principles, or even how they will evolve over time, all I can say is let's play to find out.

Kindly, Gabriel Caetano

[kaybeangel]

Goblin Slayer TRPG

I am starting a new campaign. It is available for sign ups right now! I'll be running the official Goblin Slayer TRPG system, on Sunday afternoons. 3pm EST, every other Sunday.

Session 0 is scheduled for May 5th.

I've already got a couple people who will be signing up, so come and join us and try out a new and unique system, in a fun setting.

We'll start with the first Sample adventure from the book, as a good way to learn the system, and then, if people want to keep playing with their characters, we will explore new homebrew adventures created by me.

I've run the system before, and it's a lot of fun. Very unique compared to other systems I've run. Expand your trpg horizons and play something different and new!

[respectmakiitoh]

hey everyone I'm running a fight with spirit game

it's an extremely cool indie ttrpg about teamwork, being very over the top, and feelings.

[basiliskonline]

Advice from a GM that just Started Pro-GMing

You'll see my thread on my experiences here.

But this thread is more of a bullet point general advice or things to expect. Will update as I think of things so definitely keep an eye on it and return to the original post regularly if you want to see (or ya know follow me xD)

Between September and November I had familiarized myself with Startplaying, tried some things that didn't work, adjusted my prices and eventually had my first paid campaign underway at $12/Person, about $60/3 hour session.

Between November and January I recruited for my second campaign at $14/Person and got my minimum player count so a session is coming up on Wednesday the 4th. Fill this group up will eventually bring me into about $80 a game for a 3 hour session.

My next campaign I'll be aiming for $16/person.

NOW ONTO THE ADVICE

I am running the same campaign for different groups, this provides me a variety of benefits:

This campaign is one im already running for my personal group, which means any prepwork, is prepwork i'd be doing already. This is definately important at a "starting salary" for a new Pro-GM.

It allows you to practice, familiarize yourself with and getting focused feedback. Everytime you run it, you'll be running a better product.

Warning: For many people this may lead to burnout or getting bored with your campaigns.

What to Run?

I'd love to run indie games and smaller stuff, but tbh the pickins are slim there, especially with how the website is formatted, you will really need someone searching for your games in order to find them.

Your best options are D&D5E and PF2E, though I imagine WoD and other mid-tier games have some possibility too, the Big Two are your best bets for getting regular traffic outside your own bubble.

Campaigns or One-Shots? Campaigns!

Campaigns tend to be more popular than one-shots, and luckily for you, new Pro-GM, they are obviously more consistent.

A Campaign takes, in my experience, a couple weeks to get filled up, people will get impatient or find other opportunities and they'll come and go, but on average I probably get about a person a week, once you have 3 or so, they can and often start to come in much faster.

To prevent issues in regularity, make it clear up front in the description that you are not looking for a "drop-in" campaign, and you are aiming for people that at the very least intend to stay when joining.

Organization and Tools

look around at other startplaying games to see how they set up their templates and adventure pages.

I'd suggest setting up a discord or guilded server and set up campaign specific roles, so that only people in those campaigns can see the role-related channels. this also allows you to tag everyone in the game for reminders of game start and the like.

Foundry VTT is absolutely fantastic for some games, not as a fantastic as others, if you are running PF2E I strongly suggest familairizing yourself with Foundry because quite frankly its an AMAZING VTT experience.

Feel free to ask questions i'll answer as best as I can!

[heyzebulon]

Just shouting into the void some feedback for paid DMs for TTRPGs because I see a lot of promotional posts for them:

1) Charge more - I don't want to pay a little. I want a premium service. I would pay $50 at least an hour for a paid DM who has animated maps, music, great character voices etc. I want to pay for the Critical Role experience. $15 session is an immediate "no way" from me.

2) Go deluxe - If you're charging at all, you really should be offering the kind of premium experience you could charge more for. Really work with the players on personal storylines that weave into the bigger narrative, use world maps and town maps and scene backdrops. You might not be good at voices, but you could still run tactically interesting combats with custom tokens. Find your angle and make it deluxe.

3) Start fresh - I don't want to join an ongoing campaign. I don't want to pay to be the 6th wheel to an existing group of friends with established inside l jokes. Start new campaigns for new groups instead of trying to get everyone to get along in one group.

4) Have a website - If you're just @ goblinking420 on Discord posting that you're a paid DM, I'm not keen to pay you to do anything. Get a basic .wordpress or even .squarespace domain and use a template. Put your About section there, the campaigns you run, your availability to hire in a calendar, have some player testimonials. If you're not serious about treating being a paid DM as a business then I am not serious about paying you.

I would love to pay for a good DM who is serious about providing a premium service. I've reached the age where most of my friends don't have time anymore and first kids are on the way for more people in the group. We have money, and we're increasingly using that to buy time back.

But I see so many "pay to play" campaigns that's just any average DM asking for $15 to cover their various subscription costs - like my dude, I am subscribed to the same platforms, but I would only ask friends for donations not strangers on the internet.

If it becomes a requirement to play, if it feels like a business transaction, then I want to feel like I am buying something from a real business.

[oscar-c-tango]

Horrors or Rul - A Freeform Shadow of the Demon Lord Game!

So here's a bit of a hail Mary for me. Tomorrow at 9:00 AM PST I'm going to run a Shadow of the Demon Lord game. It will be a little session 0 + starting adventure because the session 0 probably won't take that long. If anyone is interested in joining here is a link

https://startplaying.games/adventure/clk5n5t46000108mtf7tyayj0

About the Game: Shadow of the Demon Lord is probably my favorite fantasy game outright. It's a dark fantasy game with horror elements that really thrives on episodic escapades where players go somewhere and see some fucked up stuff.

It has an exciting class system where you gain new classes as time goes on, and has one of the coolest spell lists I've ever seen. It's easy to learn introduces it's complexity slowly.

If you want a fast, punchy dark fantasy game I can't recommend it enough! And this is a great chance to play it! Come and see some weird and dark stories where running away is as much a victory as fighting!

[thegoodmorningman]

"Okay, this is basically my dream job! How's the healthcare?" "Depends on how much of a capitalist hellscape your home country is."

[moeblob]

He isn't in Engage BUT I can still give him freckles. Because everyone deserves some freckles as a treat.

[thefirstknife]

Getting real sick of a certain subset of Destiny players complaining that it’s a baby game and crying to Bungie to nerf exotics and abilities when their ENTIRE POINT IS TO BE STRONG in specific ways as if they are being locked into using them.

IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA CHALLENGE STOP BEING SUCH A DPS GOBLIN AND JUST EQUIP SOMETHING THATS NOT TOP TIER META AND STOP COMPLAINING JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

MOOD. Go off.

It's incredibly annoying to me. They always use the argument of "the game should FORCE me to do things, I should not SELF-IMPOSE challenges." And like. ? I'm sorry but what? It's a video game for a big audience, it's here to be playable and accessible to the widest possible playerbase. There are plenty of ways to make the game difficult for yourself, so knock yourself out if that's your thing, but don't force others into it.

Like, I enjoy hard content, I regularly at least attempt day 1 raids, I do master raids, GMs, solo and solo flawless content and all that. But only when I want to. Sometimes I don't and I don't want to suffer in a patrol zone or struggle in a seasonal activity I'm doing for the story. The majority of the players don't want that. Designing games for the professional gamers only has NEVER been a good idea and never will be. Fifty streamers can't sustain a video game. It needs casual players who will want to come back to the game instead of feeling defeated.

One of the reasons I really enjoy helping others is because I know that casual players tend to struggle in stuff that's basic activity for me. I've seen people unable to get through a strike. I've sat for 10 minutes rezing someone who couldn't do the jump in a seasonal activity. I want those people to be able to play basic content without feeling frustrated and I want them to know that there are people out there who will help them out.

And this doesn't apply just to basic content, although it should start with that. I think all dungeons and raids and everything should be things that all players can complete. Fine, doing a master raid with all challenges should be tough, but it should be achievable with time and practice, not impossible. What a lot of these "pros" want is just completely divorced from reality.

It takes days and days of practice every time a new master raid is out for me and my team (all with thousands of hours of playtime) to get comfortable to finally finish it. We're far from casual players and it still takes a lot of time to be able to finish hard content. Making it even harder is insane to me. Like, if something is so hard that my team full of people, each with 5000+ hours of playtime and a coordinated team that's been raiding together for years now can't finish it, that means it's absolutely impossible for probably 90% of the playerbase. That's wild to me. Raids and GMs should have more people playing them. If master raids are too easy for you, Mr. I-Play-Destiny-For-A-Living, that's on you buddy. Unequip the super god tier god roll meta guns and loadouts or play something else.

And ofc, another excuse they make is "if I don't use meta, I am not going to win a raid race!" Then don't. Idk. Let me play you the tiniest violin. This affects literally nobody except a grand total of 50 people. Run your meta in day 1, and play with random shit otherwise. Play raids with all white weapons. Play without mods. Play without a HUD. Do things solo only. I don't know, make up a way to spice things up for yourself. I'm not interested in that and neither are 99% of the players out there. The game is genuinely hard enough for the majority of the players. On top of that, I am here to feel like a powerful space fantasy superhero. I am NOT here to die to dregs in patrol zones. If there's ONE thing that I know for a fact that put people off from Lightfall (as in this year of Destiny), it's the difficulty changes. They're annoying, frustrating and for some a barrier to entry more than anything else.

[suiheisen]

screaming at you on all the platforms i can: STOP WORKING AND GO TO THE DOCTOR. or i will be forced to fly there and MAKE SURE YOU GET YOURSELF CHECKED OUT. (ps i love you please take care of your health over everything or i’ll cry 🥺 do you want that.)

;_____; yes logging in everywhere and facing your messages in surround sound was an Experience. that's love...... a little traumatising.

[thegiftofgabes]

Being a paid GM is its own adventure

It's been close to a year since I started running games for money.

I started out with a few one-shots of Masks and Thirsty Sword Lesbians until I got to run a few weekly adventures of Masks, Troika!, Noctis Labyrinth, Nibiru, Apocalypse Keys and more.

Given that being a paid GM has become my main income source, it is stressful at times. There are other downsides too, which I could talk about another time.

BUT

I have never played so many games, and for so long, until I became a paid GM.

I got to take part in the tales of Adjo and Nabi in their explorations of the haunted ravines of Noctis Labyrinth.

I got to see a bunch of teen superheroes like Nini, Eli, Selena, Justin, Arthur, Matt, Jake, Val, Cherry, and many others, as they met or faced divine parenthood, evil corporate bosses, criminal overlords, Florida Men, an eldritch goose, the Fairy Godmother, time/space-screwing warlocks, and, worse of all, PROM.

I got to see mythical avatars such as Enkidu, Boudicca, and others, as they traveled the Tree of Life.

I get to see Vagabonds weave the Chronicles of the Skyless World in Nibiru, a whole world contained in a massive space station.

I get to see some really messed up monsters teeter at the edge of becoming the Harbingers of Apocalypse, as they try to stop the apocalypse themselves.

And those are just some of the adventures I got to experience first hand.

Roleplaying games are both passion and work, and that is its own can of worms to unpack since capitalism pushes individuals to monetize their passions to survive.

But make no mistake, I thoroughly enjoy what I do and the players I get to bring along in this ride, and while I am conscious that there will be a time I will change and might need to step down, I will savour every single moment of it with is ups and downs.

[kaybeangel]

Hello! I am a professional Game Master, as my full time employment and, I am now recruiting players for the new paid game in my Wednesday night timeslot. The plan is to play every Wednesday at 7pm EST. Starting April 17th hopefully, if we have enough players. This game will be played using D&D 5e, and is set within my Worlds of Heroic Adventure setting which might be familiar to those that follow my livestreams, set 20 Years after the big multi-campaign finale on my channel from last year.

This campaign is titled Puppets of the Eye of Time, and will be starting at level 7. The PCs will begin the game as the unwilling minions of Zikozis, The Eye of Time, an incredibly ancient and powerful beholder. Near the beginning of the game, the PCs will discover something that frees them from his Charm, and allows them to understand their situation, without necessarily have the ability to simply escape. As the PCs gain experience, in addition to gaining levels as normal, each will have the chance to unlock unique psionic abilities as well. As the PCs gain levels, I expect to include adventures into the Astral Sea and the Realm of Dreams, along with conflicts with powerful aberrations that lurk there. Eventually, the PCs will be powerful enough to do something about Zikozis, and escape his influence, but where will they go and what will they do?

You can sign up at the link!

[sethjarvy]

and fletcher's gm style didn't scare him? 💀

[25-worms-in-a-trenchcoat]

pls when will i be free from the hell that is employment in the food service industry

[basiliskonline]

Started Paid GMing 3 months ago

This Post has Advice/Thoughts about starting Pro-GMs here.

I started paid GMing 3 months ago, here are my experiences:

When I started in mid-September it took me a while to figure out the process of getting set up through startplaying, a lot of amazing help from @sun-gone, who was familiar with the process.

I'm not a crushingly successful pro-GM yet but I'm happy with how it has gone, I'm closer to where you are as you read this, so I figure I'd share the perspective of someone who muddled there way through and where I am 3 months later.

September

I tried to focus on indie and small game one-shots, that... didn't work. I realized I was gonna need to do 5E if I was gonna get people, and that sounded just awful.

Most of September I poked around the website, looked at what other people did, how they set up their templates and familiarized myself with Startplaying while I considered if I wanted to do this knowing I'd have to play a lot of 5E.

October

My buddy asked if I wanted to join their PF2E game, I was hesitant (i hated PF1E and I am not exactly thrilled about supporting Paizo) but figured it was another option, and I'd heard it was much better than 5E so I dove on in.

Honestly I'm still shocked and somewhat dismayed by how much I like PF2E. I found an Adventure Path, The Quest For Frozen Flame, and I fell in love. It seemed like a module made for me, specifically. I started a personal campaign while still fiddling with Startplaying.

I then put together my pages for The Quest for Frozen Flame on Startplaying.

I started my price point at, I think, $18, per person with an aim to get 6 people. However, I had no reviews from confirmed/paid customers, no games played, I was fresh. I slowly walked my price down.

At $14 I got my first person to join, they were patient and waited while we tried to hit the minimum player count, but eventually they found another game in the same time slot, so understandably took that option.

I moved down to $12 per person, and I started to get some interest.

It still took me a few weeks to get a game together, i had some people drop. (needing 1 more, someone leaves literally days before another person joins was frustratingly common) my numbers and roster would fluctuate.

Once you get a couple people though, it has been in my experience now, much easier to get people in there.

November

By November my first campaign had filled up, I was aiming for 6, but capped it at 5 because my players were concerned about game drag (this is something I am no longer concerned about, the 5 of them are flying through the content, even with some new to PF2 people).

Just before the game started we lost 2/5 of our group to schedule changes, one after the Session 0, and one just before. That put me right on the edge, if people couldn't make it or someone drops, I go down to 2 players and the game stalls out. I was sweating.

Thats when I found this page about places to promote your games on startplaying.

I put together a google doc with the rules-appropriate formatting for each location so i could easily post and adjust as needed for each place.

By the end of November I was full 5-people and making $60 a game (3 hour sessions) so about $20 an hour. not.. *amazing* but sufficient to *start* for my situation.

December

While I ran my first paid campaign I started planning to start my second paid campaign, but moving into the holidays, I specifically set it up to start in the New Year, 1/4/2023.

This new campaign would be once again, The Quest For The Frozen Flame.

I am aiming to run the same campaign a lot for a few reasons:

I am, through weird brain stuff, basically immune to burnout, so thats not really an issue.

I am very excited for this module and its dinosaur, ice-age, paleo megafauna hunter-gatherer vibes.

If I play the same campaign as I am running for my personal campaign this greatly reduces extra game prep I need to do. Any game-prep is something I would have done anyway. This is very important to me, especially while I'm working at a lower than desired price point.

I get lots of practice, familiarity and tested feedback with this Adventure Path, which I'd imagine is alluring.

My second campaign I posted at $14 per person, aiming for 6 people.

January

My second campaign, just hit the minimal player count I set to start (3), so my session 0 will be Wednesday the 4th. I have no doubt, that it will fill up during the early days of the campaign, if not before session 1.

Once my second campaign gets underway, I'll be aiming for a 3rd paid campaign (also Frozen Flame) and probably aim for $16/person.

[maamlet]

i have no ill intent i just think someone That Bad at gming should not be. allowed to do it publicly. especially if they have access to personal advice from good gms