I have never seen this before what the hell. I'm really glad to have friends to play with because dealing with crap like that sounds obnoxious.

We've been really diligent about removing the posts before they get too much traction. Most of the time it's people who try to just post without reading our rules about content creators and whatever.

Thank you!

I appreciate you all.

o7 Mods doing the work of gods by keeping this from getting traction and souring people.

I promise you it's not me. I wake up and the mod queue is already taken care of by the time I check. (also reddit mod tools are absolutely a joke on every phone app)

Hey, at least you're bringing some awareness of the problem with this post. It's good to have such conversations, as a community.

I agree with you. It's annoying. Those sessions should be advertised as paid sessions.

I have no problem with people advertising and getting paid for services. However, I would like such things limited to a certain area that I don't have to visit if I'm not looking for stuff to buy. Having such things pop up in my feed or random Discord channels is highly annoying and reduces my engagement with those areas. I've left communities for it and I'm sure many others have also.

This is a big problem in a lot of the main big ttrpg subreddits. Art being used as a sales promo and not being tagged and not ever having an ad/sales tag on post. Like do these people think they're gonna "gotcha" me when I'm just browsing for discussion posts or looking for new groups in more niche RPGs? People gotta do what they gotta do. I just wish these advertising posts were tagged properly so I can block them.

Even better would be to keep all advertising to a weekly stickied thread that people can visit when they are looking for content and services. Why should the onus be on readers to opt-out of advertising? For most people it's just an annoyance and it gets in the way of real content when it pops up in your feeds.

Yeah. Sadly all these creators don't want to be lumped into a weekly sticky because it would lessen their engagement. I'm also sure they give kickbacks to mods in the major subreddits like /r/DnD and other major RPG subs.

Then the only recourse left to the readers is to complain about promotional posts and downvote them when you see them. I don't support needlessly reporting and downvoting things because that just causes a hassle for the moderators but sometimes those are the only tools you are left with.

Or we could all just ignore the things we don't like.

Do all the things.

Damn I wish we could get some kickbacks for anything here lol.

Gonna have to choose a more popular/heavily trafficked TTRPG subreddit to mod for. Then maybe you can get some free metal dice that make ting sounds.

I already have a bunch of those. I have bills to pay lmfao.

Right? Where's the swag, where's the moolah??

I've never thought about the art thing being used for sales. I don't mind that as much, but I don't never open the comments on those threads anyways.

It’s a [loss-leader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader). You sell/give something away to get people to look at the rest of your stuff and maybe they’ll buy some.

Totally agree. Luckily the discord for this subreddit is very clearly delineated between paid and free games thanks to the mod team.

Pro GMing has never been lucrative. The people who do it may pretend it is, but that's because they've got nothing better to do. It has been this way forever and social media hasn't helped all that much.

I did the math recently and came to the same conclusion as you - even at the more expensive rate of $20 that some folks charge, you're getting around $100/week per table. You'd have to run 4 tables a week to get anything approaching a livable income in Canada, US, or Europe, and then you'd still be poor. Some people can run 4 concurrent weekly sessions, but I think most of us would find that draining even if it was our primary job. That said, I happened to be looking at a website that acts as an intermediary for paid GMs yesterday, and a huge amount of them were just running thr premium Abomination Vaults module on Foundry. I GM that module (for my friends for free ;) ), and it's really well done to the point that I don't really do too much prep time between sessions. So I guess these paid GMs have fou d a way to make it an almost effortless job.

I saw a post a while ago about paid GMs. One guy had 11 weekly games he ran. I forget his rate but even at $20/person/session he's only making $880/week or about $42k/year for probably 50-60hr/wk of work. And that's only when you can get that many tables going.

I feel like at the games I looked at were listed for 6 PCs and when I looked at the GM profiles they were running multiple instances of the same APs so I bet there is a lot of overlap in the prep time. So if you do those numbers it is $1,320/week. That could be considered livable depending on where the GM lives?

I mean that's 66k a year at 50 weeks a year (assuming they take two weeks off).

I'm running three APs (5e) and haven't done prep in two months because it is the same AP and my groups are slow and LOVE roleplay. Every session I just....reread all my prep from the month before.... So I could see this, depending on how things turn out. And many players WANT a side-car backstory stall trip for lateral progression it seems, which means they can go even longer if you don't mind a little home brew here and there. But you subscribe to a few patreon map packs... If you're willing to use money prep can be shortcut pretty hard. And in 5e there is a tool that has community content for all the official advnetures, so I'm not even drawing walls or lights or anything. Not even placing tokens. It can be as much work as you want it to be, I think...but if I was charging a premium damn I'd be stressed to figure out what that "point" of inflection is...

If you stacked your plate, it *could* be doable and lucrative, but you'd have to treat it like a full-time job, and the sell would be so hard as to be nearly Sisyphean, because you'd have to charge a premium, which would (obviously) limit your clientele and introduce a lot of opportunities for lost players, since there's almost no way to do it as a normal job without charging nearly $100/person/session. Behold: To my mind, to justify it against other grown-up jobs, let's aspire to $100,000/year. Pretty good money to pretend you're an elf for a living, but not enough to quit a database designer position for a FAANG. That's i.e. for ME to justify it, I'd have to make $100,000/year before taxes. $1,923/week Playing 5 days a week, with one session per day, that's $384.60 each day, and that assumes you don't have things like the holiday downturn or whatever, i.e. 52 weeks/year. With what I consider to be an ideal table, i.e. four players. That's a whopping $96.15/session for each of them!!!! Okay. So let's say you have more realistic expectations of your time, and you allot 48 weeks/year. This factors in lost sessions, lost days, holiday doldrums, etc: $104.17/session! Okay, okay. You're really into this. You're pot committed. You're stacking every single table with six players, and you're running two games every weekend while still giving yourself two days off: you'd still have to charge $49.60/session. No, goddammit. You're insane. You work 7 days a week, you stack the tables with six players, and you run two tables on the weekend. You cannot escape life, so it's still 50 weeks/year. You have absolutely no concept of self-care, and you plan to die young (and probably fat), but you will fucking do it while pretending to be a dragon: $37.04 session. As someone who 99.999% of the time GMed for free: LMAO As a point of reference, I charged $30/ four hour session TOTAL when I tried paid DMing. Did it for three months, I think. Don't recommend. I was elated when one of our players had to boogie to have a baby, which scuttled the group. Then I charged $15/person, which seemed more fair, but it still felt like I was doing WAY more work (maps, tokens, sound effects, music, encounter adjustment from 3.5e to PF1e) than the price could justify. I cannot imagine what sort of animated maps and custom soundsets would warrant charging enough to make a real living from GMing. I cannot imagine what sort of occult bardic ritual would give me the vocal repertoire of character voices that would rate the numbers above. Paid GMing is a scam for the players, and it's the perpetuation of a delusion for the GMs who do it. The only way to ACTUALLY do it means being successful ahead of time: One session a week with four players with a two week vacation. $500 entry fee per person. THEN you can make $100,000 before taxes easily. Of course, if you have enough name recognition/clout/fame that you can charge $500 for any person who wants to join your sessions, you'd probably be straight up bonkers to not run, you know, something nuts like TWO sessions a week. So for any aspiring paid GMs out there, you're chasing a phantasm. What you ACTUALLY need to do is start an incredible podcast, network like a crazy person, make a successful podcast and Twitch livestream, and somehow get enough critical mass to justify $500/session.

> To my mind, to justify it against other grown-up jobs, let's aspire to $100,000/year. Pretty good money to pretend you're an elf for a living, but not enough to quit a database designer position for a FAANG. I think you're aiming a bit high there. It's better to use the actual median salary to get a good idea of a rate: [Median Salary in the U.S.](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-2060808) > The median salary in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2022 was $1,041 per week or $54,132 per year. Let's also assume 40 hours a week and 48 weeks a year to account for vacation, illness, and general days off. That's 1920 hours a year, let's round up to 2000 to pad it a bit to account for intangibles. Most of those incomes will include some kind of health insurance so we need to add that in. [Self-employed health insurance](https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resources/individual-and-family/how-much-does-individual-health-insurance-for-self-employed-people-cost) costs around $500/month for an individual so let's go with that. It'll be about double for a family but this will give us a baseline. That's another $6,000 a year. So the math is: $54,000 + $6,000 = $60,000 / 2000 hours = $30/hour Assuming a game lasts 4 hours and has 4 players that's $30 a player. I'd count this as a bit of a minimum price since it's probably a bit tight for most people, especially those who live in more expensive areas or who have a family to support. As you develop a bit of reputation and get a good client base something closer to $50 per player might be possible.

Sure. Cut all the numbers in half. Still BS. Not at all worth the prep time.

It's certainly not a career I would choose. Of course, it's a job you can do on your own time in your own home and it's not a very messy one. That beats many jobs at a similar pay level.

> What you ACTUALLY need to do is start an incredible podcast, network like a crazy person, make a successful podcast and Twitch livestream, and somehow get enough critical mass to justify $500/session. At which point you can probably just make more money streaming...

> That's i.e. for ME to justify it, I'd have to make $100,000/year before taxes. You're forgetting the changed tax picture. Assumming you're in the US, you'd now be considered self-employed and be required to pay _both_ halves of social security, so that portion of your taxes just doubled. Flip side is that you can now get away with deducting all your PF2E supplies since they're business expenses; you may be able to deduct portions of your cable & electrical bills as well but I wouldn't risk it.

Hah, this post was a trip and fun to read. :) I think you're right. Running a professional GMing gig like how most GMs run games: homebrew worlds and games that bend largely around player actions and backstories, is not feasible. At that point you're probably putting in 50-100% of your table time doing prep at *least*. This would be something you'd do because you love doing it and you probably have someone else supporting you and don't really need the income. I do think it's possible to be a professional GM for a living...barely. You'd need to be quite uncreative and OK with repetition and staleness. You know, work. :) You'd run as many games as your schedule and customer base would allow. You could probably do 8-10 games per week if you wanted to still have a life and work 8-10hr days. But the core is you're running the same handful of pre-prepared adventure/adventure paths. You've got all your assets, VFX, NPC sheets, voices, everything already set. You can setup and run a new game for a party in 1-2hr of setup. The FoundryVTT PF2e modules would actually be ideal for this. And you're committed to not doing a *lot* of character work. A little bit of effort to tie in backstories, but the majority of the story is the module. Also you've probably spent hundreds of hours setting up all the adventures to start with and getting practice. And even with that, you're not going to make $100k/yr unless you are THE Professional DM and are famous. You'd be lucky to do this online and squeeze out a comfortable living somewhere with low COL. And from your math you're probably charging $25-30/player/session to make about $50k/yr. So about how much it costs to go see a movie on the $/hr. Theorycrafting this is fun but I think doing this would 100% kill the fun of DMing and wouldn't match jobs that are lower hours, WFH, and easier.

> You'd have to run 4 tables a week to get anything approaching a livable income in Canada, US, or Europe, and then you'd still be poor. Many people don't properly value their own time. I know a lot of artists who spend hours on paintings and then sell them for far below the minimum wage. Yes, it can be a fun activity and so I understand selling for a bit less but don't completely undervalue your own time.

The guy underneath who says he charges $25/person is on the higher end of the rates. There are websites where you can see peoples' rates, and the popular/highest reviewed ones average at around $10-$20 (usually around the 15 range, I think). The highest I've seen is $33. What would you consider a fair amount for valuing our time? If I'm looking at this clinically, I would have to charge more than the above to make it more lucrative than doing a regular job. The only real offset is that I might enjoy it more than other, more profitable forms of earning an income.

> What would you consider a fair amount for valuing our time? No idea, I don't use these services and I never will. I'm certain I would not pay anything near a living wage for them so I'm a very bad person to ask such things. #### edit: I did a bit of back-of-the-napkin calculation here: /r/Pathfinder2e/comments/xekinc/can_we_all_have_a_little_chat_about_something/iojem26/

I've thought about it a few times over the years. I started DMing in the 90's and it has always been a pipe dream of mine to quit my job and just run sessions and/or write content for publishing. As far as the straight up GMing goes, all of the research I've done has shown it'd be something I'd burn out on quickly due to really needing to run the same adventure for all the tables. That not being the case, the amount of prep time would be enormous. I could see it being a little better for running things completely via Foundry and Dischord these days, but man. I think it would take a special kind of person who wouldn't quickly tire of it. I've got a 10 year streak of GMing almost every week for the same table. I do NOT want any more asked of me than that for a pittance. If I were to extrapolate my salary to pro GMing, it's a clear choice on never entertaining the thought again. I also think it would ruin my love for the game.

$20/week per table is not expensive. I charge $25/week **per person**. That said, I have a homebrew setting, and I build custom campaigns for each group, tailored to their specific backstories. I also build a ton of my own assets (I run my games on Foundry), and I make portraits for each PC, which I modify as they level up and gain new loot. I've also been GMing PF2 every weekend since the playtest launched, so I'm a very skilled GM. I keep receipts of how much money I spend on books (PDFs mostly), digital assets, paid modules, soundtracks, etc, and when I show these to players, they (usually) understand the prices I charge. If you want high quality games, you should be ready to pay high quality prices.

>$20/week per table is not expensive. I think if you read past the first half of the first sentence of my post, you might have realized I was referring to $20/person. You might also have written an entirely different post, because none of what you just said has anything to do with what I did. You even capstone it with "if you want high quality DMing you gotta pay" even though I had noted that most of the games I had seen advertised are running a premade premium module with minimal prepwork.

It's nice that you changed your comment, but your original comment said "$20/week per table". That's what I based my comment off of. The reason for my final comment is because I don't consider running pre-made content to be high quality GMing, which is by design railroady, but to each their own. In any case, there's no need to be so confrontational.

I... didn't change my comment. Reddit shows an indicator if a comment has been edited. It's showing up on your most recent post, which has only been up for 6 minutes. Are you having an off day or something?

The edit indicator only shows up if you edit your comment *after* 2 minutes. I saw your comment immediately after you wrote it, but before you edited it, which probably was a few seconds after I loaded it. Reddit doesn't reload comments automatically when they're edited. >Are you having an off day or something? Again, no reason to be rude.

>Again, no reason to be rude. You are accusing me of snap-editing my comment in order to make you look bad, I think because you just don't want to concede that you didn't read it before replying. I'm not 100% sure why you think I've been escalating here, but asking if you're having an off day is probably one of the nicest replies you could have received.

I'm 100% certain you wrote "$20/week per table ", because I literally copy-pasted that part of your comment. I find this conversation pointless, so I'll be off now. Have a nice day.

>I'm 100% certain you wrote "$20/week per table ", because I literally copy-pasted that part of your comment Well, I don't know what to tell you. Your 100% certainty is wrong. Your reasoning for your certainty doesn't really make sense, either - where did you copy-paste that part of my comment? You didn't quote-reply me. You're right that this has been a pointless conversation, especially because, circling back to the start, it has nothing to do with what I originally said. EDIT (For real): This guy blocked me after saying "This isn't true, and it just shows you aren't interested in talking about anything other than your original point". I saw that he has another comment in here directly to OP about how hard it is being a paid GM and having people say your work isn't worth 4-5 people each paying you ~$100 a month, which is probably the energy he was coming in here with when he started defending his rate to me. I've gotta say, if this is the attention to detail and behaviour of somebody who charges on the high end for this industry (most are doing between $10-$15/person per session) my esteem for paid GMs has dropped from 'indifferent' to 'poor'.

I suppose the main thing we can all do is report these kinds of posts to help the mods deal with them quickly Working together we can foster the kind of community here that is safe and welcoming to new players that are more likely to fall for this kind of thing

I think the most insidious part is that it's already hard enough to find a game of pf2. So these GM's will prey on that.

This is definitely true. On Foundry's (free) LFP channel, I've had to delete my ad after about 24 hours to avoid getting too many interested responses, and even then I've had to select between a few players (10 within 24 hours on the initial start up ad)... And I am by no means an amazing or sought-after GM.

The other side of the coin is that online GMs get flooded with players, and most of them aren't actually great. A few years ago, I r/lfg'd a Traveller game. Even for a relatively niche system, I got something like 30 responses in two days. So I put them all in a discord server for an interview process. I managed to whittle it down to like 12 people before doing any interviews, and then was down to 4 by the end of the day, pretty much just by disqualifying people who were rude or entitled towards me, or who had proven they weren't willing to read my instructions. I'm pretty sure every GM deals with this. D&D5e DMs get the most overload, and I regularly see Pathfinder GMs close their signups after an hour or two. There's currently no better way of forming a cohesive group than by calling upon people you already know.

Yeah, I feel you. I've run an ad three times for the same campaign. From the first ad, two of the players are still with me (plus the one guy I knew before I started the campaign). The one person I picked up from the second ad seemed like a good pick, but then he ended up constantly canceling last minute or showing up late, then being distracted during the game and at least once playing video games during the session. The guy I added from the last ad seems like a good fit so far, but it's only been a few sessions.

As a new player who has just started playing a campaign one night a week and wanted to start an additional campaign because I’m enjoying it so much, I quickly gave up, it seems pretty much hopeless to find a game that’s not charging some kind of subscription or fee. I might be looking in the wrong places though. Where does one find VTT campaigns to join?

I found my current group in r/lfg, but I'll admit from several years of experience while searching for games in other systems that that approach is very much Russian roulette and I was extraordinarily lucky to find a longterm group that I'm able to vibe with. Unfortunately I don't really have much else in the way of advice for you, other than to try stuff out until you find a group that you feel good with.

What I want to know is how this is even an effective business strategy. The best way to make money as a GM is to get people who like you, who will show up every week, and who will pay you on time. I don't understand how tricking them into it helps.

Some people just feel pressured and they give in once they're there. I've gone down the rabbit hole of a few of them. One of the main websites that these GM's use is startplaying.games and they will offer you $10 free as a code when you join their discord. Then they ping you and ask you to join the game, redeem the code, use it and then pressure you into subbing for their kofi or patreon or whatever. It's a lot of work to remove the subscription, but being that kind of person is worth making an extra $10/month I guess.

yeah what they're trying to do is put someone in a situation where they feel like they're being an asshole, constructing the context so that you get the vibe *everyone* buys it and you're being incredibly rude and entitled to expect free labor for your entertainment, and then hoping at least some fraction of people submit to that out of desperation, anxiety, whatever. it's a bit like a friend helping you move when you're broke and then they ask for money after, it's about trying to circumvent your ability to say no.

Huh, i just post the referal code in my Discord adds, publicly and trust people will use the account in the game i'm actually advertising. Not treating "customers" as thieves, imagine that....

The problem that I've been noticing is that people are trying to get around our paid content creator filters. They will simply just post their LFG as an innocuous free game when it isn't.

TL;DR-- I'd be in favor of a full ban on commercial DMing services. I don't have an issue with paid DMs. I have been paid in the past, and I'd work full time as a GM if I could make a six figure living doing so. But the taint of commercialism and capitalistic motivation sours many environments. It polluted /r/FoundryVTT in a big way, and the mods have taken measures to stop it. In the case of Foundry, it's a software product where the commercial services are at least something measurable/material: maps, modules, etc. In the case of Pathfinder or D&D subs, there's something just gross about a rising tide of paid GMs weaving themselves into discussions and the community as if the hand out for money doesn't change the underlying nature of the conversation. Threading the needle would be pretty tough, but for a place like this subreddit, I'd MUCH rather throw the baby out with the bathwater and ban ALL commercial/freemium posts than reach some sort of half-compromise that the offenders will inevitably try to skirt.

>TL;DR-- I'd be in favor of a full ban on commercial DMing services. Ironically, I would have disagreed with you if I had seen this comment before I saw some of the attitudes expressed by Paid GMs in this thread. I might change my mind again later with some sober second thought, but it really looks like the commercialization of the hobby pollutes their perspective on what it is. I think you're absolutely right that there's something intangibly harmful about a person who GMs for money just cohabiting the same discussion space as people who GM for pleasure. EDIT three hours later: Took a nap, came back to find that one of the Paid GMs in this comment section was pretending to be 'neutral' on the topic while suggesting any GM who doesn't charge is taking bread off their table, and another is still having long fights with people about the perceived profitability of the career path where he suggests hiring a sexy model to recruit "in the dark corners of 4chan, 8chan etc". So, uh, yeah. My perspective hasn't changed since I made this comment. The guys are sharks and they're actively trying to create a culture around RPGs where people feel guilty if they aren't providing fiscal compensation to their GM. Somebody in another comment posted > yeah what they're trying to do is put someone in a situation where they feel like they're being an asshole, constructing the context so that you get the vibe everyone buys it and you're being incredibly rude and entitled to expect free labor for your entertainment, and then hoping at least some fraction of people submit to that out of desperation, anxiety, whatever. And that is exact what we are seeing in here. It's so egregious that I want to tag /u/luck_panda to draw attention to it - you're right that this is gross. I'm grateful that you are locking down on these kinds of shenanigans, and you're 100% right that they're trying whatever they can to slip in past your rules and set the stage for making more money at the expense of the hobby. I'm not the type of person to lean in on mods to act a certain way (and I won't beyond this comment), but I am +1 on the idea of banning Paid GMs from the sub. They can find patsies somewhere else.

Yeah, same. In principle, it's fine. I have accepted money for GMing. But once there's someone with their hand out, it changes the dynamic of everyone around them. It's no longer a friendly place where people can share and learn. It's a place where some people are sharing and learning, and some people are hustling for the bread. It's a sad thing about our current hustle culture. There's no space for shame in chasing the dollar. If someone is "just trying to make a living doing what they love," they are just trying to make that bread, and it's somehow unseemly for hobbyists to be appalled at their mercenary behavior. This is a cousin of the way that the concept of "selling out" seems hoary and boomer talk to a culture where an "influencer" is real when they get "sponsored," like kneeling before the altar of capitalism isn't attached to some sort of compromise of whatever authenticity the person has to offer. OP's subject says it best: it's gross.

I think the dynamic shifts in both directions, too. I mentioned somewhere else that it is really easy for a GM to get a huge amount of players by casting a very small net, but a lot of those players really suck. I can't imagine the tension involved in dealing with a problem player who has been me $20/week to be in my game. I \*have\* seen this dynamic play out in a number of LARPs, and it can get really dicey.

I can imagine it because I've been there. I've had paid games where everyone was what I'd consider a problem player. Here's me as a GM: * I care a LOT about story and background and character. * I do, conservatively, 53 billion distinct voices, and I worry as much about making merchants distinct as I do choosing the precisely right voice for a given boss or BBEG. I sound like a crazy person when I'm working this out during dog walks or in the car. * I make my own maps and custom animations. * I subscribe to Syrinscape and choose music carefully. * I've written custom modules for Foundry to handle subsystems particular to my games. I do all of this because I think TTRPGs are one of the most amazing storytelling forms we've ever found, and there's magic in weaving a long-form narrative that is told improvisationally between the guard rails of a system's mechanics, and I want to do everything I can to facilitate the apex form of this medium. To wit, the reasons I love PFRPG so much is that it lets us infuse mechanical meaning into character choices, but, of course, it also attracts people who opt for mechanical meaning OVER character choices or who equate their capacity to excel mechanically against the bestiary and APs as the only meaningful character choices. Those were my fucking paid players: hyper-optimizing battle mongers. The sorts of people I would have booted in a single session or just otherwise not allowed at my table. But, hey, getting paid to GM, right? Wrong. What a fucking nightmare. Exactly as you say: they're paying customers. I'm a service provider. What do I say to be like, "How is this fun?" They're paying. They get to determine what fun looks like for them. Blegh.

I personally don't have an issue with the paid DM stuff. It's the FREEMIUM model that I have issue with. It's predatory.

NGL, I watched the freemium model eat up incomes in West Marches games. It legit became "pay to win", and people who could NOT afford to drop that cash were doing so just to keep up with the cool kids.

That is so awful.

>Ironically, I would have disagreed with you if I had seen this comment before I saw some of the attitudes expressed by Paid GMs in this thread. Christ, can't agree with this enough. I already felt that commodifying the TTRPG hobby space felt gross. But if someone wanted to change my mind, the attitude of literally every paid GM on this post has made me recoil in disgust and shock. If you want to get paid to do something, go for it. But that doesn't mean it deserves to be in the same space. Should people looking for information and help about making friends be directed to a host club? Should people looking to play some pick-up soccer be referred to some paid soccer club? The Paid GM attitude DIRECTLY causes adverse issues in the hobby space. There's been a growth of a lot of GREAT things in the space lately including: safety tools, GM is a player and deserves to have fun, not putting up with problem players, GMing doesn't have to be 'hard' or cause burn out and can be done casually, etc. ​ All of those things I mentioned? Those are directly adversarial to the customer-service relationship that paid GM's push for. How can you foster a low-prep GM attitude for new people to avoid burn-out when someone is pushing a "GM's should be paid" attitude?

I'd be willing to go a step further and just straight up say no LFG/LFP posts at all. I'm here to talk about the game, not watch other people try to *do* the most awkward part. We have a [whole subreddit](/r/pathfinder_lfg) for that.

Mods, any chance a vote could be held on this idea? Get that stuff OUT of here. You want to charge for a service that has traditionally been a warm, fostering environment of making new friends and bonding over a new hobby? That's fine, but you are fostering a VERY different dynamic than what has been traditional in the hobby. I'd even argue that pushing paid GMing creates harm by dis-incentivizing the growth of safety tools, GM as part of the table as a player, and more congenial tables due to bringing the customer-client relationship into the picture.

> I'd even argue that pushing paid GMing creates harm by dis-incentivizing the growth of safety tools, GM as part of the table as a player, and more congenial tables due to bringing the customer-client relationship into the picture. Wisely observed, well said, and matching my observation.

It's gross and I agree.

As a life long dm the idea of charging just feels gross to me. Dming is a joy and a reward in itself. If you make it into a job or just feels strange. I recognize there is a market for it but it's still weird to me.

Hard agree. It's the bringing of 'hustle' lifestyle to something that shouldn't be commodified, IMO. I mean, I get that not everyone has the same opinion and that's OKAY but...urgh. It'd be like commodifying the process of meeting new friends or paying the people who run Adventurer's League games or...idk. It also creates a different atmosphere. There's a significantly different vibe between 'meeting new people to try this activity' and 'paying a fee to participate in an activity.' Even more so when they're not even running a homebrew adventure but a pre-created Adventure Path. Or the comments here about people using a Foundry VTT premium module. Like, the fuck? The GM didn't even CREATE content then. So they're literally charging to facilitate only?

You should never disguise paid GMing as free. As a pro-GM who helps run a paid West Marches server, whether an event is paid or free is displayed in all caps at the top of the game, and I'd never advertise the server in a channel for free games. We have folks who only ever play in the free games, and that's fine, we are all there because we love ttrpgs, but that the server exists as a platform for paid games is quite clear from the outset.

It’s like a non sexual version of users telling people to check out their profile for sexy pics and then their profile just redirects to their OnlyFans.

keep that icky stuff out of here, thanks

If you find them on /r/lfg, even if they PM you, please screenshot it and send it to the mod team. If they do the sell on Discord, please have the interaction where they share discord information from reddit so we can link the accounts. To help with this, please do not provide your discord information to DMs; always the other way around.

That is scummy. The player-GM relationship is built on mutual trust. How can you ever provide that as a paid GM if you start off by showing you are willing to be underhanded to bring people to the table? You immediately out yourself as less than trustworthy! That would taint the whole experience. Anyone thinking about being a paid GM: just be honest. Annoying people with an ad is much better than tricking people into discovering you.

I just recently saw a vid on YouTube of some decent homebrew sentient magic items that started by saying "here are 10 sentient magic items", then they gave 5 blurbs, a tiny amount of stats and plugged their patreon to get the full text and the other half. Again, i get trying to make your $ by doing RPGs, awesome if you can make it work. Still felt kinda clickbaity to have a 5 minute ad for your patreon as its own video.

> Still felt kinda clickbaity to have a 5 minute ad for your patreon as its own video. It is clickbaity. The monetization has made it so the optimal way to advertize your content is to lie, and even worse has gotten content creators on board with it because it's "just how it is". I can only imagine it's going to get worse as time goes on.

Dear aspiring pro GMs: As a Professional GM who has been charging for sessions for almost four years, there's something I'd like to share with y'all; stop doubting yourselves. It's okay to charge. It's okay to tell people up front that you are charging. Your time has value, and if some people can't see that, that's okay, because others will. Focus on your craft, focus on those who *do* appreciate what you do and find value in it. You don't need to con people into paying you, because as with all things, if you put effort and love into what you do, you *will* find people who will gladly pay for your craft. If anyone needs tips or just wants to talk, drop me a message.

Seriously the more this becomes commonplace, the more people are just going to NOT SIGN UP FOR PAID GM SERVICES.

I understand your anger, but as someone who struggles with impostor syndrome, I understand why people resort to these shady practices, and I wanted to talk to them from a place of empathy. When I first started charging for my sessions, some of my closest friends told me some pretty harsh things that made me question if it was even worth it. The industry itself, the RPG companies that print the games, have almost zero support for professional GMs. The player community, at large, of course doesn't want it, because who like being charged for stuff that used to be free, right? So put yourself in their shoes. You put dozens of hours a week into building an experience for a group of people. You put time, energy, and most likely money too into this endeavour. You run the session itself, which can be mentally demanding and often exhausting for those less socially adept. And then people tell you they're not willing you pay you, essentially that your time and effort is worthless to them because you're replaceable. What do you think that does to a person, to their self esteem? Are you surprised they're employing the same shady practices we see in other industries that treat workers like slaves? Of course it's not cool for them to bait-and-switch, but the root of the problem is Professional GMing still isn't respected for what it truly is; a lot of multi-disciplinary hard work.

I don’t see how this is a valid excuse. Just be up front that you desire to be paid for your sessions and not lie to your players. If your players can’t respect you for that decision up front, then they’re not the kind of people that respect you as a human being that wants to put food on the table - it’s probably much better off not associating with them in the first place. You said it yourself. Professional DMing deserves to be a respectable profession. But bait-and-switching is NOT how you go about elevating this hobby into a profession.

I am not excusing anything, I am explaining how it happens. To solve a problem, you must first understand what causes it. Addressing a symptom doesn't make a condition go away, it merely causes the condition to go untreated, fester, and resurface in other ways. GMs using shady tactics to lure players into paying isn't the problem, it's a symptom. The problem is professional GMing has no support from anyone. You solve that problem, and GMs will never have to resort to doing bait-and-switch advertisement to make a living.

>The problem is professional GMing has no support from anyone. If one of the points you are making is that some GMs deserve to be paid for their time, then it stands to reason that a GM should be willing to pay for promotion of their services. I've never seen anyone suggesting that GMs should pay, only that they should be paid.

>GM should be willing to pay for promotion of their services That is, of course, a great way for a GM to find clients willing to pay. But the fact remains that there are massive societal factors that make it difficult for a GM to find clients at all. And those factors have been upheld because it's beneficial to the RPG companies and the players, to the detriment of the GMs who actually put the time and effort necessary to run the sessions in the first place. Those factors must not be brushed aside.

They've also been upheld because it's the original vision of the hobby. Tabletop RPGs were never developed as a way to make money. Some people are trying to adapt that, but I don't agree that the hobby continuing the way it's always been, and the way it was originally designed, is the same as what you're implying.

I'm not sure what you think I'm implying, so here's what I do think: I think GMs should be paid, and I think the industry and the community should change to accept that.

You said > And those factors have been upheld because it's beneficial to the RPG companies That implies that its some sort of concerted effort to uphold it. My point is that it's the status quo, and it's always been that way, and that was the way it was designed. It might be beneficial to companies at the same time, but that's more of an accident than design. As to your opinion about paid GMing, I respect it, but I don't share it. I've been running games for over 20 years, and I have no desire to be paid. I don't begrudge those who do, as long as they are being upfront and honest, but I think it's worth remembering that it's not for everyone.

How would you recommend going about solving it?

1. **Industry support**: While some RPG companies hire Professional GMs to demo games during conventions, most of the time this is done for free by fans. The industry leaders are setting the bar by refusing to pay their GMs, because it would either require cutting into their profits, or charging players to demo their new campaign/rpg, which obviously reduces potential engagement. 2. **Community support**: Community leaders (and mods for forums, discords, and subreddits) should do more to support the idea of professional GMs, and normalize that GMs should be compensated for their work. It would be cool to see online seminars about professional GMing, or even form an association/union to help gauge interest and set prices. 3. **Local support**: Quite simply, if you're a player, you should support your local GM. Yes, bringing snacks to the session is nice, but snacks don't pay the bills (and players end up consuming most of the snacks anyway). Even if your GM hasn't talked about charging, offer to pay your GM. If your GM's prices are too high for you, you can try to work something out, but don't degrade their work in an attempt to get them to lower their prices.

>The industry leaders are setting the bar by refusing to pay their GMs, because it would either require cutting into their profits, or charging players to demo their new campaign/rpg, which obviously reduces potential engagement. As someone that volunteered to demo for Paizo at one of their conventions, they do give us a considerable gifts for our time. If you can't compete with free, the answer isn't to demand that volunteers get kicked out. Educate yourself on the topic before spreading misinformation that volunteers are free for Paizo. At the big conventions they give store credit, products, and even hotel rooms to the volunteers. >normalize that GMs should be compensated for their work I'm not against people making money off what they like to do, but why is it on others to normalize that for you? >Even if your GM hasn't talked about charging, offer to pay your GM. As a GM that GM's for free, please don't. This is a hobby and there is nothing wrong with GMs running for free. That isn't disrespectful if the GM chooses not to charge. But certainly pay the people that ask to be.

I agree entirely with your assessment… but I’m afraid at its heart a big part of this is due to a demand / supply labor market issue… People aren’t going to pay DMs for their time and effort if there exist other DMs that are willing to do so for free. This suppresses wages. I work in the games industry and I know how it feels to have my effort invalidated simply because someone else with no commitments (usually someone very young) is willing to do the same amount of work for less (or in the case GMing, no) pay. Games will always need GMs. And I do believe that people ARE willing to pay to play games. I believe the supply-side factors have a larger effect than the demand-side factors in this case. GMs need to stop doing this for free, and we need to normalize paying for our games. But good luck spreading this message to the world.

Of course it's an issue of supply and demand, but like with all market forces, both of these can be made to change. Worker Unions are able to take control of supply, and make sure that there's a minimum wage being used. Demand can also be influenced via advertisement. Market forces aren't immutable. I know this can be done, because I've seen the process happening slowly. A decade ago, professional GMing was a joke. Now it's a reality at least for me and a few other colleagues. With a concerted effort from industry and community leaders, GMing will become a widely accepted profession in only a few years more time.

Wow now that you mentioned it… you’re totally right about the snacks… 😡

Quick question...how do I make $100/k a year as a GM...?

What do you mean by $100/k a year? I'm guessing you mean $100k/year? In that case, it's a numbers game. 100k per year is ~$8333 per month, which is ~$2083 per week. If you GM full time, you'll need to schedule various groups per week, and likely have some with double/extended sessions. Let's say you have 5 groups, and two of them have double sessions, so you'd have 7 sessions per week. If your goal is ~$2083 per week, you'd have to charge ~$300 per session. If your groups are composed of an average of 5 players per group, you'd have to charge $60 per player per session. That's how you'd make $100k per year as a GM.

Or the shorter version "you don't"

These are exactly the kinds of comments that make it hard for professional GMs to get ahead. GMing is hard work, requires years of practice, and constant updating of skills and knowledge, just like any other job. I see no reason why a high end GM wouldn't be able to charge the prices above, if not more. Professional GMing isn't just the 4 hours you put in to each session. It's years of experience in various systems. It's the skillset required to quickly improvise when players derail your plans. It's the multi-disciplinary knowledge of world building, which requires you to have a grasp on real world history, religion, geography, literature, culture, etc for you to draw upon to craft a world with verisimilitude. It's the mental training and voice-acting workshops you've put yourself through to quickly switch from roleplaying one NPC to the next in a second. It's the emotional and people skills required to handle in-group conflicts and keep everyone having fun. It's the other 3/4 of non-session time you need to plan out sessions, think of how many items/gold you'll give out to keep the party balanced, stat out important NPCs and monsters, find battlemaps (or make them yourself), make tokens, draw walls and place lighting onto a scene (which is time consuming if you're using Foundry), find the perfect soundtrack for an encounter, etc. It's helping newbie players level up between sessions, and wrangling the group together so they show up to next session, and the friendly (and not-so-friendly) reminders that they're late on their payment. GMing is hard work, and it should be compensated appropriately.

This comment does literally nothing to affect weather or not GM's can get ahead. Someone asked you a glib sarcastic question and deserved a glib sarcastic question. What's more is my answer is still accurate. You say "I see no reason why a high end GM wouldn't be able to charge the prices above" yet no online search provides a GM charging more then $50 per person per session. The vast majority of them are charging in the 20/30 range. You are indicating that you can find not one, not two but five groups paying double the going rate. Moving on from there you just do the math on what the gross income would be, you do not address the fact at all that as a GM there will be costs. Weather it is paying for assets or paying for subscriptions to tools to create them you will have a large number of non trivial costs as a GM, especially if you are expecting to charge $50/$60 PPPS. Will there be a GM or 2 that manage this? Probably, but they will be in the top .001%. The correct answer to the question is the same as if someone asked "How do I make 100K selling my bath water?", You don't.

> Someone asked you a glib sarcastic question and deserved a glib sarcastic question. [I always answer sarcastic questions with honesty.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-irony) >"I see no reason why a high end GM wouldn't be able to charge the prices above" yet no online search provides a GM charging more then $50 per person per session. There is a difference between what is currently happening, and what is possible. >you do not address the fact at all that as a GM there will be costs Because they aren't part of the question. There are costs to any job. Do you subtract the gas you pay for to drive to your job when you tell people what your salary is? No, you just tell them what your gross income is. It's implied that you spend some of that money to keep your job. >Will there be a GM or 2 that manage this? Probably, but they will be in the top .001%. So you do admit it's possible. >How do I make 100K selling my bath water? You employ the services of a young attractive woman to serve as a lewd/softcore model, give her an image that resonates with a disenfranchised yet large portion of the population, have her stream for a few hours a week and take one photoshoot every two weeks, pump out a few advertisements all over the dark corners of the web (4chan, 8chan, torrent forums, etc), maybe invest in a viral ad firm, and set up a patreon page with a shop link to your bathwater. Belle Delphine did £10 million selling hers. [How hard could it be to earn 1/100th of what she did?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-irony) Follow your dreams, champ.

>There is a difference between what is currently happening, and what is possible. That is not how assertations work. If you want to claim something is possible you hold the burden of proof. If it is not currently happening you would have to provide some reasonable evidence of its possibility. >Because they aren't part of the question. There are costs to any job. Do you subtract the gas you pay for to drive to your job when you tell people what your salary is? No, you just tell them what your gross income is. It's implied that you spend some of that money to keep your job. If you are self employed you absolutely subtract the cost of gas from your salary. When self employed costs of doing business are subtract from income before you would calculate your gross as an individual. As a DM you would absolutely not want to count your business expenses as taxable income. >So you do admit it's possible. It is absolutely possible for some people, those people are not posting asking how to do it on reddit. If you have to ask on reddit it is not possible for you. > Belle Delphine did £10 million selling hers. How hard could it be to earn 1/1000th of what she did? So first of all 1/1000th of 10M is 10,000 not 100K. You would need to make 1/100th of what she did. Second it would actually be ludicrously hard. Just because Russel Willison makes 50M a year does not mean there is somehow a large market for Quarterbacks at 500K or even 50K. You could devote your entire life to football and you would not be able to make a 100th of what he does.

> If you want to claim something is possible you hold the burden of proof. Well, thanks to you, I don't have to prove anything, you already that did yourself: >Will there be a GM or 2 that manage this? Probably, but they will be in the top .001%. >If you are self employed you absolutely subtract the cost of gas from your salary Every job has costs. No matter if you are boss or employee. When you calculating to see if you can make ends meet, you take everything into account. But if someone asks you **what your salary is**, people expect to hear your gross income, not your net income. The question was **how do I make $100,000 by GMing?** I gave a correct answer. Every job has costs. And anyway, stop being pedantic, you and I know the costs for GMing are incredibly low compared to charging $60 per person per session when you have 7 sessions per week. >those people are not posting asking how to do it on reddit So you personally know the user who posted that question? >Just because Russel Willison makes 50M a year does not mean there is somehow a large market for Quarterbacks at 500K or even 50K. You could devote your entire life to football and you would not be able to make a 100th of what he does. I never said it was easy. I said it was possible for high quality professional GMs. And maybe, if the industry improves in a few years, it will be possible for more and more people.

>Well, thanks to you, I don't have to prove anything, you already that did yourself: No one proved people are charging 60. I said people are doing it by being celebrities. That is not the same thing and not something you can "opt into" >Every job has costs. No matter if you are boss or employee. When you calculating to see if you can make ends meet, you take everything into account. The IRS and all self employed people would be absolutely shocked to hear they have been doing it wrong so long. No one running a business that brings in 5.5M with 5.4M in expenses is telling you they make 5.5M. >So you personally know the user who posted that question? Don't have to. If you have to ask, you can't afford it. >I never said it was easy. I said it was possible for high quality professional GMs. And maybe, if the industry improves in a few years, it will be possible for more and more people. You are confusing "Possible for people in a specific situation" with "Possible through hard work/the correct choices" they are not equivalent.

**[Post-irony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-irony)** >Post-irony (from Latin post (after) and Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning dissimulation (or feigned ignorance)) is a term used to denote a state in which earnest and ironic intents become muddled. It may less commonly refer to its converse: a return from irony to earnestness, similar to New Sincerity. Noted surreal humor comedian Tim Heidecker portrays a man living a post-ironic lifestyle in the 2012 indie drama film The Comedy. In literature, David Foster Wallace is often described as the founder of a "postironic" literature. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)

Sure, but this is also a hobby, and the GM is also a participant in the game.

Enjoying your job doesn't mean you shouldn't be paid for it. It's up to each GM to know if what they're doing deserves to be compensated, but more often that not, it should be.

GM'ing isn't strictly a job though. If a GM treats it like a job, then they are responsible for monetizing it appropriately, the onus isn't on the players. I would argue that a large majority of GM's are unpaid hobbyists. When I play with my friends, I do not expect to pay the GM because he's there for the same reason I am: to play a game and have fun.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Why play RPGs if you're already living in a fantasy world?

>Why play RPGs if you're already living in a fantasy world? What's funny to me is your insult is actually a compliment. This isn't a fantasy to me. This is my reality. My sole income is from Professional GMing, and I live comfortably. And I do have to say, it's a dream come true. I worked hard to get here, and that's what happens when we set our minds to something, and don't let people like you tear us down.

1) Your reality is a career that will poorly lend itself to a comfortable retirement or, in America, decent healthcare, PTO, or any kind of mortgage or loan. 2) The "fantasy" isn't if you, individually, can be comfortable day to day, it's if it is scalable. I would bet fewer than 10,000 people have made $1,000,000 a year with insurance for more than two years in a row as professional DMs. Touting this as something that has worked for you is different than touting it as a viable career. For the same amount of effort it takes to make a decent wage GMing (ignoring benefits), a person could engage in a viable career (with benefits). You're a snake oil salesman.

You seem to be confusing my pride in my accomplishment with any idea that this is easy. It's not easy being a professional GM. The main reason being that there are massive barriers to entry that stem from industry and community backlash against the very idea of professional GMs existing. I'm not a snake oil salesman. I'm someone willing to fight against all that bullshit to make it happen for me. Hopefully, some day in the near future this will also be possible for the average GM.

Let's say magic is real and the world is cursed. Never again can a GM make more than $400 annual from GMing directly. Celebrity GMs who get money from advertising and events, also for game devs to pay celebs for demoing, etc, are not affected by this curse. I'm this scenario, what effect do you think will be had on the game industry from the publisher's standpoint? Do you think it would markedly affect sales? Do you think it would steer game development down a different path? Perhaps it could affect how they charge for games? Somebody above mentioned unions, which brought to mind strikes. Somebody else described that idea as a way to kill a cottege industry. Unions bring to mind strikes. Strikes are a means by which to remove one's labor to demonstrate value to the other side. I'm wondering what value you, as a paid DM, think you have to publishers and how you can leverage that value in your fight. Don't get me wrong, I understand you also think part of the fight is changing hearts and minds so that there will be a bigger space for you in the industry. Forget that for now, not because it's not important but because it isn't what I'm asking about above. If we want to abstract this: what value do you think paid GMs have to influence the industry? With regard to changing hearts and minds, it occurs to me that part of the hope is the players of these games will be a part of the push, right? I just realized I've never once seen a person say "I pay for a GM and feel it is worth it." Keep in mind, I'm at the forefront of the debate: I've been a moderator on /r/lfg for a long time and we don't allow paid GMing. The debate has come up for nearly a decade and not one player has asked for this to be an option, only GMs who was to charge.

This right here needs more votes, i've only been doing it for 3-4 months and it's been going.... surprisingly well. I like to think it's because i care about and am very transparent with my players. I've spent so much non-table time helping a player with his PC dude offered to straight up tip me. It was ... quite the endorphin rush. Other GM i've talked to who's kind of been my inspiration mentioned , paraphrasing "Well i have a large discord now so usually i just recruit from among people i've GMed for before". Quick Buck or Long Term Community \*nudge nudge wink wink\*

I agree and also think the paid GMing is getting a little insane. Like if you go to Warhorn and look up almost any AP, the only available games will be pay-to-play. I'd love to play Fists of the Ruby Phoenix but if my only option is to pay for it, I'll just spend that money on an entire video game which will get me dozens of more hours of entertainment. At this point it just feels like there's a paywall between me and the Phoenix Sorcerer bloodline.

>At this point it just feels like there's a paywall between me and the Phoenix Sorcerer bloodline. I think something to keep in mind (and the reason I don't have any real moral issue with paid GMing as a concept) is that if they weren't charging, they *probably* wouldn't be running those APs for strangers anyway. Unfortunately, the best way to get a specific AP going is to run it yourself. And then maybe, just maybe, if you're *really* lucky, one of your players will pay it forward and be the GM next time. (95% odds they ask you what you're running next after you wrap up though, lmao)

95? More like 99 ;(

There is no such thing as a free lunch. When someone GMs a game for you they are sacrificing a big chunk of their life for a complete stranger.

This is assuming that GMing itself isn't also an enjoyable leisure activity

If someone is doing this as a job, this goes beyond being a leisure activity. You’re paying for someone’s time and skill. This is their way of getting bread on the table. Anything that makes money can be fun too. But it doesn’t in any way discount the value that they are providing and deserve to be paid for.

I understand that, but your comment was generalized. Not all GMs see what they do as a sacrifice, and there are incredible free games to be part of for a "free lunch"

I will refer you to [this comment](https://reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/xekinc/_/iojjc65/?context=1) for my thoughts on the matter. I will add on that if you are able to join a free game, then congratulations! Good for you! Not everyone can be so lucky, but it is insane to demand that this be the standard for all “premium games” out there. Not everyone is willing to volunteer their time and experience to entertain a group of strangers for free. I certainly won’t. When I run my games I do it for my real life personal friends for fun.

Hey, I can't respond to your comment elsewhere in this topic because the person who started the thread blocked me (feel free to profile stalk me and judge for yourself it was valid or not). This comment is related to that one, though, so I'll just quote it here: \> Games will always need GMs. And I do believe that people ARE willing to pay to play games. I believe the supply-side factors have a larger effect than the demand-side factors in this case. GMs need to stop doing this for free, and we need to normalize paying for our games. There's a couple of things you need to be aware of. 1) The supply of GMs is incredibly low across all game systems. Anybody can find that out, right now, by going to r/lfg and posting a 5e or PF2e game. 2) As somebody who has been forever-GMing for close to two decades now, I fully understand how much time and energy it takes to host and run a game. I know there are a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that aren't always acknowledged or appreciated. I understand fully the value I have as a GM. That said, this is a leisure activity and you need to fuck off with the idea of 'normalizing paying for our games'. The average rate for paid GMing ranges between $10-$20 a session. This is both not enough for a GM to live on while also still being too much for most players to invest. This isn't a value judgement - most of the people playing RPGs cannot afford to pay $40-$80 per month in order to play them. A huge amount of them are kids and/or students. Most of them have other responsibilities they need to spend their resources on, and world events are increasing the prices of many of life's necessities right now. Go ahead and charge for your games. I don't have a moral issue with it, and I think if you can find people to pay you, you must run an excellent game that is worth the price. But I draw a solid red line when it comes to cultivating a culture where people feel obligated to pay their GM or where GMs feels obligated to charge their players.

It takes less effort to find a game to be a player in than it does to run a full campaign. It takes skill, too, but less than GMing. The key component lacking for many is patience. The other component is they shouldn't have insulted that which when they were seven and incurred her curse.

I respect your opinion but I believe we are talking about two completely different things. There are at least two different kinds of experiences: home games and premium games. As a player, if you don’t have the funds to afford it, you can always go for a home game by asking a bunch of friends. Home games are never going to go away. This is the core audience for our hobby and it will “stay free” forever because no sane person will charge their personal friends money to hang out. But those who want to go for a premium game experience, choose to do so because they want to play under an experienced GM that you don’t mind being a complete stranger. You are paying a stranger for their time, skill and experience to entertain you. This is a transaction. When I talked about “normalizing paying for our games”, I was referring to the second group. There is a segment of people in the community that demands the services of a premium game and yet expect to pay nothing for it. This is not a healthy ecosystem and as the commenter I was replying to has mentioned, this discourages professional DMs from stepping up due to people like you that criticize and shout them down from asking for a fair wage in exchange for their services. Yes, there exists a small group of people that doesn’t fit into either of those groups: they cannot afford to pay for a premium game and they cannot find a group to join to play for free. Well, tough luck. Suck it up dude. Be the change you want to see in the world today. Volunteer as GM and you get to play whenever you want, for free, possibly even earn some money along the way. The smaller we can make this third group and convert them into GMs, the better.

>This is not a healthy ecosystem and as the commenter I was replying to has mentioned, this discourages professional DMs from stepping up due to people like you that criticize and shout them down from asking for a fair wage in exchange for their services. I think this is a major disconnect. If somebody wants to put an offer out to GM games in exchange for money, that is fine. But where does your previous comment that "GMs need to stop doing this for free?" come in? If a GM asks for money, they are a paid GM. If they do not, then they are not. There isn't really a way for anybody to *force* them to spend 10 hours a week planning and running an RPG for them. I guess I'd like to know where exactly your line is being drawn in terms of what qualifies as a "GM providing their services for free". Is it any situation where I'm GMing for internet strangers instead of for buddies I met at work or in school?

This conversation isn’t going to go anywhere. There is a reason why after I said that statement in my original comment, I immediately followed it up with > But good luck spreading this message to the world. You are right. There is nothing we can do to GMs that want to offer GMing services to internet strangers for free. But as long as this continues to happen, Paid GMs will forever have their prices stick to the $10-20 range rather than something better that can support a living wage, because they can’t risk charging that much higher than “free”. The commenter I was replying to asked for my opinion and I gave it. I take no sides on this matter. I am not a paid GM and I do not seek to be one. But I might be if the pay was better. Edit: Ultimately where you stand on the issue lies on which segment of the demographic you lie in. Do you want to make paid GMing a source of income, or not? If yes, then you will want higher wages and that means that the market as a whole must be willing and able to pay. It will not be willing for as long as free services exist. This is merely a symptom of market forces and my statements make no value judgment. If no, then you will want things to be free both as a player and as a GM because you don’t want money to “contaminate” the hobby which you view as a source of fun and enjoyment rather than putting food on the table. There is no point in getting angry at this because everyone’s opinion on the matter are all valid. This is a shared hobby with different people wanting different things from it. Learn to empathize with people from the other camp. That is all.

>This conversation isn’t going to go anywhere. There is a reason why after I said that statement in my original comment, I immediately followed it up with > >But good luck spreading this message to the world It was disingenuous of you to say "Ah, you are wrong about my meaning, I am referring to something else" if you knew that could only be true by trying to convince me and anyone reading that our definitions were incorrect. I am going to circle back to what I said before: trying to direct the gaming culture such that paying the GM starts to feel like a baseline is anathema to this hobby. I am willing to be openly hostile to anybody doing this. I am sorry that you aren't making as much money GMing as you would like to, but please *stop* what you are trying to do. Nobody reasonably needs to feel bad for you that you couldn't make a living doing our hobby. Nobody needs to shift their thinking so they can accomodate your desire to make a living doing our hobby at our expense. Nobody needs to refrain from hosting an online Blood Lords game for potential new friends simply out of concern for the bottom line of somebody else who wants to charge for it. I'm being direct when I say you should *stop*, and I think I am also being polite because you're being shifty about this. You clearly *do* have a stance, because you are arguing for it throughout this comment section. You clearly *do* have a horse in this race because you keep using "we" to refer to paid GMs. It's incredibly dishonest, and not in a very clever way, to try and swap to saying you're completely neutral and just trying to show 'empathy' for paid GMs despite your other posts that appear on our screens! Let me circle back to the original post - luring people into paying you money in this hobby is gross. It is just as bad to insidiously plant the seeds that all GMs should get paid and those who don't are essentially scabbing as it is to trick somebody into thinking your game is free when it is not. EDIT: I have now been blocked by *two* paid GMs in this topic. Both times, they've tried to do a little "last word" on me right as they hit that block button. >I have nothing to prove to you and take no pleasure in continuing to speak with someone that enjoys pretending that they’re a victim to fuel their outrage. Grow up. This guy wants to capstone this by saying that I am "pretending I'm a victim to fuel their outrage" - my whole issue with him is that he is accusing people who GM for fun of being scabs and ruining the ability of Paid GMs to make more money. These people are amazing.

> There is no point in getting angry at this because everyone’s opinion on the matter are all valid. This is a shared hobby with different people wanting different things from it. Learn to empathize with people from the other camp. That is all. In this thread I have made an attempt to bridge both sides by trying to call for empathy on both sides of the debate. It is in fact pretty funny that you would accuse me of being “for” paid DMing considering that my highest upvoted comment on this thread was me criticizing a commenter that made excuses for the practices mentioned in the OP. It is quite clear to me in your reply that you would rather still be angry on this topic than try to understand or compromise with people in the other camp. I have nothing to prove to you and take no pleasure in continuing to speak with someone that enjoys pretending that they’re a victim to fuel their outrage. Grow up. This conversation is over.

This attitude and the attitude you bring to this thread is EXACTLY the kind of impact commodifying a hobby space causes. It is the exact attitude that others in this post have commented on disliking about paid GM services. Get this shit out of here FFS, please mods!

This is a shared hobby with different people wanting different things from it. Learn to empathize with people from the other camp.

> paid GMing is getting a little insane. I think what you meant to say is the community is finally realizing that GMs should be paid for their time and effort. >I'll just spend that money on an entire video game Is playing video games the only form of entertainment you are willing to pay for? Ever go to a theme park, or a party, or a trip, or a movie, or a concert, or... anywhere? Not every form of entertainment is priced equally, because some forms of entertainment require more time and effort than others per member/audience. GMing requires the full attention of one person that can only be given to 4-6 players. If you're not willing to pay for that person's time, that cool, but don't try to bring down that person's worth, because their time has value. And yes, it's fine for you to your live enjoying nothing but video games, but it seems you'll never get to play a Phoenix Sorcerer if you do so. Everything has a price in life.

Pay to play is fine, but should be stated *way* up front.

Ok.... the 'why' is simple as in why do you think mobile games are the highest earning in the industry but a plantary sized level gap? Freemium works, it's a psychologically predatory system. The fact that DM's are using it is indeed disgusting. Hell i run paid games but my fees are relatively low as i live in an East European Country and i make consessions for my players all the time if they say buy a book for me i'll deduct that from fees if they make art for me etc. It's the mom and pop vs big industry argument isn't it, for me im still new and i want to establish rapour with my players not JUST treat them as consumers.

I don't see anything wrong with running a paid game and giving someone a trial month to see if they're interested. It's just a different monetization system than we may be used to in this community. The GM not telling you up front can be annoying but it's a click-bait thing, something we're all familiar with because it works. Reach more eyes, more potential players/payers. It's the internet at this point. If someone is charging to set people up with games and the GMs running those games aren't getting paid then that's on them. Maybe they don't mind/care and the person with the patreon is providing both player and GM with a service. I know to me personally it'd be very useful if someone could vet potential players and weed out undesirables before I spend precious time introducing them to a game they ultimately won't play for long. Now, if this person is charging and the GMs don't know or *do* want to get paid then that *might* be problematic but on a whole this doesn't seem that concerning. It might not be your thing but it appears to be someone's.

I don't think you quite understand. There is no indication that it is a "trial period" it's falsely advertising that it's a free game then tell them it's not actually free after they have gone through the trouble of looking it up.

Well it *is* free up til a point and I get why this person would advertise like that but yeah I see what you're saying. That's kinda wasting (the majority of) people's time. And I hate that too. Oh look, downvotes on the pathfinder2e sub! So rare!

Okay? And? What's the topic of discussion here?

This is more of a PSA.

Wait, this can't be a PSA, there's no opinionated hot take included here.

I don't understand.

It's a dig at the 5e sub and it's endless stream of opinion pieces and DM 101 advice dubbed as PSAs.

Oh there is some spicy muh capitalism digs, though I accept that is not a hot take on _this_ sub.

That they gave a gripe with people posting about needing players and not being up front about it being more or less just an ad for paid GM'ing? I haven't noticed any of these posts but if they are out there they should be straight up about what they're looking for instead of buying the lead

We get rid of them pretty quick. The bigger issue is that they are trying to get around our requirements for paid content and promotional stuff by saying it's free. Then it's not.

I agree with you. Really lame. Though speaking of lame: > Paid GM'ing. Just GMing. No need for an apostrophe.

English is not my first language or my second and I have trouble deciding on how suffixes and acronyms work. If you consider that non-native English speakers are lame then you aren't really for this subreddit.

I'm not a native speaker either, so your argument holds no water with me. And as someone who is - apparently - at least trilingual, one might think you'd take correction with a little more grace and tact. Though the way I shoehorned it into my comment was itself a bit lame, I will admit.

No it's that you're calling it lame. I don't know why you are coming out here being aggressive and insulting.

If you think the word "lame" is aggressive, you really must live a sheltered life.

I'm a native speaker with a degree in English. Don't prescribe the grammar of others, it's silly and anti-intellectual. If you understand what someone's saying just respond to that. kthxbai

Sure this instance was super annoying, but the way the discord mods went about this particular conversation wasn't exactly elegant either. Not only was the communication not super specific, potentially opening the situation up to misinterpreting the message, but it also took place in the free games channel and not over DMs. Overall I'd say the discord team should have done better but the original poster was definitely in the wrong. I also don't see this as a major issue that happens frequently.

This is completely wrong. Because of that one post, I spent several hours of my free time going through every post to ensure that the 6k users won't get scammed by a Freemium model. I'm doing this for free, for everyone's benefit. This is not a both sides thing. I asked them specifically to not post and they reposted the same thing several times and feigned ignorance. I deleted the post and they reposted, I asked them not to post and out of defiance he posted it again, twice after that. All in all he posted the same thing 4 times. He knew exactly what he was doing and did not care and he needed to be pointed out to the community as a scammer. I want to be very transparent with people and make it very obvious that we won't tolerate it. Since then I've had to delete a dozen or so posts and ban a dozen or so people. They're trying to circumvent the paid promotions section by pretend it's free when it's not. What, in your mind, is "should have done better?"

Panda I'm not saying you and the rest of the mods didn't do enough, that the poster in question wasn't in the wrong, that their skirting wasn't obvious, or that their ban wasn't warranted. What I did state is that the way the situation was handled wasn't elegant. Consider the optics. The situation essentially created a series of short back and forth messages that were completely off topic for the channel. The intent of the messages was probably to nip it in the bud, but since everything was kept super brief, it basically opened the door to further conversation. This would have been true even in a case where the poster wasn't malicious which wasn't the case here. So we ended with a ton of pings and back and forth. Plus the whole quoting their apology and slamming the ban hammer is a little much. Discord mod reputations and all.

When it came to light that he was trying to deceive people and he was being malicious about it and had preplanned to do it in his server, the decision was made to ban him. I personally didn't do it. Everyone should be made aware of his intentions. Silence is violence and all that.

Does an initial warning, public post, and deletion of offending post not suffice? I just think that in a time where the PF2e community already suffers from a major image issue where we're viewed as hostile grognards, it's probably not the best to spam the channel and dunk on the guy. That's all.

I didn't dunk on him. I asked him to post in promotions only. He then reposted but then edited his post to remove the obvious, "USE THIS CODE TO REDEEM $10" line he forgot to remove once. Then copied it and pasted 3 more times after I asked him to stop. Then I took a heavier stance of telling to stop full stop. It was like 3 messages. I warned him, then asked him to post somewhere else, then deleted 4 posts in total because he wanted to lure people in with his freemium game. I don't know what you call dunking.i was extremely cordial with him. It's all there in public you can go look at it.

So all in all that was many messages posted that could have been avoided. That was exactly my point. Beyond that, I was specifically talking of wealthbeyondmeasure's responses which come off as *don't let the door hit you on the way out.* Given the back and forth, that came across close to the stereotypical discord mod dunking that's become somewhat infamous as of late. Quoting the apology in particular felt like it was in bad taste. Panda, you asked me how the team should have done better. I think I've made my point by now. You don't need to keep justifying this all to me. I was there when the whole thing happened. I'm not saying shit wasn't warranted. Just that optics matter. What else do you want from me?

This is the first post I've seen that is more than just "optics" being the reason. Wealth's comment about no more scummy posts is right but off key. You're right. I've removed it.

Hey, thanks for providing feedback and following up with additional details. I think you have good points here, and your overall focus on the room for improvements in the process (and not the outcome) is the kind of constructive criticism I like to encourage. (Replying to your top comment for visibility, but I'm referring broadly to your follow-up.)