Re: [NBC Miami] 36-year-old makes $37,000 a year leading Dungeons & Dragons games

On 4/25/2024 10:49 AM, Kyonshi wrote:

 

tl;dr: wanna live of dnd? her husband makes 90.000$ a year. In other words: marry rich
My wife makes that, I made 70k last year, but where we live to get that is expensive, we're in a tiny 70's house (about 1000 sq ft.) that's falling apart, needs probably 150k, maybe more in deferred maintenance from the previous owners, and 2 kids in a just so-so neighborhood & school.
Source: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/business/money-report/36-year-old-makes-37000-a-year-leading-dungeons-dragons-games-if-youre-doing-it-anyway-you-might-as-well-get-paid/3294720/
36-year-old makes $37,000 a year leading Dungeons & Dragons games: If ‘you're doing it anyway, you might as well' get paid
By Mike Winters,CNBC and Raffi Paul,CNBC...
...in-person tabletop roleplaying game sessions that range from $375 to $750...
Is that per person?  Probably not, if not that's about $15 per hour minimum for players assuming 5 person games.   If her games take 15 hours (as is said later) between prep and play she should be getting about $25 an hour.
...She makes $24,000 as a dungeon master for the company, plus another $13,000 teaching writing at nearby Westminster University in Salt Lake City, where she lives with her husband, Scott. He makes $96,000 as a communications director at a state agency.
A little discrepancy there.  She really makes $24k from DMing... for another company.  Sounds like she's getting screwed on pay.
"That really opened the doors to networking for other types of work, because when people were looking for a writer who could do fiction at a professional level, my name would start coming up," says Murdock.
Getting hired as a professional Dungeon Master
$24k isn't really opening the doors for anything.
Even if she didn't do it for a living, Murdock says she'd still be planning D&D campaigns for friends, reading game books or writing fiction.
Since hobbies can become side hustles, "it's important to remember that creative work is work," she says.
As a friend once said to her: "You're going to be doing it anyway, you might as well find someone to pay you for it."
And that's how you turn your hobby into a chore.
"I run about three games a week on a busy week," says Murdock. Each ongoing game, including prep, takes about four to five hours a week of her time.
24k for 15 hrs a week, assuming a couple weeks off a year she's making $3.20 an hour?!?  Maybe there's some overhead like venue, scheduling done by someone else or something, but she's really getting screwed at that rate!
In June 2023, Mari and Scott purchased a detached two-bedroom home in downtown Salt Lake City for $535,000, with a down payment of $40,000. To afford the home, they took on a personal loan within their family, which works out to $777 in monthly payments in addition to their mortgage.
So they got a 60 year loan with no interest from family. They should be paying ~$3,300 a month with a bank loan.  Must be nice.
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