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

On Sat, 27 Apr 2024 17:21:10 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 4/26/2024 4:02 PM, Kyonshi wrote:

On 4/26/2024 5:22 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>

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

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...

>
Personally, I can't imagine anything worse than making my hobby my
job. It turns the thing I enjoy most into something I /have/ to do.
One of the reasons I enjoy the things I do is that I /don't/ have to
them. The worst parts of DMing are that feeling of obligation trying
to pump out the next adventure; that you're players are waiting on you
to create another interesting and fun experience. Especially when
there's a deadline ("Oh god, we're meeting up to play in TWO days and
I haven't even started the final dungeon!!!").
>
Throw in the idea that people are PAYING me for the privilege? I'd go
nuts. Not to mention, I'm sure quality and experimentalism would go
down. Can't take risks, not if you want that filthy lucre to keep
coming in; just pump out pablum.
>
DM for money? No thank you. Not me.
>

there was the idea floating around at one point that players would
actually chip in some money for every session so the DM could afford
buying all those expensive books. But I never saw it done properly.

>
Never saw that, but I did get splat books as gifts.  Of course the rule
I had I wouldn't allow anything in a splat book unless I owned it,
probably helped, along with a free pass to try anything once if you were
the one who bought it for me. :D

I was  similar. I was never against adding content from splat-books,
but I'd add it because I thought it necessary/neat, and not just
because it existed. Simply crying "But it is in the rulebook!" was
never a winning argument with me... especially if it was an uncommon
ruling or in some weird side volume I'd never heard of.

Which isn't to say our group didn't experiment. Tell me about
something neat and that you'd like to try it, and I'd just as likely
give it a shot. I think the only difference between our methods was
that Ididn't have to own the rulebook personally (but I did want to
read about the addition, of course. Back in the day, this usually
meant a quick trip to the photocopier so I could have my own 'pages'
for reference ;-) If the addition worked in our campaign - if it fit
the style of our game, it didn't unbalance the mechanics, or wasn't
outright stupid - we'd keep it. If it didn't, I explain why to the
players and we'd stop using the rule / spell / monster / class /
whatever.

I think, overall, we had a 50% success rate. A lot of the stuff -
especially in the TSR days - was either too stupid, too unbalanced, or
just added too much complexity for us to stick with for very long.