The Too-Many Players Problem [A GM Discussion]

Sure, if it's through Paypal, but in that case an individual GM could simply set up a paypal account and do it himself including all the tax reporting. I'm thinking from Roll20's perspective it makes little sense to expose themselves to the potential legal hassles of becoming a mini paypal in order to facilitate a tip jar. Also Paypal isn't great for super tiny transactions (around a buck) because they have a minimum $0.30 fee. Source: Someone once gave me $0.31 through Paypal. :P BTW there is a GM on reddit /rpg that charges for his time, so it's not unheard of. Pretty sure he does it at brick and mortars though.

Yes and if there was a PayPal button on the Roll20 page for one's campaign it'd be even easier. I was thinking Roll20 could take a commission from such things - a facilitator's fee.

With GMs is such high demand I don't see why we need an extra incentive? Do you think more people will GM because they get some sort of kickback? Then what? We will have a flood of people jut GMing to make money (no matter how little it is) which will make is harder for people to really trust a new GM. So then there is a rating system for GMs? I can just make 100 accounts and bump my rating up and run 40 2 hour sessions & quit my job...? MMOs have this problem that when money can be made there will be many people trying to exploit it.

Do you include service providers in this concept of exploitation? If you can pull off 40 sessions per week or fortnight and quit your job, go for it and show the world something new. That's what free market enterprise means.

This isn't about GMing as a job or anything - seriously. Its about maybe getting a paid mentor account (1 buck per month per player or something), or maybe getting everyone to chip in for a new system or software as at least I have bought a lot of stuff already. No, that doesn't mean I feel entitled to any money, but in real life games I would at least get free food out of it - thats usually the rule. 1 or 2 bucks per month is a lot less than buying food for the whole group about once every two weeks (if everyone goes once and we play twice a week). To call that exploitation is a bit exaggerated I would say...

My players already helped me pay for a year of Mentor. Really there is kind of an unspoken rule in the circles I play with that GM get's free pizza and beer. Your not running the game for pizza and beer, it's more like a tip for putting in the effort to make the game happen.

Also I just read that comment about a rating system ............... that is a good idea independent of finding a way to sell DM services ..... Roll20 should have that. Next year I would love to use the roll20 platform to play test a homebrew i'm working on, and it would be very cool to have that. The forums right now are kind of bland, but I imagine some kind of rating variables and buttons with likes and dislikes would be pretty easy to implement. After all the biggest value adder for the roll20 service is community, so having some more developed community tools would be great. Maybe make badges displayable next to your names? I'm gonna be spending alot of time here. I want people to see my cool duds!

Bryan W. said: My players already helped me pay for a year of Mentor. Really there is kind of an unspoken rule in the circles I play with that GM get's free pizza and beer. Your not running the game for pizza and beer, it's more like a tip for putting in the effort to make the game happen. Exactly. This, pretty much.