Selling DM Services

It seems that Roll20 isn't all that different from real life: A whole lot of players who don't want to DM. I've been DMing for over a decade. Mastery level experience in DnD 3/3.5, high level experience in Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: The Ascension. Moderate experience in Werewolf and DnD4. Favorite setting is the World of Darkness, followed by Iron Heroes, a DnD3 offshoot by Monte Cook. You can read some of my writings here: <a href="http://finiteuniverse.com/category/blogs/blogs-tabletop/page/4/" rel="nofollow">http://finiteuniverse.com/category/blogs/blogs-tabletop/page/4/</a> Books I have on hand: Pathfinder Core Books DnD3/3.5 Core Books and a few splats. Serenity RPG Vampire: The Masquerade Mage: The Ascension Lord the Rings Roleplaying Game (Terrrrrrible Decipher version) Iron Heroes Werewolf: The Wild West Dark Ages Inquisition (World of Darkness, Hunter, set during the dark ages) Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (3E) A few DnD2 books, but I have little experience in the system. A few others in a box somewhere. I'm also a game systems designer as a hobby. Give me a setting and I can put together a game from it. Ever wanted to hang out in a postnuclear survival setting a la Jericho? Let's do it. Ever wanted to be a capsuleer flying around New Eden but without all the hassle of actually playing Spreadsheets Online? Let's do it. I have a definite personal style when it comes to how I like my tabletop gaming. That doesn't mean I can't switch things to match yours, especially when you're the customer. If you want to get a sense of who I am and how I think, and you can check out my writings linked at the top of this page. So here's the thing, DMing is work. Especially the way I do it. I.E.: Well. In this digital setting, it will be even more time consuming, as it's more difficult to pull things out of your ass when needed. I will run games up to 6 players, for $5/player/4hour session, minimum $15/session. Unless there's something else going on that day, odds are I won't be watching the clock. If it's in any system I have the books on hand for there are no additional charges. If it's for a system I don't have the books for, I will need the cost of books (either pdf or print, doesn't matter) as well. If I'm developing a system for a specific game, we'll talk. If you want to give me full creative control to do something I want to run, I can lower the per session price but it might require a larger deposit. Again, we'll talk. Part of paying is that you're going to get consistency. Unless I'm dead or dying, I will be there at game time, no excuses. If I do have something come up, you will know well in advance, or you will get two free sessions out of it. You get quality. I'm obligated to keep you entertained because if I don't, you stop paying me. You get what you want: No DM ego. Not liking the way I'm balancing difficulty, money, whatever? Most of the players agree? BAM. It's changed. Cleric feel like there's not enough undead in the past few sessions? Oops, an oversight on my part. BAM. That goblin warchief just became an evil cleric who raises his fallen soldiers to fight anew. A deposit equal to the price of the first two sessions is required for me to start detailed planning a campaign. A simple e-mail consultation figuring out what you want and if I'll be able to provide it is absolutely free of charge. The two session deposit is non-refundable unless it's me who cancels on you, and odds are that won't happen. As to my schedule, I generally work nights. My timezone is GMT-8. I'm generally asleep at 8am, awake at 4pm. Work 1am-6am. Questions? Comments? Interest? Give me a shout at <a href="mailto:becca@finiteuniverse.com" rel="nofollow">becca@finiteuniverse.com</a> As a final note: This software is still new and foreign to a lot of us. If that causes issues slowing down gameplay in the first few sessions (as is likely) your money may be partially or fully refunded. This is at my discretion. I have no intent of being a nazi about it, but I want you to rest assured that if things happen that are out of my control, you certainly will not be paying for the hiccups.

I just gotta say, this is probably the smartest post I've seen on this board. With more and more people wanting to try DnD with Roll20, I can definitely see people paying $5 to have a good, experienced DM. If I wasn't a complete newbie, I'd charge for DM services, too. Good luck!

Great idea, I wish you luck in getting cool groups to play with so it's not too much like real work.

I am sold on this idea. When I played pick-up soccer, we had to pay to use the public fields and I find this no difference. We are gaining from your service, but I do have one question: Do you still enjoy it? Yes, you are being payed so some people will not care, but a happy DM is a good DM. To that, I am looking for either a nWoD or oWoD Vampire game. I haven't played in years, but before that I played consistently for about 10 years. I like the new mechanics, but the old lore, so either is fine with me and I can play any afternoon late EST or Sunday's after 6EST. If we can't find a group here, I may be able to get a group together of players. To the final note, it may be worth having Google+ or Skype as backup while this sytem is being perfected.

Excellent post and very well detailed and reasonable business plan. This is a great business model and I wish you every success!

The short answer is I still love DMing. I've been doing it for a long time, and don't get to enjoy the other side of the table nearly as much as I would like to, but that's the case for just about every DM of any skill level. The long answer is that I love it most of the time, but it's hard to justify the time investment as I get older. I have two businesses I'm developing, a part time job, dating stresses, and really, the same growing up issues everyone else does. If I'm going to put a lot of energy into a campaign, I need to make sure the players are going to be invested in it at least enough to not flake out for (relatively) dumb reasons. A small financial investment not only helps make sure they're going to show up (they paid for it, if they don't (without proper notice) that money's gone), but it makes sure that the time I put towards campaign planning isn't just time taken away from my businesses. The longest answer would involve going into details about personal preference in gaming style. I like to use the comparison of Star Trek: Voyager to RDM's Battlestar Galactica (otherwise known as the only Battlestar Galactica to kids these days). In both cases, you have a ship stranded in the middle of nowhere trying to find their way home (though home means different things to each of them). In Voyager, the events are the story. The crew finds an alien. The crew finds an anomaly. The crew finds a planet. But every episode gets wrapped up nicely, and the ship is generally always how you expect it. In BSG, the people are the story. The fact that they're eating food and drinking water and don't have readily available supplies of either. The fact that they sometimes get fatigued and frak up because of it. Sure, events still happen, but they generally happen because of the people. When I'm running (or playing for that matter) a DnD 3 game, I like when casting a sleep spell becomes a choice not just because of the immediate tactical situation, but a long term one as well because the Wizard is down to his last two crickets and they're in the middle of a desert at the moment and don't know when he'll be able to restock on that necessary spell component. I like when the players don't pack quite enough water, and the hunt for fresh drinkables becomes an adventure in and of itself. Even heroes get bogged down in what seems like the mundane sometimes. But who knows, maybe that water hole in the middle of the desert that they go to refill at is well known and has become a trade hub for all the desert kingdoms, as well as a center for intrigue and questing opportunities that they would have never found if not for their dire thirst. Maybe they pass by a caravan that's willing to give them some water if they'll help escort them over the mountains coming up on their journey. And just maybe that caravan is actually smuggling illegal goods and the players get caught up in some criminal syndicate when their original goal was to do strictly 'good' things. A lot of people look at that simulationist tag and think 'boring' and 'mundane'. And it absolutely can be... when it's done wrong. I also like multiple storylines that interweave. The last DnD game I ran in real life lasted I think 9 months. It was an experiment in that I had too many players, so I split them into two groups of four and ran them in the same world on opposite weeks. One group's actions could affect things for the other, and occasionally the groups would meet for a big session (<a href="http://finiteuniverse.com/2011/12/skwwwwwwwwwd/" rel="nofollow">http://finiteuniverse.com/2011/12/skwwwwwwwwwd/</a>). I'm way too tired at the moment to go into too much detail, but essentially I had made every character write at least a full page of background, prompting them with some simple questions. From there, I incorporated their backstories into the plot I had already planned. A famous general had been corrupted and used by the demonic scourge to do all sorts of things, including taking his soldiers into a battle where they were all lost. Except they weren't lost, they were all captured and he was programmed to go home and say they were all lost. They were actually being used for magical experimentation by the demons in an attempt to recreate the power of their old gods. One of the first handouts the players found was a book written in the demonic tongue, but it had a loose leaf inside with a list of names and weird symbols next to each of them. The symbols they later found out represented the soldiers' bloodline's susceptibility to demonic genetic manipulation, with the most susceptible bloodlines being highly sought after by the demons. When the two groups first met and started talking, that paper was brought out. One of the characters in the party that didn't originally find it recognized their father's name in the list as one of the particularly susceptible bloodlines. And it instantly made sense to them why in all the ambushes they had suffered in their party by demons, they were always the primary target of crowd control spells. I love shit like that. Both as a player and a DM. I want to have those a-ha! moments, and I want to see the joy on the players' face when they have them. This response has been way longer than I originally planned. I could literally write for days about this. And I think that fact alone is enough to say that yes, I absolutely still love DMing. Even when the game type doesn't entirely match my tastes, I find ways to weasel things in, because I know that once the players see the light, they'll never go back. The players in the game from the above paragraph had never been asked to write backgrounds before by any other DM. They hated it. But it was a requirement for joining that game as that game was for me more than anyone else. Then they had those a-ha! moments, and it flipped a switch in them. They realized that they cared about these characters more than ever before. If one died, it wasn't "oh well reroll leave the corpse take the loot", it was "We need to plan a proper funeral". They started doing heavy rp things like that on their own. They started sharing loot on their own. Planning how best to help the party instead of just themselves on their own. All things normally out of their playstyle, all without me prompting them to. Just because of those backgrounds. And it was magic, both to me and to them. One of them contacted me recently and was complaining that in their new game, they wrote a huge background for their character, and the DM just skimmed it and said "I'm not reading all that." Their frustration at that response was one of the best compliments I have ever received :p. Okay seriously, done typing about that stuff. The Vampire books I have are all oWoD. I recall when White Wolf said they were going to flat out end the line rather than continue wallowing in splatworld like DnD kind of did for a while. I was excited that they weren't going to do something dumb with their world. Then they went and changed everything and out of spite I never bought the new ones :p. My knowledge on both the new version's mechanics and fluff is severely limited, though I'm willing to learn anything if it's what the players want. Sundays are fantastic. The only day that will be bad in the long run is Wednesdays, as I am part of a community orchestra who rehearses every Wednesday come Autumn. I've got an all day gig scheduled for the last friday and saturday of this month, and the first Friday of next. Besides that, my schedule is completely open besides the 1am-6am night job, so just let me know what's up. My e-mail's in the original post and you can hit me up there any time. If you find people we can start talking about things like playstyle, characters, etc. And then if everyone's still interested we can make some magic happen.

Rebecca - interesting business model and similar to what is run at most of the major CON's - GENCON, etc... I am in GMT-5 EST and am interested in seeing how this works for you. If you get a tremendous amount of interest I'd like to potentially offer my services to cover certain times that you may not be available. I am a Naval Officer, Husband, and Father of two so I have been scheduling my games on weeknights from from 2030 -2330 EST. I am somwhat mixed about charging for a game, but given the "magic" that can happen in a well run game it is certainly more "bang for the buck" than your average movie. Good Luck to you.

Out of curiousity how did this end up working out?

The concept makes me itchy...could just be because it's a new way of thinking about it for me. Would also like to hear about if/how it worked out.. EDIT: Nevermind, saw the website. Need no other information.