Many a GM has harboured a secret dream of making a living off their hobby, or even just earning a bit of spending money. Naturally (and thankfully) it goes no further than that in most cases. After all when you get paid to do something it tends to turn into a regular job and the fun is gone.
I was wondering, however, if anyone has witnessed/been a GM who charges for the privilege?
Not outside of cons.
I wonder about that as well the con charges for your game but where does that money go and why do they charge?
However, I do run muder mysteries for hotels as a little sideline and they pay me for that (about $1200 for the weekend) and that is pretty much GM'ing a railroad mystery for a bunch of noobies that have no idea of how the system works.
Quote from: jibbajibba;456715Not outside of cons.
I wonder about that as well the con charges for your game but where does that money go and why do they charge?
However, I do run muder mysteries for hotels as a little sideline and they pay me for that (about $1200 for the weekend) and that is pretty much GM'ing a railroad mystery for a bunch of noobies that have no idea of how the system works.
Its an interesting point. In Australia and the UK there is big money in hosting pub trivia nights.
Quote from: Fiasco;456714I was wondering, however, if anyone has witnessed/been a GM who charges for the privilege?
Not charging players per se, but I was employed by the SFBok store in Stockholm to run an open 'anyone can sit down and play' D&D campaign in their shop on Saturdays. It wasn't fantastically well paid, but kept me buried in RPGs, books, and DVDs for a couple of years.
Quote from: jibbajibba;456715I wonder about that as well the con charges for your game but where does that money go and why do they charge?
That money goes to pay for the special guests. It also goes to cover expenses of the volunteers. The biggest chunk pays for the convention space, which in recent years has skyrocketed. Then there's insurance, and taxes, if the corporation sponsoring the event is a non-profit 501c corporation, it is exempt. If it's a normal corporation or private business, here in the U.S. they pay income tax.
There's a charge for every room that hosts an event, and some charges for unused rooms and meeting space, so the event staff have to be savvy about how much space they reserve.
Big events like Origins, GenCon, Pax, Comic Con also have to pay for security services, either directly or indirectly. Smaller conventions get by, by bringing their own security, or by hiring a private security firm.
If I had to wager a guess, I'd say that Origins in it's prime nets 250-750k.
GenCon, 600k to 1.25 Million. Pax, 1.6-2.25 million, though that figure may be a bit on the high side, especially if the Convention has paid full-time staff.
ComicCon, having the largest attendance, probably has the largest income.
In the U.S. If you want to run your own convention, you'll make some coin if you can draw 1,000 or more guests. Less than that, and the expenses get dicey. I know that smaller conventions have been getting squeezed hard in the first decade by the hotels and convention center, so would be surprised if they made more than 5-10k annually after expenses. Smaller conventions generally don't charge for games though, although in recent years, I have witnessed more smaller conventions adopt that practice.
For a simple rule of thumb to estimate the baseline gross income, multiply the attendance times the badge price... Then multiply the number of exhibitor spaces times the charge for the smallest exhibitor space. Multiply the number of events times the average event charge, and add those three numbers together.
Many of the performers and special events are paid by the convention staff. Special guests are also compensated, and have their travel, lodging, and food expenses reimbursed or are provided plane/rail tickets as well as hotel accommodations and board.
In recent years, I have noticed more special events such as dances, fundraisers, and late night gatherings at nearby restaurants. These generate some additional revenue, and provide the convention staff with goodwill (and generous discounts from the venues that are hosting the after hours events).
Quote from: Fiasco;456730Its an interesting point. In Australia and the UK there is big money in hosting pub trivia nights.
One can earn a six figure income by hosting special events every weekend or regularly DJing at nightclubs in Miami Beach. I would presume there's a few other areas in the U.S. this is true for as well.
I will sometimes buy Soda and snacks. If you want some...either drop a buck or add to the snack pile. I only do this at game events in a LGS.
I've always heard the "Tale of the Paid GM" as a sort of gaming urban myth; everyone's heard about it, no one knows anyone who's actually done it.
I always assumned the lion's share of Con expenses are spent on getting the space, since they tend to be at Hotels in my area.
I knew a guy who actually made his living for several years at least as a DM. He ran an after school program and a "summer camp" where he ran D&D games for middle school kids. This was in the 1990's in Berkeley CA. He may still be doing it, for all I know. The guy had some serious, serious, serious issues though, and even though he ran all the games in coffee shops and other public spaces, speaking as a parent, all I can say is no.fucking.way.
I know of a gm who asked for donations at a Larp and that money was used to pay for gming supplies (character sheets, inventory cards, gm stamps and cant remember what else)....they also raffled off a rule book. It was not for making profit though it was used to buy supplies.
You can get paid for LARPS, and Cons because the staff (even if it is just you) can handle a large enough volume of people to make it worthwhile. The trivia night host is an example of that.
Tabletop GMs have a limited bandwidth in how many people they can handle. This ultimately makes the whole exercise unprofitable as you can't get enough return on your time.
It happens to LARPS and Cons as well where a below a certain size you can't generate enough profits to justify the time spent and reverts to being a hobby.
I personally was paid to teach four classes at the YWCA in Meadville, PA on Dungeons & Dragons in the summer of 1983. Basically 6 to 8 people with session on teaching the rules, creating a dungeon, campaign, and finally with me running a session showing how it done. So in a way I was paid for DMing but it was more than that. It turned a small profit for the YMCA I got like a $100 ($25 per class each 3 sessions).
Currently I playtest most of my writing before I publish at conventions and at Gold Star Anime. Pretty much, teaching, and playtesting your stuff, are two main ways I can see for anybody to profit off being a tabletop gamemaster.
Quote from: jibbajibba;456715Not outside of cons.
I wonder about that as well the con charges for your game but where does that money go and why do they charge?
Originally the entry fees for Gencon went to pay for the prizes for each session. Large tournaments had respectively larger prizes.
Unless it is a game only convention there is no reason to charge for games to defray non-game activities that should come from your badge fee.
In many conventions event run hours counts toward badge refund or event room refund, but again that should be from badge fees since there are not additional charges for other activities which also net volunteer hours.
I had a long discussion one year in the hearing of the gaming coordinator regarding this. He scoffed saying, "So you want to be PAID to be a gm?"
Yes I do.
Those who ran larps were able to pocket their profits. Why not the individual gm's?
I charged (past tense) back in high school for a while in private school, and then right at the end of college again. Maybe for a total of 10 sessions between the 2.
Nothing more than 5 bucks a head at the peak, and it was just because I had built a rep and especially the second time, I had built a body of work.
Nota bene that people were paying for the experience, but also because my players were a bunch of elitests that talked me up.
It being the social hobby that it is, especially with all the closeness it creates between players, I am more embarressed than anything about the experience.
I'm on the Board of Directors(and one of the investors) of GameCon Memphis. This year(Sept) will be our 5th year. We are still operating at a loss, every year, but we are improving as we get bigger. Like has been said up thread, running a Con is expensive. Our single biggest expense is the Hotel/Convention space. We also provide a "Con Suite" that has free soda, chips, snacks and PB&J sandwiches(and danishes for Breakfast) that we provide at no cost. It is our second biggest expense. We give GMs and Volunteers discount badges or Free Badges based on the hours that they work. So, technically, we are paying our GMs, Free Entry Fee, Swag, and junk food.
I ALWAYS make sure that each person that plays a RPG at our con gets some kind of swag. At least one item. Last year was tough because a lot of game companies don't have the money to provide us with as much swag as we used to get. A couple of years ago, each person that played HackMaster received a hardbound Kingdoms of Kalamar book as swag provide from K&Co.
So, on a good year that we have a lot of swag, it is actually possible to get more dollar value swag than what you paid for your Badge. Every year for GMs who get in for Free. This year(and until the gaming industry economy improves) there's no guarantee of that happening though, but I hold out hope! Personally, I really love being able to give out free stuff to those gamers who attend our Con cause I like seeing people come out and have fun.
Other than Cons though, I really don't see that happening unless the GM was the only game in town, AND he was really, really good...
I'll GM for Pizza.
Gaming conventions used to be held at Colleges and Universities, I remember the early Ghengis Cons in Denver were all hosted at University of Denver on the South Campus, in the student center. By 1983 that had moved to the downtown UD Campus, and after that, moved to the Holiday Inn Southeast 96? in Aurora, and I think finally to the Red Lion Inn, also in Aurora 2002+
The colleges and universities originally had plenty of meeting space to spare for games, but the conventions moved to larger and larger venues as more people showed up. When they shrunk they weren't for the most part able to move back though because educational institution staff and students that sponsored the shows was no longer at the schools... They had all graduated or retired.
Originally, that's why it cost so little to attend, and why badge fees and table event fees went towards tournament awards, prizes, and SWAG.
Yea, Table Fees are one of the things that I really hate. The three Cons that we have here in Memphis don't have Table Fees, and never will...
A guy out here charges a few bucks a head for regular old LFR sessions. It seems unseemly to me.
When I was 17 I spent a summer as a page at my local library system. While I was officially a page and paid under that job description, what I really did was run a series of AD&D games for children in the summer reading program. I ran sessions on Monday - Thursdays afternoons. Each session was a different group of between 8-12 kids. It was a lot of fun at the time, but now...it would probably drive me homicidal.
I've seen one GM do it at the store a bit over a year ago. He didn't charge much though, like a dollar or two per person and it was mainly to cover his gas for the day since he lived a bit away. Evidently he was a pretty good GM and never had a lack of people willing to pay that little bit to play. After a month or so he stopped gaming at the shop along with a few of the players, figiured they started gaming at one of their homes.
That's all I've ever seen.
If you want to make a bit of money off your RPG hobby, then write a game book.
If you want to make a lot of money, then get yourself hired by a computer gaming company.
Otherwise, don't expect to get paid for your hobby.
RPGPundit
We had a GM once back in college who with work and school basically had no time to run games. He finally said, "We can play on Saturdays, but I need to charge everyone ten bucks to make up for not working those days." Considering that back then we played until people started passing out, it was a bargain. I didn't mind ponying up the cash at all. He wasn't making a living on it, though.
Quote from: greylond;456946Yea, Table Fees are one of the things that I really hate. The three Cons that we have here in Memphis don't have Table Fees, and never will...
This thread is the first time I've ever heard of Table Fees, and it sounds ridiculous to me that if you've already paid to get in the convention, to get charged a second time at the table.
If every table was like that, I'd go back to Registration and demand my money back. :mad:
Quote from: Novastar;457076This thread is the first time I've ever heard of Table Fees, and it sounds ridiculous to me that if you've already paid to get in the convention, to get charged a second time at the table.
If every table was like that, I'd go back to Registration and demand my money back. :mad:
So you've never gamed to Gencon, Dragoncon, and other major gaming conventions in the past 10 years? Sorry to hear that.
As I posted in a prior message, I don't mind gaming fees if there are no other activities that are not supported by their own fees, but I do mind the gaming area underwriting the rest of the convention, which is the case at Gencon and Dragoncon. My personal preference would be to have no gaming fees and to have those activities supported by the badge I have to purchase as well. If I do have to pay gaming fees, they should represent the cost of prizes and specific materials needed for that area.
At dragoncon, each fan track director gets $300 for expenses for her track. There are no fees to attend track events and programming. They are underwritten by the badge fees. Now if in fact gaming cost more per sq foot per captita than other offerings, there might be justification for table fees. I've never seen any numbers to support such a view. Especially when those are compared to the honorariums paid to 2nd tier guests who fill many megacons rather than the headliners who are the advertised draw.
There are premium events that have an additional charge that goes straight to the event organizer like the True Dungeon and BattleTEch pods at Gencon. It is possible for someone to earn a living if your events are popular enough, your fees are high enough, and you leverage the labor of your game masters.
One year at Gencon someone brought in a set of minatures dungeons where all the characters and monsters were represented by individual minatures in a physical labrynth. The sessions were 1 hour long compared to the 4-6 hour sessions of the other events. The gm's ran non-stop the entire con, usually with 12 players per session per gm. I'd say they were making a profit at least for the weekend, even substracting for badges, hotel fees, food, and travel. But they were treating it like a business, not a hobby.
Quote from: Novastar;457076This thread is the first time I've ever heard of Table Fees, and it sounds ridiculous to me that if you've already paid to get in the convention, to get charged a second time at the table.
If every table was like that, I'd go back to Registration and demand my money back. :mad:
Yeah, I'm kind of mystified myself here. I haven't participated in any Con games, and have only been for the Shopper's Pass.
I thought that you had to pay to Registration fees for the convention, and then you had to pay a small fee for each individual game that you registered for during the event.
So, on top of those fees, some GMs are privately charging a table fee too?
Am I understanding this correctly?
Quote from: Drohem;457090Yeah, I'm kind of mystified myself here. I haven't participated in any Con games, and have only been for the Shopper's Pass.
I thought that you had to pay to Registration fees for the convention, and then you had to pay a small fee for each individual game that you registered for during the event.
So, on top of those fees, some GMs are privately charging a table fee too?
Am I understanding this correctly?
No you pay a registration fee then the con sells game slots. Some of the big game companies, like Pinnacle, take a whole room and then you play for free. When I hosted a game though there wasn't an option to do it for free so I had 6 players each of whom had to buy a $6 ticket. I might have applied wrong or something but the money went to the con and I didn't have a chance to avoid it. I think if I had hosted 3 games I could have got a pass discount but I was running a game for some mates one day already and just didn't fancy it.
Quote from: jibbajibba;457127No you pay a registration fee then the con sells game slots. Some of the big game companies, like Pinnacle, take a whole room and then you play for free. When I hosted a game though there wasn't an option to do it for free so I had 6 players each of whom had to buy a $6 ticket. I might have applied wrong or something but the money went to the con and I didn't have a chance to avoid it. I think if I had hosted 3 games I could have got a pass discount but I was running a game for some mates one day already and just didn't fancy it.
Thanks, Mate. :)
I knew about the convention registration and individual game fees, but it sounded like a third fee was being charged by the GMs.
Quote from: Novastar;457076This thread is the first time I've ever heard of Table Fees, and it sounds ridiculous to me that if you've already paid to get in the convention, to get charged a second time at the table.
If every table was like that, I'd go back to Registration and demand my money back. :mad:
This is a common practice and for a good reason. Usually the fee isn't collected at the table - it's collected upon preregistering for a game. Like with Gen Con, you pay your entry fee and then pay a small fee per game ticket.
It's not about the money - it's about getting only people who are serious to prereg. At Gen Con and other large cons tables fill up months in advance, and they need to know what games are full etc. If preregging for a given game was free, every game table would show full as soon as the first 6 people registered for the con and signed up for every damn thing "just in case."
It's a well known and understood business method - if you offer an event for free, RSVPs aren't worth crap. And with something like a game con (or tech class, or...) you really need to be able to plan on the numbers. So you charge a nominal fee, and that weeds out (most) of the rubes. You go from RSVPs being 10% accurate to being 80% accurate.
Are you stating this from actual experience in running a Convention? Not attending Cons, not "I've got friends on staff of a Con", I mean actual experience attending meetings all year long and getting into the details of actual Convention Operations/Budgets. Cause if you don't, then I'd state that you don't know what you are talking about.
Like I've stated before, I'm on the Board for one Con and I GM/Volunteer at two others here in Memphis. Table Fees are NOT needed for Pregreg numbers of people at tables in my experience. Table Fees are about making money. People look at whether they are going to a Con based on the Registration Fee to get into the Door. Some Cons have a Budget designed on a higher income than what Registrations and Sponsorships give them, therefore they have Table Fees.
Conventions have a set amount of expenses that they are willing to pay out, Operations/Security/Infrastructure, Guests, Special Events/Tournies, and other giveaways. Our Con is small but we have actively analysed the benefits of having Table Fees which would, on paper looks like it increases your income flow but you have to take into account your customer base and how many attendees you will lose vs how much money is actually realized. The Big Cons, DragonCon, GenCon and Origins, can get away with Table Fees because they are the Big Ones. They know that they have most of the Gaming Industry Professionals attending to push their latest product, that alone draws in enough people. Plus the Big Cons have the big game clubs attending.
Smaller Cons don't have some of those factors that lead to higher attendance so we have to be more aware of how many customers will or will not attend based on Registration Fees and possible Table Fees.
Quote from: mxyzplk;457184This is a common practice and for a good reason. Usually the fee isn't collected at the table - it's collected upon preregistering for a game. Like with Gen Con, you pay your entry fee and then pay a small fee per game ticket.
It's not about the money - it's about getting only people who are serious to prereg. At Gen Con and other large cons tables fill up months in advance, and they need to know what games are full etc. If preregging for a given game was free, every game table would show full as soon as the first 6 people registered for the con and signed up for every damn thing "just in case."
It's a well known and understood business method - if you offer an event for free, RSVPs aren't worth crap. And with something like a game con (or tech class, or...) you really need to be able to plan on the numbers. So you charge a nominal fee, and that weeds out (most) of the rubes. You go from RSVPs being 10% accurate to being 80% accurate.
If that was actually the case, then they would either refund the money to the attendees after they actually attended, or give it to the gm. $6 a session is not a nominal fee. I spend more on event fees than badge fees. Also, when there are no-shows at GENCON, those with generic tickets trying to get a seat
at the table still have to pay the full amount. No, the fees are for making money these days.
At my local Con's (KublaCon and DunDraCon), the Registration Fee is $50 for up to 4 days of gaming (typically Fri night, all Sat, all Sun, till noon on Monday), and there are no Table Fee's (some LARP's do have a fee, but it's usually VERY minimal).
Assuming 6 games within that time at $6 a pop ($36 total), even if Reg. Fee's were $15, I'd be paying more for a weekends worth of gaming than the flat fee.
...and if I wanted to do something other than game at a Con, I'd go to Comic-Con instead. :p
We are lucky here in the UK as the only con I know that charges players to play a game [other than the disastrous GenCon UK] is Conception (http://www.conceptionuk.org/).
They do not have an entry fee though and collect all the money made from the game tickets for charity, a total of £13,279.95 last year.
All other cons charge an entry fee but nothing extra to play games.
Quote from: Novastar;457376At my local Con's (KublaCon and DunDraCon), the Registration Fee is $50 for up to 4 days of gaming (typically Fri night, all Sat, all Sun, till noon on Monday), and there are no Table Fee's (some LARP's do have a fee, but it's usually VERY minimal).
For GameCon Memphis we crunched a bunch of data from other Cons' publicly available information, including these two Cons, and that's what I'm talking about. Table Fees at smaller Cons actually drive more people away than make up for the lost income from Reg Fees.
Quote from: mxyzplk;457184It's a well known and understood business method - if you offer an event for free, RSVPs aren't worth crap. And with something like a game con (or tech class, or...) you really need to be able to plan on the numbers. So you charge a nominal fee, and that weeds out (most) of the rubes. You go from RSVPs being 10% accurate to being 80% accurate.
Just going to say that this is common practice in other business types too. I used to run a language school in Japan (and run one now in Hungary too). As a promotion, we used to offer free demo lessons to anyone who wanted; all they had to do was sign up on our website and show up. Attendance rate of people signing up and actually appearing was just over 10%. So, in effect, I wasted my teacher's time and the school's money.
Then one of our secretaries got the idea to charge for it. A nominal fee in Japanese terms (1000 yen). Suddenly attendance rates for the demo lessons went up to over 75%, and of those, about 1/3 eventually signed up for actual lessons. The little money at least paid for the teacher's time, and the eventual signs up were good, obviously.
Never did a survey on it, but I'll guess that with the service being free, no one cared too much. Charge them a bit, and the ones who bother to pay and come are actually serious about it, even for such small money. Which means quite a few would eventually take classes.
So, matches your numbers a bit.
Asking to help cover the costs of your photocopying at a con is one thing; but there are, every few years, some guy on the forum or in real life that is utterly convinced he can make a go of running a "GM for Pay" business. Often when they find themselves out of work and don't want to look for a real job.
It never ends well.
RPGPundit
Curiousity gets the better of me...
The US poverty line for a single person is $10,890 (per 2011 data).
Now, assuming you spend one day prepping for every day gaming, and take one day off per week for personal time (i.e. go to church, get groceries, laundry, family, etc).
Assume the average table size of 6. Each game is 8 hours in length.
A movie ticket is about $10 for two hours entertainment. So we'll assume you sell yourself at $5/hour, per person (which I think is a HUGE stretch).
52 weeks in a year, but you give yourself a 2-week vacation.
6 people * 8 hours * $5 an hour * 3 sessions/week * 50 weeks = $36,000 a year
So...I guess if you can GM like a fricking machine, and convince people to pay you like they were going to a movie or theatre production for a (typically free) gaming session, you could make a decent, if not spectactular, living.
In my experience Games are 4 to 5 hours in length. Also, most Gamers are cheap bastards(myself included) and aren't going to be paying that much to play a RPG every week.
Part of the draw of Table Top RPGs(from my point of view) is that you spend $20 to $50 on a RPG and get years of play out of it...
I wouldn't want to pay a GM any more than I would want to hire an escort to go out to dinner with me. There are some things I think would be messed up by the very presence of a wage for it.
Yea, for me gaming is about hanging out with your friends. As in "Demented and Social, but Social..."
I wouldn't want to pay to be able to hangout with someone. As a GM, I want people to play in my game because they like me and my game, not because they are paying for entertainment...
Quote from: Cole;457978I wouldn't want to pay a GM any more than I would want to hire an escort to go out to dinner with me. There are some things I think would be messed up by the very presence of a wage for it.
I bet if you could combine the two it would be awesome.
Quote from: Aos;458012I bet if you could combine the two it would be awesome.
I'm not a betting man.
This thread reminds me of KODT. In the background of KODT the character Brian used to GM for pay. He was so good as a GM that he ran games 6 nights a week. He ran the same scenario for 6 different groups. He had everyone involved sign a NDA that stated that the different groups couldn't talk about an adventure until after all the groups had gone through it. I think the story was that he GM'ed Tues through Sundays and all the groups would get together on Monday nights to compare notes and tell stories.
He did it until he burnt out on GMing...