[snuxoll]

> I also love that you're making being a "Professional Dungeon Master" a plausible future career choice. :)

Professional DM'ing will never be good for anything other than making some money on the side unless you're charging players an unreasonable amount of money. Yes, there is an imbalance of potential players versus DM's, but at the end of the day the only thing preventing anybody from being a DM is getting over false assumptions that "it's not as fun as playing a character" or "I'm not Matthew Mercer and thus I'm going to be a bad DM". If my introverted and self-critical ass can DM and have players enjoy the experience, so can whoever is reading this.

I DM a weekly 2-hour session, beyond the actual time spent in the session I spend ~45 minutes prepping every week (and I'm running published modules right now, not homebrewing, so that's just time spent reading ahead, writing session notes, etc.). Paid DM's generally charge $25 per player for a four hour session, and their prep time is included in that - given that even running the same module for multiple groups still requires prep time and longer sessions moreso, you're only making $15-25/hr before banks, taxes, etc. take a cut. Not only that, but being paid means you have fairly high expectations placed on your skills that nobody would have for the friendly DM running a game for fun.

I don't have anything against paid DM's, but unless you are literally providing an insanely polished experience that has potential players willing to drop $50 each for a session you're not going to be making a living off it that justifies the time spent beyond some extra pocket change.

[bricemo]

There’s no way this is true in 5-10 years. I’m in a $20/person/hour campaign now. A future celebrity/influencer/streamer/professional improv comedian GM could easily be pulling in 6 or 7 figures.

[snuxoll]

Sure, if you have a premium product you can justify those rates - but your market is also shockingly small for said premium product. There's literally only two reasons for paid DM's to exist - A) they offer said premium experience or B) there's a huge imbalance of players to DM's. Not everybody wants to pay the money it would require to have a Matthew Mercer as their DM, and if more people just realized that being a DM is not the intimidating/tedious/boring job they thing it is there wouldn't be such a huge imbalance.

I guess I don't want to say you cannot make a living off being a paid DM, but you will have to be in the top percentiles to justify your price doing so and compete in a shallow market. Everyone else is on borrowed time until the player:dm balance naturally normalizes, and speaking as a DM myself I do my utmost to convince others to give it a shot because it's an incredibly enjoyable and rewarding experience.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Maybe? I definitely agree that paying for it changes perception a little bit ( you expect value ). But then, our sessions ( pre-covid ) have not been exactly a cheap affair ( between various manuals, accompanying pieces, dice, 3d printing/buying avatars, arranging babysitting and last, but certainly not least, food for the group it turned out to be oddly expensive hobby, though still cheaper than guns ).

I guess what I am saying is, when all those costs are considered, premium GM at $25 does not sound unreasonable. I am not sure if the market would accept more, but then.. DnD has become mainstream. I would not bet against it.

[snuxoll]

> But then, our sessions ( pre-covid ) have not been exactly a cheap affair ( between various manuals, accompanying pieces, dice, 3d printing/buying avatars, arranging babysitting and last, but certainly not least, food for the group it turned out to be oddly expensive hobby, though still cheaper than guns ).

Well, yeah, people need materials to play - that's just a given and it doesn't change if you're paying a DM or not. Realistically though, you're talking about playing in the single most expensive manner possible:

* D&D Beyond content sharing reduces the cost of manuals since they only need to be purchased once (no more fighting over the PHB or making everyone buy their own, plus associated splatbooks with character options)

* Dice are $20 for a 1lb bag, and while everybody having multiple sets is useful you technically only need a single d4, d6, d10, d12 and d20 per player (d100's are just d10, roll one twice)

* I don't get the obsession with mini's. But I also think if you're going to run grids you're better off buying a Foundry VTT license and throwing the map on your TV, which will set you back less than the cost of a single mini in most cases; I generally stick to theater of the mind for in-person sessions and use Sly Flourish's Zone-based Combat when there's an encounter that takes place outside of a 30x30 area

Babysitting if you're a single parent or have a spouse that plays and food don't have any good options to reduce cost, unfortunately.

Note I'm only trying to say D&D is as expensive as a hobby as you want it to be. To play anything other than the three box sets that include the core rules (Starter Kit, Essentials Kit, D&D vs Rick and Morty) you literally need the PHB, a bag of assorted dice and an adventure (published or your own). Hell, you can skimp on the PHB and play with the SRD5 document and need nothing but dice.

> I guess what I am saying is, when all those costs are considered, premium GM at $25 does not sound unreasonable. I am not sure if the market would accept more, but then.. DnD has become mainstream. I would not bet against it.

Except it's a premium DM at $125-150 per week, all players considered. For those that don't need babysitters (because they don't have children, have a spouse that will watch the children, or they play online) that's way more than buying pizza when it's your week. I'm not going to say the price is unreasonable given that's $6.25/hr (less, considering prep time), but it's not enough for anybody to make a living on without severe short-cuts being made in prep work (thus ruining the point of a paid DM in the first place, since anybody can do it if they get over whatever perceived problem is preventing them from doing so).

[maest]

I agree overall with your economic analysis, just one thing to point out:

You might be able to get _some_ economies of scale if you homebrew your own adventure and reuse it with multiple groups.

In terms of other ways to scale your per session income is to allow people to just watch the sessions you're DMing(a la Crit Role), but at this point you're a content producer (not to mention the players might not like being watched by others).

[ajuc]

There already are proffesional DMs, but they stream in addition to DMing. Can't feed your family when you have audience of 5.