Professional Dungeon Masters

 

Pictured above: profile pic of a Roll20 forum member

advertising as a "Paid DM" 

In recent months I've been exploring the Roll20 members forums. Here people advertise that they are looking for games to play in, looking to start a campaign, etc. I've been interested, surprised, annoyed, and even appalled (I'll post more on this in the future), but the most stand out thing to me there is the phenomenon of "paid DM's."

Around 10 years ago when I started exploring the "OSR" online, there wasn't much in the way of "professional dungeon masters." Sure, somebody like Frank Mentzer and other mid-level gaming luminaries might be getting a payday for running a convention game. You can make your own call as to whether such sessions are worth the time and money (I try not to be judgmental but I don't find this grizzled veteran very compelling in his refereeing), but I was never much of a convention dude. 

At some point right before I originally started this blog I was lurking around a forum, I think RPG.net, and some young fellow calling himself Captain Kommando or some such made a post discussing the possibility of running games for a living. Apparently he lived with his granny and money was an issue. In order to help he wanted to earn some bucks, and he thought DMing for pay would be a great way to save the homestead. He would don masks and do voices and provide you an interactive experience. That forum, at least then (I have zero recent forum experience; in the past I found forums such as rpg.net and Dragonsfoot to be cesspools of tired old school gamers clinging to tired old notions) was full of people who thought their way of having fun pretending to be elves was superior, and they kind of ate Captain Kommando alive. "pay to play? the hell you say!" But he dug in his heels. I think that after he sat on a train for an hour to go run a free trial game for some folk at a mall food court, and none of them showing up, he gave up on his dream and went back to a regular job search. 

Flash forward some years, and the roll20 "looking for games forum" is full of folk advertising as "paid DM's." Literally 25-35 % of the posts are from DM's looking to get 10-20 bucks a sessions from their players. And they often seem to be able to find a group to pay. They call themselves "legendary DM's" though readily admitting they have only been doing D&D for two or three years. That's gotta chap the ass of anybody doing it for free for decades. Hell, sometimes a group will post looking for a DM to pay. 

Now, none of that really appeals to me. For one thing I don't really need the money. But to have to have an expectation that you are "working" for the players really turns me off. Too many times in the past, especially outside my own hand-picked groups, have I felt like running a session was like a job that didn't pay. For every player that brought me a six pack of high end beer, there were two who didn't seem to give a shit about what might be fun for me in the game. And I was giving it up for free. 

The added pressure of getting paid for it for sure does not appeal. A role playing game as customer service? Just like life in general I have found that when it comes to being a player the secret to happiness is managing your expectations. If you are paying somebody you certainly have high ones. 

Honestly, I think this notion is another side effect of  the popularity of Critical Role. 

Sandboxy enough for me

Sandbox. It’s a gaming term that many people will have a somewhat different definition for. What is it?

Well, unless you are all about totally “winging it” as a GM, you need to do a lot of prep on a lot of locations when you are thinking sandbox. Have all your ducks in a row, as they say. If you start players in a location, they can hear about and choose from a variety of directions and places to go. Head to the hills up North where rumors of giants with sacks of gold come from, or go to the Western Forest to visit the old abandoned wizard tower the barkeep has told you about. Maybe just head south and explore some wilderness hexes. The GM has something to offer no matter where the players might go.

Is this really sandbox, or are you just creating enough railroad tracks to make it seem like a sandbox (paraphrasing Frank Mentzer, I believe)?

In my teens I took a rare break from my own gameworld to do a few sessions of City State of the Invincible Overlord. The players made up characters, and I had them be non-natives showing up at the city gates. From there, they were free to go where they wanted. Go into that tavern and look for action? Sure. Go into the bath house and talk to the dolphin that just appeared in a pool? Whatever. Go down in the sewers to investigate rumors of a Wraith Overlord? Fine by me. It was a lot of fun, but lets face it – every one of those locations the player visited where set encounters with their own preset plot hooks and rumors and such. Was that true sandbox because the players decided which stores to go to first? I dunno.

I guess it is still something to taste that is very debatable. What do I think of trying to sandbox? Well, as a kid things seemed more freeform. But as adulthood started I was doing more plot driven things. I would not say railroady, because I have always thought the character freewill was important to the games. But If I start a game and say “you guys hear about a newly discovered system of caves under the city rumored to have monsters and treasures” and the players say “Naw, we’d rather go out in the woods and explore unmarked hexes” then I am probably already running a shit campaign that the players have no respect for anyway.

I think my current players want some freedom to do some things in-character that they want to do, but as far as the main adventure I think they want some fairly well defined goals. Go visit that dungeon, go explore this abandoned tower, go find that enemy who left us for dead.

Like right now I'm doing a 1st ed. campaign set in the Night Below. Pretty linear, right? But a couple of games ago a (rolled encounter) Minotaur hunting group appeared out of a side tunnel and eventually got defeated. Appearing to come from a larger group (they weren't bearing lots of supplies or water), the players decided to go down the side tunnels and look into it. The party druid changed into a bat and swooped down many miles of tunnels where I had to randomize everything, including a small minotaur fishing village and a minotaur giant maze city (something I had been thinking about for a while, and got the chance here to display it) that the players found mighty cool and unexpected (sadly, they decided to leave that place for their currents tasks at hand, maybe to return and explore more one day).

But players deciding to "got north instead of south to the dungeon" is great in small quantities, but I would get tired of that sooner or later no matter how creative I am. It's more fun for me if the players can decide on a solid goal and follow through with it, instead of going in the opposite direction from what I've prepared or burning down inns on a whim or whatever.

If I create a dungeon I want the players to go to it, not go in the opposite direction. I can handle it if they do, but they can think a little bit about my fun too. I'm a DM, not a damn civil servant.

Those old City state sessions from my teens were the most open and free games I ever ran, and the experience and challenge made me a decent and capable GM later in life. Generally, I think it is great to have some choices, but also for the DM to light a fire here and there to temp the players into certain actions. The best games are a combo of choice and available plot hooks. Sure, I could just tell players to go wander willy nilly and crack open the Old School Encounter reference and randomize every little thing. Hex by hex wilderness crawl or whatever. But I think most players want a GM to have certain plans for them (and those plans are at their best when they come in the form of the DM being inspired by the characters), while leaving some wiggle room for improv adventure.

The party knows about an old haunted tower outside of town that perks up their interest. But the party thieves want to go do a bit of pick pocketing at the market place while the rest of the party hits up the beer tent to buy some rounds for locals and maybe hear some rumors about the tower. That's cool. Sandboxy enough for me.