Treasure Tables » Professional GMing How do you feel about the whole idea of paying someone to GM games for you? Including contact info for tours with pro game designers. What People are…

As far as coming to the discussion late, no worries there: I leave comments open on every post for about 30 days, and I keep pretty good track of them until then — for exactly this reason.

“GM-ing for Profit: Can it be done?”
http://www.davidrm.com/rpg/rpg-article-005.shtml

From the discussion here, it sounds like some of the issues I brought up back in 2001 have been resoloved, at least partially. Also, I think there’s now more acceptance among players of the idea of paying. However, I think, as several others have mentioned, that we are still a long way from having full time professional GM’s.

I only found your blog today, Martin, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read so far. I’ll be back.

-David

This is a simple distinction, and one that has been mentioned in other comments, but it’s quite striking to read: “player” becomes “customer.”

Many great points in your comment, anonymous — thanks for taking the time to put them all into writing. (And I love the term “highly trained leisure industry operative.” )

The reason is that there won’t be professional players is that generally there will be more demand by players to find a good GM, then there are GM’s willing to pay for players. If some type of tournament system develops, then there may be “professional players” in the same way there are professional gamblers, but it would be much more akin to wargaming than roleplaying – a contest based on strict rules. It is more liekly that Collectible Card Gaming players will turn pro than roleplaying.

As the hobby matures several things are becoming apparent. One is that some players who played when young continue to do so as they become older. They will have money to potentially pay any GM. Another is that they will have much higher expectations of the gaming experience than they did when they were much younger. It must be substantially better for them to enjoy it. A third is that because of family and work commitments, most will not have much time to devote to preparing for the game. The confluence of these three items point to the emergence of commercial GM’s at some point.

What is the job of a paid GM?
1) To know the rule system extensively.
2) To do all the preparation needed to run the game so that there is maximum value to the customer.
3) To consistently run an enjoyable game session for his customers.

Obviously there will be different business models. The guy who works weekends at the library to provide entertainment for teens is much different than someone who is paid by 40 year old professionals hoping for a night’s worth of fun. Likewise genres, themes, styles will be important to customer.

I suspect currently the market would not support true commercial GMing, but Otherworld Excursions indicate one is developing. It is possible as people become more affluent and the hobby develops more institutions, that GMing may become a viable occupation.

I think commercial GMing, an occupational GM, and a professional GM are three different things. Commercial GMing is simply being paid for it. This is already being done. A GM occupation is one where people can be paid enough to hold it as a full time job. This has not been achieved yet, but online gaming through MMORPG’s is developing towards this trend.

A professional GM however, is someone with credentials that indicate his expertise in running games. Most jobs are not professions. It will be a long time before GMing becomes a profession. When it does develop, I think it will be a case where the professional GM is a highly trained leisure industry operative. He would cater mostly to the affluent who could afford to pay him a decent fee. He may have interns under him learning from him that would assist him in his games while they run less expensive games of their own to the middle class.

He probably has various scenarios he could run repeatedly for different groups. These scenarios would require much preparation ahead of time, but once added to his repertoire could be performed repeatedly and efficiently. For more extensive fees, he could perform more customized scenarios. He probably has several gaming groups he sees every week who sign long term commitments that pay up front.

He probably works a staggered schedule, maybe nights W-F and days Sat-Sun if he has a traditional 40 hour work week. It may be that week nights he engages in a small number of groups in a table top game, and runs a much larger LARP on the weekend with costumes, props, etc. Such interactive roleplay may be assisted with people in the theatrical profession who do this for experience and some money as well. The LARPs probably provide the volume of people needed to have low fees for customers, yet earn enough money for the GM. This is the equivalent of paying for a movie. He probably uses it to identify affluent clientele for his more intimate table top sessions. Given that this is the future, he is probably assisted by a variety of relatively cheap multi-media applications to enhance the experience. Besides being paid for his services, the professional GM also makes money by selling various game material directly to his clientele – either directly or through network relationship with an established retailer and/or game company.

if this type of pro GM becomes established soon, it would probably to be a professional manager for established world wide LARP organizations. This is some time off. While some players in these organizations are successful professionals with the money to pay, many are also college kids or lower income. It may happen some point in the future, especially for people running large events for those multiple chapter LARP locations.

Time and details are here. Register at the Wizards.com site if you haven’t already (if there are spaces in your username you won’t be able to chat!) Then go to the community page, log in, and click on “Go chat in RPG Live!”, then on the ‘Chat Now!’ button; click on ‘Rooms’ once the chat session begins.

Rudolf: Apart from the scaling up in your 5th item, I think much of your list is the baseline for many GMs. It sounds like consistency in those areas is what matters most to you, and that seems like an important point for larger-scale efforts at making pro GMing viable.

To be worth it, I’d want to see the following elements. These come mostly from my experience with RPGA events and big cons.

1) Character creation needs to be fast and straight-forward. People want to play.

2) Focus. Don’t talk about how great some other adventure was, or how great anything else was. Use your time to make this adventure great.

3) Props. I’m not saying you need a costume, but there are lots of little goodies that make running a game easier for players. Illustrations, miniatures, maps, or whatever. For a more tactical game, you might want blast templates and a scale map. For more of a role-playing game, you might want player handouts.

4) Prepared. Ideally, the judge should not need to pick up the printed adventure until something wacky comes up. You should know where things are, and how people will react to most things that players will do.

5) Organized. When you scale this up to make money, you’ll need to get players to tables, judges to tables, and money to management. This needs to be quick, clean, and fast. Again, people want to play.

One way to do this might be to record the session, and have the video (or clips from it) available online. I suppose some folks would be suspicious that it wasn’t staged, but some wouldn’t — and I know for some of the best sessions I’ve been involved in, this would be a great way to show them off. (And welcome to TT, Rudolf! )

(Tavis) At some point I’ll post how these were ranked by respondents at Gen Con.

Count me in as being quite interested in seeing these results!

(CJ) Money changes hands equals “work”. Roleplaying is strictly a hobby. I don’t even want to write a gaming article for pay. The minute “professional” gets brought in, the responsibility rachets up and the fun goes out the window.

As a freelancer, I find this viewpoint interesting for two reasons: one, it doesn’t apply to me at all as far as writing is concerned (I love writing for pay, as with my freelance work, and I love writing for free, as I do here); and two, I worry that it would apply to me with GMing/pro GMing!