The mere concept of people asking to be paid to run a ttrpg is mindboggling to me. Almost as much as the fact that there are people out there actually paying others to join their game and run it for them.What the fuck happened? Is this just a symptom of late stage capitalism or american faggotry?These are supposed to be fun and friendly hobbies that you play with mates in your spare time, not actual jobs.
>>94425033It's because of>the fact that there are people out there actually paying others to join their game and run it for them.and also a long-existing idea that getting paid for your hobby means fun profit with negligible downsides.
Because Critical Role and Stranger Things made D&D a fad, a bunch of bandwagoners were desperate to participate and parasites saw a way to make a few dollars.
>Why are paid games a thing?Because being a DM for modern 5e play culture is an absolute chore. The player-to-dm ratio is completely fucked for 5e.
It's simple supply and demand. 5e fucking sucks to run but it has a huge fanbase of eager players
>>94425033Because running certain popular systems (DnD 5e, Pathfinder 2e) is absolute fucking torture and the only way to get me to do it is to literally pay me.Develop better TTRPG taste and I'll gladly run a FUN game like Ryuutama for free.
>>94425033I guess people are too afraid to ask their friendgroup to try it out, or they want one time experience, with little effort from them.
>>94425033D&D 5e is so focused on wanking off player power fantasy that DMing for that shit system IS work, so pay me.
>>94425062>>94425065>>94425079What's with this lie? It sounds like its coming from people who've never run 5e, or are simply complete idiots.5e is stupidly easy to run. One of the easiest, in no small part thanks to dozens of high-quality tools, databases, and apps that make running the game practically autopilot. There's plenty of adventures, official, 3rd-party, and otherwise, and the core system is so simple that even small children are able to run the game.The reason there's a player/GM disparity is because the system's popularity grew incredibly quickly, and regardless of what RPG it is, it's going to take longer for a GM to grow comfortable with running the game than it's going to take for a player to play it. The reason other games are actually seeing a player shortage instead is because 5e is so popular it's basically swallowed up all the players, leaving bitter GMs to do nothing but bitch and moan and lie on websites in hopes that people will turn away from 5e.
>>94425033Very basic supply and demand. People want to play but not GM. GMing is more work than playing, and less familiar.Being surprised by this indicates that you are stupid.
>>94425115People ran games for free for decades before the parasites showed up, you really think they didn't enjoy doing so? Ironic that you call anyone else stupid.
Supply and demand is truly an advanced and incomprehensible concept
>>94425112hope you got paid well for this!
>>94425112Tell me you've never run a good TTRPG without telling me you've never run a good TTRPG.
Because I'm not playing with friends you stupid fucking faggot I'm playing with randoms I don't know and if I'm gonna be spending time with people I don't know instead of my friends I'd rather get paid 5 bucks
>>94425112I didn't say it was hard. I said it was a chore to run. I like DMing, even other versions of D&D, but running for people with 5e-brain simply sucks. It's just not an enjoyable style of play for me.
>>94425112>The reason other games are actually seeing a player shortage instead is because 5e is so popular it's basically swallowed up all the players, leaving bitter GMs to do nothing but bitch and moan and lie on websites in hopes that people will turn away from 5e.The vast majority people still playing 5e are the bandwagoners who showed up to play that and only that, it's not that people aren't still playing other games it's just a completely different ecosystem.
>>94425112Better games don't need an entire research departments worth of tools just make the game halfway playable. DnD 5e and DnD 2024 are fucking messes and I have never seen a DM who actually enjoyed running it except for the ones who have ONLY ever run DnD.
>>94425139People made video games for decades before they figured out the most effective way to monetize them, too. Of course, the RPG industry is mostly a bunch of clueless rubes, so it's no surprise it didn't even occur to them to charge for services rendered until recently.
>>94425149Why are you spending your free time on something you clearly don't enjoy? Are you that desperate to have TTRPG Player as part of your identity?
>>94425112Not sure if paid shill or just the most retarded post on /tg/ right now.
>>94425112Whats with the lies? The reason there's a DM shortage is because the game fucking sucks to DM for.
>>94425162You really think WotC cares enough about the 12 people on this board to have paid shills here?
>>94425172Considering this is WorC we're talking about, yes. They're pretty exceptional when it comes to dumb nonsensical decisions.
>>94425033People who don't get it for free are willing to pay. And a one-time payment is easier than cultivating a relationship that would have them get it for free.
>>94425172I think DnD 5e has fanboy shills who will white-knight for it completely for free because they've tied a huge part of their identity to a lifestyle brand and shitty YouTube e-celebrities.
>>94425112You seem to conflate>an absolute chore>sucks to run>fucking tortureWith "it's hard to run". You say that it's "stupidly easy to run", but when we look at the posts you reference, no-one even remotely implied that it's hard, just that it's an absolute fucking chore that sucks to run and constitutes self-torture.The fact that you conflate these things in your cancerous over-eagerness to defend 5e suggests that you're the one that's either lying or a complete idiot.
>>944251575e doesn't need them. But it has them.Game was designed to be incredibly accessible, and it is. About as near to being objectively so as an RPG can be. It's so accessible, it went ahead and dominated the market to such a degree that even now, a decade after the game was released, it's more popular than all other RPGs COMBINED. Little kids can pick up the system and play it, entirely without the suite of tools available to them to make running the game easier. But, if you want to make running the game incredibly easy, you can just collect a few of the tools made by the largest and best financed RPG community and make running the game essentially effortless.If you want to pretend that running 5e is hard, tedious, or anything but one of the easiest GMing experiences, what you're actually pretending is that you're an idiot.
>>94425211>5e doesn't need themStopped reading. Everything you say is lies.
>>94425221>all the facts support you>every number that can be pulled up confirms what you say>but i don't like the truth, so I will say you lieGeez, that's some high-grade cope.
>>94425231You've proven nothing, you just keep repeating the same lies over and over, convincing nobody except yourself.
>>94425231This whole thread is people saying that DnD is awful from a DMs perspective. I'm really not sure who you think you're fooling here...
>>94425301>5e ISN'T more popular than all other games combined!>There's NO WAY that could be true, because I struggled running a game that even children are able to run without difficulty!Oh man, you weren't just pretending to be an idiot.
>>94425309>a handful of contrarian trolls on 4chan are the TRUTHlollmao even
>>94425311When has popularity ever been a sign of quality. I know you're in full trolling mode right now, but you sound like the kind of person who's only ever played Fortnite and gets unreasonably angry when someone says better games than Fortnite exist, grasping at whatever lie you can to justify such an indefensible position.
>>94425316When it's one shill against everyone else, I'm tempted to think the shill is the "contrarian troll".
>>94425324>When has popularity ever been a sign of quality.It's definitely a sign of accessibility.
>>94425341Apparently not, considering 5e has a worse DM-shortage than anything else I've played.
>>94425336Are you trying to play some kind of numbers game on an anonymous 4chan image board in a thread with maybe 10 people, likely less?Whoo boy, why not try actually make an argument instead.
>>94425062Is it really?I have considered running games for my local ttrpg/board games club and it always has an excess of people wanting to DM, so even cool DMs struggle to get enough players.
>>94425341Flipping burgers is "accessible", that doesn't mean it's a career to aspire to. I'm done though, your trolling is neither funny nor entertaining.
>>94425347It also has far and away the largest population than anything you've ever played.
>>94425033Death of community spaces and rise and fall of social media means people aren't skilled at making friends. You only pay if you're not playing with friends. And the games are only fun if you're playing with friends, so it feels soulless to hear that people are.
>>94425359Largest population of people not actually playing the game.
>>94425356>you beat me soundly with your logic, and now I will run awayFantastic. Also, it's adorable how you got your ass beaten with the accessibility bit and tried to shift directions like you thought no one would call you out on it.
>>94425033I think I would hate playing RPGs if I my players were also customers.
>>94425172Why don't you tell us, shill?
>>944252115e is not accessible at all lmao. People think it is because they don't actually use 90% of the rules.
>>94425365Largest population in general,For any RPG, its easier to play than it is to run, and what that ultimately means is that if you scale up the population of a system, you're going to see the player number outpace the GM number. 5e grew incredibly quickly by RPG standards, exceeding everyone's projections and even finding modest mainstream success. And, even with a GM shortage, there's still more GM's running 5e than all other games combined. It's almost like no one wants to play other published games because the larger community disagrees with your evaluations.
>>94425391People with friends do play other games though. Kind of a non-starter discussion to have with someone who has no idea what that's like though.
>>94425033>Ttrpg board>Supposedly OP plays them>Can't grasp foreign concepts from his povInteresting. The increased popularity of ttrpgs brought more players and oportunists. The ratio of players to janny gms is obviously really small so the prospect of getting paid for something you considered worthless was really attractive to opportunists when they can just recycle the same module for 10 different groups.
>>94425355
>>94425033you pay so that the gm actually uses your custom pronouns
>>94425587You could not pay me enough for this. I'd be working my actual real-life job.
>>94425033Its the admiration of ”making it” and ”efficiency” and ”monetization” in the society as a whole. Its the same in videogames. Take WoW for example: people pay real money for others to carry them through latest raids or to arena ratings, or to get to raid runs and buy loot in classic wow ”gdkp” runs. People pay to watch streams in twitch and pay for AI voice to say their ”funny” line and get a smirk out of a streamer. Paying has simply became so easy. Just swipe of a finger on your phone and small amount of money is gone. People pay for a lot of things that used to be free.Nobody who actually plays with his real friends pays for the GM. Same as nobody in a real guild pays for loot in WoW.Socially retarded outcasts with no friends have access to hobbies and games now via discords etc.
lol poor
I've honestly no clue. I could MAYBE understand hiring a GM for a niche game that you'd like to learn and be introduced to but paying for a 5e game is truly bizarre for me. I'm in a community for finding TTRPG games and there's dozens and dozens of free 5e games posted every week. People are paying to get something they could effortlessly find for free
>>94425033I don't play tabletop games, and I think they're cringy and boring, but why shouldn't people charge strangers to entertain them? I imagine GMs have to do a lot of shit to keep track of what players are doing, keeping the story fresh and interesting, all while adapting on the fly, so I assume it takes some level of skill and therefore requires payment. If not, then people wouldn't pay them because they'd just do it themselves for free.
Been thinking of quitting my job and becoming a paid GM living in a van. I could shower at planet fitness. Finally get some proper sleepI sleep 5 hours a night so I can get up at 4:46 a.m. to go to work in a factory full of subhumans. My imagination is a dying ember after 8000 hours in this fluorescent gehennaSaved a lot of money to buy a tinyhóme and I can't. I have a girlfriend but if she left me I'd definitely quit my job I have 60k saved and probably 30 years left to liveIf I could live in a van off of 2k a year I'd be set. DnD and reading books and going for hikes from time to time is all I really care for anymore. I love my gf but more and more she feels like a burden. I miss when I would run games after work when I worked part-time. Gods I was strong thenMy imagination was such that I barely needed to plan the game because of how many ideas would spill out of me. I still did plan though. Now I can tell my GMing has suffered. My vocabulary has shrunk. I look back at old adventures I wrote and old session or campaign notes and almost start crying because I realize I don't have ideas like that anymore.
>>94425033It’s an amazing pleb filter. I’ve never had issues with players who paid, meanwhile free players bring in all sorts of freaks and retards
>>94425033>>94425112>write a novel that gets you dozens of hours of runtime>pretend your players' backstories are interesting and relevant and find a way to integrate them into the novel>tediously narrate said novel, which you have written yourself>struggle to make your players with vidya brain do anything proactively>struggle to "balance" encounters because you have to give the illusion of difficulty so your players can get a false sense of accomplishment>struggle to track stupidly bloated stats for everything>remember to give "muh spotlight" even though the players make themselves irrelevant>have the game die out before anything you were looking forward to anyway because people overstep with their scheduling, can't keep long-term interests, or because the new vidya/show/current thing came out5e DMs should be on a 200k payroll by WOTC themselves.
>>94426156The only time you’re getting paid 200k by WOTC is if you’re a Pinkerton
>>94425033>Is this just a symptom of late stage capitalism or american faggotry?That isn't even real, that a commie talking point.The idea of paid games is that you are getting a quality experience. A GM who is amazing, players who know what they are doing and getting some goodies like 3d printed miniatures of your character. Now all it is about is all the rejects who got kicked out of other games go to paid ones.>>94425363The fall of community spaces doesn't help either.>>94426156I don't mind story games but the issue with those is that everyone thinks D&D can fit as a story game on top of expecting the GM to do all the work while they use spells to avoid every kind of conflict possible which goes against story telling itself.
>>94426851>The idea of paid games is that you are getting a quality experience. A GM who is amazing, players who know what they are doing and getting some goodies like 3d printed miniatures of your characterThere's a big difference between a $5 game and a $20 game
>>94425112>>94425231>>94425311>>94425341>>94425353>>94425368>>94425391>>94426851I have interest in this fight but reddit spacing niggers should be torn apart by dogs.
>>94425148You don't even need to run a GOOD ttrpg to know that 5e is really bad when it comes to prep, just look at Lancer.
>>94425033My group's GM runs paid gming as her full-time job to fund her rulebooks and modules.I get to fill a seat for free. None of the players have been horror story material yet.
>>94426851>you get a quality experience if you play with someone who's seeking to extract money from you instead of someone who's doing it for love of the hobbyRetard take.>>94426909You've been trying to force this meme for years and it's pathetic, fuck off already.
Why do you think solo games are booming now? People want to play, not to mess around with rules.
>>94426963Solo games aren't booming, the vast majority of people see them as the copium they are. TTRPGs are about having fun with other people and rolling dice alone in your room is just sad.
>>94426945I refuse to argue in good faith with anyone clearly posting from a fucking cell phone.
>>94425033Welcome to capitalism.If you're not on the grind, you're failing at capitalism.
>>94425033>The mere concept of people asking to be paid to run a ttrpg is mindboggling to me. >These are supposed to be fun and friendly hobbies that you play with mates in your spare time, not actual jobs.Yeah, getting paid to play and referee games is mind boggling isn't it. It never ever happened before that a game became monetised. Pic obviously related as it's just a bunch of mates in their spare time and does not depict the world's richest football club that has held the #1 spot for most of the last 20 years.
>>94425033I don't pay my GM with cash but I do bring drinks and food to every session.
>>94427270So you want us to act like a buncha jocks?
>>94427270Totally different scenario. Critical Roll is a proper club. You twats are some lads a footie in your spare time.
>>94425033its kind of a chore to give someone pizza and beer over the internet
Because VTT software made it possible and opened a market that was simply not there before. GMing is much more work that just showing up as player and some people took that opportunity. As much as people try to blame 5e it's simply wrong and not being able to wrap your head around such a basic concept only show how much of a fucking brainlet you are. Amusingly enough it seems that charging for your games seems to increase the quality of participating players drastically because it filters shitters that would just use the gamegroup to unload their retarded issues on. So be prepared to see a lot more paid GMing simply due to that.>>94426963Lmao. Solo games are basically just GMs that don't want to deal with player issues anymore.
>>94425033>Late-stage CapitalismStopped reading right there>>94425112It's a PitA to run a Critical Role/[other ttrpg podcast] style game which is what most 5e/NEXT noobs think they want from a DM. It's a doubly shitty situation because when presented with such a prepared game, most people can't improv off of each other anyways so you end up with 1 party face and everyone else dead silent until it's time for combat.
>>94427025What makes you think he's using a phone?
>>94426134Why are you on this board?
>>94427494It would certainly improve you.
>>94425033>WHYI didn't read your post because it's because people lack the friend circles (or the social skills to acquire those circles) and substitute effort with money.Do not pay for games. Do not fall for any of these people trying to say they're higher quality or people take the game more seriously, because that is some absolutely baseless tripe and completely pathetic cope.A sweeping majority of paid-for games are module or pre-written content.Dictated but not read. You can suck my dictated, though.
>>94425033Most of my friends are self-proclaimed "RPG nerds" (as in shit like Dork Souls, Purse Owna, and, and uhh, Final Fart (nailed it)) but none of them want to actually read shit or choose a background for their character the few times I've had them merely attempt to create a character. The chemistry just doesn't happen for some groups, there's such a thing as *too much* autism. I find it funny that tabletop is considered the nerdiest of nerd hobbies when it's the people that literally can't go beyond a video game that are the most socially stunted.
>>94426917Lancer is a sad case of a good game completely ruined by the type of fanbsde it attracted because of the author's political beliefs and social media activity. It's a better game than DnD, but 99% of the people who already know how to play Lancer are people I don't want to interact with in my life ever.
>>9443123399% of the people who already know how to play D&D 5e are people I never want to play a game with, just because how badly modern DnD causes brainrot that makes DnD players absolute shit to play any other game with. They become unable to see any other games except through the lens of "DnD'isms".
>>94425033If it means added security that the DM won't randomly abandon the campaign part way through, will almost always show up for session, and will meet certain requirements instead of half assing it, I can totally understand people being willing to pay a reasonable little fee that across the party over a whole campaign adds up enough to be worth it for the DM.Also, how much is the DM putting into providing resources vs the players? If the DM has a really nice set up, that costs money.
