I’m a noob at role-playing myself, but I just played my first online game recently. So I don’t have a ton of perspective, but I was impressed at the amount of behind-the-scenes work the GM must have done to make it all run so smoothly. Since it was somewhat history-based, there was research, and there was a ton of math in calculating battle results.
So I can see where someone who’s really good at it could make a job out of it. Why not? I don’t have that kind of money to spend, but if you’re into playing, having someone with that much skill running your campaign for you would be a real treat.
As far as the friendliness goes, I see that more as a customer service type of thing. I can tell you, in the retail world, it’s always important to offer hospitality, to make the customers feel welcome and at ease. I see him working the game sessions in a friendly style to be part of offering a great gaming experience, not “paying for friends”… but that’s me.
Addendum: I did get away with some shenanigans but nothing game breaking. I rolled a Neutral Lizardfolk Sorcerer/Warlock that had a fondness for playing the bongos and because of being able to cast druidcraft cantrip to make plants grow my character used it to keep a mobile evergreen bush on his person at all times. Like a shitty ghillie suit. I rarely got good rolls to successfully use it to deceive anyone. My character also ended up growing a giant tree in a small town over the course of the campaign because i was too poor to buy land so my workaround was to grow a tree on public land.
I don’t think that paying for a fun D&D session is all that outrageous. I mean people pay money to get locked into an escape room for an hour or so, paying to hang out with friends and be entertained in a collaborative manner for 3 hours would likely be up some people’s alley. I don’t have any IRL friends that play D&D though, but still i prefer having an ongoing online campaign over a one time thing.
I have in th past been a paid DM via Roll20 and Discord, not for the typ of cost given in the article, but enough to cover purchase of the module etc.
There does seem to be a lack of available DM’s (certainly in my area) and if one is prepared to give his time up to not only run a session for others but also do the out of game prep work and answer players questions/queries, why shouldn’t they get a small amount of recompense for it.
I currently run 2 games at my FLGS and another for youngsters at a local gaming group FOC as I quite honestly enjoy DMing, and have done for over 30 years now.
Sadly my paid games came to an end due to changes in my work and family commitments making sessions hit and miss, but I’m hoping now that things have settled back down to perhaps start running one or two again.
There does seem to be a lack of available DM’s (certainly in my area) and if one is prepared to give his time up to not only run a session for others but also do the out of game prep work and answer players questions/queries…
I’d rather play because I’m more in it for the silly voices and lulz. But I have to GM if I want to get my game on because no one I know is interested in the job. Which I can’t blame them for not wanting to do. It’s a details oriented sort of thing where you have to have a lot of plates spinning at once and I’m too busy trying to figure out which offensive Scottish stereotype to use for the dwarfs.
I have always heard there is a severe lack of GMs, but never experienced it and now I’m mostly a GM and play very little. I know people that got paid for face-to-face games because they would bring their terrain and models and everything else to make it an experience, but it makes sense it would translate to roll20 as well.
I think my Curse of Strahd game might be ending early (one of the player’s PC died for to foreseeable future), maybe I should try and get in on this for my every other Friday game.
