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Dexo posted:lol definitely not a scam. Do paid games have more stability than free games? That is a reason I'd at least consider. I figure at least the GM would show up to get their pay.
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Jul 20, 2022 00:29
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Arrrthritis posted:Not even a category for 4e D&D smh Don't you know you're the grognards now? That's OSR.
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Jul 20, 2022 00:53
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Paid GMing isn't a scam, though it's something I don't think many people could turn into a career, but what you're basically "selling" is (presumably) your own skills and experience prepping for and running a game for people who specifically want that. It's frankly not any weirder than "hey man if you run a game for us we'll buy the pizza and beer," it's transactional either way, one is just more direct about it, and especially these days as we continue to live through The Event, I would wager it's actually not as easy for most people to just casually throw together a TRPG group as it maybe used to be. Also, even before there was a virus running rampant, if we're being honest here the whole "find a GM off the game store community flyer board" was always a crapshoot. There's no guarantee a paid GM will inherently be good or non-lovely but they're generally much more up-front about what they're offering, what they'll run, how many players they'll take, etc.
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Jul 20, 2022 01:00
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IMO it's not that different from organizing a party at your house vs. hiring a party planner. There's undoubtedly far more parties that were just organized by the host, but there's also a niche for paid party planners and there's nothing inherently wrong with hiring one. You do however have some expectation of professionalism when you hire someone to organize or run a social event for you. Or perhaps a more apt comparison would be hiring a clown to attend your kid's party...
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Jul 20, 2022 01:04
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There were absolutely some weirdos and scams before it got more mainstream. I'm particularly thinking of the professional Dungeon Master who wore his very professional (and terrifying) mask in your house. It seems weird to me that VTT services are looked at as another revenue stream instead of a promotional cost for the company to eat. Your customer base is limited to the player base, you can't only benefit by expanding that by any means necessary. Maybe defray operating costs with microtransactions like pretty dice effects or premium subs.
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Jul 20, 2022 01:14
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Leperflesh posted:IMO it's not that different from organizing a party at your house vs. hiring a party planner. There's undoubtedly far more parties that were just organized by the host, but there's also a niche for paid party planners and there's nothing inherently wrong with hiring one. You do however have some expectation of professionalism when you hire someone to organize or run a social event for you. When you put it that way, I guess people have made livings selling much worse services than DMing a tabletop game. 
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Jul 20, 2022 01:25
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I can't escape the feeling that paying for a GM is like paying someone to be your friend. Which is probably unfair an unfair comparison, but that's where my mind goes.
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Jul 20, 2022 01:38
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Do these matchmaking/paid-GM services have much flexibility in terms of schedule? My fiance and I work nights, and if a paid service would actually let us find games running at times we could make, that might be worth it.
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Jul 20, 2022 01:43
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Colonel Cool posted:I can't escape the feeling that paying for a GM is like paying someone to be your friend. Which is probably unfair an unfair comparison, but that's where my mind goes. I end up thinking of paid [GMing] as akin to paying for a [fishing guide/sex worker/telephone psychic]. You get what you want right now - [a D&D adventure/a nice fishing trip/sex/a conversation], but there's zero chance of it ever becoming anything more than a paid transaction. Sometimes all you need is a fishing trip, sometimes you want to make a fishing buddy, but once you add money to the equation you're probably not taking it back out.
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Jul 20, 2022 01:45
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Colonel Cool posted:I can't escape the feeling that paying for a GM is like paying someone to be your friend. Which is probably unfair an unfair comparison, but that's where my mind goes. I get it but yeah it's just a transaction, like you pay for you and your kids to go to chuck e cheese, where they have built and structured an environment to have fun in. Paid DMing is the same. There's a chance that you get into some weird attachment poo poo, but it's not particularly looked upon well, like if someone got *too* attached to a Nanny or Maid. Ironically that is why one of my paid groups blew up, because some super weird social situations occurred. The DM just canceled the game, and moved on. But that type of stuff can happen in any group, probably a bit easier to sever like that when it's just a transaction and not a real friend group with a long history. Antivehicular posted:Do these matchmaking/paid-GM services have much flexibility in terms of schedule? My fiance and I work nights, and if a paid service would actually let us find games running at times we could make, that might be worth it. Yeah, you can find games at almost anytime, might be a brit or aussie, but yeah.
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Jul 20, 2022 03:33
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There are definitely some weirdnesses to paid GMing like parasociality and boundaries and expectations, but tbh it's kind of much of a muchness with a lot of the other expectations that come from non-paid friend group GMing with regards to expectations of prep, learning systems, as has been brought up the whole "buying the VTT sub" thing (or the more classic "buying the Monster Manual and DMG since players won't be doing that), questions of hosting, meal/snacks expenses, etc. So you're kind of just trading one set of social navigations to have to make for another.
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Jul 20, 2022 03:59
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CitizenKeen posted:I end up thinking of paid [GMing] as akin to paying for a [fishing guide/sex worker/telephone psychic]. You get what you want right now - [a D&D adventure/a nice fishing trip/sex/a conversation], but there's zero chance of it ever becoming anything more than a paid transaction. Sometimes all you need is a fishing trip, sometimes you want to make a fishing buddy, but once you add money to the equation you're probably not taking it back out. so i'm going to expound verbosely and boringly on this a bit, particularly in response to Kai Tave's post just now. I really like this analogy because it gets to the heart of the specific thing that I (and I think many people) find to be... weird? perhaps even actively offputting? about the idea of paying a GM - it turns an activity that typically occurs within the boundaries of friendship into one that happens within the boundaries of 'employment' or 'commerical arrangement' or some such word. That's not to say that friendship is free of social navigations that need to be made, even ones involving the exchange of money. If a friend gives you a lift somewhere you might want to cover their gas. If you're eating a meal with some friends you'd probably split the bill, possibly based on the amount everyone ate or possibly just equally. If one person ate a lot more than anyone else, they might pay more. If (say) it's an expensive restaurant and one person is a lot poorer than the others they might have their portion covered by the rest of the group, even if they don't ask for it. And any and all of these interactions could become awkward or unpleasant or result in conflict if a person handled them poorly - possibly by acting in a way that seemed to be taking advantage of the generosity of one's friends (say, if the poor person whose meal will probably be paid for by the others insists on going to the most expensive restaurant possible because that way they're getting the most expensive food for no money) or possibly by acting in a way that is *too* generous (e.g, if one person insisted on paying for everyone else's meal, even against their protests, they might appear to be trying to show off their wealth or of buying the others's friendship). But just because there are some social navigations, even social 'transactions' involving money that occur as part of a friendship, doesn't mean that every exchange of money can occur within a friendship without changing the nature of the relationship. It's a blurry line and obviously exceptions exist in some circumstances. But I would say, in general, that the people I pay money to (or who pay me money) are not my friends. My boss is not my friend. My landlord is not my friend (if my landlord was my friend he wouldn't be about to evict me if I stopped paying him rent). A cab driver is not my friend, and he's not giving me a lift because he's my friend, he's giving me a lift because I'm paying him. I know, and he knows, that even if he thought I was a rude idiot he'd still give me a lift because that's his job and he needs to feed his family. I don't dislike the people I interact with commercially, and some of them I would probably be friends with under other circumstances, but the fact that our relationship is fundamentally commercial makes the possibility of a simultaneous friendship awkward and weird. There is an inherent power dynamic that doesn't exist between friends, or at least doesn't exist to anywhere near the same degree. I don't think the expectations and social boundaries of friendship are much of a muchness with the expectations and social boundaries of a commercial relationship. I just don't. I don't think that you can just swap one for the other and say that the situation is no worse. I'm not saying 'nobody should ever be willing to pay for a GM' or that doing so is a betrayal of the concept of friendship or anything like that. But I guess I am saying that if you're paying your GM, your GM is probably not - probably can't be - your friend. And for (at least) me and (I think) many people, your tabletop RPG group are sort of assumedly your friends, or at least strangers who you are going to become friends with once you get to know them. Playing TTRPGs together *is* friendship. The idea of swapping that out for a commercial relationship feels like swapping out one's friend for a paid employee. again, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I am saying that if you do it, then you say "well, there's not really any difference, it's the same activity as a friend GMing just with slightly different expectations!" then... that feels weird in a way that I can't help but want to disagree with, because it implies the equivalence of friendship and commercial relationships in a way that I just don't think is accurate to the world we live in.
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Jul 20, 2022 05:23
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Yeah, even aside from issues like lovely internet personalities charging hundreds for a seat, the very idea of turning a social experience into a transactional one makes the game feel more like a commodity or a service instead of a hobby. Just like plumbing, you might get a better outcome from paying a professional, but it’s more fun to watch your friends play around in poo poo.
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Jul 20, 2022 06:10
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a computing pun posted:*snip* I mean, it is the same activity. Just without the friendship social structure layered over it. No one is saying there is some equivalence in friendship and commercial relationship. They are completely two separate things, someone could be both but they don't have to be. I just don't think the base action "playing a tabletop game with some people" needs to have the tag "be friends" over it. Like I have played at Cons with randos, I would not call any of those people my friends, I have ran one shots for people in rando discords, none of them I consider friends. Cool and nice people, yes, but friends absolutely not. I may have a stricter definition of friends than you, but like at the point where the relationship is simply "be friendly and nice to another for a period of time" then that extremely can coexist with paying for a service(should be the defauilt?). I think paying for a service, and being friends can coexist on it's face, as like I'm paying a family friend his normal rate to fix my floors and walls at my old house, and there is no problem there, as like we are grown rear end adults, and can talk out any problems as they arise if they should arise. The notion of playing TTRPG's together being friendship to me is a far more dangerous statement than anything involving being friends and doing commercial services with one another. The Idea that just because I played a game with you, for 4 hours and we were cool and had fun, means that I know anything about you as a person, or anything going on in your life outside of what came up in those 4 hours is to me silly. As that info is like core to friendship for me. I'm tired, it's late, I'm sorry if this comes off mean, I really don't mean for it to. I'm just explaining my thoughts stream of consciousness style. Edit: Once again to clarify, I get if it's something that doesn't interest you, or seems unfun or something like that. But just explaining where I disagree with you. Dexo fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 06:35
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It just depends on what you want in a tabletop RPG and what draws you to the activity. I personally can't see myself ever going for a paid GM since for me playing tabletop RPGs is definitely something I only like to do with friends. Aside from my preferences I really don't see anything weird with paid GMing, if anything it's a good thing that a bunch of people can make a living doing it and the players get to play a game they probably otherwise wouldn't be able to play.
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Jul 20, 2022 07:28
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To be clear I don't think paid GMing and friend GMing are 1-1 identical, I just think that in terms of circumstances to navigate and social mores and other things, that they both come with that stuff, just different varieties of that stuff. Like of course a paid GM isn't your friend, but it's also pretty hosed up that the default expectation for being the GM of a friend group is "of course they'll buy the books we don't want to, do all the prep work, pay for VTT subscriptions, etc" and I think that gets glossed over a bit too quickly throughout the hobby as a whole. GMs are in fact expected to put in extra work and extra money in order to participate within the same hobby where it's just a given that 3-4 other people in the friend group will not, perhaps ever, and that's considered perfectly normal and just the way of things. Given the extent of all that frequently unexamined additional work and out of pocket expenditures GMs are tacitly expected to shoulder to participate in the hobby (which also, let's be clear here, comes with a bunch of its own baggage of the "well I can't find anyone to run a game for me, guess I have to GM or give up on roleplaying" variety, another thing that's considered Just The Way Things Are which a bunch of people take for granted), I do not personally feel like paid GMing is some super weird thing that upends the existing 100% equitable dynamic. e; and to be clear, a bunch of these unexamined assumptions come from the games themselves. Traditional TRPG design puts all the onus of prepwork on the GM's shoulders. D&D sells you three core rulebooks, two of which players are unlikely to need to purchase. There are games which mitigate and minimize these things, self-contained books and games where players are given more of the responsibilities traditionally given over entirely to the GM, but at the same time it's impossible to ignore the elephant in the room that the most popular and pervasive elfgaming out there is still good ol' D&D, which is as GM-burdening and GM-expense-oriented as they come. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 08:16
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My only issue with paid GMing is that… it just doesn’t make any sense with the groups I have. Our games work because they’re developed (characters/world/stories) by us and for us, and the GM is just one of the 4-6 people involved in that. A GM that didn’t know us would be strange, and I can’t imagine what they could bring to the table that could overcome that.
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Jul 20, 2022 08:20
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admanb posted:My only issue with paid GMing is that… it just doesn’t make any sense with the groups I have. Our games work because they’re developed (characters/world/stories) by us and for us, and the GM is just one of the 4-6 people involved in that. A GM that didn’t know us would be strange, and I can’t imagine what they could bring to the table that could overcome that. Like a lot of things, I don't think paid GMing could possibly be for everyone, but a lot of people don't have real same-wavelength friend groups that are also TRPG groups, or they can't find a GM who wants to and/or knows how to run a particular game. How many stories are there about "I'd love to play [GAME] but the GM only runs D&D and Pathfinder, and if I GM [GAME] then I don't get to play it myself," well with paid GMing there is in theory an answer to that, in much the same way that you might normally go to a convention to play a con game, only instead you pay the game to come to you. I don't think anyone wants or expects paid GMing to replace the usual "get some nerds together and play a game" thing, more that the very notion of paid GMing is no longer simply the provenance of grognards.txt stories about weirdos with Dungeon Master Masks.
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Jul 20, 2022 08:24
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Kai Tave posted:To be clear I don't think paid GMing and friend GMing are 1-1 identical, I just think that in terms of circumstances to navigate and social mores and other things, that they both come with that stuff, just different varieties of that stuff. Like of course a paid GM isn't your friend, but it's also pretty hosed up that the default expectation for being the GM of a friend group is "of course they'll buy the books we don't want to, do all the prep work, pay for VTT subscriptions, etc" and I think that gets glossed over a bit too quickly throughout the hobby as a whole. I was trying to wrangle a post into being but it was just this but worse.
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Jul 20, 2022 09:03
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Kai Tave posted:Like a lot of things, I don't think paid GMing could possibly be for everyone, but a lot of people don't have real same-wavelength friend groups that are also TRPG groups, or they can't find a GM who wants to and/or knows how to run a particular game. How many stories are there about "I'd love to play [GAME] but the GM only runs D&D and Pathfinder, and if I GM [GAME] then I don't get to play it myself," well with paid GMing there is in theory an answer to that.... Except that paid GMs have to basically run just D&D and Pathfinder in order to be popular enough to be a going concern.
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Jul 20, 2022 11:04
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has anyone said findm yet? ok, bye.
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Jul 20, 2022 11:24
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hyphz posted:Except that paid GMs have to basically run just D&D and Pathfinder in order to be popular enough to be a going concern. If I was paid GMing then yeah I would expect those to comprise most of my work, but I'd also make it clear that I'm willing to run less mainstream systems on request if only for my own sanity
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Jul 20, 2022 11:43
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Tarnop posted:If I was paid GMing then yeah I would expect those to comprise most of my work, but I'd also make it clear that I'm willing to run less mainstream systems on request if only for my own sanity https://startplaying.games/request-custom
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Jul 20, 2022 11:48
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Tarnop posted:If I was paid GMing then yeah I would expect those to comprise most of my work, but I'd also make it clear that I'm willing to run less mainstream systems on request if only for my own sanity And that's fair, but from the players' point of view it might not be ideal because of the different skill perceptions of game. If someone is primarily advertising running Curse of Strahd or whatever in D&D 5e with "other systems" as a sidenote, it doesn't appear to me that they would be all that good at running Glitch - even if actually they would be, and they were only advertising Strahd because that's what sells. It's probably an adverse selection variant of some kind.
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Jul 20, 2022 12:26
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https://twitter.com/NoHateInGaming/status/1549479240390901760?t=u6G4A0NNrbub8u9GFuzJsQ&s=19 Well then.
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Jul 20, 2022 12:42
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"Please not about sub races within humans."
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Jul 20, 2022 12:45
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What's the next level beyond "mask off?" Because god drat that is some Myfarog level poo poo.
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Jul 20, 2022 12:55
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The Nordics and Greys are well established in real life UFO lore, so that's not totally unexplained - but holy gently caress.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:06
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Saw this yesterday and it’s still gross today. Not unexpected but super gross.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:10
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See you got the real obvious racism which draws attention away from the implied triple brackets around the David Icke lizard people right above.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:11
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Truly the pit is bottomless.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:20
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moths posted:The Nordics and Greys are well established in real life UFO lore, so that's not totally unexplained - but holy gently caress. I'm sorry, there's a race of Nazi supermen that's well established in real UFO lore? What? Also:  I thought humans were extinct or something? Make up your minds!
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Jul 20, 2022 13:29
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So if you can make it past 96 hours of no sleep you're good for the next month and change, that seems right
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Jul 20, 2022 13:33
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GreenMetalSun posted:I'm sorry, there's a race of Nazi supermen that's well established in real UFO lore? What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_aliens Basically a weak visual shorthand for the "Good" aliens was making them tall white humans and that turned into a Thing.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:34
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Yes a lot of very old UFO lore said that the things driving them looked like big nordic white people. UFO encounters didn't start describing the the pilots as little green men or greys until after the Barney and Betty Hill case blew up in the media. By pure coincidence I'm sure the Outer Limits episode with these guys in it predates the Hills describing their abductors.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:35
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Jul 20, 2022 13:38
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Welp, uh, okay. Learned something today. Anyways, the trick is to stay awake for 1023 hours. They can't touch you.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:38
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Notahippie posted:That's my major takeaway. From what I can tell, two whole-rear end businesses both discussed a deal and then actually exchanged money and resources without a signed contract specifying what exactly they were agreeing on. I get that wargames are a hobbyist thing, but that's still kind of astounding - you'd think at least one of them would have said "wait, before I give you my stuff let's write down what we're agreeing to in order to make sure we're on the same page." Even if you don't want to get the lawyers involved, it seems like you should at least have something to point to where both parties agree to something - instead both parties are showing emails where they're negotiating, but no email where both parties are saying "yes, I agree to the last terms proposed" I wonder if both sides intentionally left it vague thinking that they would somehow outsmart the other. Only to find out they were both trying to do the same thing.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:43
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https://twitter.com/NoHateInGaming/status/1549555522323496960 I know all the secret rituals of ANTIFA and BLM https://twitter.com/NoHateInGaming/status/1549564809217204224
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Jul 20, 2022 13:49
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poo poo written by racists always reads like it was written by a 14 year old.
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