This notion just completely baffles me and fills me with despair; I understand people reaping the benefits of gaining viewers and subscribers on youtube and twitch playing DND as well as other games, but these discussions have been talking about being paid for private games.
This conjures up many issues, firstly, it is a game that we play with friends or with people that share a passion for the game. I do not understand why people would seek out random people to play a TTRPG and hand over money just to take part?
I would hate to sit down and add up how much money I have spent running my home games, I consider myself lucky if my players bring their own food!
Don't get me wrong I love my current group, none of them have ever played anything like this before and nothing gives me more pleasure than presenting them with a deck of spell cards for their character or a new mini or even a set of dice.
After I realised how into the game they were getting I brought and organised a folder for each of their characters; I just love every aspect about running a game for friends and what I get back from them is worth more than money.
That is why I cannot get my head around this idea of paying to play, it seems really impersonal and every aspect would become about the money.
How much time would you spend prepping a game, would that effect how much you were charging?
Would you cut a game short because the time was up rather than going with it until an appropriate moment?
Would your rate be dependant on how 'good a DM you are?' How would you even quantify that?
The whole situation just feels plain wrong, you couldn't justify how good you are based on your prep time or amount of years you have played, I know that GM's and DM's everywhere often spend a lot of time prepping for games and it can sometimes feel like your players don't appreciate the amount of effort that goes into it, especially if your players take a path you hadn't prepared for and end up throwing away a whole sessions prep, but when that happened to me, we had one of the best games we ever had! (I am a huge advocate for improv gaming but I'll talk about that another time).
I think its important to remember that DMing or GMing is a choice and although some of us take up the role because no one else would (like I did) I consider it a privilege to be able to share this experience with friends or even strangers that will become friends. The process of playing RPG's for me is discovering the heroes we all want to be (after we have gotten over being power drunk murder-hobbos) and I don't think that is something we should be paying for.
I also don't like the thought of hearing peoples awkward experiences, which I am sure would go a little something like:
'Last night just as we were packing up our character sheets and putting away our dice, our DM turned to us and said "just leave the money on the table on the way out," and I was like, erm...sorry I don't pay for role-play"
The whole thing just makes me feel dirty and in need of a very hot shower.
My other issue with this situation is how do you know what your paying for? If a new player decides to join a group and they are paying to play are they going to be expecting what they have seen on Acquisitions inc or Critical Role? if they are I am sure they are going to leave disappointed and not likely to play again.
If there are any situations in which you think paying to play would work please let us know, the only way I think I would have payed to play is back when I was trying to find a group to play with; if I had the option I would have jumped at the chance to pay someone and just join a group, but would I have played long term? probably not, would I have given up and not explored this amazing hobby? more than likely, would I have been disappointed that it wasn't what I had hoped it would be? maybe.
Any thoughts on the issue? Tweet at us @WisSave and by using:
#IDontPayForRolePlay
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