• Re: [NBC Miami] 36-year-old makes $37,000 a year leading Dungeons & Dra

    From Justisaur@21:1/5 to Kyonshi on Thu Apr 25 14:32:39 2024
    XPost: rec.games.frp.misc

    On 4/25/2024 10:49 AM, Kyonshi wrote:


    tl;dr: wanna live of dnd? her husband makes 90.000$ a year. In other
    words: marry rich

    My wife makes that, I made 70k last year, but where we live to get that
    is expensive, we're in a tiny 70's house (about 1000 sq ft.) that's
    falling apart, needs probably 150k, maybe more in deferred maintenance
    from the previous owners, and 2 kids in a just so-so neighborhood &
    school.



    Source: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/business/money-report/36-year-old-makes-37000-a-year-leading-dungeons-dragons-games-if-youre-doing-it-anyway-you-might-as-well-get-paid/3294720/

    36-year-old makes $37,000 a year leading Dungeons & Dragons games: If
    ‘you're doing it anyway, you might as well' get paid
    By Mike Winters,CNBC and Raffi Paul,CNBC...

    ...in-person tabletop roleplaying game sessions that range from $375 to
    $750...

    Is that per person? Probably not, if not that's about $15 per hour
    minimum for players assuming 5 person games. If her games take 15
    hours (as is said later) between prep and play she should be getting
    about $25 an hour.

    ...She makes $24,000 as a dungeon master for the company, plus another
    $13,000 teaching writing at nearby Westminster University in Salt Lake
    City, where she lives with her husband, Scott. He makes $96,000 as a communications director at a state agency.

    A little discrepancy there. She really makes $24k from DMing... for
    another company. Sounds like she's getting screwed on pay.

    "That really opened the doors to networking for other types of work,
    because when people were looking for a writer who could do fiction at a professional level, my name would start coming up," says Murdock.
    Getting hired as a professional Dungeon Master

    $24k isn't really opening the doors for anything.


    Even if she didn't do it for a living, Murdock says she'd still be
    planning D&D campaigns for friends, reading game books or writing fiction.

    Since hobbies can become side hustles, "it's important to remember that creative work is work," she says.

    As a friend once said to her: "You're going to be doing it anyway, you
    might as well find someone to pay you for it."

    And that's how you turn your hobby into a chore.

    "I run about three games a week on a busy week," says Murdock. Each
    ongoing game, including prep, takes about four to five hours a week of
    her time.

    24k for 15 hrs a week, assuming a couple weeks off a year she's making
    $3.20 an hour?!? Maybe there's some overhead like venue, scheduling
    done by someone else or something, but she's really getting screwed at
    that rate!

    In June 2023, Mari and Scott purchased a detached two-bedroom home in
    downtown Salt Lake City for $535,000, with a down payment of $40,000. To
    afford the home, they took on a personal loan within their family, which
    works out to $777 in monthly payments in addition to their mortgage.

    So they got a 60 year loan with no interest from family. They should be
    paying ~$3,300 a month with a bank loan. Must be nice.

    --
    -Justisaur

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  • From Spawn@21:1/5 to Spalls Hurgenson on Sat Apr 27 18:43:18 2024
    On 27/04/2024 1:22 am, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

    On 4/25/2024 10:49 AM, Kyonshi wrote:

    Personally, I can't imagine anything worse than making my hobby my
    job. It turns the thing I enjoy most into something I /have/ to do.
    One of the reasons I enjoy the things I do is that I /don't/ have to
    them. The worst parts of DMing are that feeling of obligation trying
    to pump out the next adventure; that you're players are waiting on you
    to create another interesting and fun experience. Especially when
    there's a deadline ("Oh god, we're meeting up to play in TWO days and
    I haven't even started the final dungeon!!!").

    Throw in the idea that people are PAYING me for the privilege? I'd go
    nuts. Not to mention, I'm sure quality and experimentalism would go
    down. Can't take risks, not if you want that filthy lucre to keep
    coming in; just pump out pablum.

    DM for money? No thank you. Not me.


    Yeah, it just sounds kind of stressful to me. I have been running games
    for so many decades that it's kind of just second nature for me, with
    lots of winging it and flying by the seat of my pants. If I was getting
    paid for it I'd feel obliged to bring some kind of level of
    professionalism to proceedings which would just kind of kill the reason
    I do it, ie, to relax and have fun with my wife and my mates - no
    glasses of wine behind the DM's screen if I feel like it, taking
    exhaustive notes rather than mostly leaving that to my players and
    asking them to recap for me at the start of every session (haha), etc,
    etc, etc. As you say, all more in the name of trying for an acceptable
    level of consistency rather than taking risks, taking the game to crazy
    and unexpected places and so forth.

    That said if people want to do this and others want to pay, more power
    to them I guess. But the best payment for me will always be everyone
    around the table having a good time and, ideally, getting really into
    the adventure.

    --
    As always, I remain...
    Spawn

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  • From Justisaur@21:1/5 to Kyonshi on Sat Apr 27 17:21:10 2024
    On 4/26/2024 4:02 PM, Kyonshi wrote:
    On 4/26/2024 5:22 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

    On 4/25/2024 10:49 AM, Kyonshi wrote:
    https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/business/money-report/36-year-old-makes-37000-a-year-leading-dungeons-dragons-games-if-youre-doing-it-anyway-you-might-as-well-get-paid/3294720/
    36-year-old makes $37,000 a year leading Dungeons & Dragons games: If
    ‘you're doing it anyway, you might as well' get paid
    By Mike Winters,CNBC and Raffi Paul,CNBC...

    Personally, I can't imagine anything worse than making my hobby my
    job. It turns the thing I enjoy most into something I /have/ to do.
    One of the reasons I enjoy the things I do is that I /don't/ have to
    them. The worst parts of DMing are that feeling of obligation trying
    to pump out the next adventure; that you're players are waiting on you
    to create another interesting and fun experience. Especially when
    there's a deadline ("Oh god, we're meeting up to play in TWO days and
    I haven't even started the final dungeon!!!").

    Throw in the idea that people are PAYING me for the privilege? I'd go
    nuts. Not to mention, I'm sure quality and experimentalism would go
    down. Can't take risks, not if you want that filthy lucre to keep
    coming in; just pump out pablum.

    DM for money? No thank you. Not me.

    there was the idea floating around at one point that players would
    actually chip in some money for every session so the DM could afford
    buying all those expensive books. But I never saw it done properly.

    Never saw that, but I did get splat books as gifts. Of course the rule
    I had I wouldn't allow anything in a splat book unless I owned it,
    probably helped, along with a free pass to try anything once if you were
    the one who bought it for me. :D

    --
    -Justisaur

    ø-ø
    (\_/)\
    `-'\ `--.___,
    ¶¬'\( ,_.-'
    \\
    ^'

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)