I’m recruiting for a Kingmaker PF2 paid game. The game was initially set up through StartPlayingGames, and is being run through Discord and Roll20. However, I have a growing shared content nexus here to help with some of those books and data sources! Characters will be played with the Free Archetype, Ancestry Paragon, and Gradual Ability Boost rules in place, and starting at Level 1.
The game is currently 1 session in, thanks to the loss of several players due to life circumstances. There’s a good chance we’ll be rebooting as a result, but that’s not a lock just yet - so if you’re interested, please think about if you’d like to start out at the beginning, or skip the intro material and jump straight into the action! Also, if you are familiar with the original adventure path, or the CRPG, or even this version of the game… I have a few wrinkles planned to throw in for you over time.
Sounds like a good time, but I can just never pull the trigger on a weekly game that’s $20 a pop. I never know if I’m in the majority or minority in that view, and I totally get the idea of paying a GM for their services but I just can never see it being more than $5-10 a session per player and having that make financial sense.
That’s a fair opinion, though that’s actually pretty much the average that folks are charging when they’re trying to do this.
As a general matter of ‘doing the math,’ there’s also the non-playtime/prep, books, and fees that come into the calculation. If a given game only involves prep time equal to the playtime (and it’s frequently more) and ~7.5% fees (averaging a couple of platforms I’ve looked at) that works out to about $2.30-3.10/person/hour of work on the GM’s end of things. And that’s leaving out the fact that, for this campaign, the first $200 or so just goes to paying for the books and VTT elements. The hourly rate on the player’s end looks worse, certainly. (This is what happens when you get a retired accountant doing this!)
But hey, at least you agree that it’s fair for GMs to get paid something - beats a couple people I’ve heard from!
I totally get it, and I don’t think charging that much is wrong or bad, so hopefully it didn’t come across like that. As someone who runs games more than plays in them I just find myself wishing it didn’t cost that much and if people DO pay that much, I really hope they get a high level experience. I would enraged you pay $80 a month for mediocre GM work (bad or no RP/voices/immersion/rules understanding/etc.)
To each their own though, I think I just come from a place of buying all the material as a mostly forever DM/GM and never expecting to recoup that money, because my friends enjoy the games I run and the strangers I have played with do as well.
I totally have considered running pay to play games, I just think I’m ok with making. It a more accessible fee and stretching the recoup out much further.
I’ve reduced the pricing on my Kingmaker game, and shifted recruiting entirely over to Demiplane. Hoping for a bit more luck heading into the new year - plans to play it on Tuesday afternoons (CST)
Leismann is a pretty good GM! He was running Abomination Vaults for me on Roll20 for several sessions before conflict with another player and some further personal issues led me to have to move on. Solid guy and definitely recommend his games. Heck if our times line up I definitely want to join him for another campaign!
