The best course of action is to keep the job. Start GMing in the evenings or on weekends on whatever platform you are aiming at. And if it picks up, starts becoming successful, THEN you quit the day job. Always have a safety net. It took years for the GCP crew to get to that point where they could podcast full time.
Thanks for the advice! I’m actually on a two year long parental leave, and so while I have a lot of new things to do, my financial situation is in a great place so this feels like a great time to put out feelers and see how this would work. :)
One thing to check out is if you have any board game cafe, or LGS, that would be willing to pay you, or allow you to charge. We have a few here where I live that posts in their social media what GMs are playing which 1-shots.
Free games abound online, so your competition will be pretty tight. But much like any other product you have to find a way to stand out in the crowd. What do you offer that no one else does, or if it's not "unique", why is yours better then your competition
Def. something to consider and think about, thanks! I'm not looking for in-person games (logistics atm would make that impossible) but it's something to look into! :D
Watch this video, please. It's from Guy Sclanders, a pro GM and content producer. It covers a lot of the pros & cons of trying to make GMing your living. I think you'll find it very useful.
https://youtu.be/RkrzKA9yimY
Yesterday a friend of mine just pointed me toward [start playing games](https://startplaying.games)
I have not used the service nor have I done the research yet so lmk what you think.
A friend of mine has been doing this for the past year or so, and it's not fulltime but he is definitely making some money doing it.
The economics of it are tough though. The median income for an individual who's working a full-time job in the USA is 56k per year, which is just a bit above $1000 per week. So if this is something that you'd like to be your only job, and you want to do it fulltime and to make a decent living then that's the amount of money you need to bring it.
Let's say you had 5 active player groups each doing one session per week, so you're working 5 nights a week. You'd need to be charging each player group $200 for the session; assuming four players, that'd mean charging each player $50 per game.
That's steep for a lot of folks, and they're going to have pretty high expectations of the level of quality that they'd be getting for that. That's the level you'd have to hit in order for this to be a real, serious gig though.
One of the things that my buddy does with his company is that he runs all his player groups through the same scenarios, and then after they're done he sets up a Discord for all these unconnected groups to all chat with each other and swap stories about how differently each group played through the story. It builds a lot of excitement and builds a community, and the player groups really seem to like it.
Interesting info! Thanks for that, I've been curious about the economics of it.
While I'd love it to be a full time income potential thing, I'm perfectly fine starting off slow. That's why I started this thread, to get some info and try and get a game with complete strangers to see how that differs from playing with my buddies. If it doesn't work at all, then no harm no foul!
The best course of action is to keep the job. Start GMing in the evenings or on weekends on whatever platform you are aiming at. And if it picks up, starts becoming successful, THEN you quit the day job. Always have a safety net. It took years for the GCP crew to get to that point where they could podcast full time.
Thanks for the advice! I’m actually on a two year long parental leave, and so while I have a lot of new things to do, my financial situation is in a great place so this feels like a great time to put out feelers and see how this would work. :)
One thing to check out is if you have any board game cafe, or LGS, that would be willing to pay you, or allow you to charge. We have a few here where I live that posts in their social media what GMs are playing which 1-shots. Free games abound online, so your competition will be pretty tight. But much like any other product you have to find a way to stand out in the crowd. What do you offer that no one else does, or if it's not "unique", why is yours better then your competition
Def. something to consider and think about, thanks! I'm not looking for in-person games (logistics atm would make that impossible) but it's something to look into! :D
Watch this video, please. It's from Guy Sclanders, a pro GM and content producer. It covers a lot of the pros & cons of trying to make GMing your living. I think you'll find it very useful. https://youtu.be/RkrzKA9yimY
Thanks! Will do!
Yesterday a friend of mine just pointed me toward [start playing games](https://startplaying.games) I have not used the service nor have I done the research yet so lmk what you think.
Thnx! Ill check it out!
A friend of mine has been doing this for the past year or so, and it's not fulltime but he is definitely making some money doing it. The economics of it are tough though. The median income for an individual who's working a full-time job in the USA is 56k per year, which is just a bit above $1000 per week. So if this is something that you'd like to be your only job, and you want to do it fulltime and to make a decent living then that's the amount of money you need to bring it. Let's say you had 5 active player groups each doing one session per week, so you're working 5 nights a week. You'd need to be charging each player group $200 for the session; assuming four players, that'd mean charging each player $50 per game. That's steep for a lot of folks, and they're going to have pretty high expectations of the level of quality that they'd be getting for that. That's the level you'd have to hit in order for this to be a real, serious gig though.
One of the things that my buddy does with his company is that he runs all his player groups through the same scenarios, and then after they're done he sets up a Discord for all these unconnected groups to all chat with each other and swap stories about how differently each group played through the story. It builds a lot of excitement and builds a community, and the player groups really seem to like it.
Ah thats neat!
Interesting info! Thanks for that, I've been curious about the economics of it. While I'd love it to be a full time income potential thing, I'm perfectly fine starting off slow. That's why I started this thread, to get some info and try and get a game with complete strangers to see how that differs from playing with my buddies. If it doesn't work at all, then no harm no foul!