Careers related to PnP?

[Aegis013]

Hi all, I've been pondering possible career paths and have come to the realization that probably the closest thing I could have to a dream job would be the serve as a DM/GM for money. (Playing would be even better, but it just doesn't seem possible)

Has anybody done anything like that or have any thoughts about it?

My biggest concern is that you can get pretty reasonable quality of GM service free of charge (just take a look at the PbP section on this very site), so it would be extremely difficult to attract players willing to pay.

After consulting with players I've GM'd for in the past, and been friends with for years, carefully tailoring campaigns to their play styles and preferences, they say they'd probably not be willing to pay any more than $5 each for a 6 hour session, so even if I did attract players willing to pay, it'd be hard to make more than pocket change.

So what kind of careers exist that could utilize PnP GM's skills? And how might one go about pursuing them?

[Tyndmyr]

Hi all, I've been pondering possible career paths and have come to the realization that probably the closest thing I could have to a dream job would be the serve as a DM/GM for money. (Playing would be even better, but it just doesn't seem possible)

Has anybody done anything like that or have any thoughts about it?

My biggest concern is that you can get pretty reasonable quality of GM service free of charge (just take a look at the PbP section on this very site), so it would be extremely difficult to attract players willing to pay.

After consulting with players I've GM'd for in the past, and been friends with for years, carefully tailoring campaigns to their play styles and preferences, they say they'd probably not be willing to pay any more than $5 each for a 6 hour session, so even if I did attract players willing to pay, it'd be hard to make more than pocket change.

So what kind of careers exist that could utilize PnP GM's skills? And how might one go about pursuing them?

Well, you can write adventures. That also pays poorly. But you can get some beer money at least doing it on the side.

Writing systems is even tougher. Getting to critical mass with a system against all the other RPGs out there is brutal.

You can write actual books, but the competition there is fierce, and you're getting further away from gaming. Same, same most other tangentally related jobs. The game industry itself is small and competitive, and while games may give you useful skills for other jobs, other jobs are generally much less fun than gaming.

[Aegis013]

I appreciate the feedback. Understandable on the gaming industry, particularly with the rather smallish set of interested parties creating demand who will buy products and how many of those products tend to be non-perishable so consumers won't come back for another round unless something entirely new is created.


...and while games may give you useful skills for other jobs, other jobs are generally much less fun than gaming.

It's acceptable if they're much less fun than gaming, but in what jobs might those skills be directly (or somewhat indirectly) useful?

I've had someone suggest tax lawyer in the past, since that might entail pushing the limits of a system of rules, rather somewhat like optimizing. What else might there be?

[Corlindale]

This is probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I think the skills required for teaching are surprisingly similar to the ones required for GMing. You prepare a session/lesson, while considering what you know about your players/students. You estimate how much time each part is going to take as best you can (but always make sure you have backup material in case they get further than expected). You have certain expectations about how things will go and prepare accordingly, but sometimes they will do something you didn't expect and you'll have to improvise.

Large sections of the Gamemastery Guide for Pathfinder could seriously be a Teacher's Guide if you just switched a few nouns around. Even the archetypical player types they list are pretty much student types too.

[Aegis013]

This is probably not exactly what you're looking for...

This is exactly the kind of the thing I'm looking for! I hadn't made those connections between teaching and GMing. Thank you!

Edit: Other thoughts still welcome and encouraged.