How to Be a Professional GM 

This is an excellent question. In my experience, people don't expect more than usual. I think it's important to remember that when people pay a GM they're not choosing a paid game over a free game, they're choosing a paid game over nothing. If they had a group of friends they could play with for free, they would, and if they found a free group of strangers online (say on Roll20 or something) there's always the worry that it would be inconsistent or unprofessional. So don't think of it as trying to compete with--and needing to be better than--a casual game with friends. You just need to show up on time and tell a good story.

I am very bad about tagging my videos, but I need to be better at it. Thanks for the reminder.

@@danwells9305 1000 apologies. It was not meant to make more work for you. If you wish, I can share a vid where I learned them from. Only takes an extra minute or two. Just thought I can help. Call it a teacher personality, always helping even when not being asked.

@@gr1mace717 No apology needed! Like I said, it's something I need to be better at. If you've got helpful advice I'd love to see it.

D&D 5e is, absolutely, the most popular. Beyond that I don't know if I have any useful data--Pathfinder is pretty big, but I've only gotten one request for that, and it's only for a one-shot. I'm running two Pendragon campaigns, but that's because I evangelize it all the time so I doubt that's a widely reproducible statistic. I'm also currently running a The One Ring campaign. In the past I've run (for money) 7th Sea, Dresden Files Accelerated, Star Trek Adventures, Alien, and...a ton of D&D.

@@danwells9305 Fallout RPG is right around the corner and will be an RPG that the newer RPGers will transition into because of the name recognition. It's a 2d20 system, so you are already familiar with it since you are running Star Trek.

@@HekylHyde I got into the beta for Fallout in 2019, and have the final published version open on my laptop right now. It'll be a few weeks, but I'll review it soon.

@Dan Wells Conan 2d20 online gm for several years and must say that system is awesome; ran a Brigand and Thief campaign, Adventure generator. Planning a Westermark Rangers campaign during rise of king conan.

I can't get you an autograph, but you can order signed book directly from him through his website. When we record our podcast together he's usually signing books the whole time :)

@@danwells9305 Awesome, thank you! 😄

Man, me too. And thank you :)

I do a little of both. Some published campaigns, like Curse of Strahd and Enemy Within and the Great Pendragon Campaign, and some homebrew stuff like a Dresden Files things I made up, and a big Blades in the Dark story. For the most part I find it best to lean on published material, just because it's less time for me so my hourly rate is higher :)

@@danwells9305 true. But one does not go to DaVinci to ask him to color a coloring book. Wouldn't it make sense to write some horror mid length content(I have a 10ish sessions adventure I wrote and ran twice already) or will that be pointless since you're already charging as much as people would pay you anyway?

Oh, and also, love your books, but only read the first trilogy

@@akent12 For me it's all about the investment of time, and the return on that investment. If a group really wants something new and unique, and if the GM knows that going in and accepts it, then that's great. Like I said, I've done a bit of that, and it's very rewarding. On the other hand, my hourly rate is for the session itself, but by its nature has to include the prep time, and My prep time for something like The Darkening of Mirkwood is a tiny fraction of my prep time for something that I write myself. I would also humbly suggest that Da Vinci is the wrong analogy for a GM--don't think of yourself as a painter, but as an actor, and don't think of published adventures as coloring books but as scripts from famous playwrights. Asking Da Vinci to recreate somebody else's work is, as you suggest, a waste of everybody's time, but asking Patrick Stewart to play MacBeth is a sold-out show in the most prestigious theater in London. Watching somebody new and clever interpret a pre-existing script can be incredibly exciting, and well-worth the players' time and money.

Since recording this video I am now running two different online The One Ring games, one in 1st edition and one in 2nd

@@danwells9305 excellent. I am doing via Skype because the lads I play with live miles away but it goes well. Great game. Looking forward to second. Good luck with the pro GM’ing and ongoing success.

Knew it then. I was aware of hard data to dismiss most of the narrative within a month of the narrative starting, and I knew people who called it out correctly the day it started.