Melody [0:00]
The Game Master Certification Organization welcomes you to our interview excerpt podcast series! I’m your host, Melody Rainelle. We have the pleasure of chatting with a game master by the name of Charles the Sinister Storyteller. At the time of this interview, Charles has been running seven games a week. In this episode, we’re going to get some insight as to what that looks like. We’ll also chat about advertising, networking, and free games versus paid games. So, first off, let’s start with an easy question. Charles, how do you get players to start playing?

Charles [0:37]
You just ask them. So, I'm also a bit of a unicorn in that I don't really like playing. It's not really what does it for me. I prefer to be the one telling... So, there is a massive disproportion amongst players and GMs and that math kind of works in my favor. There are always people that want to play in a game, and as someone who only wants to run them, I just have to find people that are wanting to play the specific game that I want to run that time. And now, now that I've got... I have seven weekly games. So the other aspect of that is just finding a day and time. Currently I only have Tuesday nights open, so there might be 8,000 players that want to play Symbaroum, but none of them can play on a Tuesday night, for instance; so, that can make getting a group together hard as well. But other than that I just kind of say "Hey, I want to run this game - who wants to play?"

Melody [1:36]
Neat! Okay, so here’s the big question: What does running seven games a week look like?

Charles [1:44]
It looks like I only have Tuesday nights off. So I run paid games, so there's incentive for me to run more rather than fewer games. I mean that's... if I were running only free games, you can bet your bottom dollar I would not be running seven games a week because I would be burned out. Also, half of those games would almost immediately fall apart, because such is the tragedy of most online games. Yeah, so that sees me running games from Wednesday night all the way through Monday night. Every week. Oh and two games on Sunday, actually, I have a morning and an evening game.

Melody [2:29]
How much prep work do you have to do for that?

Charles [2:31]
Well again, I'm actively working to not do much prep work. So I would say most of my prep work, in air quotes, happens the day of - where I just kind of... I... this is gonna sound so stupid, but I just kind of think about the game. Like, "What would be fun to happen tonight?" Well actually, maybe I better back up... I'll use my Coriolis game. So, Coriolis is this like Arabian Nights sci-fi game by Free League. So what I did was I came up with the idea for a story which is, you know, the group is trying to get their pirate prince engaged to this wealthy daughter of this merchant on some far planet, to kind of solidify their power. And that's like the start of the story but what's really going on is, there is some kind of important, and invaluable religious artifact in this area that they're supposed to steal. So, you know, yeah like - you're escorting the prince, you're keeping him safe, trying to get him engaged to this princess, but really like - your pirates; we want you to steal this religious artifact. So once I have the genus of the story kind of set. I just think: "Alright, well, what- what could be a couple cool things that can happen tonight? Um... Oh! Maybe the prince goes to one of the bath houses and the party detects an assassin that's in there and so they have to deal with this assassin... Or maybe they have to figure out, like, how are you even going to get to the religious artifact? Like where is it? You know, is it in a really secure place? Is it in a place where you would feel bad stealing it from - like in some kind of Temple?" And, so I just think of like, almost like little bumps in the road that I can introduce... and then I do that, and then I see how the players react, and I just keep building from there. I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty good at having either just enough to fill out a session, or more than enough where we can't get through all of the things in a session. It used to be where I really was anxious about... "Man, like I don't know if I have enough complications for this entire session..." and I've very quickly thrown that concern mostly out of the window because it's never really been a problem. But that's pretty much all my prep.  I might come up with a couple names, but everything else I kind of try to do on the fly. And that's true for most of my games. Because again, most of them are very freeform like that. The exceptions would be my Pathfinder games but I'm running pre-written material so those take almost zero work. In fact my Sunday night... Actually, my Sunday morning and my Sunday night group are going through adventure paths that I've already run before, so... like I genuinely don't have to do any prep work, because I know how the entire story plays out. So for that one, I'm just more looking fo- ...This'll sound weird but I'm kind of doing my prep during the session because I'm thinking: "Okay, I know that this is about to come up. How can I how can I tie that to this character?" And yeah, that's pretty much it.

Melody [6:00]
It sounds like you're good at thinking on your feet and finding efficient ways to handle your games! So, how sustainable is it to run games for a living?

Charles [6:11]
Ah, well - okay, so first off, I certainly don't do this for a living. There are some people that I have, I say "met," that I've met online in various Discords that absolutely do this for a living! Personally, I don't know how sustainable that is... There's just so many variables that would go into that. For me, I would say it's mostly like a side hustle - I hate to say side hustle, that sounds bad... But I certainly don't make enough to make a living off this - like not even close. I make enough to subscribe to some Patreons that get me music and maps and stuff. I make enough where I can buy games to learn new games to run these groups through, like: "Hey we're getting bored of Pathfinder let's play something else." "Oh well, I just spent $400 on Symbaroum, and I got all the books. Why don't we play that?" "Oh yeah, that sounds neat." It helps go toward, you know, if something on my computer breaks and I need to replace... I don't know... I need to replace my motherboard. Like, I'm still active duty military. I'm not making a ton of money to begin with, so this money I get from running games actually does help enable me to keep running games.

Melody [7:24]
Good to know! Understanding that you are in the military, one question that comes to mind is: Does being on active duty ever interfere with any of your games?

Charles [7:35]
Sometimes. Sometimes I'll have to fill in on shift work where you know I'll have to work 7pm to 7am, and, with the exception of my Sunday morning game, all of my games occur in the evening. Almost all of them start at 8pm Eastern time, my Thursday game goes from five, eight, Eastern. But, you know, sometimes I have to work nights. It's infrequent, but it can happen. But not enough to actually be a real concern.

Melody [8:05]
Awesome. Moving on, we would love to hear your input on building, advertising and networking. Would you talk about that?

Charles [8:14]
So as far as all that goes. The general mentality of paid games is starting to change - like it's still... I hate to say that it's even taboo now... But there are kind of two camps of people... There's either people that are like: "Okay, I see the value in that." Or there are people who bear this vitriolic hate of paid games, like: "Why on earth would I pay for playing a game that's free?" ...And I mean the answer is: it's not free. I mean the running... "If it were free, why aren't you running the game?" You know, that's kind of how I view it. It's just, it's a very immature mindset to have, but on the same token, I don't begrudge anyone that doesn't want to play in a paid game. I just don't understand the unnecessary hate of it. And because of that, I'm kind of limited where I can advertise at. I mean StartPlaying[.games] is a good place, I like to point people toward that. Because even if I can't accommodate them, the odds of them finding a group that they can fit in on that site are extremely high. That website also handles billing, as long as you set it up that way, so I don't have to worry about that. Whereas before I was using PayPal and Google Sheets, and it was enough of an administrative headache that I was willing to go to a place that takes 10% cut of my business, just so that I don't have to track that stuff because again, that's work that I just don't want to do! And I'm willing to pay to not have to do that. I try to advertise mostly in Discord and Reddit. I don't use Twitter because I hate it, and I found most success through Discord and Reddit anyways. Facebook nets practically nothing. Twitter nets literally nothing. So those are my two main avenues, and also almost - I would say probably 90% of my games - are just repeat players. So we play a game for a year and we finish that campaign, and we end the campaign this week, and we've already decided what we're going to start playing as a new campaign for next week; so we just roll right into it with basically no downtime.

Melody [10:41]
Okay, that’s cool! But, most of the players you are with now started as strangers, right?

Charles [10:48]
Well, yeah, they all were. I initially started running free games, but those all ended pretty quickly because people flaked out, and I was getting a little disc- eh, discouraged isn't really the right word. I was trying to figure out how can I run a game that actually sees itself to the end so that all this work I'm doing isn't basically done for nothing. And I realized, well - you know, if you're going to a movie theater... like, okay, you and me we're going to go see the new Black Widow movie, and I won tickets on a radio show, so we're both going for free. The odds of us talking and cutting up are higher than someone who like had to pay money, had to set aside an evening for that maybe they had to pay for a babysitter or something? So that monetary investment, really helped ensure that players are punctual, that they are engaged - they're just a higher quality player. Also, it kind of helps weed out problem players. I had some... we'll just say bad acts. I feel like that's a good catch all but players that created problems in some of these free games which helped contribute to one or two of them falling apart completely. And I found that in games that they pay to play in... because I've had to kick people out of paid games before, but I have a little bit more leverage. I know that word kind of has some negative connotations but what I mean is, you know, if you were that player for instance, I can go to you and say: "Hey look, everyone is paying to play in this game. We meet once a week, three hours on a Wednesday night. You're all paying to be a part of this. You are being disruptive and disrespectful of their time and money. So, either you need to correct your behavior, or I'm going to have to ask you to leave and I'm not going to take your money anymore and you're not going to be a player." So it kind of creates that incentive for the player to behave, because you know like if you're receiving a product for free, then like: "Well, what are you going to do - kick me out? Like I'm already not paying or whatever." But do you really want to wasted 30 sessions that you've paid into to not see the end of this movie? Probably not. So that's why I decided to start moving into paid games and of course that led to more problems with advertising and finding new players. But fortunately, I have a pretty dedicated, I would say, core couple of groups, and they're the main ones that have been going for a long time.

Melody [13:30]
Well, you make some good points that are worth contemplating. I understand there are some strong feelings on both sides of that topic. Thank you for sharing your insight and opinions, Charles!

To our listeners - please check the podcast description for details on how you can connect with Charles the Sinister Storyteller!

In our next episode, Charles will be sharing with us his approach to analysis and thoughts on improving as a game master, so stay tuned! Follow us to receive notifications when new podcasts are released. For more podcasts and information, check out our website: https://www.gamemastercertification.org/. Like what you’ve heard here? Hit the share button to help us spread the word! Thank you for listening!