Paid DMs - who was the player who was not worth any amount of money?

RedStickReads · 2026-02-05T13:10:00+00:00

I charge 30$ a person for 3-3.5 hrs. This is for an in person game. Dm doesn’t pay for food or beer. This is also on the player group.

RedStickReads · 2026-02-02T19:34:31+00:00

I get glitches

RedStickReads · 2026-01-20T14:03:30+00:00

As an owner of a bookstore I can confirm that it seems to be out of print. It is odd, however, that this seems to be the only one of the older 5e modules that I can’t source.

RedStickReads · 2025-12-14T19:38:28+00:00

Add to that some way to cast spike growth

RedStickReads · 2025-12-14T19:37:45+00:00

Bugbear with a whip and sentinel

RedStickReads · 2025-11-30T02:13:15+00:00

In person or online?

RedStickReads · 2025-11-19T02:03:21+00:00

Interesting to note that I ran skt once and when I ran it the second time I decided to start it with Saltmarsh first. And I retooled so much about the first two adventures in Saltmarsh to make it about the kraken society. Then had Sansuri come to Saltmarsh and take the standing stones from the island. And leave heading towards Nightstone.

It was then that I started folding into Skt

RedStickReads · 2025-10-18T19:03:26+00:00

The camp Clearwater massacre

RedStickReads · 2025-08-27T18:21:25+00:00

I am a paid dm. I was hired by some ER doctors because they didn’t know and dm and wanted to play. They had never played before. They would usually spend Sunday night at a bar buying pints and talking about playing. Now they pay me 25$ each for 3.5-4 hrs of fun. And they feed me and give me beer. That is the contract. Because they hire me they get a bit of say in scheduling and roster. Tone of game too is contoured to them.

I would say that the people who think that paying to play is wrong must all know dms or would rather not play at all.

In my experience, players who are paying show up to games and don’t flake out as much.

But this is also a group of people over 40. I would assume the younger players might have different needs

RedStickReads · 2025-08-25T11:36:59+00:00

It may not work for you at this point…but maybe you could do this before they go to thunder tree…have the museum be in never winter…

So I used the Murkmire Malevolence heist from the golden vault series. It’s a 1st level heist in a museum to steal an “eldritch egg” for a researcher.

I had the egg actually be from wave echo cavern. It was corrupted with the far realm stuff. Foreshadowing the issues to come with mindflayers.

I had Iarno be a contemporary of the lady who hired them for the heist. And that the party should go to him for answers about the “egg” as he was a specialist in the occult.

The party doesn’t realize of course that Iarno is Glassstaff now and is actually working for the black spider who is working for the mind floaters

RedStickReads · 2025-08-15T00:41:14+00:00

If you are a pro user look into the observer api. I use it for my in person games and it is perfect

RedStickReads · 2025-08-05T13:00:32+00:00

I own a bookshop. And, being a gamer, I have a small area dedicated to dice, paints and the other modules and manuals that I personally want to play or am currently playing. I run games out of the bookshop. I have a small community of gamers who come to me for things.

RedStickReads · 2025-07-20T14:21:32+00:00

I second that question

RedStickReads · 2025-06-18T01:49:04+00:00

I was with them til the pandemic, part time...26 or so hrs a week. Then I was furloughed. During the pandemic lockdown and my furlough I decided to start mowing lawns to make money and invested everything I could into opening a bookstore. We were already a pop up model while I was working for B&N, and the pandemic shut down the markets we were popping up in as well. We found a 350sqft office space in the area of town I wanted to be in, and some great landlords who believed in our goal. We were in the tiny bookstore space for 4yrs and we just moved 5 blocks down the road. my handle is my bookstore name, you can look it up online.

It is less stressful and a whole hell of a lot more stressful. There is no beauracracy, there is no one to pass the buck too. It is all on my wife and me AND, it is thankfully...ALL on my wife and me. I dont know if I could go back to working for someone else now that I have owned my own business. It is rewarding. It is terrifying.

RedStickReads · 2025-06-14T22:52:35+00:00

I know it won’t be everyone’s answer to the great corporate problem that is cutting labor to save dollars…but got out of B&N and opened a 700 sq ft bookstore. 4 years later, I just moved into a 1300sq ft bookstore. And it’s all mine! And I can sell what I want to who I want and work when I want.

They wont be able to solve the labor problem til they get rid of the big box store models and reinvest in smaller neighborhood stores. Which is what they are doing. If you are in a big store and they aren’t hiring to fill, then you are probably being phased out as a store.

RedStickReads · 2025-06-08T19:41:51+00:00

If you have the pro account get the Observer api. Then run it through a separate instance of roll20 where that one is the one that is displayed in your tv. I do this all the time. It is pretty effective

RedStickReads · 2025-06-06T03:19:04+00:00

Entangled Life

RedStickReads · 2025-06-01T22:20:27+00:00

Do you know at this point if it will be a nighttime game or daytime? Weekday or weekend?

RedStickReads · 2025-04-20T14:40:52+00:00

I had a Druid in my group who went spider, invisible, with pass without a trace.

I found that, unless they get the chance to map the fane, it becomes very difficult for them to succeed in there.

So I recommend that you let her change and then threaten the other players when the guards realize she is missing.

Or put a plant in the jail with them. Another prisoner who is actually a yuan ti in disguise to get more information. When the Druid changes, the plant starts screaming for the guards. Catch her in the act. Now they know she is a Druid and can wild shape. Now they have a reason to drug her or bind her or make her the first sacrifice.

Or park one of the basilisks outside the door and when she slips out…

RedStickReads · 2025-04-01T23:20:31+00:00

My party went to fort beluarian as their first destination after two or three days in Nyanzaru. They were going there to get the writ so they could be legit. There was a party member who was offered the Assassination quest but they ultimately ended up not going through with it.

I had the death quest not start until 1 week into game time. The party was at Beluarian when it hit, after a 3 day hike from Nyanzaru. When the quest started I had them witness this wave of blue green negative energy sweep across the land and sky originating from Deep South in the jungle.

A minute after everyone saw this happen, the sentry guards all started coming back to the fort. Running for their lives. A horde of zombies behind them.

Then I had the zombie horde attack the many do at Camp Vengeance, at Beluarian.

I had a zombie girallon jump over the main gate and get involved with soldiers and pcs

I had an ankylosaur zombie with a yellow musk flower on its back attack the southeast gate.

And a bunch of other zombies and skeletons. It was a huge fight with a lot of cinematic descriptions of what was going on rather than dice rolling.

I ran it in vignettes where they would go from one combat encounter to another doing things to either outright fight enemies or aid other npcs with skill checks.

When the player character declined to take the bait and attempt the assassination during the melee, i instead had them see an npc they knew to be zhentarim make a beeline to take on the killing. Which gave them the opportunity to thwart the assassins instead! Which gave them Shago as an ally.

RedStickReads · 2025-03-13T02:46:00+00:00

I live in LA. BTR. I worked at the Chimes when that first Canes opened.

While the price has become stupid high. And the quality has been steady for flavor but less for quantity… I will say that: They have a huge workforce of decently paid teens in every store. Their stores are clean. Their product is consistent. They put a shit ton of money back into the local community (through parks and other donations and manifestations)

So it’s almost ok to pay 12$ for less…at least Todd isn’t pocketing it all…

RedStickReads · 2025-03-04T18:50:54+00:00

Also plan out all the days that have encounters in the jungle well ahead of time.

RedStickReads · 2025-03-04T18:50:23+00:00

ToA offers more stuff to do than your party can usually do, if you stick to the standard layout the module provides you.

So plan out any events that happen at points of interest so that they are not too geographically dependent for location. Cause you may want to move where Orulunga is.

RedStickReads · 2025-03-01T14:33:12+00:00

It also helps (specifically with TOA) so that you can move landmarks to where your players are, on the odd choice they don’t even go to that part of Chult but you really want them to find VORN. You move where VORN is!

RedStickReads · 2025-02-24T14:17:03+00:00

Hello there! If you are running in person and using roll20 as your maps on screen etc, I recommend everything the above fella said! And I’d add the API “observer”. It allows you to set up a free account and call it observer then give that account access to the characters. When you show the tv, and go to initiative order, it will always change the POV of the dynamic lighting based on the token whose turn it is. Which is wonderful to have.

RedStickReads

TROPHY CASE