Paying for a MU*?
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@juniper It wasn't the legendary Quinn who did it, but he was involved in its conception somehow.
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It's so interesting that people suggest entitlement is a reason not to ask for money. Because... not getting paid doesn't seem to be saving anyone from entitlement? Like what makes it worse if there's money?
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@thhppbbbt more entitlement.
And also, not enough $$$ to make up for jacking up the entitlement.
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Premium content pay MUDs have made more than coffee money but not a living.
Virtual sex work is and was a thing on WoW.
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Well there is a business model ready for you to set up. A premium paid virtual sex work mush. Honestly why not.
Though I do think there is a different culture between muds and mushes which is why the paid mush projects i know of have failed.
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@mietze How much money would it take to tip that, I wonder?
Like, if there's someone who's willing to pay... I dunno. A hundred bucks for an evening of storytelling for, say, a group of four players. Is that worth doing? I can't see how it wouldn't be worth paying (for me), but I'm out $25 anytime I see a movie in the theater and I'm way less engaged. Is that worth doing for you as a storyteller?
I hear a lot of people saying you'll never make a living but could we change that? How do we start demonstrating that the time others put into our stories and our fun is valued? There's a tenor I hear a lot that not only is staffing and storytelling unpaid but it's more broadly thankless, and that's shitty. I whine and grouse about video games that institute pay to play schemes (you can take another action... if you wait an hour for your COINS to refill! or you can pay CASH MONEY to refill them now!) because the actions I can take in those games fundamentally aren't valuable to me, I'm paying to click more. But another person's creative energy is valuable to me. I hit Patreons, I back Kickstarters. I don't quite get why this hobby is The Exception.
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@thhppbbbt Yeah I'd pay for a MU* the same way I pay for any entertainment. I'd easily pay $100 a year to play Arx on subscription via an easy platform like Patreon. I would not pay via a donate button because filling out my shit every time is a pain in the ass.
If I had to, I would do an Ares subscription for unlimited web portal access to all connected MU*s.
I'm not paying for TS.
I wouldn't pay for special in-game objects or extra energy bolts or whatever. I won't even do that with video games.
If I really enjoyed a game's freemium bar RP, I probably wouldn't pay the upgrade to have my shit GMed because I don't want to plan shit out and then herd cats. But I would pay for someone to read my sheet and make up stuff to GM for me and get the other PCs signed up and all that, then I just log in and go.
If it were kosher, I'd pay a good ST to exclusively ST my stuff on my schedule.
Hell, I'd pay someone to read all my character's RP logs (or select ones) and write a book based on them just for me.
Someone here is being paid to make cat drawings of PCs. That's super smart.
There's probably not a limit to the related products or services that anyone might pay for, but there is no real market.
If there were a MARKET for making money off RP Mus, someone WOULD be making money off RP Mus.
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@thhppbbbt there are a few people in the community that you could offer me $500 to run a scene for and unless I had a bill to pay absolutely no way in fucking hell.
So really it depends.
Also when running "an evening of storytelling" at least for me would involve planning, ect. I would feel obligated to have timely follow up and highly personalized stuff for that, because I already feel that even when not being paid.
Is this a stand alone event? Integrated into the metaplot/game altering stuff? Ic or gear rewards at the end? Game wide recognition?
When you offer a paid service it is good to have boundaries and think ahead carefully.
Integrating paid stories into a mixed company mush (or limiting yourself to only taking on the number of people you can take on as customers which may be problematic as far as making the game big enough) is a lot different from tinysexing people via tells/chat on an mmo.
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@mietze said in Paying for a MU*?:
there are a few people in the community that you could offer me $500 to run a scene for and unless I had a bill to pay absolutely no way in fucking hell.
You can just @ me next time. Gosh.
On the topic of paying for a service, specifically a MU, one would presumably have to be careful what kind of source material they used. Could someone, for instance, be able to make money off of a WoD game? Or a D&D one?
Donations for infrastructure costs is one thing, but "getting paid to run a MU" leads to other legal questions.
He/Him
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Also to be blunt, there are certain freedoms inherent in a volunteer hobby that change once the mindset is "paid work."
A lot of times the "why don't we pay gamerunners and storytellers" comes up in the context of "so they will shut up about being volunteers" or "so that they will hurry up and get me what I want."
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@mietze It's interesting to see the lines we draw. Most of us, even if we wouldn't do it ourselves, see no issue in paying a coder for their time in coding a whole game from scratch. But we'd baulk at the idea of paying a storyteller.
I don't know what that means, but it's interesting.
He/Him
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@mietze LOL same. I think we all have those people.
Ok, so, boundaries on that hypothetical. Assume that transactions are consensual, and it's not for Loathsome McFuckface and their Four Asshole Friends. Maybe not your favorite player/group, but someone reasonably polite, who shows up on time, engages with what you put out. Let's say expectations are that you'll handle whatever planning you're gonna do for a 3 hour scene, and that it's standalone with the potential to be a repeat thing if everyone's having fun. I don't want to pin this solely on people who are staffers empowered to tie into metaplot, so let's say - integrated with meta/game altering stuff if it works with whatever the elevator pitch was for the scene, and not if not. IC rewards, gear, recognition, entirely on par with any other scene on the game - no special benefit to the paid scene, the payment here is explicitly for your time as an ST.
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@tinuviel i am not sure we've ever rped so I dunno. Maybe i would offer you an evening of STing for free!!
But yeah I agree the other big issue is that many mushes are using other people's work so that's a no no for making money off them unless you have permission.
I would totally ts with almost anyone for $500 though.
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@tinuviel It's really weird! I'd do the very thing I'm describing in a heartbeat? Like, maybe I couldn't do it every day, but fuck, between the various streaming services I don't watch (and other random services I pay for but almost never use) because I'm busy MUSHing, I'm sure I could pay an ST once a month as outlined, and probably twice.
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@thhppbbbt for me it still would not be worth entering into a money exchange obligation. There are a lot of variables in that.
Legwork to learn more about their pcs so I could personalize it. Time speaking to people to find out their boundaries. Do I trust them enough to believe they won't get weird with money entering in. How do I bail if things get weird. Is there a mix of STs who run free stuff to and will that cause issues in game management. If I'm not the game owner, should they get a cut as provider of said space and how would that be set up. Ect.
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@tinuviel I wouldn't mind paying a ST (I have tipped/patreon/whatever story creators before but not in a mush setting).
But for me anyway I would feel extremely uncomfortable accepting payment for STing using someone else's property and in mixed use setting (some are paying some aren't) without knowing pretty explicit boundaries. And having seen people get super weird and entitled once money enters the picture I am too leery.
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All else aside it's also worth noting that overseas billing can be a pain in the backside and you might easily end up paying more for the bill itself than for the game.
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@rucket said in Paying for a MU*?:
I am reminded of Wes Platt and Chiaroscuro and Otherspace when they tried to add microtransactions to MUing. If there was a "Donate for Hosting" button on a wiki, I might pitch in $5 here or there and I'm sure others would too, but anything beyond that, I dunno.
To his credit, he was doing microtransactions before they were ever really a thing. But that doesn't mean it was a good idea.
I do know there were a lot of people who dumped tons of cash on it. You know because they gave out badges to players like they were some kind if achievements. It was a wild time.
That said, I do really miss Chiaroscuro. It was a fun game.
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@mietze said in Paying for a MU*?:
i am not sure we've ever rped so I dunno.
We've been in the same insular, incestuous hobby for a while now. Chances are high.
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I joke sometimes that if someone paid me to GM for them, I'd do it. I have a mortgage to pay!
But ultimately, I think I'd just bail because it would inevitably feel like a job where I'm now contractually obligated to fulfill the entertainment bucket of people I might not even enjoy because $$$.
This is my hobby. I do this for fun. If someone is acting weird and entitled to my storytelling time, I start to avoid them. If someone is entertaining me in return and caring about the stories I'm crafting and the NPCs I wrote? They'll get more of my time. Is that favoritism? Maybe, I guess so, IDK.
Money doesn't solve GM burnout. Treating your storytellers like they're also players (because they are) does.
