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From: Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc,rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: [NBC Miami] 36-year-old makes $37,000 a year leading Dungeons &
 Dragons games
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2024 19:49:02 +0200
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tl;dr: wanna live of dnd? her husband makes 90.000$ a year. In other 
words: marry rich

I feel like this is a pretty poor example of money management. The whole 
spouse with a hobby job thing has been going on for a long time, and 
millennials are hardly the only ones that have been doing that.
I do find it interesting how the game is explained in the article though.

Source: 
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/business/money-report/36-year-old-makes-37000-a-year-leading-dungeons-dragons-games-if-youre-doing-it-anyway-you-might-as-well-get-paid/3294720/

36-year-old makes $37,000 a year leading Dungeons & Dragons games: If 
‘you're doing it anyway, you might as well' get paid
By Mike Winters,CNBC and Raffi Paul,CNBC

This story is part of CNBC Make It's Millennial Money series, which 
details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

People are surprised to learn that Mari Murdock, 36, is a professional 
game master, a role in which she organizes and narrates tabletop 
roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons.

"A lot of people don't see things like hobbies or artistic endeavors as 
something that could generally make them money," she tells CNBC Make It.

Admittedly, she didn't expect running D&D games to turn into a paying 
gig, either — at least at first: "It was just a hobby I did with my 
friends in college."

Dungeons & Dragons is an open-ended tabletop game in which the narrative 
is shaped by the players' choices, whether that's through combat, 
puzzles or negotiation. A GM is the world-builder and narrator for the 
players' actions, but they also enforce and explain the rules, kind of 
like a mediator or referee.

Since random rolls of the dice can be the difference in whether a 
player's character is swallowed by a gelatinous cube or crushed by a 
herd of centaurs, a good GM will also be an adept improviser who can 
keep the story moving based on the circumstances of the game.

In other words, it's not an easy gig. But as Murdock played tabletop 
games through the 2010s, she grew more confident in the skills it takes 
to run a good game. While not obvious at the time, it's what led to her 
becoming a paid GM.

"I love teaching, I love writing and I love playing games — it's been an 
interesting career path that's an amalgamation of all the things that I 
want to do," she says.

Since 2021, Murdock's main source of income has been working as a GM for 
Dungeon Master Direct, a Utah-based company that specializes in online 
and in-person tabletop roleplaying game sessions that range from $375 to 
$750.

She makes $24,000 as a dungeon master for the company, plus another 
$13,000 teaching writing at nearby Westminster University in Salt Lake 
City, where she lives with her husband, Scott. He makes $96,000 as a 
communications director at a state agency.

Here's a look at how Murdock was able to turn her hobby into a career.
Becoming a tabletop gamer

The eldest of two siblings in a Latter-day Saints family, Murdock says 
she was "willful" and "liked being my own boss" when she was growing up.

Most of her childhood took place in Michigan and in Utah, where she 
spent her days "climbing trees, catching frogs, playing make believe." 
At night, she would stay up reading books, pretty much "any type of 
storytelling."

In 2007, Murdock's family moved to Hawaii after her father got a 
teaching job at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. She studied literature 
at the school, and while there, played her first tabletop role-playing 
game at a friend's house and "loved it."

In 2010, she took time off from school to become a full-time missionary. 
She was assigned to Japan, the country where her mother was born.


While in Japan, Murdock met her now-husband, Scott, who was also doing 
missionary work in another part of the country.

Mari returned to Hawaii in 2012 and graduated from BYU-H with a 
bachelor's degree in literature. She got a communications job on campus, 
and was soon joined by Scott, who moved to Hawaii to be with her and 
finish his degree.

They helped create a gaming club on campus, with Murdock acting as the 
club's faculty advisor since she worked for the university.

The club was a hit, becoming the second-largest student group on campus. 
Murdock got more involved with the club, running tabletop RPGs for 
first-time players. In 2013, she entered and won an open audition to 
write fiction for Legend of the Five Rings, a popular collectible card 
game set in feudal Japan.

"That really opened the doors to networking for other types of work, 
because when people were looking for a writer who could do fiction at a 
professional level, my name would start coming up," says Murdock.
Getting hired as a professional Dungeon Master

Even if she didn't do it for a living, Murdock says she'd still be 
planning D&D campaigns for friends, reading game books or writing fiction.

Since hobbies can become side hustles, "it's important to remember that 
creative work is work," she says.

As a friend once said to her: "You're going to be doing it anyway, you 
might as well find someone to pay you for it."

In 2016, Murdock moved to Salt Lake City with Scott, where she studied 
for a master's degree in transatlantic literature. She also continued 
freelance writing, mostly for Legend of the Five Rings.

"I got roped into writing anything that they needed me to," says 
Murdock. This included novelizations of the game, as well as text that 
explains game mechanics, character backstories or text that appears on 
game cards. She was mostly paid in free products at first, but later got 
paid in cash.

In 2020, Dax Levine — an old friend from Murdock's university gaming 
club — founded Dungeon Master Direct, a professional dungeon master 
service. The timing was fortuitous, as tabletop gaming became more 
popular during the pandemic.

The company was successful enough that in May 2021 Levine was able to 
hire Murdock as a game master, commonly called a dungeon master when 
playing Dungeons & Dragons.

"I run about three games a week on a busy week," says Murdock. Each 
ongoing game, including prep, takes about four to five hours a week of 
her time.

She also helps run company events, like the largest game of Dungeons & 
Dragons ever played, according to Guinness World Records. The game was 
held at a mall in Provo, Utah, and culminated in all 1,227 participants 
defeating an evil wizard named Vecna in the final attack.
Mari Murdock running a gaming session.
Graham Merwin | CNBC Make It
Mari Murdock running a gaming session.

Despite the fantastical elements of Dungeons & Dragons, Murdock says her 
interest in gaming has not been discouraged by her church. In fact, "a 
lot of members of the LDS church gravitate toward fantasy games," she says.

Attitudes have change since the "satanic panic" of the 1980s, where 
people had "this stereotype that kids in their basements were actually 
summoning these demons and things like that," she says.

For Murdock, gaming allows you to immerse yourself in "a pretend 
situation where you are imagining that you are someone else. I think 
that really develops creativity. It creates problem solving and a lot of 
empathy."

What Mari and Scott spend in a month

Here's how Mari and Scott spent their money in February 2024:

     Debt repayment: $2,450 for student loans, credit card debt, PayPal 
Credit, personal loan
     Mortgage: $2,147
     Food: $1,390 on groceries and dining out
     Discretionary: $832 for home goods, a Kickstarter contribution, 
hair salon
     Utilities: $452 for Wi-Fi, heat, water and electricity
     Savings: $400
     Subscriptions and memberships: $235 on Hulu, Spotify, Amazon Prime, 
Midjourney, Patreon, Nebula, Max
     Insurance: $161 for health, dental, vision, car and home
     Phones: $140
     Gas: $71

In June 2023, Mari and Scott purchased a detached two-bedroom home in 
downtown Salt Lake City for $535,000, with a down payment of $40,000. To 
afford the home, they took on a personal loan within their family, which 
works out to $777 in monthly payments in addition to their mortgage.

As part of the move, they did what Murdock calls a "financial reset," 
with the goal of paying down the roughly $15,000 in credit card debt 
========== REMAINDER OF ARTICLE TRUNCATED ==========