Since we’re talking about pricing and living wages in TTRPG spaces, I want to point out that $125 for a 4 hour session is ALSO NOT A LIVING WAGE.

I run a fee-for-service solo consulting business. Let me break down the numbers https://twitter.com/gailforcenyine/status/1387170569276338179

(And yes, I’m arguing that the “your 400-page full colour illustrations book is overpriced at $30” guy is underpricing himself. Because everything in indie game spaces except The World’s Most Profitable Roleplaying Game is underpriced. Bear with me.)

First let’s define “wage” here. Someone working a bog-standard 40 hour week making a salary that’s equivalent to $15/hr makes $31K/yr. Median wage in the US is about $36K, so $31K is actually low, but let’s go with it anyway.

So we want to pay ourselves $31k, what does our freelance GM’ing business need to earn in revenue to support that? Time to break out the ratios! I’m gonna use Mike Michalowicz‘s Profit First model because it’s popular and easy to understand. It looks like this:

We’re using the ratios in Column A:

Real Revenue (100%): ???
Profit (5%): ???
Owner Pay (50%): $31k
Tax (15%): ???
Operating Expenses (30%): ???

Which resolves to:

Real Revenue (100%): $62k
Profit (5%): $3k
Owner Pay (50%): $31k
Tax (15%): $9k
Operating Expenses (30%): $19k

So our target number is $62k in real revenue. “Real revenue” is the money you have left over after cost of goods sold (CoGS), but let’s assume the only input here is the owner’s time.

(Realistically, they’d have to provide minis or accessories for the table, but whatevs)

Okay so how does someone make $62k in a year as a solo freelance DM? In theory a year is 52 weeks, but you’ll subtract some weeks of vacation, and subtract sick days, and stat holidays, and you’ll have slow weeks and cancellations.

Let’s call it 40 full working weeks a year.

$62k / 40 weeks = $1,550 / week.

Let’s assume you’re working a standard 5 days a week, 8 hour workday, 40 hour work week. But your actual game sessions (4 hours each) fall on weekday evenings and weekend afternoons/evenings to align with your clients’ schedules.

How many 4 hour sessions fit in an 8 hour day?

The answer is 1 session. Your max is 1 session/day. Because you also have to account for travel time (30mins each way), set up (30 mins) and tear down (30mins). Plus an hour for lunch and an hour for emails and whatever.

We haven’t even accounted for prep time! Or bookkeeping and accounting. Or bookings and sales and marketing. Accounts payable and receivable. All the stuff it takes to run a business. Let’s set aside 1 day (8 hours) to do all that. (Probably not enough, but again whatever)

So we have our 5-day work week set up as 4 money-making days and one admin day (Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach calls these Focus Days and Buffer Days, which is the language I use in my own business.)

We know we have to make $1,550 working week, and we know that in each week we have 4 money-making days, and we know in each of those days we can book 1 gaming session. So that’s 4 sessions per week. The math is super easy!

$1,550 / 4 sessions per week = $388 per session.