I'm currently writing a draft adventure for the project. I'd link it to you, but that'd be giving things away for free, wouldn't it? Anyways, I've been struggling to get ahold of DMs who are interested in making some money via a collaborative game design project. So, I decided to do a little experiment. I purchased the services of 3 professional DMs on Fiverr. I asked each of them to give development notes on how I could improve my first draft of my adventure. Here's what it cost me:
 |
| Cheap and fast? You got it! |
 |
| Only slightly more expensive, but with a longer delivery time? OK, but don't fuck me around on the due date! |
 |
| Well, if I hired the other guy... I guess you seem pretty similar in price and time. |
The work in question was a 38 page epic adventure for 4 1st level characters. It is intended to operate almost on the same scale as a published adventure while still being setting agnostic. I want to deliver on your dollar. It has original artworks, detailed maps, houserules, sidequests, and diversions aplenty.
I am now going to review their work.
I have intentionally hid their identities so that they don't suffer any consequences from this article.
(If anyone would like to deal with DM2, feel free to email me. I'll put you into contact with them.)
Dungeon Master 1
This one was the cheapest, and the one with the earliest delivery time. He delivered on time. The result was a single page RTF consisting primarily of grammatical and typo corrections. What little commentary they delivered however was probably more insightful than either of the other two. DM1 pointed out plot holes I had missed and errors in the flow of the adventure. I feel that, if I had hired DM1 for a more significant span of time, they could have delivered something truly thought provoking.
Dungeon Master 2
This one was the middle price and delivery time, though a much longer delivery time than the first. The product was an extremely thorough review of every part of the adventure. He basically dissected what I had done. While he and I differ philosophically on some matters, (I think evil players should suffer and TPK while good players should walk through problems with ease.) he was very detailed in the technical matters at hand. Quality for dollar, I got every penny's worth with this guy. His criticism was harsh, but not mean, and well justified. Highly professional.
Dungeon Master 3
This was the most expensive and longest delivery time.
I...
I did not get my money's worth here.
A one-page report with less information than the 35$ 7-day product.
Opens with just praising me on how great at writing adventures I am. No meaningful recommendations or corrections. Covered nothing that the other two didn't notice and deal with more thoroughly. Full of spelling and grammatical errors. Extremely amateurish and unprofessional tone. Devolved into generic feel-good DMing platitudes near the end.
I feel like this person has been running games for maybe a year or two and decided that made them good enough to do it professionally. I guess I paid them, so in a way they're right.
I've been in game design as a hobbyist for over 15 years now, and I'm still just a babe in diapers at this.
Results
Well, I'd say I'm overall happy with what I got. Based on my research of other peoples' experiments with Fiverr, generally speaking, if you want something done right, you need to use a shotgun approach. Hire at least 2 people to do the same task and use the best of all the results combined. Hiring 1 person at a time runs the risk of you getting screwed. Also, it pays to take some time to interview the service provider before paying for their service more than I did. I just hired whoever was available to respond that day. Overall, if you've got some cash to blow and need some professional DMing services that your social circle won't provide, I'd recommend doing business on Fiverr.
Modular Campaign
I am currently looking for hard-working dungeon masters with at least 5 years of experience in DMing or game design in general to help work on a project making modular content for the Dungeon Masters Guild. The material is intended to be setting agnostic and self-compatible, such that a DM could spend a small amount of money on a handful of small modules and build an entire setting and campaign in an evening off of that alone. Collaborators participating in the project are considered creative equals. Profits from a title are split evenly between contributors on that title's credits page. If you are interested in participating, please email me at
jamalcolmson@hotmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment