Hiya all,
Up until now, I have been buying all the gaming supplies for my group (including a fairly heft miniatures bill).
Realistically, I can't keep this up any longer so I would like my players to help cover some of the costs. I don't want to get into a 'pay for play' situation so was trying to think of alternatives.
How do people out there tackle this sort of issue?
Cheers, Chris.
IMHO every player should buy and paint his/her own miniatures.
It´s also fair if they somehow contribute to adventures and other books needed, if you have a constant gaming group.
GM/DM should at least once a month buy pizzas :P
I buy books that interest me. If my players would want anything else, they would have to buy it. (This hasn´t occurred, probably because my players are not as "into it" as I am.)
Miniatures can get very expensive. I have a small stock of minis (around 200 or so, I never counted them) collected over the last 20 years. If someone wants a special mini, he would have to get it himself. If I don´t have sufficient minis. I use substitutes - dice, coins, whatever is handy at the moment.
Stefan
This is a sticky subject. My former group and I had a gaming "collection" which we all contributed to equally (and typically was left at my place since i DMed 90% of the time and that's the place we gamed 90% of the time). It was great because we had been playing together for quite awhile (7 years). Additionally, everyone was free to buy whatever they wanted to keep at their place.The problems arose when I had to move and wanted to keep the collection intact. I ended up buying the collection from the rest of the guys so I could take it with me. In retrospect it would have been less painful to buy it piecemeal as stuff came out instead of having to make a large lump sum settlement, but oh well.
Not sure if that is applicable in your case but a group collection is definetly a was to save (provided the group is regular and no one is moving).
I don't know how you'd do it with minatures since that is something you keep and can be reused. It's unfair though that the DM is spending bucks on that to give everyone a good play experience.
I made my players each cough up $10 to buy the Shackled City hardcover which we're playing. It can only be used once, everyone gets a benefit from it, seems fair that everyone should help pay for it.
I don't use miniatures, so that's not a money sink for me. I would look at some of the Fiery Dragon counters (I think that's them) or other paper tokens if you're trying to save money. Unless you really like miniatures, of course.
I'm thinking about doing a "shared cost" thing for some of the higher-price books, like Ptolus or Shackled City. I'm not quite sure yet, though.
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I own all the gaming supplies for my group too. ALL OF THEM. My collection is probably in excess of $2000 and all of it is mine. Sometimes one of my players will buy me a new book for Christmas or my birthday or something, but the vast majority of it is my own purchasing. I'm pretty much the only DM for our group, so its fitting that I'm the one with all the supplies. Plus, we play at my house (since everyone else lives with their parents still). The only thing I ask in return is that the players bring soda (usually 2 12-packs) to every game and anything left over after game STAYS. :)
As far as sharing cost, I did that once before. My friend agreed to go half and half with me on the old class splatbooks (Defenders of the Faith, Masters of the Wild, etc.). Biggest mistake I ever made. Naturally, since he paid half, he wanted to take them home with him all the time instead of leaving them at my place. His house is a zoo. Those books were destroyed within 2 months. I eventually went out and bought my own copies and told him he could keep the tattered remnants of the other ones. My advice is, if you're going to split costs, make sure you can safely split ownership as well or you will run into problems.
Edit: And what is it with people jacking my avatar all of a sudden?!?
This is easy. Just don't buy things for the group, if you like a book buy, if a player asks for a book, tell him you don't have the money for it, so if they want it they will have to buy it. And if they buy it and want to use it, tell them that you will have to look over before allowing it, and that if they use it then it has to be opened to the table for general consumption as to make everything 'fair'.
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This is easy. Just don't buy things for the group, if you like a book buy, if a player asks for a book, tell him you don't have the money for it, so if they want it they will have to buy it. And if they buy it and want to use it, tell them that you will have to look over before allowing it, and that if they use it then it has to be opened to the table for general consumption as to make everything 'fair'.
I think another reason I own all the books is, if one of my players DID buy a book to use in my games, I would want to hang on to it so that I could use things in it for devious villains and the like. But I wouldn't want to make someone leave THEIR book at MY house because, well, that's just not fair to them. This is why I buy all my own stuff.
My advice on saving money is to simply not buy all the various things that come out. Buy only the 'important' stuff and use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
Books that I did buy: Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds, Unearthed Arcana, all of the 'Complete' books (except Psionics, we don't use Psionics). These have a lot of detailed information and allow characters of all classes to diversify themselves. Plus, having definitive 'alignment' books is always very helpful.
Books that I did not buy: Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness, PHB II, DMG II, MM IV. These books are too highly specialized for my needs. In my last 2 years of gaming, I think we have encountered all of 3 aberrations and tons of undead, but there are so many options for undead already that it just seemed unnecessary to buy a book dedicated to them. I did pick up the Draconomicon, but 80% of my reason for buying it was Todd Lockwood's artwork. He's amazing.
Well I pretty much DM 90% of the time. Add to that the fact that I like to use miniatures and I end up buying most of the stuff for gaming. I have a lot if not most of the WotC books, several hundred of the miniatures and a lot of Dwarven Forge. Sure some of it is from gifts (Christmas, birthday). Do I care that I have paid for all of this. No. I figure everyone has to control their own gaming experience. I want to use minatures, so I got some. Why should I charge the player for it. If I didn't want to use miniatures and the players did, I would expect them to supply them. Books wise, I expect most people to buy a Players Handbook and that's about it. If they want to play something that is solely in another book, well I'll probably buy that book for me and they need a copy of it for themselves. Food wise, everyone pitches in for food. I have a cabinet where we store all the game food.
Generally in my group, the GM will usually own the main core books for whatever setting we are playing in. These books are available for anybody to look at while we are gaming. If anybody want's to use anything non-standard or out of some supplement it's their responsibility to bring it to the table when we play.
Another possible suggestion: play homebrew settings. A lot more work, but infinitely cheaper :)
Another possible suggestion: play homebrew settings. A lot more work, but infinitely cheaper :)
More rewarding as GM, IMHO, as well. :)
Im thinking of making the "characters" in my campaign all buy their own ph with me covering $10 the cost per person
anything above and beyond is their issue but I forbid MMs of any kind being brought to the table except by the DM (me)
Wow; I would have never thought of this as a topic; my players all bribe me with beer; I usualy get 3 or 4 six packs and a bottle or two of something stronger on a bi weekly basis. I do own several hundred; probably more realistically, miniatures, but then so do most of my players as we all did warhammer fantasy and 40k; and have generally collected any cool miniature that has come out, so minis are not a problem at all; everyone brings their own unless I need to borrow an orc army or something; we dont use minis that much; we mostly draw stuff out on a big plastic sheet with dry erase pens; might use minis for marching order. You really dont need metal minis; you can always just print out some markers with pics on them and use those and the heck with the prudes; tell them to get their own minis :) We all bring stuff like graph paper and pencils are easy to come by; haven't seen a wooden one in years; least not a sharpened one. Most peeps bring their own snacks; we all treat the game like a party/social gathering so I usually make some appetizers; am not gonna spell that Hor d Hor word. I give bonus exps to anyone who brings the beer of the day; you would think that after 20+ of playing this game and bringing me beers; one of them would think to call and ask what the beer of the day is :) hehe we have a pretty good group; nice to be loved at least by me friends.
kinda curious what ph is in the above post; lol; ok just figured it out; caps would have helped. Hard to believe your players dont have books, but they dont really need them; they should just write down stuff applicable to their characters; knowns spells and such, weapon damage. My players all have so many books I have to outlaw some and really enforce the rule that nobody but me opens a monster manual without my permission. Last thing you want to do is get in an arguement about what a monster can and can't do. I would never ask for money or charge anyone to play unless it was my job and that would prolly take the fun out of it cause I would have to find someway to guarantee playing time and satisfaction; and that can't really be done. I always make my own settings and stuff; very rarely run any premade dungeon; though I have as once in a while Dungeon magazine will have something interesting. Once you run a few pre made dungeons you should know how to put together a scenario and how to set a few hooks; if you need help; many here on the boards can help; there are some really good posts by lots of us on what to do to improve your game. Charging players $10 is not one of them and if you give peeps $10, well you might get a lot of players real quick that you never see again :).
that is how it started many many years ago; they said I gave out better magic stuff that way hehe, but I dont drink to much anymore and we are all a bit more grown up and all responsible like :)
Thanks for all the responses.
We had a chat about before our last session and it was fairly unproductive.
The ownership thing came up and one player wanted to keep records of what was purchased so that we could compensate someone who left the group etc.
Another player just didn't want to contribute at all beyond paying his share of the e-tools files he uses.
In the end I basically had to say no more minis and no more funky dundjinni maps since I couldnt afford the printing costs etc.
I was a bit disappointed with that but I don't think it is fair for the DM to bear the bulk of the costs (as seems to be common practice).
Cheers, Chris.
Well, since the majority of my gaming group actually lives with me, I'm prolly a special case - or *special* at least! However, we do have a couple of unrelated college guys in our group, so I have a bit of experience.
I made my son buy his own bloody PHB and DMG. I got tired of trying to prep for a game, only to have my own personal SideTrek to locate my friggin books. He'll have his own MM by Christmas, too, and *likely* a PHBII. He's a character-making *junkie* I tell ya!
I told my daughter I will buy her *her* own PHB once she can read. (she's 6) She's been working a noticeable amount harder at learning to read lately...
Our other members also play in "pick-up" games on campus, as players and DMs both, so they have their own books and will bring their PHBs *at a minimum* when we game. In fact, this weekend, we were playing in a "gaslight London" setting one of them developed, and one of them whipped out the Tome Of Battle book and asked if I would allow the material from it into my games. Now, I don;t own that one myself, so I said, "Most likely - but I'll need to get with you and study the rules out of it for what you are wanting to use."
As for minis, ok, I am the mini whore. IF, however, I manage to somehow NOT have THE uber-mini you need for your character, buy it yourself. I've been known to use a wild mix of metal and plastic minis, bits of craft wood turnings (particularly milk cans and pickle barrels), and "flats" all on the same tabletop. "Ok, this here monstrous spider (medium) is actually Fang, our guard-dog...these here six assorted elves are really hobgoblins..." and such-like.
I'm the DM most of the time and have had three of my own kids playing in the group at various times (and have another one in training for another couple of years or so), as well as my wife and my son-in-law. Others have come and gone along the way, some moving out of state and starting new gaming groups of their own. I maintain a bookshelf full of the essential rules (DMG, PHB, MM), books I like (magic systems especially), books my players like (wilderness-oriented greenness), and books that were either cheap or otherwise looked neat that might someday get used (Empire, Airships, Guilds, etc). If a player wants to use material from a book I don;t have, I'll look it over and if enough players think it is really useful to them, I'll buy me a copy of my own. (Means my son will likely generate a space for Tome of Battle on the "family shelf" soon, as his style of combat is "Hit target with big weapon until something dies/breaks")
Since my wife loves having people over, she tends to cook dinner for us on game-night. Fridays are family pizza-nights, so if we game on a Friday, any non-family players bring enough pizza for themselves. Everyone contributes drinks and junk-food, as well.
I *like* to run games, so I never even think about how much *I* spend on stuff that benefits my players, because it benefits ME as well. Plus, I'm training my wife and son as DM's so that I might get to play occasionally. In fact, Labor Day Weekend, the Outlands family played an adventure based on an idea my daughter had which was fleshed out by my son - and they co-DM'd it. (didn;t really work out like we'd all hoped - son kinda hogged the DM'ing, which made daughter mad a lot - BUT the boy has a great start at being a DM! He's working on a follow-on adventure and we're building a compatable character for my daughter so that she can play and actually have fun) Wife and I had fun playing and son had a blast DM'ing it - even if we DO have to now change his name to "Monty Haul"! :D Being slightly more experienced, tho, I have stepped in and toned down some of his...generosity. Also took time-outs to talk to him about how various things worked out, like the number of critters in an encounter and such. I'm looking forward to playing more of his stuff, partly to see how his senses and sensabilities grow and develop! Daughter had fun when son wasn't shutting her out of the action, so she'll have much more fun playing for a long while yet rather than DM'ing.
Ok, well, now that I have totally rambled my head off, I hope a thing or two that I said was of some use! Good luck - a gaming group is a delicate thing to balance and each one is different. Obviously, my solutions won't work for a lot of groups, but maybe some of them will.
--Doc
I was a bit disappointed with that but I don't think it is fair for the DM to bear the bulk of the costs (as seems to be common practice).
It sounds like your group has come up with a workable solution. If people start missing the minis you used to buy and supply, they know how to get them. If instead it was just you who was willing to spend on minis, you'll soon know that they don't appreciate it and won't spend time on stuff that isn't useful to your game.
As far as common practice: that's bunk. If the GM wants specific books for himself, not to share with others, then it makes sense for the GM to buy it. If the group suggests a setting, then the group should contribute. Everyone should contribute to core books.
In my group, we ran 3.0 w/ just my PHB for the last few months before 3.5 came out. When 3.5 was released, I bought the core books and lent them to our GM, who prepped with them and brought them to the sessions. When the Completes came out, Ben bought Complete Warrior (since it matched his interests), the GM bought Complete Divine (cause he wanted it), Jennifer bought Complete Arcane (for her sorcerer) and I bought Complete Aventurer (reluctantly, to round out the set.) Jennifer got the PHB2 for her birthday. While the books tend to stay with their owners, they get shared around during sessions and one shots. It certainly cuts the burden down when each person's purchasing one $30 book, not $30x4 for the GM alone. Seperately, various players have a D&D mini addiction-- the minis are theirs, but they lend them for use during the session as required.