I agree so much with this! Most people who move into the pro gm world have a ton of experience and resources, but the reviews are one of the best ways to have people vetted. We only show GM's who have 5+ reviews on our search, but any GM can list a game if it meets our review standards.
I like that take on it being a permanent convention set up. The drop in games are definitely filling that niche. A bunch of our games aren't in search because GMs use our tools for charging their customers and scheduling sessions, but for private groups. I'll be honest, we're working to make the ToS more clear as we've learned about other use cases. We mean to say, Minors need a parents consent (credit card to book). As we have grown, we're working to create a better and more apparent code of conduct.
You also found an interesting bug! If you haven't signed up for an account but click become a GM, it won't work since our database looks for an account to them upgrade with new permissions. Thanks for pointing that out!
Awesome! Thanks for responding. That clears up some details.
> I'll be honest, we're working to make the ToS more clear as we've learned about other use cases. We mean to say, Minors need a parents consent (credit card to book).
I know how tricky ToS can be, especially around safe access for minors. A lot of games I've run professionally have been at cons and events where kids could be present, and online signup/registration tends to be one of the recurring hangups.
> A bunch of our games aren't in search because GMs use our tools for charging their customers and scheduling sessions, but for private groups.
This is an awesome use of the service, and it'd be great if that use case was made more visible up front as a selling point toward becoming a GM.
The pitch to GMs as it's presented on the site is more about how the site can help to drive people to games, but if I already have players and my goal isn't necessarily to expand my audience through discovery, then using this service solely as a front-end to handle private scheduling and compensation — and with the option to open it up if we want to add a player built in — sounds a lot more compelling.
For instance, I use Calendly to book and take payments, but it's more rigid to work with as a group scheduling tool than I'd like — a business meeting isn't quite as expected to have people join and leave a group meeting on a whim. I feel also like I'm paying for business-focused features and integrations I don't use, while fighting against that design in order to connect it to VTTs and the like.
Oh yeah! The buy-in presented to GM's needs some TLC. Now that we have become "official official" we are gonna have our lawyers help with our ToS and working with some convention folks on a better Code of Conduct presentation.
Yeah, we originally thought about using calendly too, but ran into the same rigidness.
Also, I don't think I answered this previously, but we take a 10% cut of game bookings!
I like that take on it being a permanent convention set up. The drop in games are definitely filling that niche. A bunch of our games aren't in search because GMs use our tools for charging their customers and scheduling sessions, but for private groups. I'll be honest, we're working to make the ToS more clear as we've learned about other use cases. We mean to say, Minors need a parents consent (credit card to book). As we have grown, we're working to create a better and more apparent code of conduct.
You also found an interesting bug! If you haven't signed up for an account but click become a GM, it won't work since our database looks for an account to them upgrade with new permissions. Thanks for pointing that out!