Hi all! We're Nate, Devon, and Jared, the founders of StartPlaying.Games. StartPlaying.Games is a platform that helps players find tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) and professional Game Masters.
I (Devon) have been a professional Game Master for over five years, running games for players all across the country. I even started hiring other professional GMs because I had more groups than I could run! The biggest issue I've been seeing with people getting into the hobby or trying new game systems is finding someone to run the game for them. A lot of solutions involve digging through discord servers and forums, which aren't very friendly to new players and require a lot of time and effort. I knew there had to be a better solution to this, and started creating some Pro GM groups to network with others.
A few days after the pandemic hit San Francisco in March 2020, I got a call from Nate, who wanted to pick my brain about being a professional Game Master. He was working on a similar idea, but with a tech-focused twist: an Airbnb-type marketplace to find Game masters and other virtual game masters. That first night, we spent hours on the phone chatting about what the platform could be, and for hours each evening for the next several weeks as we began to build StartPlaying.Games.
Over the next few months, we spoke with over a hundred Game Masters and Players while building out StartPlaying.Games. We launched our platform 3 months ago, and since then we have had over 2000 bookings and around 300 GMs join our platform. And with 40 million+ D&D fans around the world, we know there is a market for our platform.
We offer users the ability to join solo, book for yourself, and a group, as well as hand-picked options for custom and corporate requests. We make money by taking a percentage of game bookings.
On StartPlaying.Games, Game Masters get more time to focus on planning and running games instead of building a website and business platform. We’re now chatting with game publishers to help them find players for their game systems, and working with convention organizers to help them run virtual conventions. We are also chatting with charities on how to get more involved in helping them run game-driven fundraisers.
We would love to hear your ideas and any feedback you have!
I've been a user on the site for about two weeks. I'm hopeful that you'll succeed. Currently my group maintains a discord community that helps us find players and connect with vetted DMs.
Can you please un-SPA your site? It's really hard to use and the current use pattern is to find a DM and move the discussion off your site as quickly as possible.
- The infinite scroll feature makes it really hard and slow to find DMs.
- The site doesn't let you open a DM's profile in a separate tab which forces you to lose your place whenever you visit a DM's profile
- The profile summaries are unhelpfully inconsistent/dishonest (Professional for 80 years, Hosted over 1M games, etc.) The profiles can't be true and make any sorting/filtering impossible.
- The DM's platforms and supported games aren't on the find a DM page.
- The DM profiles lack structure and rich content features. Please add a native video embed so that we can see videos/clips. Most DM's offer that by linking to their twitch/youtube properties. Make the profile fields less generic.
-- DNDBeyond content share?
-- Roll20 content share?
-- Audio provider? Discord/Roll20/Zoom
-- vtt supported? Roll20/FantasyGrounds/etc
Looking forward to seeing where you go and excited for your success.
Hi Dataminded! Yes! This is something we have all talked about as future optimizations for the best user experience. We'll be changing a lot of our buttons over to links first.
We plan to change how our GM search functions to make it easier to see a number of GM's at a glance as well, and probably moving to paginate those pages.
These additional ideas for the profile are fantastic, and I will be adding them to our optimization list for profiles! Thank you so much!
I came here to say the same thing. :) I also wish I could see the hourly rate in the search results or at least in the profile (it seems like you have to click "Book..." currently).
I see session of $10 to $30, which seems really low to me.
Your audience are basically guys making plenty of money and not afraid to spend it. I know a few guys who spends tons of money on Games Workshop kinds of things, buying even more than they have time for.
So I was wondering why are your prices so low? I would think the lowest price would start at $50 or something.
Like everything, price is set by supply and demand. I'm pretty sure the demand is there. So are there so many great GM's that flood the supply?
We let GM's set their own prices. So we expect a lot of prices to fluctuate as demand continues to drive them up, or lower as more GMs join the platform.
I’m in a campaign right now that is around $20/hour/person. Over time (given good site curation) there should be development of premium GM’s and cheaper GM’s. A better analogy is more like freelancer sites than gig economy sites, since a good GM is not a commodity.
I've never seen a GM charge more than $5/hour/player. The premium market either doesn't exist or I haven't been able to find it. It's not due to an inability to pay. I've had DMs push back when I suggest that they raise their prices.
Congratulations on launching! One thing - allow me to select a time zone and see game schedules in my local timezone...
I'm currently playing in a group that's transferred from in-person to videochat - as we're several players that have moved to different cities (same timezone) and a GM who's emigrated to Canada (we're on GMT+1/2 depending on DST). It can work - but please make it easier to figure out - avoiding the need to calculate offset :)
I used to work nights a few years back, and I'm sure I'd love to be able to join games after work (before the weekend) - say 8 am local time...
Other than that, maybe a bit more information for potential GMs?
Hi e12e! We actually show all games in your local timezone based off your browser. Do you think you'd still want to be able to change your timezone knowing that? Also, what are some details you'd want to see about potential GM's, we're always looking to flesh out more details for our users.
I see the other times appear to be local (although a timezone would be comforting to make it more obvious).
And personally, I'd love a 24h display option.
Re: GM - I was thinking along the lines of expectations etc - as this is (potentially) something players will be paying for. I'm sure I'm not the only veteran player/GM who's never really considered charging money for GMing (well, directly I did "teach" rpg as an elective subject for half a year).
Ah yes, we def want to change that to be dynamic for campaigns! We will need to def need to make timezones more apparent. Thanks for these suggestions!
had a similar idea a while back but to incorporate a suite of tools for the gamemasters to use, maps, npc name generators, voice modulators, things like that.
Awesome that you are seeing some traction so early on, looking forward to your success.
I tried this service and ran 2 campaigns with different groups of friends. It was amazing. DND was something I wanted to try for a long time but the barrier to entry was (at least, perceived to be) really high.
Great to see this finally launching. I'll be recommending this service to anyone who's interested in dipping their toe into DND. I also love that you're making being a "Professional Dungeon Master" a plausible future career choice. :)
> I also love that you're making being a "Professional Dungeon Master" a plausible future career choice. :)
Professional DM'ing will never be good for anything other than making some money on the side unless you're charging players an unreasonable amount of money. Yes, there is an imbalance of potential players versus DM's, but at the end of the day the only thing preventing anybody from being a DM is getting over false assumptions that "it's not as fun as playing a character" or "I'm not Matthew Mercer and thus I'm going to be a bad DM". If my introverted and self-critical ass can DM and have players enjoy the experience, so can whoever is reading this.
I DM a weekly 2-hour session, beyond the actual time spent in the session I spend ~45 minutes prepping every week (and I'm running published modules right now, not homebrewing, so that's just time spent reading ahead, writing session notes, etc.). Paid DM's generally charge $25 per player for a four hour session, and their prep time is included in that - given that even running the same module for multiple groups still requires prep time and longer sessions moreso, you're only making $15-25/hr before banks, taxes, etc. take a cut. Not only that, but being paid means you have fairly high expectations placed on your skills that nobody would have for the friendly DM running a game for fun.
I don't have anything against paid DM's, but unless you are literally providing an insanely polished experience that has potential players willing to drop $50 each for a session you're not going to be making a living off it that justifies the time spent beyond some extra pocket change.
There’s no way this is true in 5-10 years. I’m in a $20/person/hour campaign now. A future celebrity/influencer/streamer/professional improv comedian GM could easily be pulling in 6 or 7 figures.
Sure, if you have a premium product you can justify those rates - but your market is also shockingly small for said premium product. There's literally only two reasons for paid DM's to exist - A) they offer said premium experience or B) there's a huge imbalance of players to DM's. Not everybody wants to pay the money it would require to have a Matthew Mercer as their DM, and if more people just realized that being a DM is not the intimidating/tedious/boring job they thing it is there wouldn't be such a huge imbalance.
I guess I don't want to say you cannot make a living off being a paid DM, but you will have to be in the top percentiles to justify your price doing so and compete in a shallow market. Everyone else is on borrowed time until the player:dm balance naturally normalizes, and speaking as a DM myself I do my utmost to convince others to give it a shot because it's an incredibly enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Maybe? I definitely agree that paying for it changes perception a little bit ( you expect value ). But then, our sessions ( pre-covid ) have not been exactly a cheap affair ( between various manuals, accompanying pieces, dice, 3d printing/buying avatars, arranging babysitting and last, but certainly not least, food for the group it turned out to be oddly expensive hobby, though still cheaper than guns ).
I guess what I am saying is, when all those costs are considered, premium GM at $25 does not sound unreasonable. I am not sure if the market would accept more, but then.. DnD has become mainstream. I would not bet against it.
> But then, our sessions ( pre-covid ) have not been exactly a cheap affair ( between various manuals, accompanying pieces, dice, 3d printing/buying avatars, arranging babysitting and last, but certainly not least, food for the group it turned out to be oddly expensive hobby, though still cheaper than guns ).
Well, yeah, people need materials to play - that's just a given and it doesn't change if you're paying a DM or not. Realistically though, you're talking about playing in the single most expensive manner possible:
* D&D Beyond content sharing reduces the cost of manuals since they only need to be purchased once (no more fighting over the PHB or making everyone buy their own, plus associated splatbooks with character options)
* Dice are $20 for a 1lb bag, and while everybody having multiple sets is useful you technically only need a single d4, d6, d10, d12 and d20 per player (d100's are just d10, roll one twice)
* I don't get the obsession with mini's. But I also think if you're going to run grids you're better off buying a Foundry VTT license and throwing the map on your TV, which will set you back less than the cost of a single mini in most cases; I generally stick to theater of the mind for in-person sessions and use Sly Flourish's Zone-based Combat when there's an encounter that takes place outside of a 30x30 area
Babysitting if you're a single parent or have a spouse that plays and food don't have any good options to reduce cost, unfortunately.
Note I'm only trying to say D&D is as expensive as a hobby as you want it to be. To play anything other than the three box sets that include the core rules (Starter Kit, Essentials Kit, D&D vs Rick and Morty) you literally need the PHB, a bag of assorted dice and an adventure (published or your own). Hell, you can skimp on the PHB and play with the SRD5 document and need nothing but dice.
> I guess what I am saying is, when all those costs are considered, premium GM at $25 does not sound unreasonable. I am not sure if the market would accept more, but then.. DnD has become mainstream. I would not bet against it.
Except it's a premium DM at $125-150 per week, all players considered. For those that don't need babysitters (because they don't have children, have a spouse that will watch the children, or they play online) that's way more than buying pizza when it's your week. I'm not going to say the price is unreasonable given that's $6.25/hr (less, considering prep time), but it's not enough for anybody to make a living on without severe short-cuts being made in prep work (thus ruining the point of a paid DM in the first place, since anybody can do it if they get over whatever perceived problem is preventing them from doing so).
I agree overall with your economic analysis, just one thing to point out:
You might be able to get _some_ economies of scale if you homebrew your own adventure and reuse it with multiple groups.
In terms of other ways to scale your per session income is to allow people to just watch the sessions you're DMing(a la Crit Role), but at this point you're a content producer (not to mention the players might not like being watched by others).
My kneejerk reaction to the headline was that this might be a service to connect existing groups to vetted, high-quality GMs, like a premium service aimed at the sorts of folks who'd otherwise spend a ton of money on TTRPG tables and miniatures.
But this is more like a rideshare model, where you're looking at who's available for a given timeslot/location, then jumping into a game that's determined by the GM. With online games, you're also likely playing with strangers.
This makes the whole thing feel more like a permanent convention/event setup — you pay for a seat at a table and agree to work with whatever's handed to you. Which is great, but it also has to compete with similar free game matchmaking as well as those types of (now also virtual) events.
I'm also confused about the age tier filters — the "No Use By Minors" section of the ToS is very clear about users under 18 being prohibited from using the service, but there are game filters for games that can include players ages 9-17. That seems impossible without breaking the ToS.
The Code of Conduct is welcome, but it's stowed away in the bottom of the ToS. For a social product like this, it would benefit from being much more prominent and discoverable. It's also unclear how to report issues with or violations of the CoC; there's a contact email and URL in the ToS, but they point to a different domain of startplayinggames.com, and the Contact form URL in the ToS just plain doesn't work.
More importantly, the CoC doesn't appear to give the GM the ability to define additional conduct rules or expectations that don't necessarily delve into content sensitivities — can players be late, show up unprepared, play intoxicated? Can a GM remove a player who is following the CoC but otherwise being disruptive? I see some who state they will in their profiles — if they do, does the player get refunded, and from where does that refund come? What potential consequences are there for players or GMs who remove a player from a game?
What's the revenue split look like? I tried the "Become a GM" link from one of the GM profile pages, but it pulled up a blank profile, presumably because the footer links are all relative? https://startplaying.games/game-master/become-gm
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!
This is awesome! GM/DM are a rare resource, and as a forever-DM, I would love using such services to be actually able to play.
One thing I think would be a cool addition : play by post games.
I'm not a native speaker and I'm always more comfortable in written games rather than spoken ones, mainly because of the highly specialized vocabulary that I don't recognize immediately when spoken. Of course, this could be roleplayed (playing an outlander character), but I bet it would quickly grow old :)
I suppose any non-native speaker would feel that way too - and then, there's the timezone problem.
One thing I know from roll20 : localized games are not the answer. There is just not many enough players outside US to properly fit each timezone with enough diversity. That's also why PbP has been what worked best for me.
Anyway, I'm glad to see this happen, best of luck!
It's so funny, we see a lot of forever DMs using our service for this exact reason! OHHH, play by post could be so fun! Thanks for that suggestion. I'm sure we have some GM's who would enjoy that.
Your sentiment reminded me of a very niche game that I got once, but couldn't get people to actually play. You're supposed to just go about your day, observe the life around you and sorta daydream / imagine stuff on top of that and then write physical letters about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Profundis_(role-playing_gam...
I have a question about which system is better for a story-driven game for beginners.
Some context: I like RPG, but I have played exactly 4 times in the last 20 years. Last time I played it was D&D and my experience was it was more of a tactical game focused on combats than characters and story. It was about the squared map, knowing all the rules of your weapons and spells and trying to beat the GM in this game. All the rest seemed like cutscenes to the combat mini-games.
I didn’t enjoy this that much, especially since I do not know all the rules, limitations and possibilities of my weapons/spells.
I would prefer to develop a story together. A system where you don’t need a exact map with squares/hexagons to make decisions, for example. Where story and character decisions on what to do matter more than tactical decisions in combats.
Also, despite living story-driven games, I am not much into “acting” (doing voices, emotions and reactions like my character). Not sure if I have too many restrictions to find a good system or group here.
So, which system should I look for that it’s welcoming to beginners and story-driven?
Sorry you had that experience. Honestly though it sounds more like a bad DM, or a mismatch in what kind of game everyone wanted to play, than anything inherent to DnD.
Story in an RPG comes out of the choices the players make in response to the world. DnD enables that just as much as any other system. And nothing about putting yourself in your character’s shoes and making choices requires taking an improv class or talking in funny voices, so don’t worry about that.
But a bad DM who treats every non-combat encounter like a video game cutscene can be a bad DM in any system.
That said, like another poster mentioned, 4th edition did tilt heavily towards being a skirmish wargame dressed as an rpg. 5e is much better in that regard.
But if you want to get away from swords and sorcery fantasy and if Lovecraftian horror does anything for you, check out Call of Cthulhu. The rules are straightforward, creating characters is easy, and it usually focuses on unraveling a mystery rather than completing a Conan the Barbarian style quest. Combat is de-emphasized, because characters that keep getting into fights with unspeakable eldritch horrors tend to have short life expectancies.
Do you know what edition of D&D you were playing? 4e was heavily focused around gridded combat and it turned many players off, as tactics and math overshadowed the role playing.
If you haven’t given 5e a try yet, do so - it’s substantially less crunchy that previous releases and frees combat from the tyranny of the grid if the group wishes to play it without.
As far as balance between combat and story, that’s all up to content. Published adventures tend to be very heavy on dungeon crawls, while many homebrew adventures lean more towards RP.
I don’t know which edition it was. But I think you are right about content influencing how a system is played. StartPlaying.Games pays good attention to this btw. The descriptions and info about level of RP, Puzzle and Combat are very useful.
That said, from reading about it, I do think that the mentioned Cypher System will be a better fit for me
The Cypher System is probably closer to D&D, but the combat / rules / stats are a lot more streamlined, so in my experience it's easier to jump between narrative and action.
Monster of the Week is a bigger (and welcome!) departure from the traditional TTRPG formula, and is probably closer to what GP was looking for -- it's a very light "game" system on top of the players building a story together with the DM.
Monster of the Week is one of a _bunch_ of quality spins on the Powered by the Apocalypse/Apocalypse World engine. They span a ton of genres, and they all share relatively simple, story-driven mechanics:
The d&d lineage (from old school dungeons and dragons, via advanced dungeons and dragons, through pathfinder and d20 system and on to 5e) can all be played without grid and all that. For a "ready" example see the call of cthulu d20 edition/remake.
But in a pick-up game with strangers, and with the current "mainstream" d&d - you probably have to be lucky to enter a campaignwwhere you develop a character as rich as Elminister or the Lord of Waterdeep.
For systems that encourage story-telling - I'd look to Cypher as mentioned by others - and of course white wolf's Storyteller system. It can be used for almost anything - but Hunter and Mage are probably most beginner friendly for players. Beware that mage can be quite mind bending.
In addition to the recommendations for Powered by the Apocalypse games (specifically Monster of the Week) I'd also encourage you to look into the FATE system, especially FATE: Accelerated Edition[0] and its SRD [1]. It's designed to be fairly light on the mechanics, and to help the GM and the players focus on the development of a story within those mechanics. I've been running a homebrew-story FAE game with a group of 4 friends and I really like the flexibility it gives us to focus on the narrative and character development. Also it's designed to be a pretty minimal time commitment to learn the rules well enough to give it a try.
>> I would prefer to develop a story together. A system where you don’t need a exact map with squares/hexagons to make decisions, for example. Where story and character decisions on what to do matter more than tactical decisions in combats.
You're probably looking for something like the old Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium:
I see from the wikipedia article that the last edition was in 2014, so it's still going. There used to be a d20 version, also, for those people who don't know how to read two d10 side-by-side ;)
You might also want to check out the user forums at rpg.net:
You can play any system any way, and popularity of D&D (especially online and in English-speaking countries) means that you're more likely to find the 5% of D&D players that want narrative-focused D&D than the 50% of World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu players who want narrative-focused games. But there's enough of both to find someone on the internet.
Also systems come with setting and genre - if you like medieval fantasy and political intrigue Call of Cthulhu might not be for you (because it takes place in more modern times in real-world+ universe and it's mostly focused on horror/mystery). World of Darkness has a culture of focusing on narrative and acting over mechanics in this system, but it can be a little too "emo"/"existential horror" for some people. Or maybe it's my prejudice, I've never personally played it, just watched some games in the 90s.
If you don't like crunchy mechanics there's a very simple d6 system:
1 = you failed AND something bad happened
2 = you failed
3 = you failed BUT something good happened
4 = you succeeded BUT something bad happened
5 = you succeeded
6 = you succeeded AND something good happened
Your character sheet is just a table with free-form description of what you're good at (you roll 2d6 and choose better result) and what you're bad at (you roll 2d6 and choose worse result). DM can also give you more/less dices depending on how hard something is to do.
That's pretty much it - you can play it now :). I don't remember what was the name of that system but it's commonly played late-night at conventions - almost no setup required. And it tends to create games with little focus on combat.
Voice-acting is a matter of personal preference I think. I don't usually do it and I've never had problems in games where some people did it and some didn't.
Anyway - the key to having fun is to set expectations on the first session. Better to talk about it in advance than to waste time playing with people who want to have fun differently than you. The system is secondary (and you can always houserule stuff away if it's too complex for you).
Well to get to more story aspects - you really need to be at least conversant with the mechanical aspects and also the actual fluff so you don't keep breaking Suspension of disbelief for the players.
As a DM + general TTRPG lover, I think the real magic is playing with friends so the game can be exactly what the group wants, then each session and campaign can build on each other.
Our group has running jokes that span campaigns and worlds, because we have that shared language from being a group.
With that said, I still think this is a fantastic idea for everyone from all fronts to be able to play the games you like and get exactly what you want out of a game.
I will have to take a look because I have been curious about how to get deeper into this area, possibly for pay. One thought was to start a game shop in my town but I have heard super low margins and just not a great idea.
Yeah that's what I love about this game. Each game builds on each other and you end up with something super meaty. Where many games feel like snack food for me tabletop RPGs feel like a full meal :)
I totally agree about how powerful games can be for groups of friends! The shared language of games and the "meta" is such a fundamental part of TTRPGs.
I literally just bought two new dice sets yesterday - and my brother berated me saying "When was the last time you played DnD?" -- And I thought - well, Ill need to find a way to play again... and just put that out into the Universe...
Now I see this...
So - you have a new user in me. Ill look into your site and find out how to participate!!!
Online is really vibrant right now. I'm playing at least 3 games a week when pre-covid I was lucky if I could find 1 game a quarter. With paid DMs everything is so much easier.
I think this is excellent. As a start up it seems like you need to land product market fit for core DnD users willing to pay for a GM first. But after that there is an interesting strategy of seeing if you can expand the DnD market in general to more casual or newbie players. I think this is a huge opportunity.
I am in my first paid campaign now, and as a first time player my sense was that probably 80% of it was really complicated and could be stripped away for simplicity. Things like: speed, rolling for character creation, initiative, casting times, etc. These are sacrosanct to DnD players but there is a much larger gamer/board game crowd that doesn’t care. They want to get to the exciting story moments where you roll a D20 and win or lose, that’s it, in about 10 minutes.
First there was Dwarf Fortress and then there was Minecraft. I think there is an opportunity for the Minecraft of DnD, appealing to 10x as many people.
The reason I won't take a stab at this, as badly as I want to get into D&D, is that I have an unreliable schedule and can be pulled away at any moment (I have young kids). I won't even try because the possibility of letting others down is paralyzing.
I'm not sure if this is even something you can fix, but, there it is. And maybe there are ways to handle this gracefully without me letting the rest of the party down. In that case, maybe this is a communication/education problem.
I DM online for a group and we start at 9PM every Monday for similar reasons. A few people in the group, including myself, are married with children and we want to enjoy a game when the kids are in bed and there's less of a chance of interruptions. We also have an alternate day everyone has agreed on so if somebody has an emergency or can't avoid making plans on the regular game night we can still have our session for the week, this is important as a chain of missed sessions because life happened to get in the way can cause a group to fall apart.
If you're not at a point in your life where you can make a (bi-)weekly commitment with a similar setup, you can always find a DM that is looking for substitute players that can fill in when a regular party member is missing. This is a tactic used by many to avoid cancelling sessions altogether because a player cannot make it, and to keep players on a "waiting list" should a regular need to step out. No commitment on your part is needed and there's no hard feelings if you can't make a game after getting the call because you're not part of the regular group anyway.
Just make sure to find a DM that's understanding of the parental life and if you're comfortable with it you can always give them control over your character if you have to step away where feasible (no DM will want to roleplay for you in social settings, but generally other players can handle those and if there's a check you specialize in they could use your stats in a pinch - but when you're just dungeon crawling it's NBD to drive your character in combat or exploration). While I always have my wife to available to deal with any issues that may crop up with our child on game night, my players are fully aware that I'm willing to take over their character for a bit if they need to step away for an urgent matter.
At the end of the day it's important for everybody to remember _it's a game_, and we're there to have fun. The party member that regularly skips a session because they only seem to join when there's nothing better to do is a drag, but the vast majority of DM's and other players know that life is not so convenient that nothing will ever interrupt a scheduled session and aren't going to hold it against you.
One last suggestion: you can always do play-by-post. There's quite a few groups that operate this way, and it's a great way to get into the game without having to find 2-6 contiguous hours to play. The experience is most certainly "not the same", but that's the point.
I feel this so much! We're hoping to roll out a "Play Now" option down the road so you don't need to plan to be free. I think finding a way to find really flexible GMs would be helpful for solving this too.
I assume you’re a single parent, which is why you can’t make an agreement with your partner for some periodic uninterrupted time.
Have you looked at how often you are actually interrupted for a meaningful amount of time during the time the children are, or should be, asleep? Try to get a sense of the actual likelihood and severity of the disruption, because these games can handle a player stepping away periodically for a few minutes.
Not a single parent but I think everyone’s parent experience is different. Mine is that even with two of us we always feel short staffed.
I like your thought about data collection. I think the problem is more psychological. I cannot get deep into things if there’s a chance I’ll be interrupted. I’ve tried for years. The only video games I can enjoy are ones like Zelda Switch where small chunks are meaningfully fulfilling and I can pause at any point.
I was in a curling league last year and felt guilty and distracted every single time knowing my wife was on her own while I got to play.
Indeed this is very much a social and psychological problem with me and my family unit’s “free time” structure. But I look for external helping hands where I can, such as a “we have made this friendly to people who have to drop out”.
I used to love DOTA like games. God... when my first was born I was perpetually getting banned because I kept dropping out of games, screwing over 9 other people. :)
Makes sense. I'd encourage you to have a good talk with your partner to see how each of you can give the other time to step away from parenting guilt-free. It's important to find that, for both of you. It might sound silly to ask them to give you three hours to play D&D, but it's not. This is actually even more important to do if you feel you have a parenting situation that neither of you can step away from, not less.
I've been in the same situation with LoL and parenting in the past, letting down a 5v5 group, so I totally understand the hesitation. My problem was that I was trying to sneak in the time instead of being honest about what I wanted from myself and my family right then. It's just about being more intentional with the time commitment. And recognizing that D&D is much more forgiving of unexpected surprises than MOBAs are--the GM can always say you're off running an errand or just roll for you if you have to leave during a combat. You'll find many groups are forgiving of being a new parent.
Also, keep in mind non-parents also have things come up. It's not just us. My D&D session Saturday night cut short by two hours because the GM thought he had recovered from a Friday night migraine, and he suddenly realized how tired he was. We had been planning the night for two weeks but it was totally okay to wait and plan a time to resume. It's all normal.
I was trying really hard to avoid giving the OP any specific advice on their personal life when I wrote my comment higher up, but now that you've posted I have to chime in: yes to everything you said.
Being a parent, much like being a married, doesn't mean you stop being your own person. Everybody needs time to do their own thing, away from their partner and children; as much as we love them we also need to take care of our own wants and needs.
So yes, absolutely, speak with your partner and figure out some time you both can step away guilt-free. And keep in mind that groups are more than willing to accommodate your needs.
This is really great - I've fallen out of playing table top RPGs lately (kids, time), but especially being able to play early morning or late night is great. Pricing seems great - makes me think of it as an alternative to movies.
One place you might find some inspiration is italki.com - it's for language learning, but a very similar idea of pairing people with teachers. They have really nice search and scheduling functionality.
This is cool! Have you guys considered going into modern board games too? Some of the rules can be quite complex (1-2 hours explaining rules, getting through the first couple of rounds), and there's quite high demand for people figuring them out on say, TTS. Think Splotter games, Brass, etc.
It's certainly hard to find one person in a group of players who can be a _good_ GM.
Regardless, I think the key difference here isn't just connecting D&D players, it's more that the GMs are professionals. It's the difference between a professional "murder mystery" dinner, and one that a friend organizes. Sure, the format is largely similar, but the experience is wildly different.
This is really cool and probably should have been made a while back, and I'd absolutely use it if I didn't luck into a game earlier this year. I might still use it to play something else.
One thing is, it seems very targeted at TTRPG curious folks that have never played before, like people who have watched Critical Role or heard of D&D and are fantasy fans but have no idea what the actual play experience is. This makes sense, it's a fast way to grow your user base. But I'd be more likely to use the product if I could search by system and request specific games. I would use it to play more niche games that fewer people are running as one shots.
Based on your company description it seems like you're moving in that direction.
Me and my co-founder wanted something like this for a while and timing just seemed right to start building it! We do have the ability to search games being played currently of different systems and search GMs who run certain systems too. We notice a huge amount of our customers are folks who have seen Critical Role and want to get into the hobby. I think it will hopefully get a lot of other systems a chance for people to explore other systems too.
Just checked out the site, and one thing I'd recommend is allowing GMs to give more detailed info on the price per session. In the "Upcoming Games" section, one of the games is listed at $30 per session, which seemed incredibly steep compared to the other featured games that were all ~$10 per session. I clicked on the expensive game to see why it was so expensive, and it turns out that's just the rate for a single person, but it goes down to $10 for sessions with 3 or more people. This seems like a cool idea, and I wouldn't want DMs to miss out on players because they saw a high price on the front page and went with a cheaper option.
That's only for one player though, if you click through then it says:
Schedule: Price is $30 per player per session for one player, $15 per player with 2 players, and $10 per player with 3 or more players. Ask me about my availability!
I don't know if there's a way to display the variable pricing, because at first glance it looks like it would be $150 for a group of 5, but if you click on the page, you find out that it would only be $50 for 5.
This is an awesome service. I initially planned to do one or two one-shot games and this has become a regular pastime with half a dozen games played over a couple of months.
Some GM’s are better at keeping players engaged and I have found you get what you pay for. There is a walkthrough game for kids on Saturday mornings that is on my list to try.
I would like to see player profiles somehow captured by the platform as the back and forth between the different gameboard programs is a bit clunky. Letting GMs set up multi-game campaigns on a subscription basis may also be interesting.
Thank you so much! We're excited to build out a better player profile too! Really excited to make it a good resource for finding the right party members too!
Hey, great idea! I have always wanted to start playing, but I don't know anyone interested in DnD. Having some GMs willing to introduce new players to the game is fantastic!
There are some comments here suggesting that the service might not make much sense since it should be easy to find someone willing to be a GM in a group of friends. I just wanted to say that that is not always the case :)
Needs FFG SWRPG as an option. Saga edition and D6 are both totally different games.
Can this integrate with other tools in the community, like RPGSessions.com? What about mysheets.com? Or myRPGTools.com? What about OggDude’s character builder? What about the various dice rolling programs?
Can you also handle FFG Genesys, which is very similar to FFG SWRPG?
What about virtual tabletop games?
Do you handle audio chat, background music, and video as well? What about shared maps, like roll20?
I’m already in a number of different Discord servers for various different SWRPG campaigns, and while the games themselves don’t cost me any money, Discord certainly does. And if I want the Discord server to perform reasonably well, then I have to get yet another Nitro subscription, and that kinda gets old after the first half dozen or more Discord servers.
And scheduling is a hard problem that I have yet to see anyone handle right.
Speaking only for myself, I’m not looking for a 24x7x365 convention. I want to play with the same group of people every week (more or less). It could be a really large group, so maybe only a small subset of us can get together for any one game. But still the same group of people, albeit perhaps with a few different options for GMs.
Give me a reason to use your community system instead of the various Discord servers I’m on, please. Not only will I be happy to give you money to do so, I’m willing to give you extra money if you can make that experience even better for me.
Really cool idea! I could definitely see myself using this service when I graduate and have more time.
Out of curiosity, what is player retention like in campaigns? Have you guys considered adding any incentives to keep players coming to the sessions? When I last played DnD, we would always have a ton of fun during the sessions, but it was difficult to keep everyone coming back regularly.
We have been pretty surprised about how high our player retention is. It's different for every DM but on the site overall it's pretty high. I think part of it is due to how much people really do want to play, and that they have paid for the session. I really do like the incentives idea though. That is something I want to explore more of now. Like a loyalty program for playing in a campaign.
Running paid games brings in a different type of player. As a DM, nothing has been more satisfying. Player retention has been great and I've never had more involved players.
Do you have any ideas about incentives I could offer as a DM?
One tiny advice, all the buttons on your website have anti-aliasing on the text. Anti-aliasing works great on large text, or small text, if it is white in color on dark backgrounds. In your case, the smaller buttons have readability issues, especially the "Signup/Login" button on the top right.
For public games, it would be nice if there was a way (similar to kickstarter) to have a minimum number of people attached to the game before it starts/gets-funded, otherwise it doesn't happen.
I would be very interested in trying this out, but do not want to end up paying for a 1 on 1 session if no one else joins.
This sounds great, my friends and I used to have a regular game night but busy schedules and a few people moving means now it's something we just kind of talk about doing on Roll20 or something. I already posted to our group to see if I can get them in a session!
Amazing! Yeah, our search has two options, one for groups and one for individuals, so you can find a game for either. So glad to see groups of friends getting back together and adventuring again.
Cool. Pricing looks looks great. Low enough to justify a few hours of fun. High enough to only get people who really want to be there. Hopefully its enough to keep DMs engaged. Looks like me and my boys are going to dive into a star wars story.
Site has some sort of performance issue. Could be hugga death. Just to let you know, as you might lose people who ar just impatient. I got the impression too much JS running? Maybe prerendering and cdn required?
This looks cool, but the pricing is absolutely insane. I saw $10-30 per session. Dming is a lot of work, sure, but that is a steep price. I don’t know many people who would pay $120 a month to play DND.
Keep in mind that we're speaking of building games totally hand crafted for the players and the characters they built, if done properly. Even if using a module, not two games are the same, because GMs build around characters, and players may get the story off-rails. It doesn't seem expensive to me, we're in luxury territory.
It's not that much when you consider that the the IRL group we where paying £2 to £4 dues and a couple of drinks and food so I was spending £15+ a night last year.
Ands that counting the cost of buying books figures etc for the DM
There's a fascinating change in willingness to pay between between digital and physical products!
I used to DM a weekly game. Every Thursday night our group would get delivery, at $10-12/pp, plus beers, etc. Once we moved to a remote session, I adopted Roll20, and was trying to decide if the $5/m was worth the extra file storage :P
... I was going to comment the exact opposite. If a session is 5 players and $20/session, and lasts 4 hours, then the GM is making $25/hr and that doesn't even include prep time!
I've played a few sessions on this platform, including a session across the country with my sister for her birthday. Big fan - if you find a solid DM, this can make quarantine a lot more fun.
I just want to congratulate the folks behind this for coming up with a great idea and executing it. Makes me wish I had time to play D&D again. Total brilliance, good luck with this!
Congrats on launching! I've been (extremely) slowly working on a similar idea for the past few years. I gave up on the pro GM part because demand seemed so low. Best of luck.
Thank you! Really excited to get more people playing. Demand kind of moved up due to a lot of folks never having the chance to play, and this helped them break into the hobby.
Yeah! We naturally sort on upcoming session, with all times being in your browsers local timezone, but we need to make that more apparent. We're thinking about better sort options, but also trying to balance the amount of space that search takes up!
Looks really interesting, congratulations on the launch! It's been mentioned before, but the lack of any indication of timezone was kind of offputting.
It quotes local time (according to the browser). If it's going to quote only one (i.e. not give the option to change timezones) I'd say local is probably the better option instead of making most people do the tz conversion in their heads.
Not sure how well this can work without a game client though. I'd love a hybrid where you play a video game of sorts , but a DM is actually running it .
As one of the GMs on their site, I can say it works very well. I use a combination of already-existing technologies to host my sessions. Every GM has a slightly different approach, but as with all things D&D, that's really true in many areas. For the way I have it set up, it is fast and simple for the end-user to set up an account and be playing by that evening or that weekend.
To follow up for the various games I play in roll d20 is the goto - some people have problems with sound on roll d20 or want to stream so we use hangouts.
You can also use discord but the sound is laggy and doesn't work with better gear as well a it should
Players really need a decent headset not a $9.99 special offer.
You can play on ipads etc but you ideally need a real PC/MAC with a big screen or screens.
I don't know anyone tbh. I played a lot of VtM and other WoD games a long time ago and after watching a couple of episodes of LA by Night I've been longing to play again.
Ditto, my D&D and Traveller groups broke up because we all moved away for jobs or college or military or got married, etc.
There was a program called GRiP that did some of that but was hard to configure. https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/GRiP the company that did it went out of business. So have a good business plan and marketing.
this looks incredible. i've heard so much about DnD but never had the opportunity to get into it because you have to find a GM and find time and all that jazz thats hard to do as a 30-something. thank you for making the entry level free!
How do you plan to handle players that others don't like? That's a fairly common problem for TTRPGs. You'll see a question every other day on rpg stack exchange about a troublesome player. Off the top of my head
* Players who don't play fairly
* Players who are rude
* Players who break game norms, like always wanting to detract from what the group wants to do ("It's what my character would do in this situation")
* Players who role play too hard in boring ways (e.g. overly philosophical debaters)
* Players who are overtly sexual
* Players who make off color jokes
* Players who aren't engaged enough
* Players who are selfish or antagonistic
* Players who others cannot understand due to language / accents
* Players who are racist/sexist/make unwanted advances irl
I (Devon) have been a professional Game Master for over five years, running games for players all across the country. I even started hiring other professional GMs because I had more groups than I could run! The biggest issue I've been seeing with people getting into the hobby or trying new game systems is finding someone to run the game for them. A lot of solutions involve digging through discord servers and forums, which aren't very friendly to new players and require a lot of time and effort. I knew there had to be a better solution to this, and started creating some Pro GM groups to network with others.
A few days after the pandemic hit San Francisco in March 2020, I got a call from Nate, who wanted to pick my brain about being a professional Game Master. He was working on a similar idea, but with a tech-focused twist: an Airbnb-type marketplace to find Game masters and other virtual game masters. That first night, we spent hours on the phone chatting about what the platform could be, and for hours each evening for the next several weeks as we began to build StartPlaying.Games.
Over the next few months, we spoke with over a hundred Game Masters and Players while building out StartPlaying.Games. We launched our platform 3 months ago, and since then we have had over 2000 bookings and around 300 GMs join our platform. And with 40 million+ D&D fans around the world, we know there is a market for our platform.
We offer users the ability to join solo, book for yourself, and a group, as well as hand-picked options for custom and corporate requests. We make money by taking a percentage of game bookings.
On StartPlaying.Games, Game Masters get more time to focus on planning and running games instead of building a website and business platform. We’re now chatting with game publishers to help them find players for their game systems, and working with convention organizers to help them run virtual conventions. We are also chatting with charities on how to get more involved in helping them run game-driven fundraisers.
We would love to hear your ideas and any feedback you have!