How do i start pursuing proffesional dming?

[Salgood]

I should start this post out by saying that I am 16 and have been playing dnd 3.5 for 7 years 5e for 4 years and dming both for 4 years. Ive started getting very in love with the idea of proffesional dming as ive spent alot of time creating a homebrew world that ive written many pages of lore for and have been running for about 3 months now. Id like to expand into getting paid to dm atleast a few sessions a week but im in a small town and am not sure how to go about getting players. Im open to all advice or tips for when it comes to being a proffesional dm like pricing, what to do about problem players when there paying to be there, and anything else anyone can think of :)

[Vorpal Glaive]

StartPlaying (https://startplaying.games/gm-search) is a great place to pursue your dream!

[Lalliman]

Professional DMs do exist, so this is achievable.

But it’s also something that only a small fraction of players will ever be interested in. D&D being a recreational activity among friends is an essential part of the experience for many, and having a DM who is providing a paid service fundamentally changes that dynamic. So in terms of finding players willing to pay for professional DMing, that’s probably a non-starter if you’re in a small town. You’d have to play online to find players.

Also, not to rain on your parade, but I think you might still be too young and inexperienced to realistically attempt this. Firstly, regardless of how skilled you actually are, most strangers aren’t going to have high expectations of a 16-year-old DM, especially because most of your potential clients would surely be 25+ financially-stable adults.

Secondly, while your four years of DMing experience isn’t nothing, it’s not a lot either. Especially because, living in a small town, you’ve probably spent those years DMing for a handful of personal friends. So you probably don’t have a lot of experience handling unfamiliar players with diverse playstyles, which is exactly what you would be doing as a professional DM.

Because mind you, as a professional DM, you don’t get to have bad days. You don’t get to make the kind of rookie mistakes that are easily laughed off in a friend group. If people are paying you to provide a service (especially one that friends usually do for each other for free), they’re going to be upset if you can’t provide consistent quality. This will apply more or less strongly depending on how much you actually charge, of course. But you should be aware of the extra burden you’re taking on.

I guess the main practical advice I would give is: if you’ve never ran a game for a group of internet randoms before, do that for free first. Run multiple short campaigns for multiple different groups so you can really experience what it’s like to run D&D outside the controlled environment of a friend group. Then you can reconsider whether you’re willing to take on the responsibility of being paid for that.

[Pauly]

Volunteer to be a GM at conventions. Do as many conventions as you can.
Cons are a great way to broaden your experience of dealing with players from different backgrounds

Write one shots for conventions. You will get a lot of feedback on what works and doesn’t with your writing.

[Anymage]

I guess the main practical advice I would give is: if youÂ’ve never ran a game for a group of internet randoms before, do that for free first. Run multiple short campaigns for multiple different groups so you can really experience what itÂ’s like to run D&D outside the controlled environment of a friend group. Then you can reconsider whether youÂ’re willing to take on the responsibility of being paid for that.

This. Paid GMing is also a field where the realities of it being a job can conflict with the ideas you might have in your head. (Video game jobs are another major example of this.) You'll need more skills than just playing with your friends. Especially because the playing with random people is not a guarantee of quality players and you'll have to manage some difficult personalities while remaining professional.

Also agreeing that sixteen is on the young side. In addition to practical problems like being able to process credit card payments as a minor, you'll very likely have problems both being comfortable keeping charge of a table full of adults (who tend to be the sorts of people who have discretionary income to hire a GM), as well as being seen as someone who can be in charge by adults. Jobs also have a history of taking advantage of teenagers. And while there are worse jobs for this than DMing, it's also very likely to wind up running over lots of time you'd want to spend doing other things.

If you want to get more practice DMing I'd recommend asking at school or somewhere similar if you can start a club. Just the experience of having to run for people other than your friends who you're familiar with can be good practice for DMing for more people down the line. If you're looking to have more money as a teenager I'd recommend a job with more clearly defined hours and responsibilities so it doesn't wind up overrunning everything else.

[Kardwill]

Id like to expand into getting paid to dm atleast a few sessions a week but im in a small town and am not sure how to go about getting players.

Both are going to be a problem, I think. It is very unlikely you'll find players willing to pay weekly for a campaign, especially in a small town. Unless you already GM for strangers, and want to switch to a professional relationship (which will bring its own set of complications)

The solution for the "small town" problem would be GMing online, like on Roll20. Do you play/GM online? If you don't, then do it, at least for a few games, to see if it's your thing.
From my experience, online games make quite a difference for the GM (more prep work, more energy spent to keep the players engaged while you don't see them... It's quite fun, but pretty tiring).
Note that GMing online will get you far more potential customers, but far more competition too. It's likely you would be the only "pro GM" in your hometown if you opt for "live" games, but only if you know how to find potential players.

For the "campaign" stuff, unless they already know you, it's likely your customers won't engage in a weekly payment for a campaign with a complete stranger. Most of your paid games would probably be one-shots or short bursts, at least at the beginning. Offering a complete start-to-finish experience in a game is quite different from playing a week-after-week campaign. Your personal setting and lore will be far less important than your ability to set a simple and engaging story and to keep the game going at the right pace.



Note that there is another kind of pro-GM : GMing for events and kids, aka "the glorified babysitter". It depends of where you live, but running games at a youth center, or getting paid by parents to GM at their kids' birthday, might be an option (and a fun experience) if you want to run "live" games.

[Vyke]

There's a lot of great advice in this thread, especially working with cons and schools.

Without wishing to sound negative there are two warnings I'd offer.

1) Be very sure you want to make your hobby your business. Many people do and do it successfully. But it requires a very different mindset. It's no longer something you are doing for fun, you are doing it for someone else's fun. You aren't doing it to relax after work. It is work. It may well affect how you see the hobby in your own time (because while you are paid GMing you are on their time). You will have to drop your creative satisfaction for theirs and you then might not want to spend the rest of your time playing. I have worked in my hobby and I can assure you after a day working in the hobby, it was the last thing I wanted for my evening.

2) Linked to this. You say you've enjoyed homebrewing a setting and lore. That's great for your home game and I'm glad you enjoyed it. But if you're a paid GM it doesn't matter. You need to run what your players want. They probably don't want to read pages of lore. They want an exciting game from the moment the time they've paid for starts ticking and they want it to end with victory when the time ends. And they don't want homework or pre reading, that's why they hired a GM. You will have to decide what you care about. If it's the money, you need to be ready to murder your darlings and drop anything in your setting that doesn't work for the players. If the creative side is what excites you more then you need to decide how important your creative integrity is. It might be more fun to publish your work as a setting..... but that carries it's own burdens.

As some specifics to your question, problem players. You need to set your stall out early for what behaviour you expect and then you need to stick to it. And that's tough. Think about the obvious risks. Do they have to pay if they cancel? What if someone behaves inappropriately? What is considered inappropriate? What warning do they get? Will they get a refund if you remove someone from the game. Will they get a refund if your remove yourself from a game? How and when will you get paid? (It's not at the end of the game) Make it absolutely clear what you expect. That's your offer and that's your price. They can take or leave it. Be very careful if someone wants to negotiate something different. And if you aren't sure you can stand there and stand by your expectations.... don't put yourself in that position.

Oh! One other really important thing to think about is venue. Not just does this location work for playing an RPG. You need to be thinking, is the venue safe, both for you and your customers?

[Vorpal Glaive]

I should start this post out by saying that I am 16 and have been playing dnd 3.5 for 7 years 5e for 4 years and dming both for 4 years. Ive started getting very in love with the idea of proffesional dming as ive spent alot of time creating a homebrew world that ive written many pages of lore for and have been running for about 3 months now. Id like to expand into getting paid to dm atleast a few sessions a week but im in a small town and am not sure how to go about getting players. Im open to all advice or tips for when it comes to being a proffesional dm like pricing, what to do about problem players when there paying to be there, and anything else anyone can think of :)

There will always be naysayers in life that could potentially stop you from pursuing your dream. Don't listen to them. Professional GM is a fast-growing occupation you can take advantage of like this Reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/agep6s/professional_dungeon_masters/) shows. If you advertise on StartPlaying and Meet-up and tabletop rpg-related Facebook pages you might find a group of players looking for what you're offering.

[Vahnavoi]

Broaden your concept of what being a professional game master means. It does not need to mean that this is going to be your job title. At your age, I'd take a look at school, churches and other community spaces to see if they're offering summer jobs for youth leaders or such. That's more likely to give you an opportunity to hold games to kids and teenagers closer to your own age.

In the longer term, consider what kind of education would support your endeavor. If you want to be an entrepreneur, that might be finance. If the goal is to just hold games to people while having a job, consider childcare and teaching. If at some point you want to publish books, consider graphic design and illustration. If you wish to primarily work online and maybe branch out to computer games or online services at some point, consider information technology.

Also, look at jobs for holding games outside of tabletop roleplaying, such live-action murder mystery parties, escape rooms or even being a blackjack dealer.

[Ionathus]

There will always be naysayers in life that could potentially stop you from pursuing your dream. Don't listen to them. Professional GM is a fast-growing occupation you can take advantage of like this Reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/agep6s/professional_dungeon_masters/) shows. If you advertise on StartPlaying and Meet-up and tabletop rpg-related Facebook pages you might find a group of players looking for what you're offering.

"Follow your dreams" is a nice sentiment, but knowing what's actually within your grasp is critical so you don't burn yourself out or run into heartbreak after sinking all your efforts into something unfeasible.

Sadly, I'm with the "naysayers"1 on this one. You shouldn't even consider "professional GMing" an option available to you until your mid-20s (and even then, it's by no means a guaranteed thing): as others have said, even if you were the most skilled DM in the world, it would be an uphill battle to reconcile your age against the age of anyone with the disposable income to pay you. Very few mid-20s groups want to hang out with a 16-year-old, and I would be suspicious of the ones who do. You're at a completely different stage of your life right now and your worldview, experience, outlook, and communication styles are nearly incompatible for a longform thing like D&D.2

Focus on becoming the best DM you can be right now (the advice to play with people outside of your circle is very good for this), and pick a different part-time job that's a little easier to get off the ground. I do also love the idea of running games for birthday parties as a starter, though you definitely need to have a lot of patience to try running something like D&D for preteens.

1. Who have all, for the record, been very measured and encouraging in their responses here even if they're sharing concerns with the OP.
2. Yes, older groups do occasionally play with teenagers, but almost exclusively when there's a prior relationship in place (e.g. child-parent, older/younger siblings, etc.)

[Vahnavoi]

As another career path I forgot to mention, take a good look at sports. Running, say, a soccer club for kids might not make you better at D&D, but it can make you better at other aspects of customer service and running a business. Now, where I live, doing this professionally would not be an option at your age: the field is dominated by volunteers and hobbyists, actually getting paid requires being extremely experienced and well-regarded and gaining a high position in a sports organization. But, even if you can only do it as a volunteer, the skills gained are worth it.

[BRC]

I've got a friend who does this through Startplaying. He's also a very experienced GM whose been playing and running games most of his life and has a deep passion for it. I

Things to Know from observing my friend
1) The times when clients are available to play are, unsurprisingly, the times when your friends will want to do stuff! My friend gets very few free evenings. If you're 16, I'd say this is going to be very difficult on top of school.

2) It's a LOT of work. My Friend mostly runs modules to cut down on prep time, but providing an experience worth charging for is still a lot of time investment for each session, plus handling the social side of things (Corresponding with players about characters for example.) If players don't feel they're getting their money's worth, they will drop out, so imagine all the normal social wrangling involved with a D&D game, but with a lot more pressure.

It's the sort of thing that can easily ruin one's love of a hobby. I'm pretty thankful he didn't burn out, since he loves RPGs and it would be a shame if he lost that.

3) People probably don't care about your Homebrew.

My friend mostly runs published modules, not just because it cuts down on prep time, but because it's much easier to advertise. Recruiting for a Curse of Strahd game gives the players some idea of what to expect vs "Hey, I have a homebrew setting, I think it's really cool!". I'm sure there are people out there who would enjoy your homebrew world, but unless you've got a really strong elevator pitch, people are not going to want to read your several pages of setting lore before deciding if they want to play. And even then, setting lore doesn't necessarily tell them much about what to expect from the campaign.

Remember, they're not only giving you 2-4 hours of their time, but they're paying you money, and given the nature of campaigns, that money probably isn't worth it unless they play a bunch of sessions. How willing would you be to commit to spending $100 to play in somebody's game?

When doing it professionally, the dynamic changes a lot. You're no longer one of a group of friends engaging in a hobby, you're now a businessperson providing a service for clients.


Some steps to take

1) When my friend got started, he reached out to everybody he'd run games for and asked us to write reviews for him. As he'd been running games for a long time, he had a pretty healthy pool of people to ask, and because he's really good at running games, we were all more than willing to write glowing reviews.

2) People are less likely to be the first person to join a game, since they don't know when, or if, the game will gather enough players to actually ever start. They're a lot more likely to join a game that already has players in it. When my friend got started, I think he reached out to some players he knew personally who he thought would be interested and gave them free seats so that paying players would feel more confident joining in.

[Lalliman]

There will always be naysayers in life that could potentially stop you from pursuing your dream. Don't listen to them. Professional GM is a fast-growing occupation you can take advantage of like this Reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/agep6s/professional_dungeon_masters/) shows. If you advertise on StartPlaying and Meet-up and tabletop rpg-related Facebook pages you might find a group of players looking for what you're offering.
I totally support following your dreams. But you do have to do it right. If your dream is to be an astronaut, the way to achieve that dream isn’t to go apply for a job at NASA right now. You start by pursuing a STEM degree and fostering a healthy lifestyle so that you can build up to being an astronaut eventually.

DMing is slightly less intensive than that, but the same applies. As a 16-year-old with a few years of experience running home games, putting your services on the market right now is feasible, but it isn’t a very effective way to pursue being a professional DM. Spending the next few years seeking out new experiences and solidifying your skills so that you can be a confident pro-DM down the line, that’s what pursuing this dream looks like realistically.

[Raunchel]

Of course, following your dreams is something we all aspire to. But unfortunately, there also is such a thing as reality. The reality is that there are lots of people who like to GM and not actually all that many who are willing to pay for someone to run a game for them. That in turn leads to a pretty big oversupply of potential GMs which makes it an incredibly competitive market. So, generally, a professional GM doesn't make that much money, has pretty unreliable hours (and income) and is expected to do a lot of preparatory work. A lot of your prep work will also be hard to recycle because, well different groups want different things out of a game. And the moment a paying customer doesn't get what they want, they bail.

I've personally never been paid to run a game (I actually did get paid to play DnD once, but that's a different story and had far less to do with gaming-related skills than other factors) but have dealt with service-oriented roles where I essentially was self-employed and it was hard to properly plan things in advance, especially because I didn't want it to intervene with my education.

My personal advice would be to focus on your education and just GM as a hobby. If you happen to find some people who want to pay you for it, you can certainly give it a try but I wouldn't focus too much on it. It's far too uncertain to base anything on.

[J-H]

Also be sure you work on how you speak. You want to be an interesting speaker with a broad vocabulary and the ability to keep people interested with just your voice... or at least, it helps a lot. If you were over 18, I'd say join Toastmasters. As a 16 year old, check for a Speech class in school, or look for a Gavel Club (Toastmasters for teenagers). It gets you more practice speaking in front of people, as well as practicing verbal variety (varying speed and tone), cutting out crutch words (um, er, uh), impromptu speaking, and dealing with the unexpected while speaking on front of a group.

Actually, unless someone is already a great speaker, that's just good advice for anyone in a job that involves talking to people above call-center level.

(Yes, I did Toastmasters before and am trying to get a club started in my area now)

[KorvinStarmast]

Also be sure you work on how you speak. You want to be an interesting speaker with a broad vocabulary and the ability to keep people interested with just your voice... or at least, it helps a lot. If you were over 18, I'd say join Toastmasters. As a 16 year old, check for a Speech class in school, or look for a Gavel Club (Toastmasters for teenagers). It gets you more practice speaking in front of people, as well as practicing verbal variety (varying speed and tone), cutting out crutch words (um, er, uh), impromptu speaking, and dealing with the unexpected while speaking on front of a group.

Actually, unless someone is already a great speaker, that's just good advice for anyone in a job that involves talking to people above call-center level.

(Yes, I did Toastmasters before and am trying to get a club started in my area now) This is some of the best advice for any GM. Well played!

[KineticDiplomat]

Understand that your experience with GMing to date is entirely based around a social contract where most people realize you are freely offering your time to facilitate them playing a game. A great deal can be forgiven in you, and most people will be more than happy with a mediocre amateur with a multitude of faults and foibles so long as you aren't actively BAD.

Once you begin taking more-than-table- snack-money, you are now in a different league. The expectation is that you will provide a client facing experience worth paying real money for. You are no longer the friend taking on the hardest job; you are someone with obligations and expectations. Most notably.

Quality. Simply put, you can be the best kid in the school play and not worth one red cent off-boradway, write an A+ piece of fiction for class that publishers won't even bother sending you a form rejection for, and you can absolutely run a "pretty fun" game that isn't worth paying a real wage for. Before you head down this route, you need a bit of a soul search to confirm that you are actually good, and not just "good enough".

Consistency. Now that you're a business, the expectation is business like consistency. Players can miss games - it's their money - but you can't. If you are the type of person who relies on a flex schedule, this isn't going to work here. Someone js literally paying you to be there every Thursday night, and they do not care that you have something else you want to do.

Customer service. If you want to run a cool 3 Musketeers game but all your clients want yet ANOTHER D&D game...guess what you're gming? And you'll ride the line between being sufficiently creative to be unique, but also giving them a bespoke experience in the field they want.

Those are more or less the pre-reqs for being a professional at anything. GMing is no different, so before getting into details, can you meet those basics?

[hifidelity2]

Volunteer to be a GM at conventions. Do as many conventions as you can.
Cons are a great way to broaden your experience of dealing with players from different backgrounds

Write one shots for conventions. You will get a lot of feedback on what works and doesn’t with your writing.

I agree with this - a "strangers" feedback will help you develop your style and understand that different (age) groups want different types of adventures

[Kardwill]

I agree with this - a "strangers" feedback will help you develop your style and understand that different (age) groups want different types of adventures

AND get you out of your confort zone of "GMing for friends in a familiar place, and with the possibility of finishing the game next week". GMing one-shots with a time constraint for complete strangers can be a very interesting GMing experience, even if you don't want to become a pro.

[KillianHawkeye]

While it's true that professional DMs do exist, I strongly doubt there are any who do it as their career. It's definitely more of a side gig kind of thing at best, unless you're the one in a million like the top 0.1% of Twitch and YouTube stars.

So this is something that may be a good goal to work towards long term while you keep your more realistic options open.

[VampiricLongbow]

As with everything, it is all about networking and getting yourself out there. Also, lots of practice.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

While it's true that professional DMs do exist, I strongly doubt there are any who do it as their career. It's definitely more of a side gig kind of thing at best, unless you're the one in a million like the top 0.1% of Twitch and YouTube stars.

So this is something that may be a good goal to work towards long term while you keep your more realistic options open.

This is very important to keep in mind. As with the other sorts of things mentioned here there is a media complex making it look very sexy. I have one friend who does paid DMing he gets $50 for a a three hour session. He can book prime hours like Saturday night pretty easily when he wants to. Thing is, he's an engineer in his 50's who makes ~$40 an hour so I'm hesitant to call him a "professional" DM.

Another friend enjoys running modules and will run the same module for different groups only a year apart. He's exactly what you're looking for in a convention DM and his games get huge tacks of applications. I've told him he needs to put a trivial table fee on his new games if for no other reason than to trim down the number of player applications he needs to go through. He has badges on roll20 for crazy numbers of hours, games, unique players, buying digital products, etc which would help with looking like a serious person you should consider paying.

These are the people your comparing yourself to when you pursue non-celebrity professional dming, adjust your expectations accordingly.

[Psyren]

StartPlaying (https://startplaying.games/gm-search) is a great place to pursue your dream!

Per the TOS you need to be 18 and up to use this service.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

While it's true that professional DMs do exist, I strongly doubt there are any who do it as their career. It's definitely more of a side gig kind of thing at best, unless you're the one in a million like the top 0.1% of Twitch and YouTube stars.

So this is something that may be a good goal to work towards long term while you keep your more realistic options open.

Going "semi-pro" could be kind of nice though. Work a regular job three or four days a week, spend the additional time you "should" be working nerding out about settings and monsters and run a few paid DM'ing session in the evenings and weekends. It costs more time and probably still makes less money than just having a 9 to 5 job, but I could see that being a rewarding lifestyle if you really love DM'ing...