“Exploring the growth of people getting paid to run Dungeons and Dragons games.”

And so July kind of bled into August, and I had found myself in this rabbit hole of exploring the growth of people getting paid to run Dungeons and Dragons games. Definitely driven by the pandemic, but now holding up even as the pandemic loosens in different places around the world. And so I thought, “Why not give it a try?” I’ve been running through the entire pandemic multiple games with and for my friends and having a good time and I have experience in the video game industry. I worked alongside some of the greatest designers in video game history. And so I found a site that’s startplaying.games that basically serves as a bridge. They help Dungeon Masters who want to get paid for running the game connect to players who are willing to pay to run. And I, I spent, you know, a good three weeks investigating the marketplace and the different kind of web sites that offered and felt like that one, startplaying.games, really kind of nailed the scenario well. They did, they do paid matching. Like, you know, they have a list of all the games people want to run and they have a bunch of, you know, people can log in making an account and go, “I want to play in that game,” and, you know, join it and get their credit card ready and show up on Friday night and have Friday night Dungeons and Dragons in their own house at their computer, but with people from other places the world and a Dungeon Master who is treating it professionally and therefore, you know, should be at a certain tier of achievement and delivery could pay his capacity giving that experience. So I built, you know, made an account, built a profile, thought about the games I wanted to run, looked at the format everybody else was doing, thought about a marketing plan, and put it out there. And I’m two weeks in and I’m already getting, I’ve got four different conversations. One has led to a group of people out of Sydney, Australia – mind you, I’m in Kalamazoo, Michigan – who don’t know anything about D&D other than they want to play. And apparently, they’re in some form of lockdown, because they said they, you know, they’re, they’re all in their houses and they can’t hang out together. So they want us something they can do online together for fun. And put that out there and I said, I, you know, like will work out the time zones, but I’d be willing to do that. And so, it turns out, you know, like I now am teaching them Dungeons and Dragons and letting them have fun off Sundays at 5 a.m. Michigan time and for four hours. So I’m, I’m from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. And they’re from like 7 to 11 p.m. their time.