One night, I was talking to a close friend who had played many of my online tabletop role-playing games over the years. He was sharing with me some of the terrible experiences he had trying to find a good Dungeon Master (DM) to play role-playing games with online.
He mentioned that the Dungeon Masters he played with, based on game system and time availability, had wildly different DMing styles. He said he would have to invest his time for a game session or two before deciding if he enjoyed their style or not. He even left in the middle of one game because the DM was so awful.
Lastly, he was in a free game but noticed that one player at the table seemed to be the main character of the story and everyone else was just support characters. When he questioned the DM about this, he was told the DM was in fact a DM for Hire and only paying players received story involvement. My friend was extremely upset and felt like he had been tricked.
He ended all of this by saying, “These other DMs did not make the game fun, exciting, or engaging for all the players like you do. I did not realize DMs varied so widely in talent.” That's when I realized, if I wanted people to hire me as their Dungeon Master, I was going to have to showcase what made me different from DMs they had played with before or would find online for free.
The first thing I did was to sit down and create a stand alone, one-session-only, adventure. One that would have the 3 major components of any tabletop role-playing game. The 3 components being a combat scenario, a role-playing scenario, and a skill based scenario. The combat had to be dynamic and exciting. The role-playing had to be intense but with some humor sprinkled in. The skill checks had to be risky and rewarding.
Next, I had to amp it up! I added vibrant maps with game tokens. I incorporated music and sound effects into the scenarios. I created unique voices and memorable personalities for my monsters and NPCs. I provided art that illustrated the people, places, and things the players interacted with throughout the adventure.
I knew I wanted the game to be accessible to new and seasoned players. However, I didn't want to waste game time on character creation mode. I collected some pre-made characters for the players to choose from. I allowed the players to customize the appearance of their character and to name it but keep the pre-made statistics. This was just enough to add a sense of creativity and ownership to their character.
Lastly, I would run this adventure for 8 players at a time and finish on an exciting but satisfying cliffhanger. I would sign-off by thanking all the players for participating, explain that I am a professional dungeon master, and encourage them to leave a review on my StartPlaying page.
I have run this free adventure now 9 times with an average of 8 players each time. From this pool of nearly 72 players at least 8 of those players returned to be paying clients. Those 8 clients referred over 11 friends to my online tabletop role-playing games. Since November 2022, I have run two 6 session campaigns, three 4 session campaigns, and numerous 1 session adventures for over 19 paying clients.
Investing the time and energy in establishing myself as a professional Dungeon Master was the best thing I could have done.
Nicholas Cardarelli
Raisedondnd.com
https://startplaying.games/gm/cardarelli
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