I've recorded a great long session with Judd Karlman of the Githyanki Diaspora about his experiences running games on Start Playing. He shares his approach, what he would do differently, and his hopes for paid GMs down the road. I had this conversation with Judd to use his experience to help me start off strong as a paid GM. I hope once I’m done with the edits, you use our conversation also to help you start stronger.

In the first part of my Pro Gamemaster series, I talked about running open tables West Marches style as a workhorse game for the Start Playing platform. There's a balance to be stuck between what I want and what's good for my clients. What's good for the DM, and what's good for players. I'm looking at the prep time and effort required, the income made, and whether I am providing value...are players having fun?

I think open table games are the workhorse of game sessions for me. Episodic sessions in a lore-rich campaign world. These are the foundations of West Marches games. I have chosen to leap fully onto the 500LB beast that is D&D 5E. I'll run Neverwinter in 5E as my first of two open-table games. D&D is a monster on Start Playing, maybe because it is a strong touchstone for folks. They can talk shop, jargon, and compare adventure stories. Like military veterans trading basic training stories, golfers talking about their scores or bosses beaten in Elden Ring. In our podcast session on GMs for hire, Judd said he believes there is room and growth for non-5E games —and I believe him, but that's Phase 2 of my plan!

West Marches campaigns need a community of player characters. I'll set up a public Notion page for world details, schedules, rules, and a Discord might come later. I need to figure out a way for engaged and recurring players to provide world updates and communicate amongst themselves —but that is probably Discord.

I'll use the three 5E core books, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and the 4E Neverwinter Campaign book as my source of lore for the City of Neverwinter, our home base. I use Obsidian for a lot of writing and planning stuff, and my GM prep will happen there.

Foundry VTT and Zoom are my online tools. I'll have to find digital maps, tokens, etc, to load into Foundry. I will keep track of the time spent. This is all prep and work and needs to be tracked to know if I'm making money. It sounds like a job for Google Sheets!

Let’s get into it. So far, every tool and choice I've made plays to my strengths.

I'm not doing anything brand new or stretching too hard. At this stage, there are things I don't know about this adventure; using the things I'm strong at, things that come easy for me, puts me in a great position for the things that are unknown to me. Like what's a good schedule? Or the unknown unknowns? Use what you're good at to free yourself up for the unknowns.

I'm leaning on my West Marches Kickstarter experience. I ran OSE and Forbidden Lands for 40+ players. I'm offering a 2.5 - 3 hour expedition for five players max. I'll start with $30.00 per seat. Start Playing has a feature to offer the first two-player signups a 50% discount; I'll make use of that in these early days. I don't have a sense of what days to schedule for yet, but I also have to figure out do I have the energy to run four games a week and how to get that energy if I don't!

Everyone starts at 1st level; having multiple characters is encouraged.

Milestones for experience. I love XP for gold, but these are open tables of various remote players, and tracking XPs isn't the right fit. But knowing what activities will get you a level up or being able to boast a milestone: "I was there when we slew the giant dank swamp troll!!" That's priceless! I'll have a starter list of milestones which I'll add more to in play. I'm considering "hidden" milestones - these are "discovered" in play and known only by those that discovered them. What they do with it is up to them. We'll see what happens!

I will tweak the Neverwinter map to be a point crawl and use the journey and audience rules from Adventures in Middle Earth 5E. These are some great mechanics for handling perilous journeys and social interactions or mini-games, as the kids say.

I will need to start the "fire" I learned this from my Into the Mad Lands games. Players may come to the game ready to rock and still need a push, a direction, permission to play. I will prep the ruins of Castle Never for early delving, probably the ruins of Port Llast and the ruins of the floating city Xinlenal. Maybe my early milestones board looks like this:

The Greenhorn milestone is an easy incentive for you to return with your 2nd level character for more adventures. Several interested but competing parties could sponsor the recovery of the Never Crown. I'll have some GM brainstorming fun for the other two. Things like the Neverwinter sourcebook for lore and Kevin Crawford's Worlds without Number are great resources for generating ideas. This part is the GM fun part we’re used to. Making up factions and agendas and giggling maniacally to ourselves. I will also “stack the deck” in my favor by running a few private sessions before launching. These prequel practice games will take the “first and new” edge off my Start Playing early sessions and provide reference points around what previous players did and how things may go. Pre-Play!! If you can, as a GM, pre-play your new games or new scenarios before you run them for tables of strangers. I cannot recommend pre-playing enough!

I'm considering offering 'Intro to Foundry & D&D' slots for an hour, free. I show you around the Foundry VTT app and the 5E plugins. You get to know me, and I put my charm on ya!! This is good PR stuff. I know the Foundry VTT pretty well, and I like more folks to use it and get comfortable with it. It helps remove software hurdles if you're in my games later, where I will likely use Foundry.

I'm also looking to find a sci-fi game to use the same play framework. Traveller, maybe, Mecha Hack, or Lancer using The Long Rim setting.

I'll start scheduling games after GenCon in August. Right now, not counting this article, I've logged 3 hours of work, mostly reading and planning. No new expenses. I've downloaded 5E plugins for Foundry and begun looking for digital assets for tokens and maps. I will pull maps from Dyson Logos which I already support on Patreon. I'll see if free D&D Beyond has anything to help me out.