Hi. I’m Jack, and I’m a professional gamemaster, or Pro Gm for short. I run a variety of games through
Startplaying.com on my Discord, focusing on theater of the mind and a cinematic experience. I also make
material for a bunch of different tabletop roleplaying games both on free my website and for sale there
(even on commission) or on Drive Thru RPG. I run and build for a bunch, but right now I’m focusing on
Tales of the Valiant, Daggerheart, GURPS, Mutants and Masterminds, and the One Ring 2nd edition. I also write freelance, particularly for Shewstone Press and their world of Drintera.
Of Gods and Gamesmasters provides gods, monsters, villains, and whole worlds.Check out my blogs and my work in multiple systems and genres on https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/, my published material on https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/20218/Of-Gods-and-Gamemasters, like Aberrant Apocrypha 1, a Manuscript of Maleficent Monsters.
Book my games on https://startplaying.games/gm/ofgodsandgamemasters, or watch my worldbuilding streams and videos on https://www.twitch.tv/ofgodsandgamemasters and https://www.youtube.com/@OfGodsandGamemasters.
If you like any of that, support me on https://www.patreon.com/ofgodsandgamemasters .
Contact me and find all my other links here: https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/wheretofindme
Introduction
I bet you’re wondering how I got here. Well, sometime way back in 1981, or 1982, I picked up a copy of
the Moldvay Basic of Dungeons and Dragons from TSR in a KB Toy Store in Louisiana. I had wanted to
“play Tolkien” with my family. I orginally thought I’d get my dad to run, but he didn’t have time, so I
became a Dungeon Master at the tender age of 8, and I’ve never looked back. For the last 43 years, I’ve
run games and built worlds in more systems than most people have seen, from Marvel FASERIP and
Traveller and Gamma World through GURPS, every edition of D&D, nearly everything White Wolf ever
made, and more. Iv’e played in even more. For most of that time, I built for myself and my friends, and
ran games for fun. At most I got pizza (or beer, when I was old enough.)
But after many, many years of a bewildering variety of jobs, mostly involving hard physical labor, I ended
up disabled. My spine was damaged by too many impacts while riding forklifts, which, as you may know,
do not have shocks. So, it thought to myself, what other skills do I have? Worldbuilding, telling stories,
running games. I figured I’d finally try to make a living doing what I love. I started out making
worldbuilding videos on YouTube (still do that), started promoting on social media, and that got me
making TTRPG things to get peoples’ attention, which got me making monsters, gods, and villains for my
website and Patreon, and taking commissions, but all of that is slow to build up an income, and I have
partners, kids, a mortgage. I’ve even been in a few actual play shows.
Gaming For Fun and Profit
Then one day some folks I had run a super hero LARP for approached me for a paid tabletop game, and
we were off to the races. I’ve been running paid games for about three years now, two of those on
Startplaying. Here’s some of what I’ve learned.
Pros:
People who are paying you to run a game are often more invested in that game. They pay more
attention to the game itself, they learn the lore, they take it seriously. They skip less sessions.
When you have clearly advertised what kind of person you are and what kind of games you run, it
tends to weed out mismatches. So far I’ve had no horror stories from paid tables. I can’t say that
about free tables, at all.
Getting paid to GM often focuses you more on providing a good experience. It’s critical to making
money and getting and retaining players, so you make sure to use good safety tools and listen to
your players from session 0 to session 100 or more. This good for you, and good for the players.
Like actual plays, paid sessions have tight time constraints. That teaches better pacing, better
planning. Helps protect from distractions and tangents.
As paid GM, you’re a performer, as well as still a player at the table, just like in an actual play.
That means you continually challenge yourself to be a better gamemaster. Gamemastering,
worldbuilding, all that, are all skills, and as such can be improved with intent and practice like any
other skill. You can be a good gamemaster right out the gate of course, but no matter how good
you are, you can get better. Doing it for a living, or just generally for money, encourages you to
research and work hard at your craft, and doing it 5 or more time a week like I do means you get a
lot of practice.
If, like me, you can’t help building new worlds, monsters, villains, and stories, well, professional
GMing lets you get a lot more of those worlds, well, out in the world.
You can make pretty good money for the time actually spent running. I make like 80 bucks after
the platform cut for ost of my 3 hour games.
Cons:
Stress. It isn’t just for fun anymore. If you weren’t stressed out about doing a good job before, you
will be now. And that’s both good and bad. But you have to manage the stress.
Burnout. Do anything too much you might get sick of it. I haven’t had this problem yet with Pro
GMing, but I’ve experienced it with building ttrpg material.
Marketing. Here’s a big cause of burnout. You have to do all your own marketing, even on a
platform like Startplaying. You have to write good descriptions, find, purchase, or make good art
for the promos and the game pages. You have to promo yourself on social media.
Time constraints are a con, too. You can’t always get through everything you want, you’re hit hard
by people being late. Be flexible.
You are self employed. You gotta handle your own taxes, find health care, figure out how to cover
when you get sick, because you will.
You aren’t paid for all the time you spend prepping that you aren’t running. In some cases that may
be as much or more time than you actually run for, and that’s all on you. It’s like teaching, that
way.
Tips:
Get good at teaching new systems. You get more players if you’re willing to teach the game.
Run multiple systems and settings. Each one makes you better at running games in general, and
variety helps cut down on burnout.
When you are getting started, you may have to run some well known popular modules in the most
popular game systems, even if those aren’t your favorite. Curse of Strahd helped me get started,
even though I prefer making my own stuff, and Wizards of the Coast is not my favorite company.
Be nice, be kind, be polite, be welcoming, but do not tolerate any intentional breach of what is
agreed upon in session 0, and make sure that session 0 (and your advertising) make your values
clear so you don’t find yourself running for someone who perpetually offends you and that you are
offended by in turn.
Be ready to boot anyone who is disruptive. Better one player gone than losing your whole game.
Know your rules, know your world, but also, be easy on yourself. Even most paid players are
really reasonable and tolerant people (if you handled your advertisement and session 0 right.)
Everyone makes mistakes, just work on making sure your clients have fun.
Happy Gaming, and always be Worldbuilding.
Jack Kellum, Of Gods and Gamemasters
About The Author
