How to Create a DM For Hire Service for D&D (Part 1)

Transcript: How to Create a DM For Hire Service for D&D (Part 1)

So building a service for a DM for hire business. This is something that we have to think about pretty deeply in order to make sure that we are delivering things to this unique marketplace, in a way that is going to make your players want to come back and join you again. So what I want you to do now is, let’s imagine that you had a blueprint. This basically is a blueprint that will help you create consistency, and create a quality experience for everyone who visits the world that you DM. Obviously in this case, the blueprint is the pre-planning that we’re going to start doing to ensure that every player will want to share their enthusiasm. They want to come back for more and tell their friends, that kind of stuff.

We’ll create a few things when we create a service.

Starting now we’re gonna think about some baseline pieces that we want to put together if you were to build a DM For Hire service. Things that I would want you to think about. As you’re building it out, it will be your first pass at how you’d want to do things. Eventually, as you get more experienced, and get out there and and and get that flow going out in the field doing paid sessions. This (the blueprint) may change as you evolve and learn new things. But for now, if this is something you wanted to do, start thinking about how you would start it off. This is going to be just your first try at it (building your service).

How do we want to create a DM for hire offer that ideal players are going to find irresistible and will want to keep coming back?

How can we do this without compromising your values and what’s important to you? Here are some struggles that I think you see a lot around this (building a service). Folks who are aspiring to be a paid DM, why do they fail bringing in the right players, or appealing to the right players. First of all, bringing them in and making sure they match with your values. Not only that but making sure you don’t lose them as a returning player. So some of the struggles I’ve listed out here.

• The first struggle is:

  “Hey what elements should I even include in my offer”? Just because you see other people doing a certain thing doesn’t mean that you absolutely must do it yourself. And that’s a big distinction. Because if you’re going to go try and do something that you don’t enjoy, your players are gonna see that or they’re gonna sense that, and it’s not going be very fun for everyone. So let’s make sure that we figure out what elements are important to you. Because when things line up with what you care about, and what’s important to you, that’s when things can really shine.

• The second struggle is:

  There’s no consistent experience. If you don’t have any kind of organization around how you’re going to be running your sessions. And if it’s an ongoing thing, like you’re trying to do a session a week, or maybe multiple sessions a week, or maybe you’re trying to just do a once a month, whatever it is. You want to make sure you have some kind of process in place that will make it the same every time. Not only for your players who come back and want to have a consistent experience, but also for you consistently being able to know what to expect. Every time you go out there and do a session. It becomes kind of like clockwork for you in a way that takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders.

• The third struggle is:

  Lack of confidence on how much you should charge for your services. If you don’t know what you have to offer. If you can’t clearly articulate to your ideal players what you have to offer, and why your offers are so valuable, then you’re definitely not going to have confidence in what you want to charge for it. But if you’ve built the structure of a service that you can offer, you can become a lot more confident in saying, “Hey I’m able to charge this much because I provide this, this, this, and this for you”.

These are the things that we want to address and overcome these struggles.

We want to go from unsure about what elements we’re going to have. We want to get rid of the inconsistent player experience and even the experience that you yourself are having as you’re doing session after session. Let’s get rid of that lack of confidence on what to charge, and turn that into is choosing those elements that’s going to make you really shine. Also making your players so excited about what you did that they give you five star reviews, so we have the ability to feel confident in what we’re charging.

How are we going to do this? How you how do you build a DM For Hire service?

Here’s the steps that I put together. I’ve put together three steps or three actions. Today, I’m just going to cover the first one, because there’s a lot to cover for each of these. And then we’ll cover the other two in subsequent posts. So let’s look at this first action.

The first action is to determine what your preferred setup is. So first, you want to put together a list of elements that that you want to include in your session. Think about every possible thing you can include in your offer. Things that will bring both you and your players the most joyful experience. As I said before, so it’s important to stress that again. Things that bring you joy, not things that you think other people are going to enjoy. If you aren’t having fun and you’re not enjoying it, your players are going to notice and that’s definitely gonna change the energy of the group. It’s going to change how people perceive how well things are going.

Let’s take out some paper and a pen and start brainstorming together what what your DM for hire service might look like.

Here are some things I want you to think about. What are some things that we can bring into your offer? Let’s break it down into a couple categories.

The first category is Service.

Write down “Service” as your first section in your notes and underline that, Service. What do I mean by service? There are certain things that players will will see as super valuable. They’re going to walk away thinking how great an experience it was. They’ll be like, “Wow, he or she really blew my mind on this”. So the main goal around service is to provide as much value as you can, so that they’ll want to return again for another paid session. Here are some examples for for what you can provide for service.

• Guidance

  Could you possibly can you include like free guidance for new players? Could you do like a quick consultation with them to help them get up to speed?

• New Players

  Some DM’s want to do this DM For Hire thing just for new players. I know a few myself who have gone through some of my programs. Other folks would rather work with players who are super experienced. But if you were bringing in new players, are you willing to give them guidance? What if it’s a mix of new players and veterans? Do you have a way to help those new players feel welcomed? You want to have some kind of some kind of guidance? Possibly. So think about how you would handle that.

• Session Zero

  What about what about if you offered to run a session zero before your first session? Even if it’s a one shot, right? Maybe, maybe you can offer, possibly for free, just doing a session zero with everyone. Getting everyone familiar with each other just for a short hour or so. That’s one way you can do it. Also, if you do do this one shot, do you have a consultation? A one on one with each player to to go through their character? And when they’re doing the character creation, maybe helping them build the backstory? Are you doing all that? Is that part of your service? There’s a lot of things here one other one that I’m thinking about here? And that would be what you could you offer?

• Free One-Shot

  There is another one that I’ve seen some some DM’s do. Could you offer an introductory one shot for free? Or maybe for a low cost? If you did it for a low cost, that could bring in some folks who are on the fence about whether or not they want to join you. They want to see what it’s all about first. When you offer that value upfront, it makes people that much more willing to join you on a paid session. So think about those things around service.

The next category is Software.

Write “Software” as the next section in your notes and underline that. As a DM for hire you have a broad reach. If you offer online games, you have a really broad reach worldwide, basically. So you will want to decide which kind of software tools you like best. The reason being is because you’re going to convey this in your in your actual listings, where you’re going to list what what your offer is.

Any players who also like using those tools are going to be drawn to you. Those that don’t like those tools are gonna be pushed away. And guess what, that’s okay. Because you only want to be running games for folks who will enjoy what you’re doing and the tools that you’re using. Obviously, we said before, you’re also going to enjoy it yourself as well, because it’s other folks who are matched the same values and same things that you care about.

That being said, let’s talk about what are some things around software.

• Virtual Tabletop

  Write down what virtual tabletop software you’re going to use. Are you are you going to use any at all? Are you are you the type of DM who likes to do theater of the mind? That all depends, so you need to write that down.

• Physical Table and Minis

  Do you plan to maybe set up a physical table with physical minis and use a webcam to point at and then move move pieces around like they do on Critical Role? This is a really cool idea and I did an interview quite recently, with an awesome youtuber named Troy buckle. He showed me how he set up this kind of DM setup and it is pretty amazing. If that’s something you might want to do, check out the interview and walkthrough of this unique setup on the Dungeon Mavericks YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/PHcwT13YIqk. You’ll see what’s possible with using an actual table actual minis even if your players are virtual online using online communication tools. That’s another option you can offer for paying players.

• Group Communication

  What about the voice chat or the video software that you’re gonna be using? Some folks just use voice only. That was originally what discord was for of course, a lot of us know about discord. Some folks go far back and still stick with Skype. That’s because they just want to use voice. I guess Skype was originally a voice only thing, but both Skype and discord now have video. Some folks don’t like to use video and that’s an interesting choice, but I think nowadays everyone’s using video. Although if it’s something that you didn’t want to use, you don’t want to use video you only want to use you know voice only. You’d want to list that as well as something that you care about and how you’d want to set up your particular offer.

• Character Sheets

  Then the last one is around software. How are you going to manage the character sheets? Are you going to use D&D beyond? For most folks, that’s the easiest way to set up a character sheet and share it with The DM. Then the DM can just go in and see how everybody’s characters have been built. There are other tools as well, it just depends on what what you care about. So you wanna make sure you write that down as well.

Now the next section on determining your preferred setup, this is this is another area in your notes.

The next category is Resources.

So write down “Resources” and underline that. Here’s the next section that you want to think about for resources. As a benefit of players who are paying to join you, what will they get in the way of resources? Are there are there some things that that you can give them where they can’t get them anywhere else, unless they spend their own extra money or time to get it?

• Published Books

  Would you supply them with access to an online compendium of published source books for them to utilize? I know that in D&D Beyond you can offer the ability for a DM to have all the source books, which I think cost a couple hundred dollars to have all the source books. But you can share them with any players who you bring into a campaign, and they can all access every source book without having to own it themselves.

  That’s a really great benefit for a lot of folks, when they don’t have all the source books, maybe they just have the handbook. And maybe they want to look at some of the other supplements like like “Zanathar’s Guide To Everything” or “Tasha’s Cauldron Of Everything”. Those are the ones that have some extra character options. So maybe they want to have access to those because they don’t have it at home.

• Artwork

  What if you had a curated library of character artwork, and tokens that they could choose from, instead of them having to go out and find stuff. Maybe you’ll have a really vast selection of things that they can pick and choose from, without them having to spend extra time trying to go find it themselves. Maybe that’s another cool thing that you could offer.

• Maps

  Another another thing that a lot of DM’s like is maps, not everybody does. The folks who do theater of the mind don’t really care about maps. If you did care about maps, what kind of map making software are you going to use and and display for your paying players? Some some map making software is very fancy. And it makes it look very immersive. Other map software like Owlbear Rodeo, for example, it is very minimal. Some players might not care about that they only care about the story. They don’t care how detailed the map looks, they only care about measuring distance.

All of this just depends on what you care about.

When you convey what you care about, then the players who care about that will be attracted to your game sessions when you put out these listings. That’s the whole point of determining what your preferred setup is. It will then determine what your target audience is going to be, your target players. Those whom you’re going to go try to find and bring into your world.

All of that was all the first step in building your service.

We’ll go over working procedures and building the offer and in later live sessions.  One of the thing to note here is that this “Build Your Service” step is just one step in an entire 9 step roadmap that we have. So I’m going to show you what that looks like. There’s a it’s a clear 9 step roadmap for creating a DM For Hire Business in 90 days. You’ll see this is just step 6 out of 9 steps. I wanted to mention that that is our premier 90 Day program that that I’ve worked with Dedicated DM’s who have been able to go on and create a DM For Hire service in in about 90 days.

Finally, one other thing before I sign off.

I wanted to announce that we have we have another 5day challenge called “Get Paid To Run D&D”. That’s coming up in the next month or so. If you’re interested in finding out more about this challenge, click this link: https://go.dungeonmavericks.com/3stepdmpack. It’s going to take you to a page where you can grab our free download called the “3 Step DM Adventure Pack”. Go ahead and click the Download button if you want to grab that PDF if haven’t already gotten it. Then scroll down to the yellow section, just click the blue button in this section to sign up to get notified when the challenge is open for registration.

That’ll be coming up very soon within the next month or so. If you’re interested in joining us for the 5 day challenge in building a DM For Hire Service you’ll be having your first your first game listing up in five days. Join us for that that will be really awesome to see you in there.