Pay-to-Play: The Business of the Professional Dungeon Master

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This newsletter is one very close to my heart. I’ve mentioned this before, but I work on the side as a professional dungeon master. I’m paid to run tabletop roleplaying games for people. It’s a decent gig, but one that I also recognize exists in the complicated and wild economic and cultural ecosystem we know as the TTRPG community. So I decided to bite the bullet and do a deep dive. I’ve been working on this piece for 2-3 months and finally got it out today. I’d love your perspective and hope you find this insightful.

In 2024, I learned I was being laid off from my full-time position as a reporter in Washington, DC. The decision was quite sudden, but the role was reportedly one my boss no longer wanted to fill. Like many in such an economic situation, I began looking for other forms of employment and alternative sources of income. One of the many tools I considered was “professional DMing,” something that I had been paying a company for. I was regularly DMing D&D games for friends, and the skillset seemed viable. 

So I reached out and applied to become a GM. I was accepted and began to host games in exchange for a regular weekly fee.

I’m hardly the only one. There’s a slowly growing community of creators, performers, fans, and more who have turned years of GMing into a viable income. Tens of thousands of players are regularly paying to play TTRPGs online in this economy, something that might’ve once been seen as unfathomable in an earlier era. The practice has helped marginalized and disabled individuals find alternative sources of revenue, and has earned DMs more than $50 million in the last five years.

History of Pro DMs

For the sake of our conversation, a professional dungeon master, or “Pro DM” is defined as someone who has been compensated financially to run a tabletop role-playing game. This could be in-person (such as during a convention, at a local gaming store, or at an event hosted at a bar) or it could be online through platforms like Discord, Foundry or Roll20. The majority of pro DMs earn their income from online games.

The label of “professional DM” does not imply a superior skill level. Several of the best DMs out there are not compensated for their work, while many subpar DMs are paid for their labor.

The ‘History’ of Professional DMs

Pro DMs are not a new concept, as game stores and conventions have been compensating DMs to run modules and homebrew worlds for years. Some local businesses have offered to host games for private parties in the past. But two historic milestones arguably sparked the notion of the dungeon master as a profession.

The first is the popularization of Actual Play content.

Actual play, or recordings of players streaming their TTRPG experiences, has its origins in “play reports” in magazines that described wargames and campaigns in print. Once long-form video became available online, creators realized they could broadcast their D&D drama to a broader audience. Media companies like Penny Arcade, Geek & Sundry and Wizards of the Coast organized their own live-streamed games that have become the pop culture pillars we know and love today.

These performers would set the stage for what a good game looks like and how we might experience such at our own tables. It also inspired others to realize that perhaps they could be like Matthew Mercer or Chris Perkins and run an AP themselves in podcast or Twitch form.¹  

The second event was the launch of Startplaying.games in 2020, an online marketplace where DMs can sell their trade. A DM can go on SPG and host a listing for a specific game (Strahd in Space!) at a particular time (Fridays at 6 PM EST). Players then pay the DM weekly for the opportunity to join the table and roll dice with whomever else is willing to join the table.

While people likely hosted games online for money before SPG, the marketplace normalized the practice, much like Amazon changed book selling in the early 2000s.  SPG also arrived at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a moment when people faced significant layoffs and sought home-based entertainment during quarantine. That led to a massive surge of interest in D&D that year, which made it the perfect time to offer ‘premium’ D&D games online for anyone willing to play.  

In the six years since SPG’s launch in 2020, it has become the face of professional DMing for most TTRPG players. There are an estimated 5,000 professional DMs registered on SPG, according to the company’s CEO Devon Chulick, as well as 80,000 players.

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StartPlaying.Games: The Pro GM Marketplace

The surge in professional DMing would not be possible without StartPlaying.Games, arguably the primary marketplace for any pro DM worth their salt. Devon Chulick launched the project in partnership with Nate Tucker and Jared Golhardt in 2020 after his work as a pro DM and content creator in the San Francisco area got him featured in a Bloomberg Businessweek article. Chulick had been recording actual plays and podcasts for several years, and that eventually led to people wanting to hire him to run games for them. Chulick began to receive messages from other DMs asking how he did it and how they could become like him.

So he collaborated with Tucker and Golhardt to launch the website. SPG formally launched in 2020, arriving at the perfect time for people seeking a new way to make money while we were all in quarantine. The project saw steady growth with GMs quickly swarming to the platform to seek new ways to turn their skills into cash. That growth led SPG to raise $6.5 million in seed funding in 2022. The venture capital fund a16z, along with general partners Jonathan Lai and Andrew Chen,

provided the financing.

Fast forward to 2025, and the company has become the face of the space, Chulick told TTRPG Insider. The website currently hosts over 5,000 DMs and 80,000 players. It regularly partners with creators, publishers, and GMs to host weekly events that promote the latest and most significant releases from big publishers. It also offers training workshops and resources to help GMs stand out in the market.

SPG has also reportedly paid out more than $50 million to GMs since its 2019 inception, according to a recent interview with Many Sided Media. While this is a speck of dust compared to the billions paid out to gig workers at Uber or Fiverr, it is a lot of money in the TTRPG space.

How does SPG work, exactly? Let’s say you want to find a D&D game on a Tuesday night. You search the website and see game slots that may be available at that time. They may fit your exact style, or they may be something different. Players will then sign up to pay a regular subscription fee to appear at that table. In many cases, players can join the game instantly. Some DMs may put players through an interview process or a session 0 beforehand. That player will then be sent a link to a Discord account or another social media platform where players regularly gather to roll dice. They’ll also be charged a per-game fee.

The average fee charged by most DMs we spoke to was between $20 and $30 per session, though games can range from $5 to $100 depending on the DM. Private games containing erotic themes, for example, often cost more.

SPG will then take a cut of the paid fee to cover its costs, in a similar way to Apple’s App Store or Amazon. The fee was 10% until Jan. 2025, when the company raised it to 15%. “It was one of those things where, like, we really needed to do this to make sure that we were a long-term profitable company, and that we didn't have to make unnecessary rate hikes,” Chulick told TTRPG Insider. While DMs had to adjust their rates to accommodate the additional rates, Chulick claims that it didn’t lead to significant “subscription churn” or cause DMs to lose a substantial amount of players.

While SPG doesn’t have exact data available, Chulick estimates that 15-20% of all DMs on its platform earn a full-time income through their games.

Meet the Competitors

While SPG remains the face of professional GMing for most, other companies are aiming to expand their presence in the space and offer alternatives to the monopoly that SPG appears to hold. We spoke with two smaller companies that are aiming to offer their own unique takes on the practice:

Polyhedra

Polyhedra was launched by David Demic, a lawyer who wanted to help find better games. He personally struggled to find players and tables that met the level of personal quality that he desired. He’d also noticed that a lot of marginalized people were struggling to feel welcome at local game stores. He initially joined some smaller teams but decided to go independent in 2021 and founded Polyhedra.

What distinguishes Polyhedra from SPG is that it aims to interview players, match them with appropriate GMs who fit their style, and ensure they abide by the company’s code of conduct. It also requires all DMs to use Foundry, a VTT with high customization and many features.

The project has grown slowly since then, hosting more than a dozen GMs and over 500 members on its Discord server. It also recently launched its own online marketplace and is slowly expanding its online presence beyond its Discord service (where the majority of its members currently play).

Full disclosure, I work as a contractor for Polyhedra. ³

Arcane Gate

Arcane Circle is the newest member of the professional DM market, founded by community manager and DM Michael Ortiz this year. The platform presents itself as an alternative to SPG by offering lower fees, a community-focused approach, and (eventually) a built-in VTT. The project came about when Ortiz found it increasingly difficult to earn a living on SPG due to the platform's fees. He eventually decided to launch his own platform in partnership with his cofounder, Michael Carmody this fall. AC is currently in its alpha stage, but hopes to provide an alternative marketplace and an all-in-one platform for DMs to run games.

The company recently attempted to crowdfund the platform in November, but canceled the project after struggling to find enough backers.

Meet the Professional DMs

But what kind of person decided to become a professional DM?

A good example is Anya, a professional writer who moved to Germany with her partner. She found that her work was drying up in 2022 and was considering alternate forms of income.

"I liked playing Dungeons and Dragons,” Anya told TTRPG Insider. “I liked running it. I’d also just published my first D&D module, so I had something that was very solidly mine to kind of focus on and run.” She launched her career as a pro DM and has hosted over 500 games on the platform. She currently runs around eight games a week between freelance contracts and her work as a cosplayer and actual play performer.

VJ Harris, an indie game designer themselves, began their pro DMing career by quitting their job and joining a cohort for marginalized creators hosted by the top-ranking SPG DM Friday Strout, in 2022. They’re currently running about three weekly games on SPG while also working on their own indie titles.

Somnus Grey is a self-described Australian creative who had initially wanted to build a career in film and game design. Unfortunately, both of those markets were not easy to get into. But Grey found themselves regularly running TTRPG games for friends. They spotted an ad for SPG in 2020 and were encouraged by their friends to make a bit of money with their skills. Now they run 11 games a week

These are just a few examples of who joins. But we identified a few trends among many people in the professional DM space.

They Reflect the TTRPG Community’s Demographics: Just as the TTRPG space has historically been male-dominated but has slowly diversified over time, the same can be said of the professional GM marketplace. A cursory glance at SPG’s list of available GMs showed a majority of white male GMs, although female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ creators have slowly grown their presence on the platform. There are no official numbers available for the demographic breakdown of the platform because SPG requires DMs to “opt-in” to sharing demographic data, according to SPG’s leadership.

They are Creators: While many professional DMs pursue this as a side gig alongside their full-time work, others use it to earn a living and potentially even launch a TTRPG career. Creators like Luke Hart from DM’s Lair, DJ of BeeZee RPGs, the host of Lore By Night, and others maintain SPG profiles, where they regularly host games alongside their other creative projects within the space. It’s pretty standard for pro DMs to have side projects, such as actual plays or published material.

They Seek Alternate Forms of Income: Several GMs I spoke with noted that they began this practice due to limitations on their ability to work. Jack Kellum, the owner of Gods and Gamemasters, told TTRPG Insider that he took up professional DMing after a back injury prevented him from performing physical labor. He now runs multiple games alongside his TTRPG and world creation-related work online. Kobold DM (whom we interviewed in 2024) spoke about how he struggled to find a job after graduating in 2020, leading him to take on professional DMing as his primary source of income for four years.

Pro DMs in 2025: Thriving Despite Economic Uncertainty in the Industry

A big part of what inspired this story was a single question: Were the current economic uncertainties of 2025 causing players to stop using professional DMs? There’s a ton of good reporting on how tariffs have severely hurt game creators' ability to print new games or ship them into the United States. We’re also seeing many reports alleging that Americans (and likely others) have less disposable income than they did in the past. TTRPGs are a luxury good, so it would make sense for people to cut back on TTRPG spending as they budget for living costs.

The cuts haven’t affected professional DMs yet.

The majority of DMs that TTRPG Insider spoke with said that they have not seen any substantial declines in player subscriptions or attendance in 2025. While some players left their games due to shifting life circumstances, the numbers were not significant enough to indicate any trends.

Chulick confirmed this consistency, claiming that August was one of the company’s best months for GM earnings.² Demic reported the same consistency among Polyhedra’s players.

Why is that? One possible answer is simply that the player type who would use paid games hasn’t yet been affected by increased prices or tariffs. Another answer may lie in the distinct appeal of paid tables.

Why Pay to Play?

One aspect of professional DMing that I’ve often fought over in my head is the question of why someone would pay. The ideal TTRPG experience will forever be sitting at a table with people you know and trust. But not everyone has this due to a thousand different variables in their lives.

There are two big reasons that I suspect inform whether someone will join a paid table.

Safety and Certainty

While players can find a free game online on Reddit or Discord, it can often feel like the Wild West. The random Reddit ad you might find on a campaign might be hosted by people who might discriminate or mistreat players based on their identity. They also might decide to end a game on a whim.

Playing on SPG helps provide some limited level of safety and information about the DM. “If someone joins a free game on [SPG] and delivers not just a bad experience but one fraught with trauma and actually hurtful to the group, there is a level of consequence on the platform,” Chulick emphasized. “You can then report that DM, and we’d host an investigation and determine if we need to remove them.”

SPG has its own trust and safety team that reviews reports of questionable conduct by its DMs to ensure players are comfortable and safe. That moderation relies heavily on player or DM reports, since SPG does not moderate or manage the DMs' private servers. Polyhedra also has its own mods and strives to ensure players fit the community’s vision through screening interviews.

Polyhedra attempts to replicate this in its own way through screening interviews and ensuring players will abide by specific standards as well as having cases reviewed by its volunteer moderators.

Community

The other appeal is a desire for a consistent community that matches a player’s values. Paid GMs, in theory, should hopefully match a player’s interests.

Harris, for example, noted that their tables often appealed to marginalized players because they created a safe space for people of all types. Anya noted their narrative-heavy approach to storytelling appealed to her players. Kellum indicated that his approach to world-building and his use of historical references were usually major draws for his players. Each DM and their tables fit particular playstyles and are designed to create something players want to return to week after week. That can even lead players to pay for multiple games from the same DM. It might cost them quite a bit to do so, but it supports their DM, and it often turns into a friendship between the player and DM.

Some people are willing to pay to have a safe, sound community.

Chulick pointed to the loneliness epidemic of recent years as a big reason for paid GMs’ success. “People are feeling lonelier than ever,” Chulick argued. “But gaming groups are literally some of the best places to find community, because you meet regularly, you also have all these memories of the adventures you go on that create these different patterns in your brain of positive experiences. Even though it's all pretend, play is really healthy, and it helps deal with loneliness, and it helps create this community between other players.”

The Economic Realities of Pro DMing

While the notion of running your favorite TTRPG for money seems like fun at first glance, the reality is a bit harder than you would imagine.

The first thing to note is that nearly all professional DMs operate on a contractual basis, just as an Uber driver might be employed. They get as much money as they put in and often have to pay for the assets and tools required to run things. That means that if they want to run Curse of Strahd, they will have to buy the book, the digital assets (tokens, maps, visual, music, etc) and the hosting services for their VTT or other software they use. They’ll also have to do enough labor to prepare for the game, which may not be compensated.

Polyhedra dealt with this price fight in 2023, according to Demic, by setting a base rate that its community was comfortable with. The company decided to charge an average of $30 per session for most games on its platform, based on the U.S. minimum wage of $15. This number was chosen on the assumption that the DM would spend 4 hours preparing and 4 hours running the game for a table of 4 players. If a Polyhedra DM were to run five games a week at that rate (minus the fee that Polyhedra takes to cover operational costs), Demic claims that they would make around $35,000 a year. It’s a “feasible” rate to live on, depending on location, but it is far from a living wage in the United States.

SPG, in contrast, does not set prices for DMs. That means DMs have to determine how much their games are worth and strive to find a price that lets them earn sufficient wages to meet their needs while remaining affordable for their customers.

The DM’s status as a contractor also means they have little economic flexibility or support if things go badly. They might lose significant amounts of income if a TTRPG campaign ends suddenly or if the DM themselves gets sick.

The market is also well-saturated, which means that DMs have to compete even more to make their games stand out. That may include mastering marketing skills, graphic arts, becoming a content creator or any other assortment of approaches to make their Curse of Strahd campaign stand out against all others.⁴  

The risk of pro DMing also includes the adverse effects of turning one’s hobby/passion into a job, which can often lead to burnout and even to hating what you love about the hobby. Many of the DMs TTRPG Insider spoke with described their own ways to manage the threat of burnout, but it is a real and significant psychological reality facing creators in the space.

The Future of Professional DMing

Nearly every professional DM TTRPG Insider spoke to for this story expressed enthusiasm for what they were up to and how much they hoped to continue doing so.

Demic, Ortiz, and Chulick also have big visions for their companies and for the DM communities that they hope to serve in the coming months and years. SPG, for example, expects to launch new tools next year to support language localization, in-person games, and even paid games for families. Polyhedra wishes to automate much of its backend work and provide new opportunities for its community through one-shots and seminars. Arcane Circle also wants to build its platform and expand the website's features.

But what is next for this market? After talking to people involved in the space, I would make two predictions.

• Market Demand Will Remain Consistent in the Short-term: People need community, and will continue to pay for it. There’s a thirst for third spaces like TTRPG tables, and paying for a slot is one way to do it if you can’t find friends or the time otherwise.

• More Pro DMs and More Competition: The latest data from the U.S. job market shows job growth slowing. People also regularly report feeling like the market isn’t actually hiring. Workers may feel a need to seek alternative sources of income and turn to platforms like SPG to do so. That will further saturate the market and force DMs to do more to distinguish themselves through marketing and other initiatives.

Conclusion

Professional DMing is a new and novel way for creators in the TTRPG space to turn years of skill and mastery into a viable source of income. It can, in the best of circumstances, provide community and safety to players seeking such things. For DMs, it offers a unique way to turn their storytelling skills into a viable source of income. Unfortunately, it also comes with significant risk and uncertainty, as do many roles in the gig economy.

We love seeing people turn their loves into income. And the companies behind supporting professional DMing appear confident in its long-term viability despite a year marked by economic uncertainty. For now, we will see whether that growth and support remain as strong as they appear today.

Thank you to everyone who chatted with us for this story. What are your thoughts? Send any comments, corrections, or story suggestions to [email protected]. Also bother us on social media if you’ve thoughts.

Did you find this valuable? Please share! It means the world to me as a writer and reporter.

Correction: David Demic remains a lawyer while operating Polyhedra

1  It also established the alleged “Mercer effect” where players expect their DM to provide a Critical Role-level experience, but that’s a whole other conversation.

2  Our interview with Chulick was back in September so those numbers may have shifted.

3  I will openly admit I am biased due to being paid by Polyhedra, and hopefully did my best to maintain neutrality when describing them. I considered leaving them out, but I feel it is necessary to note other competitors in the space, including the ones I work for.

4  Curse of Strahd is most likely the number 1 campaign run on SPG, considering that it’s the most popular campaign ever in D&D Fifth Edition’s history. Everyone wants to play it.