A newsletter and podcast focused on Friday Strout's fiction and tabletop roleplaying games. Featuring top industry contributors from both the professional Game Master scene, game designers, writers, artists, and more!
Today we chatted with Hunter Fell who is a member of the StartPlaying Games team! We covered a bit of GenCon experience and the origins of SPG, as well as a brief discussion of networking.
https://www.twitch.tv/warlocksandwaffles https://www.youtube.com/@warlocksandwaffles https://startplaying.games/gm/huzzahescapism
NOPE.
But here’s how you do the work:
Discover your strengths.
Leverage your strengths.
Stop listening to people who don’t have a credible track record.
Fail humbly.
Fail more.
Learn from your failures.
Capitalize on your successes.
You need your business to have longevity. Therefore, you need to focus on a few different things that are important:
What sort of games can you run and still have fun?
Focusing on your strengths is important to providing a great experience.
Run too many of the same campaign and you’ll get burnt out on it.
Run too few of the same campaign and you’ll be doing more prep on average for all your games.
What sort of games can you run without the time/pay ratio being out of whack?
It makes no sense to run 4+ hour games with an average seat price.
Your compensation needs to make sense at an hourly rate.
You need diversity of experience (different campaigns/settings) available to up-sell.
Your players won’t play Curse of Strahd 6x a week, but they might play in 6x different Ravenloft campaigns. (I only run CoS 5x a week now, but it’ll soon be 3x. Balogh, top-ranked GM, runs Exandria 6-8x a week in different homebrew campaigns.)
I have several players who play with me 3-4x a week. These are your super fans and will strongly consider any offering you have. They replace your “seat fillers” over time.
Theros used to be a “dead setting”. I saw maybe 1-2 Theros games on SPG in March. When I coached my friend Kenzie onto SPG I encouraged her to start running Theros games because it would hit the underserved market. She now runs 4-6x Theros games a week because there is a hefty demand for a GM whose strength is that setting.
Finding your business plan is at simple as discovering more about yourself. It’s not what everyone else is running. It’s what you’re great at.
Happy gaming.
For this ep we have Sebastian on and BOY did we talk about some really cool shit. Topics: Their job at Hit Point Press, Shift RPG, Storytelling Collective, being an editor for Uncaged: Goddesses, Big Bad Con 2022, indie publishing, The Vineyard, and their background in journalism.
Shift RPG Discord: https://discord.gg/Pww8psMjB9
On this pod we chatted with Sarah about her new Kickstarter project with Draco Studios (link below), being a novelist, the freelancing tabletop industry, leadership within tabletop projects, her adventure in Candlekeep Mysteries “A Deep and Creeping Darkness” and more!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dracostudios/dragonbond-endless-sagas
https://koboldpress.com/haunted-items-brynjolfs-collar/
https://twitter.com/UnfetteredMuse
To check out the Siren from our upcoming release The Vineyard signup for our BackerKit! You’ll get the PDF for free – Discord link for the playtest community is in the PDF. Amazing!
https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/4f7c44d7-fe78-4309-984c-6d95567e5a29/landing
If you’d like a more polished and edited Dollars & Dragons please sign up for my Patreon so that I can afford to edit these things!
Hey y’all! This week we’re talking actionable steps for your biz.
The average marketing consultant is paid $100/hr. My rate is $175/hr for pro GMs and more for companies. Why is my time worth so much?
I cut through bullshit. Here’s how:
1. HONESTY
Most clients shouldn’t hire me starting out. I actively recommend people don’t until they’ve been running their business for a while.
When you’re new: You’ll learn just as much from a blue belt. Put in the work first, I say –
2. SIMPLICITY
Most of my work is about reducing things to the simplest action plan possible from what we CURRENTLY know. Business plans will change often, but making sure you’re heading in one direction intentionally is what is most important.
When I was a tactical advisor in the Marine Corps we had a saying: “A good plan right now is better than a great plan tomorrow.” Time is money – and choosing to extend your timeline for factors that don’t net you a higher ROI is silly.
I want you to win ASAP.
3. THE NORTH STAR
A foundational guiding light is important to understanding your business. You need to boil down your entire LLC to one truth. What is it?
If you need more than 1 sentence, it’s too complex for your small business. You can’t follow more than 1 North Star.
4. REMOVE OBSTACLES
Automate your processes as much as possible so that you aren’t doing busy-work over and over.
There’s no reason for you to do the same thing more than twice.
Josh Simons from Demiplane We chatted about Twitter, business development, theology, upcoming Demiplane services such as Vampire Nexus, party dynamics at the table, compensation in the tabletop industry, Kickstarters, and more!
(The podcast is free! Support if you find it to be valuable.)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/dollars-dragons-74442263
Check out our preview PDF by signing up here through BackerKit!
Our team’s last ask: It would help out the team immensely if you hit NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH on our pre-launch page.
Today I had an awesome conversation with Josh Simons! We chatted about Twitter, business development, theology, upcoming Demiplane services such as Vampire Nexus, party dynamics at the table, compensation in the tabletop industry, Kickstarters, and more!
Missed a week because we launched our Siren Preview PDF! Link below!
Your NPCs are boring because it is tough getting players to engage.
Here’s 3 tricks I use to have them live Rent Free in my players’ heads:
1. Curiosity
My NPCs will ask about the PCs. This causes them to build a relationship with the NPC as they communicate normally. Try asking:
“Where are you from?” THEN: “Oh, I know that place. I’ve been there, I saw X festival 2 years ago.” etc. Have the NPC relate.
“What do you think about <local rumor>?” THEN: “I see. Here’s <my opinion>.” Double points for being a bit over-the-top, which often leans into humor.
“I just had this spiritual awakening at <temple/commune/brothel>.” THEN: “What’s your God think about <local rumor>?”
2. Generosity & Kindness
Players are greedy. Instead of making the party work for a boon, have a nice NPC give something to them out of the kindness of their heart.
They’ll be suspicious. Let them be.
Don’t flip the NPC into a villain.
3. Goal Oriented
Include wholesomeness that you think the party would go for. Perhaps a minor goal of the NPC? They want to:
– Impress the girl next door
– Get strong enough to do 20 pushups
– Become the fastest runner in town
– Save enough to retire their parents
Can’t get enough of me talking and talking and talking? Well here we go, now I talk with guests and not just into the Twitter void. These will be free on Patreon – with additional exclusive eps unlocked once I reach a certain amount of Patrons. Check out my Patreon!
Check out our preview PDF by signing up here through BackerKit!
Our team’s last ask: It would help out the team immensely if you hit NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH on our pre-launch page.
Returning this week with the oft-times #1 GM on StartPlaying Games: Balogh (Matt.) We talked about value adds for players, Exandria & Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, free session 0s (and why not to do them), getting the best out of yourself, therapy, & branding.
HEY! Our first Q&A for y’all. JW came in with some great questions. Give it a listen if you want to learn about: Starting out, focusing on growing your brand, and what campaign/setting to choose.
Friday (she/they) chats with Lou (he/him), the graphic designer she relies on to produce high quality thumbnails. They talk about AI art, being an artist, graphic design as a profession, pro GMing, and what has been working for him.
https://www.patreon.com/RPLouu
https://startplaying.games/gm/rp_lou
