Launch HN: StartPlaying.Games (YC W20) – Tabletop RPGs run by pro game masters

Hi all! We're Nate, Devon, and Jared, the founders of StartPlaying.Games. StartPlaying.Games is a platform that helps players find tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) and professional Game Masters.

I (Devon) have been a professional Game Master for over five years, running games for players all across the country. I even started hiring other professional GMs because I had more groups than I could run! The biggest issue I've been seeing with people getting into the hobby or trying new game systems is finding someone to run the game for them. A lot of solutions involve digging through discord servers and forums, which aren't very friendly to new players and require a lot of time and effort. I knew there had to be a better solution to this, and started creating some Pro GM groups to network with others.

A few days after the pandemic hit San Francisco in March 2020, I got a call from Nate, who wanted to pick my brain about being a professional Game Master. He was working on a similar idea, but with a tech-focused twist: an Airbnb-type marketplace to find Game masters and other virtual game masters. That first night, we spent hours on the phone chatting about what the platform could be, and for hours each evening for the next several weeks as we began to build StartPlaying.Games.

Over the next few months, we spoke with over a hundred Game Masters and Players while building out StartPlaying.Games. We launched our platform 3 months ago, and since then we have had over 2000 bookings and around 300 GMs join our platform. And with 40 million+ D&D fans around the world, we know there is a market for our platform.

We offer users the ability to join solo, book for yourself, and a group, as well as hand-picked options for custom and corporate requests. We make money by taking a percentage of game bookings.

On StartPlaying.Games, Game Masters get more time to focus on planning and running games instead of building a website and business platform. We’re now chatting with game publishers to help them find players for their game systems, and working with convention organizers to help them run virtual conventions. We are also chatting with charities on how to get more involved in helping them run game-driven fundraisers.

We would love to hear your ideas and any feedback you have!

I tried this service and ran 2 campaigns with different groups of friends. It was amazing. DND was something I wanted to try for a long time but the barrier to entry was (at least, perceived to be) really high.

Great to see this finally launching. I'll be recommending this service to anyone who's interested in dipping their toe into DND. I also love that you're making being a "Professional Dungeon Master" a plausible future career choice. :)

My kneejerk reaction to the headline was that this might be a service to connect existing groups to vetted, high-quality GMs, like a premium service aimed at the sorts of folks who'd otherwise spend a ton of money on TTRPG tables and miniatures.

But this is more like a rideshare model, where you're looking at who's available for a given timeslot/location, then jumping into a game that's determined by the GM. With online games, you're also likely playing with strangers.

This makes the whole thing feel more like a permanent convention/event setup — you pay for a seat at a table and agree to work with whatever's handed to you. Which is great, but it also has to compete with similar free game matchmaking as well as those types of (now also virtual) events.

I'm also confused about the age tier filters — the "No Use By Minors" section of the ToS is very clear about users under 18 being prohibited from using the service, but there are game filters for games that can include players ages 9-17. That seems impossible without breaking the ToS.

The Code of Conduct is welcome, but it's stowed away in the bottom of the ToS. For a social product like this, it would benefit from being much more prominent and discoverable. It's also unclear how to report issues with or violations of the CoC; there's a contact email and URL in the ToS, but they point to a different domain of startplayinggames.com, and the Contact form URL in the ToS just plain doesn't work.

More importantly, the CoC doesn't appear to give the GM the ability to define additional conduct rules or expectations that don't necessarily delve into content sensitivities — can players be late, show up unprepared, play intoxicated? Can a GM remove a player who is following the CoC but otherwise being disruptive? I see some who state they will in their profiles — if they do, does the player get refunded, and from where does that refund come? What potential consequences are there for players or GMs who remove a player from a game?

What's the revenue split look like? I tried the "Become a GM" link from one of the GM profile pages, but it pulled up a blank profile, presumably because the footer links are all relative? https://startplaying.games/game-master/become-gm

This is awesome! GM/DM are a rare resource, and as a forever-DM, I would love using such services to be actually able to play.

One thing I think would be a cool addition : play by post games.

I'm not a native speaker and I'm always more comfortable in written games rather than spoken ones, mainly because of the highly specialized vocabulary that I don't recognize immediately when spoken. Of course, this could be roleplayed (playing an outlander character), but I bet it would quickly grow old :)

I suppose any non-native speaker would feel that way too - and then, there's the timezone problem.

One thing I know from roll20 : localized games are not the answer. There is just not many enough players outside US to properly fit each timezone with enough diversity. That's also why PbP has been what worked best for me.

Anyway, I'm glad to see this happen, best of luck!

This is a great idea and just what I wanted!

I have a question about which system is better for a story-driven game for beginners.

Some context: I like RPG, but I have played exactly 4 times in the last 20 years. Last time I played it was D&D and my experience was it was more of a tactical game focused on combats than characters and story. It was about the squared map, knowing all the rules of your weapons and spells and trying to beat the GM in this game. All the rest seemed like cutscenes to the combat mini-games.

I didn’t enjoy this that much, especially since I do not know all the rules, limitations and possibilities of my weapons/spells.

I would prefer to develop a story together. A system where you don’t need a exact map with squares/hexagons to make decisions, for example. Where story and character decisions on what to do matter more than tactical decisions in combats.

Also, despite living story-driven games, I am not much into “acting” (doing voices, emotions and reactions like my character). Not sure if I have too many restrictions to find a good system or group here.

So, which system should I look for that it’s welcoming to beginners and story-driven?

Super neat idea!

As a DM + general TTRPG lover, I think the real magic is playing with friends so the game can be exactly what the group wants, then each session and campaign can build on each other.

Our group has running jokes that span campaigns and worlds, because we have that shared language from being a group.

With that said, I still think this is a fantastic idea for everyone from all fronts to be able to play the games you like and get exactly what you want out of a game.

I will have to take a look because I have been curious about how to get deeper into this area, possibly for pay. One thought was to start a game shop in my town but I have heard super low margins and just not a great idea.

HOW FN APROPOS!

I literally just bought two new dice sets yesterday - and my brother berated me saying "When was the last time you played DnD?" -- And I thought - well, Ill need to find a way to play again... and just put that out into the Universe...

Now I see this...

So - you have a new user in me. Ill look into your site and find out how to participate!!!

Thank you

Totally missed the opportunity to call this "AirDnd"

I think this is excellent. As a start up it seems like you need to land product market fit for core DnD users willing to pay for a GM first. But after that there is an interesting strategy of seeing if you can expand the DnD market in general to more casual or newbie players. I think this is a huge opportunity.

I am in my first paid campaign now, and as a first time player my sense was that probably 80% of it was really complicated and could be stripped away for simplicity. Things like: speed, rolling for character creation, initiative, casting times, etc. These are sacrosanct to DnD players but there is a much larger gamer/board game crowd that doesn’t care. They want to get to the exciting story moments where you roll a D20 and win or lose, that’s it, in about 10 minutes.

First there was Dwarf Fortress and then there was Minecraft. I think there is an opportunity for the Minecraft of DnD, appealing to 10x as many people.

Some feedback for what it's worth:

The reason I won't take a stab at this, as badly as I want to get into D&D, is that I have an unreliable schedule and can be pulled away at any moment (I have young kids). I won't even try because the possibility of letting others down is paralyzing.

I'm not sure if this is even something you can fix, but, there it is. And maybe there are ways to handle this gracefully without me letting the rest of the party down. In that case, maybe this is a communication/education problem.

This is really great - I've fallen out of playing table top RPGs lately (kids, time), but especially being able to play early morning or late night is great. Pricing seems great - makes me think of it as an alternative to movies.

One place you might find some inspiration is italki.com - it's for language learning, but a very similar idea of pairing people with teachers. They have really nice search and scheduling functionality.

This is cool! Have you guys considered going into modern board games too? Some of the rules can be quite complex (1-2 hours explaining rules, getting through the first couple of rounds), and there's quite high demand for people figuring them out on say, TTS. Think Splotter games, Brass, etc.

I find it incredibly hard to imagine why anyone would pay for this.

Is it really so hard to find one person in a group of players that wants to GM?

Is it really that hard to find a group of players in the first place?

Meetup has always been perfectly adequate to find a group, and I have to do that only once for every place I live.

This is really cool and probably should have been made a while back, and I'd absolutely use it if I didn't luck into a game earlier this year. I might still use it to play something else.

One thing is, it seems very targeted at TTRPG curious folks that have never played before, like people who have watched Critical Role or heard of D&D and are fantasy fans but have no idea what the actual play experience is. This makes sense, it's a fast way to grow your user base. But I'd be more likely to use the product if I could search by system and request specific games. I would use it to play more niche games that fewer people are running as one shots.

Based on your company description it seems like you're moving in that direction.

Just checked out the site, and one thing I'd recommend is allowing GMs to give more detailed info on the price per session. In the "Upcoming Games" section, one of the games is listed at $30 per session, which seemed incredibly steep compared to the other featured games that were all ~$10 per session. I clicked on the expensive game to see why it was so expensive, and it turns out that's just the rate for a single person, but it goes down to $10 for sessions with 3 or more people. This seems like a cool idea, and I wouldn't want DMs to miss out on players because they saw a high price on the front page and went with a cheaper option.

This is an awesome service. I initially planned to do one or two one-shot games and this has become a regular pastime with half a dozen games played over a couple of months.

Some GM’s are better at keeping players engaged and I have found you get what you pay for. There is a walkthrough game for kids on Saturday mornings that is on my list to try.

I would like to see player profiles somehow captured by the platform as the back and forth between the different gameboard programs is a bit clunky. Letting GMs set up multi-game campaigns on a subscription basis may also be interesting.

Overall a big fan and now a loyal user!

Hey, great idea! I have always wanted to start playing, but I don't know anyone interested in DnD. Having some GMs willing to introduce new players to the game is fantastic!

There are some comments here suggesting that the service might not make much sense since it should be easy to find someone willing to be a GM in a group of friends. I just wanted to say that that is not always the case :)

I have been dreaming about this :) Minor comment: Would it be possible for you to show the timezone next to the schedules - I assume that you show in my browser configured TZ (or pro gm's are serious night owls - I'm in CEST atm), but its pretty shitty to be an hour late/early due to assumptions, especially this time of year when DST ends (and not necessarily on the same date)

Needs FFG SWRPG as an option. Saga edition and D6 are both totally different games.

Can this integrate with other tools in the community, like RPGSessions.com? What about mysheets.com? Or myRPGTools.com? What about OggDude’s character builder? What about the various dice rolling programs?

Can you also handle FFG Genesys, which is very similar to FFG SWRPG?

What about virtual tabletop games?

Do you handle audio chat, background music, and video as well? What about shared maps, like roll20?

I’m already in a number of different Discord servers for various different SWRPG campaigns, and while the games themselves don’t cost me any money, Discord certainly does. And if I want the Discord server to perform reasonably well, then I have to get yet another Nitro subscription, and that kinda gets old after the first half dozen or more Discord servers.

And scheduling is a hard problem that I have yet to see anyone handle right.

Speaking only for myself, I’m not looking for a 24x7x365 convention. I want to play with the same group of people every week (more or less). It could be a really large group, so maybe only a small subset of us can get together for any one game. But still the same group of people, albeit perhaps with a few different options for GMs.

Give me a reason to use your community system instead of the various Discord servers I’m on, please. Not only will I be happy to give you money to do so, I’m willing to give you extra money if you can make that experience even better for me.

Really cool idea! I could definitely see myself using this service when I graduate and have more time.

Out of curiosity, what is player retention like in campaigns? Have you guys considered adding any incentives to keep players coming to the sessions? When I last played DnD, we would always have a ton of fun during the sessions, but it was difficult to keep everyone coming back regularly.

I really like the idea and wish you well.

One tiny advice, all the buttons on your website have anti-aliasing on the text. Anti-aliasing works great on large text, or small text, if it is white in color on dark backgrounds. In your case, the smaller buttons have readability issues, especially the "Signup/Login" button on the top right.

Feature request:

For public games, it would be nice if there was a way (similar to kickstarter) to have a minimum number of people attached to the game before it starts/gets-funded, otherwise it doesn't happen.

I would be very interested in trying this out, but do not want to end up paying for a 1 on 1 session if no one else joins.

This sounds great, my friends and I used to have a regular game night but busy schedules and a few people moving means now it's something we just kind of talk about doing on Roll20 or something. I already posted to our group to see if I can get them in a session!

Cool. Pricing looks looks great. Low enough to justify a few hours of fun. High enough to only get people who really want to be there. Hopefully its enough to keep DMs engaged. Looks like me and my boys are going to dive into a star wars story.

Site has some sort of performance issue. Could be hugga death. Just to let you know, as you might lose people who ar just impatient. I got the impression too much JS running? Maybe prerendering and cdn required?

This is one of the things I did not know I wanted but am extremely happy about!!

This looks cool, but the pricing is absolutely insane. I saw $10-30 per session. Dming is a lot of work, sure, but that is a steep price. I don’t know many people who would pay $120 a month to play DND.

I've played a few sessions on this platform, including a session across the country with my sister for her birthday. Big fan - if you find a solid DM, this can make quarantine a lot more fun.

I just want to congratulate the folks behind this for coming up with a great idea and executing it. Makes me wish I had time to play D&D again. Total brilliance, good luck with this!

Congrats on launching! I've been (extremely) slowly working on a similar idea for the past few years. I gave up on the pro GM part because demand seemed so low. Best of luck.

Interesting concept.

I looked through and one thing jumped out immediately.

There is no option to sort for either game or GM.

Is there a reason this does not exist?

Time - the time filter should be UTC or specify the time zone.

Looks really interesting, congratulations on the launch! It's been mentioned before, but the lack of any indication of timezone was kind of offputting.

Amazing idea.

Not sure how well this can work without a game client though. I'd love a hybrid where you play a video game of sorts , but a DM is actually running it .

I run 3 games on here and play in 1. Amazing service, definitely give it a look if your interested in getting an amazing tabletop gaming experience.

Oh wow, just the other day I wished I could find people to play in a WoD campaign and thought there is a need for a tool like this.

built with Bubble, i see ;)

Ha, I had this idea a while ago and even bought a great domain but never got around to building it. Glad it exists though!

Sweet, I'll have to try this. Been looking for more experiential stuff, and coop video games are getting more scarce.

this looks incredible. i've heard so much about DnD but never had the opportunity to get into it because you have to find a GM and find time and all that jazz thats hard to do as a 30-something. thank you for making the entry level free!

Congrats on your launch, always great to see Bubble apps topping HN!

I was daydreaming about this with my son. This is awesome!

This is a really cool idea :)

will tell my friend about it as hes an amateur dm. maybe he could go pro.

How do you plan to handle players that others don't like? That's a fairly common problem for TTRPGs. You'll see a question every other day on rpg stack exchange about a troublesome player. Off the top of my head

* Players who don't play fairly

* Players who are rude

* Players who break game norms, like always wanting to detract from what the group wants to do ("It's what my character would do in this situation")

* Players who role play too hard in boring ways (e.g. overly philosophical debaters)

* Players who are overtly sexual

* Players who make off color jokes

* Players who aren't engaged enough

* Players who are selfish or antagonistic

* Players who others cannot understand due to language / accents

* Players who are racist/sexist/make unwanted advances irl