060 - How Donathin Frye became a fulltime professional Dungeon Master

Roll Play Grow: A TTRPG Business Podcast

How would you like to be a full-time, professional game master? It sounds like a dream a lot of us have in this industry, and so I am thrilled to introduce you to Donathin Frye who does just that. Donathin supports himself as a full-time Dungeon master with some additional freelance game design work, through Patreon subscriptions. He tends to run 6-8 full-length campaigns at any given time, and truly does spend 40 hours a week working on those campaigns. It was absolutely fascinating to learn about how Don does this and what a typical week looks like for a full-time GM. There’s a lot of good advice, even if you’re just looking to improve your DMing skills for your home games!
Find Don:

• Patreon
• Twitter
• Portfolio

Find Roll Play Grow:

• Show Page
• Patreon
• Discord
• Lightheart Adventures Website
• Lightheart Twitter
• Lightheart Instagram

Support the show

Find Roll Play Grow:

• Show Page
• Patreon
• Discord
• Lightheart Adventures Website
• Lightheart Twitter
• Lightheart Instagram

Chapters

1. Introduction & Updates (00:00:00)

2. Donathin Introduction (00:03:36)

3. How Donathin became a professional game master (00:10:35)

4. Using a subscription model for campaigns (00:15:47)

5. How to encourage newer players to role play (00:28:33)

6. Prepping for sessions & staying motivated (00:31:04)

7. Note taking as the GM (00:38:20)

8. Donathin's game design (00:40:50)

9. What has been the most challenging part? (00:45:47)

10. Figuring out rates (00:49:01)

11. What has been the most rewarding part? (00:51:34)

12. Upcoming projects (00:57:20)

13. Where can people find you? (00:58:41)

14. Wrap-up (00:59:45)