D&D 5E Group looking for a Pay to Play GM to Run Our Campaign Mondays 8:30PM ET

WHO WE ARE: Our group (with one exception) has been in a paid campaign together since May of 2019 and are in need of a new GM. We played through a majority (level 6) of the Saltmarsh campaign before our game came to a close. We vary from a few hours to a few decades of D&D experience but everyone does their part to come to the table prepared to play. WHAT WE WANT TO DO: Play some D&D! We are looking to start a new campaign with a DM who matches well with our play style and expectations. We want a GM who is a long term fit for our group who would be willing to run a campaign with us. WHY YOU’D WANT TO RUN THIS GAME You don’t need to go looking for players. We’ve already done the work for you. We fully embrace the pay to play model. It makes sure the DM but also the players are motivated to be there. We’ve always paid on time and without reservation. Rates are negotiable The only drama in this group will be what you create in your storytelling! We’ve played together for close to 100 hours so we know and respect one another. No babysitting required! We already know one another so you won’t need to break the ice with the group. We hit the ground running. We are fun! And we have proof! Our prior DM said he ”thoroughly enjoyed our group” and that we were always “fun and enthusiastic”. He’s also more than willing to be a reference for us. How many groups can say that?! We respect the GM. If we have a disagreement on rule interpretation in game we state out case. If we can’t resolve it there we simply say “let’s talk about it after”and move on.   We understand a DM joining an already formed group of players can create a tricky dynamic. We are more than willing to work with you to make sure you’re comfortable. WHAT WE WOULD EXPECT FROM YOU The ability to run 3~ hour sessions on Monday nights at 8:30PM ET excluding holidays etc. A willingness to work with and respect an already formed group of players Strong knowledge of the rules of D&D (we understand none of us know everything) Significant experience as a GM and with Roll20. Useful tools like area of effect templates are a real plus A Discord server for voice during sessions and communication other times A healthy balance of enforcing rules and rewarding creativity Fun! We like to smile and laugh. We want you to too. Does this sound like something you’re interested in? Please reply with answers to the following questions and we can see if we’re a good fit for one another. What’s your level of experience with D&D and Roll20? Are you currently running a pay to play campaign? Are you able to run our campaign at 8:30PM ET on Monday nights? What are your strengths and weaknesses as a DM? What qualities make up a good group of players? How do you balance rules and creativity? What is one of your favorite memories running a campaign? What are your favorite campaigns that you’ve run? p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #000000} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #000000; min-height: 12.0px} li.li1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} ul.ul1 {list-style-type: disc}

I sent you a PM, and I might as well answer the rest here: 3 years experience. Recently started charging, and players seem fairly happy so far. Only issue is time/day, so I sent you a PM, however if it doesn’t work out I hope you get someone you enjoy!  I feel I am fairly creative. I also spend good amount of prep time to make sure I “earn” what I offer. A weakness of mine, would be descriptions of rooms/etc, although i am trying to improve on this a lot! A good group of players for me is someone who can roll with the punches and just accept what the dice have given you in good spirit. I use the rules as a guideline but if a player wants to break a rule and it sounds super cool, I usually let them. In addition, I like to use logic and put myself in the campaign. Does that thing you want to do sound feasible? Then do it! I have many favorite memories. Honestly none come to mind. This sounds like a bad point but I genuinely believe it’s because I enjoy every second of what I do. But my favorite campaign was a homebrew! I enjoy it more than modules imo. That’s it, I really don’t have a “speal”, Again only issue is timing. Lmk if I fit.

What’s your level of experience with D&D and Roll20? Ive been a member of Roll20 since 2015, but ive been dming for 5 years since my dad first introduced it to me. Are you currently running a pay to play campaign? Are you able to run our campaign at 8:30PM ET on Monday nights? Yes and yes! I run a couple games for $5 per per person per session with session 0 and 1 for free :). I am more than able to run your games at that time and i have a discord server I can pm you to talk further. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a DM? What qualities make up a good group of players? Weaknesses: I pick on my players alot in the beginning and sometimes it ruins a rp moment.  After awhile it goes away and my voice acting could use some work, but I love working on it with people.  Strengths: Available 24/7, Active Discord, I have access to a wide variety of campaigns, and Im good at working with homebrew to adapt the campaign to your wants and desires. Also im nice if that helps. How do you balance rules and creativity? What is one of your favorite memories running a campaign? What are your favorite campaigns that you’ve run?   Im gonna paste my playstyle from my listing because I feel like it applies well here. “I am a lenient DM, not everything is set in stone and sometimes the situations you and your friends encounter will stretch the rules and that's okay. I'm constantly working to improve the story, the characters, the roleplay, and the backstories we all bring to the table. I'm always excited to pursue a living world and I tend to add/subtract elements to the campaign that contribute to the overall enjoyment of the game for the players. I prioritize the fun that everyone wants to have in a dnd game and I communicate with the players as much as possible in order to make the world that you invest in worth participating in.” One of my favorites memories is the first time ive dmed it was for my dad and his drunk friends. It was awful but everyone had fun and it really gave me a lighter sense of the game. In honestly Lost Mine of Phandelver is wonderful to me because I always run it with new players and it covers all the basics of the game and theres alot of roleplaying opportunities in it. I dont know what it is, its just like the start of a new journey for players that i love. i look forward to hearing from you please pm me for a link to discord if you want to talk further!

What’s your level of experience with D&D and Roll20? I have been playing D&D 5e since it was in the playtest and earlier editions before then going back about 12 years, and currently am the GM of several campaigns within a group I found right here on Roll20, the campaign has been going on for 2+ years and has moved from 3rd level to 17th level. In terms of Roll20 I have over 2500 hours played on various games, and have worked with the systems in Roll20 (Dynamic lighting, battle maps, jukebox, etc) for almost that entire time.  Are you currently running a pay to play campaign? Are you able to run our campaign at 8:30PM ET on Monday nights? I'm not currently running any pay to play campaigns, just regular campaigns in various stages of in-progress. However Mondays at 8:30 ET are completely free for me for several hours, so I will be able to run the campaign without an issue. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a DM? What qualities make up a good group of players? My strengths as a DM come from a deep love of the lore of D&D, specifically the monsters and the various cultures that make up a world. I enjoy breaking type, and believe that just because a creature is traditionally evil doesn't mean that they all have to be, which can lead to NPCs I expected to be enemies becoming friends and allies. Aside from that, I am an aspiring game designer, and a lot of my design work has been in creating balanced homebrew for 5th edition. I don't typically like just plain +1 weapons and armor, I want there to be a story behind these objects and for them to have weight within the world. I also believe in creating a world that feels like it's not static when the party isn't around it. There are always things happening within the world, villains move their plans forward, kings move armies, powerful monsters gather hordes and make plans. The decisions of the party always have the most impact, but I want there to be consequences for ignoring what could be a significant problem. However my biggest strength is that my table is always a safe place for my players. I don't tolerate real-world discrimination, and want everyone to be able to have fun without being uncomfortable. My weakness as a GM tends to be in consequences of actions. Magic and physics don't tend to be mutually exclusive, and I have had some players be unhappy with that fact. I don't do things like have items burn off if it doesn't make sense, but an uncontrolled fall without a backup plan is going to be a bad time. I also have a tendency to talk too much, which may not seem like an issue for a DM, but I have definitely inadvertently interrupted a couple of spotlight moments to remind a player of something.  How do you balance rules and creativity? If there is a creative solution that works around the rules but doesn't directly break them, I will find a way to make it work within the fiction. I want to reward creativity and lateral thinking and make cool things happen within the game, but it is also my job as a DM to make sure things don't get too far away from the rules so long as they aren't getting in the way of things running smoothly. What is one of your favorite memories running a campaign? My favorite memory of a campaign is when my party discovered the BBEG's motivations, after almost a year of wanting nothing more than to hunt them down and kill them, the players had to pause and think about what they were doing, and how close they were to the BBEG's own point of view. They acknowledged that they wouldn't go that far, but they had a lot of good conversations about it and it has led to a lot of very fun character moments. What are your favorite campaigns that you’ve run? My favorite campaign I've ever run is the on-going one I currently run on Saturdays, called Aemathis. It's a world that the players have made almost as much as I have, and it feels like a real place whenever I step into it. There's history, mystery and danger in this world that started in my head and there are things within the world that I could never have thought of by myself. A campaign isn't just the DM's creation, it's a collaboration between all the players, and I believe it makes it much richer for that collaboration.

Hey Richard!      It sounds like you have a pretty great group here! Before I go into too many details, allow me to give a brief introduction of myself.      My name is Ravyn and I have been involved with TTRPGs for the better part of a decade as a player, game master, and game designer. I've worked with a number of different systems ranging from Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e - 5e, Cortex, Dragon Age RPG, Pathfinder, and more. I've also developed and published my own TTRPG system called FUNdamental RPG. I currently take commissions for private games as a professional game master and I run a TTRPG show called "Blackfeather Guild" on Twitch several times a week where we run various campaigns and one-shots. Most of my games feature custom made graphic art and carefully selected ambient sounds and music. I think that answers the first couple of questions as well. I currently have a campaign running on Monday nights but that will be wrapping up before Christmas so I will soon have that time slot open. In reference to the question about strengths and weaknesses, I would say I'm a very good story teller with a firm grasp of when to drive the session and when to let the players interact. Being a TTRPG streamer, I tend to be very skilled at guiding the session to have a certain pace where the entire group feels like the game is progressing without going too fast or feeling stagnant at any point. As for weaknesses, I am a bit more familiar with older versions of DnD and various other systems than I am DnD5e. That being said, I have run 5e games before, most recently as a guest DM for NerdSmith on Twitch, and I have no problems working within that system. As for what makes a good group of players, just having open communication and honest feedback are the most important things. Besides that, I look for players who want to have fun with it and can immersive themselves in the story. Regarding rules, my golden rule is asking "what would make the game fun and the story interesting?" To quote Gary Gygax, " “The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any  rules .” I think rules are important but they are there to guide the story and play, not to be seen as a law that has to be followed. As such, I will typically approach things with a "What are you trying to do and we'll find a way to make the rules fit that" vs "Let's change what you want to do to fit the rules." My current favorite campaign is called "Badlands." It's in its second season on my Twitch channel and has been a really interesting and moving story. My players have been amazing and bring a lot to the characters. That game is currently streamed every Saturday and runs on FUNdamental RPG, which is a TTRPG system I developed. I have a ton of favorite memories in campaigns and sessions. It's very hard to choose a specific one, but one that does readily come to mind happened a couple of months ago. We had a point in my "Badlands" campaign where a character had to choose between bringing back their sister, who had already died, or saving an innocent girl they didn't really know. It was a significant moral dilemma that had been curated over several sessions and it drew some tears from my players and the audience. Being able to evoke emotions in my games is something I strive for. Please feel free to PM me if you'd like to discuss further. I can also provide links to my streamed sessions if you'd like to see my GM style and some of my content.

So just wanted to post here that we've found ourselves a DM so we'll close applications at this time.  Thanks so much to everyone who reached out!

Sounds good, i hope yall have fun! Let me know if yal ever need anything