The Rise of the Professional Dungeon Master
On a recent Friday evening, Devon Chulick stood in the kitchen of his San Francisco apartment brewing potions. A dry-erase game board with a grid of black squares to assist in drawing maps was laid neatly across the coffee table in the living room, along with a dozen or so miniature elves, wizards, and drow rogues, which had been released from their Tupperware prisons.
In an hour, a trio of twenty- and thirtysomething Google employees were scheduled to arrive for an entry-level Dungeons & Dragons game. “They’ll love this,” Chulick said, sloshing the brew, a combination of water, vanilla, and cherry bitters; while not exactly essential to the quest, the concoction “adds to the experience.” Tall, bearded, dressed in black up to his glasses, Chulick looked the part of a Silicon Valley product manager—which he is, at bro-tastic swimwear company Chubbies. But in his free time, he said, “everything is fantasy.”
Since October, he’s been moonlighting as a dungeon master-for-hire, catering primarily to those entering the world of D&D for the first time and seeking instruction in the game’s owlbears, Icewind Dale, and other mythological features, plus a few clients who are dusting off the rule books they put away with other childish things in the early 1980s. Until a few years ago, the idea of engaging a professional dungeon master, or DM, would have seemed absurd. In the old days, if a DM accepted payment at all for the work of organizing and creating challenges for a game, it was usually in pizza slices or beer, depending on the age group involved. Most of the time, your DM was a buddy with a talent for making up stories. Demand, paid or unpaid, was relatively anemic.
But D&D has gained more mainstream followers of late, thanks especially to the Netflix show Stranger Things, which premiered its third season on July 4, -snip
This made me happy, a resurgence of D&D. Have to say, it's probably been 25ish years now and I still do miss it.
You're comparing the incomparable. D&D fills a need which video games can't, the camaraderie of being with other people playing 'pretend phaggotry' instead of home alone in your dirty undies masturbating while playing yet another FPS and screeching "f**king camper!" over the headphone mic to some 15yo isn't the same.
It's like saying you're never having ice cream again because you have cake.
Originally posted by Robtard
You're comparing the incomparable. D&D fills a need which video games can't, the camaraderie of being with other people playing 'pretend phaggotry' instead of home alone in your dirty undies masturbating while playing yet another FPS and screeching "f**king camper!" over the headphone mic to some 15yo isn't the same.It's like saying you're never having ice cream again because you have cake.
conflating fps with mmorpg is a weak tactic 👇