How I Got into the TTRPG Freelance Industry

A lot of people have been asking me lately how they can get their first job as a freelancer in TTRPGs, or tabletop roleplaying games. I think there are a lot of posts that do this really well (that I’ll link later), but I keep getting asked so I’m going to write my own.

As a disclaimer, this is 100% based on my experience. I’ve been freelancing as a tabletop designer since 2020 and self-publishing for longer than that. The industry has changed even in those five short years, and how I got in is not necessarily how someone else got in, or how a third person will get in. I’m also not going to say that any of this advice is fair or unbiased—it’s not. That’s a different argument for a different time. Okay, let’s jump into it.

The Recipe

To get hired, you need two things:

You need to have already made stuff.
1. And published it.
You need to already know people.
1. Beyond being mutuals with them on Bluesky

This is really bad news for people who haven’t made stuff, or people who don’t know anybody. You might be able to get your first gig if you have one or the other. You might be able to send your portfolio into an open call and get picked, or you might be able to ask a friend to take a chance on you and hire you to write on their Kickstarter. But I wouldn’t hold your breath. The people who get work in this industry are already extremely lucky in addition to being good. Wouldn’t you want to double your chances by having both?

Fortunately, if you haven’t already made stuff, or if you don’t already know people, there’s hope. If you start now, by the next time that company you want to work for is hiring there’s a chance you’ll check both boxes.

See, the secret to having already made stuff is to MAKE STUFF.

The secret to already knowing people is to CONNECT WITH PEOPLE.

The rest of this post will be about these two things.

Making Stuff

Okay, so why are we making stuff before we get paid for it? A few reasons:

People won’t hire you if they can’t verify that you know how to make tabletop stuff. If I wanted to hire a writer for a tabletop gig, I would choose the writer who had ttrpg experience over the writer with only prose or dialogue experience every time.

You will learn about what kind of creator you are and what kind of things you like to write about. This will help you focus your portfolio and your career. You might find you love writing horror, or space fantasy, or supernatural western. Lean into that! Build your niche.

You can make money off the stuff you’ve made. It’s hard and you need an audience but you can make money off your portfolio pieces if you’re good (Not covered in this blog post).

You will discover if you actually like making stuff. It’s okay if you go through this process and realize that you don’t actually like writing for tabletop RPGs! Better to learn now than when you’re 5 years deep into the freelancing life.

Your Portfolio

You probably want to start with stuff that makes for a good portfolio. Just like a good video game writing portfolio needs to show off different types of game writing (Scenes, Barks, Flavor Text, etc), your portfolio should have a bunch of different things, too. I would recommend:

Something Crunchy
Something Questy
Something Prosey

Crunchy

When I say something crunchy, I mean something that shows off what you can do with systems. Design an enemy or a playbook for your favorite game. Hack a system. Use an SRD, or build your own game.

This portfolio piece demonstrates that you know how to think about Game Design. You know how to marry technical communication and player fantasy, and you can do it in a concise way that makes someone reading it go, “Oh, I have GOT to try this out.”

A non-exhaustive list of SRDs can be found here. If a game has one, you can use it to make new things and, depending on the license, publish them for money.

Questy

Write an encounter, a one-shot, an adventure path for a game that you already like. This is something that shows off your quest design chops, which are important. Now that you have systems, how do you put them together in a narrative that will excite players?

Not all games have need for adventures, but this is a good skill to have because this is the number one way the larger companies support their big games. There’s published adventures for all the big names. Find the one you like the most, see if it’s got a style guide somewhere, and get cracking. I got my start writing adventures with The Storytelling Collective RPG Writer’s Workshop.

Prosey

Let’s talk about the setting aspect of tabletop role-playing games for a second. This is the part where you can really flex your ability to write good, engrossing prose about a location or part of your setting. What makes this place interesting? What makes it playable, as opposed to just nice to read? A good blog post I really like to reference for this is Alphastream’s Actionable Lore post.

Don’t Skip Publishing

Here’s the thing: you need to have published your work. Publishing demonstrates that you can commit to finishing a project, and also that you’ve thought about this game past the words on the page. Maybe you’ve playtested (personally I think you should do at least a little bit of this), but you should edit your work, lay it out, add some art.

If you can’t do all these things yourself (not many can; I can’t!), then you can pay someone to help you, or barter skills. I edit all of Willy Abeel’s self-published work, and he lays all of mine out. But there’s a lot you can do with some royalty-free art and simple templates.

Actually putting the work out is a different thing entirely. You want to identify where to publish the stuff you’ve made. Common places are:

Itch.io
DriveThru RPG
Patreons, Ko-Fis, or other tipping systems
Personal Storefronts or Websites

If you don’t have the license to sell your content (let’s say you wanted to make a d&d adventure about Beholders), you can’t sell it. But you can host it on a personal website for free. That’s what I did for Rockets Underground, my pokemon fangame.

It’s probably a good idea to put your first few things up for free or Pay What You Want (itch and DriveThru both support this). That way people who want to read your stuff to assess your skill aren’t paywalled.

Laying Out Your Portfolio

You need to make sure the world knows about the stuff you’ve done. A landing page or portfolio site will go a long way. You don’t need a fancy wordpress site or a custom URL, but I have one so that makes me a hypocrite. Here are some TTRPG writer portfolios I really like:

You’ll notice mine isn’t on here. This is because no one is ever satisfied with their own portfolio. Yours is fine, I promise. If you don’t believe me, send it to a friend and get their opinion.

Connecting With People

One thing about creative industries is that people like to work with people they like to work with. So you need to become somebody that people like to work with. Why?

Nobody will hire you if they don’t know who you are. The best portfolio in the world is useless if nobody sees it.

You will build a support network full of people who have the same goals and interests as you, which will do more than just get you hired.

You will expand your horizons, find new inspiration, and learn more about the industry from different pockets of the market that you never realize existed. There are a good number of D&D Players who mainly watch YouTube and never realized that Matt Colville published his own D&D content (seriously). The space is much larger than you think.

Where To Connect

There are a few places you can do this. “Social Media” is not one of them.

Instead, you’ll want to look to some other places:

Meet in Real Life
Join A Discord Server
Contribute to Projects

Real Life

I want to preface this by saying that it is extremely privileged to be able to walk or drive or take public transit to a physical meetup and meet other people in person, especially in the middle of a pandemic. HOWEVER, this is where I have made the most of my connections. The reality is, conventions still work.

Go to your local game store and participate in events. Maybe you have a local game design meetup. You’ll meet people this way, but the best bang for your buck in terms of meatspace engagement is, in my opinion, conventions.

I’ve gotten gigs after meeting people at conventions like PAX Unplugged, GenCon, and Big Bad Con. Look for conventions that support your values or have scholarships or programs for new designers, especially if you are marginalized. Print business cards, or get one of those digital ones. If you’re going to a con, you might want to have something to show off—a conversation starter, so to speak. The year I brought my game O Captain to Big Bad Con, I made so many contacts, and people were so excited about the game. They remembered the experience we had playing together.

When going to a large con, try to find the meetups that mean something to you. Is there a special interest group? A community you’re a part of? When I was writing on the Dungeon Masters Guild, I went to a meetup for DMG authors at PAX Unplugged and came home with a ton of connections.

Discord Server

Join one. Do not join a bunch. Discord servers are worth only what effort you put into them. If you spend all your time on Discord Servers, that’s time you’re not spending making things (and isn’t that the goal?). If you are investing in multiple Discord servers, you’re also splitting your investment, and you won’t see the return as much as if you were a member of just one or two.

In a Discord server, you want to make sure that YOU are providing value. You’re a member of the community. Be polite, be helpful, be kind. Provide feedback as much as you ask for it. If you only go to the Discord when you need to promote your own stuff, people will notice. I will notice. Don’t do that shit, it sucks.

If you’re just starting out, I recommend the TTRPG Rising Tide.

Contribute to Projects

This is a really good one because it technically solves both your problems: making connections AND making stuff. I got my start working on community projects such as the Uncaged Anthology, the Book of Seasons, and the Scientific Secrets series. Many people I collaborated with on these projects are now people I work with, people I recommend to employers, and people I would hire in a heartbeat.

Finding these projects requires a little bit of being “in the know.” Usually, if you choose the correct discord server, there’ll be a channel where people can post opportunities. You’ll want to watch that channel closely.

You can also join game jams. Itch has a page of game jams you can follow. While they’re usually skewed towards video games, the ttrpg game jams will also show up. You can also keep an eye on Rascal News’s Announcements page.

A Note on Building Connections

The advice I have to give in this section can be summed up as: be normal. People are looking for connections who can be friends and collaborators, so you’ll want to show that you can be those things.

I said it in the Discord section already, but you can’t just take. You can provide value to your connections, even when you’re not in a position to hire or pay somebody. Some ways you can do that:

Show interest in what they’re working on and support those projects
Offer feedback (always ask if it’s okay, and NEVER provide feedback without permission)
Say their name in rooms they’re not in.
Share opportunities with them, like open calls and job listings.