OUR STORY
Built by two lifelong nerds.
Summon is being built by two people who've spent their whole lives around a table rolling dice — and who got tired of watching the people who make the magic get squeezed. This is why we're drawing the circle.
WHO WE ARE
Josh & Chris,
Code Boys.
— Two guys · Birmingham, AL
We're Josh and Chris — a two-person software shop called Code Boys, based in Birmingham, Alabama. We build tools and platforms for the niches we actually care about. And we've been playing tabletop games our entire lives: D&D, Call of Cthulhu, whatever weird indie system somebody brought to game night.
So we know exactly who makes a session sing. It's the Game Master — the one who preps for hours, voices the tavern keeper, and turns a Tuesday into a story people remember for years. They're the craftsperson. The whole thing runs on them.
But when we looked at how pro GMing works online, the math was backwards. The dominant platform takes 15% of a GM's rate, takes a cut out of their tips, and can be slow to pay. Run games for months and you might clear less than you'd expect for that much love and labor. Meanwhile players told us the opposite story: they still couldn't find a game, or a group to actually play it with.
One side under-paid, the other side unable to get to the table. We're builders. We couldn't leave that alone.
So we started building the fix. That's Summon.
THE MISSION
We only win when
the circle turns.
Summon takes 0% from Game Masters. You keep 100% of your listed price and 100% of your tips. Players add one flat 7.77% on top — and it never comes out of your pocket.
Here's the whole idea, and it's a simple loop. When a GM can earn a real living doing what they love, they run more games — and better ones. More tables mean more players find a seat. More seats mean more good nights, more first-timers who fall for the hobby, more feet through the door of your friendly local game store, more people telling a friend they finally found a group.
The hobby grows. And a bigger, healthier hobby means more games for the GMs to run. Round and round — that's the flywheel.
Every part of that circle is on the GM's side, because that's the only way it turns. We don't make a dime unless a game gets booked, so our entire job is to help fill tables and pay pros like the pros they are. We grow on volume, never on squeezing the people who do the work.
A WORD ON THE PLATFORMS BEFORE US
Grateful — and headed somewhere different.
We want to be clear about something: we're genuinely grateful to the platforms that opened this category. They proved that people will happily pay to game together, and they put professional GMing on the map. That took guts, and it made room for what we're doing now.
We just have a different vision of who the money should serve.
No mud, no takedown. Different bet, that's all — that a marketplace built to put the maker first is a better place to spend a Friday night.
WHERE WE ACTUALLY ARE
New, honest, and
Birmingham-first.
We won't oversell it. We're new and we're bootstrapped — no venture-backed war chest, no glass tower in San Francisco. Just two nerds in Birmingham funding this ourselves because we think it should exist.
That means we're building it the honest way: one city at a time. Birmingham first, where we can shake hands and personally onboard our first Game Masters — then city by city as the circle grows. We're not going to promise a crowd that isn't there yet, or games you can book tonight. We're going to promise the part that's in our control: a fair deal, in writing, and founders who answer their own email.
We're building it in the open, and we'd love for you to get in early — before the doors open.
THE CIRCLE IS BEING DRAWN
Come help us turn it.
Players, Game Masters, and game stores — gather your party and get in before the beta opens.