Theater of Dice is building an inclusive and welcoming community within the world of tabletop role-playing games. Through collaborative storytelling and creative play, they’re showing people of all backgrounds that safe, affirming spaces exist where imagination can thrive. Whether you’re a seasoned player or brand new to the game, Theater of Dice is proving that everyone deserves a seat at the table.

Photos by Theater of Dice Website. Q&A as told to CEI by Theater of Dice Co-Founders, Ambrosia Ross and Jon King, in their own words.

Tell us a bit about yourselves.

Ambrosia: I’m Ambrosia Ross. I am the CEO and one of the co-founders of Theater of Dice.

John: I am John King, and I am the head of research and development.

Tell us about Theater of Dice.

Theater of Dice was founded in 2023, and we formed an LLC in 2024. We started as a group of players who had what we call a red flag DM [dungeon master]. The guy was bad news. When we finally stopped playing with him, our co-founders looked at each other and went, “What can we do to make sure this never happens again?” We started a Discord group called Theater of Dice and began to play together in a safe group. Over time, that community has grown to over 50 people. We have an amazing community of people who are focused on providing a safe and inclusive space where people can feel heard and really get immersed in their adventures without having to deal with all of those red flags.

What is the makeup of your community?

We have a large group of Mainers, but we’re actually international. Our group has grown quite a lot. We have people in six countries—primarily the United States and Canada, but we also have people in Vietnam, Australia, the UK, and Poland.

How do you market yourselves?

We primarily reach people through Facebook and Reddit. We are also starting to attend local festivals, comic cons, and things like that to reach people more locally.

What is your favorite thing about Theater of Dice?

Community. It’s all about community. We’ve worked in various different jobs, and I’ve [Jon] managed some different companies in the past, and I’ve always found that community is the backbone of whatever you’re trying to do.

What are you most proud of?

We have an amazing group of people who are very determined to see what we started continue. Finances—not only for us but also for our community—have been a large struggle. When we started, we launched in beta as a free service to work out all the kinks and see if what we had to offer was actually worth paying for. And overwhelmingly, the answer has been yes. People are very much willing to pay for a safe community. But we live in a very hard time when it comes to finances, and people don’t have a lot of extra income. They don’t know whether or not their jobs are stable. We provide scholarships wherever possible to people who want to join us and want to play our community games but don’t have the funds to do so. At this point, the other thing we do is keep our cost incredibly low so that we can provide this at a reasonable price.

It was nice to be able to be a company that focuses on what we can bring to our customers first. We have the great fortune of having an amazing community and customers, and they really pitch in wherever they can to help us out. It’s amazing.

What challenges have you faced?

One of the things that we discovered very early on that none of us are strong in is social media marketing. And for an online community, social media marketing is where it’s at. So, we reached out to Innovate for Maine and got an intern who does social media marketing so that we can boost our skills a little bit over the summer. That already has been quite a big step forward. Social media marketing is where you’ve got to be, and it’s something that we aren’t strong in yet.

How did you hear about CEI?

So I actually started working with CEI back in 2020 when I was taking a business class for a laser tag arena called The Imagination Station. We reached out to Ruth Feldman to get help building the business plan and quickly came to realize it was not a viable business. However, the relationship that we built with Ruth Feldman through that experience was amazing. So when it came to starting Theater of Dice, we knew right away that we wanted to be working with Ruth.

What is your relationship with CEI?

The mentorship that we’ve gotten from Ruth has been absolutely phenomenal. She has reached out in the in-between times when we weren’t asking questions to make sure everything was going OK. She has supported us through Top Gun, she shows up at the events we are in, and just has been wonderfully supportive. We would absolutely recommend CEI. The mentorship is amazing and has been incredibly helpful.

What are tabletop role-playing games?

Tabletop role-playing games are an improv-based game. A group of people gets together, whether online or in person, and they play “yes, and.” D&D provides a system of rules that people then use to jump off and tell a story together. It’s very community-based and very imaginative.

What support is offered for new and inexperienced players?

We will be starting, in about 6 weeks, a brand-new beginner game for people who have either no experience or have not played in years and don’t know how to play the newest edition of D&D. We also provide support to game masters. We provide them with mentorship, training in various virtual tabletops, resources such as maps and books on D&D Beyond, and of course, our community support.

What is your favorite thing about being a business owner?

As far as being a business owner, I [Ambrosia] think my favorite thing is the 24/7 schedule. Even though you go from working 9 to 5 to working 24/7, I have 4 kids, and so this allows me to spend quality time with them and be there when they need me. With Theater of Dice specifically, my favorite part has been running the business aspect of it. I love running a business. I started out as a game player, as a DM, and I thought that was going to be my favorite part—but it turns out I love business. I love working with my mentors. I love building this amazing community.

What do you want to say to potential Theater of Dice gamers?

There are safe spaces out there. Often, there’s a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to D&D and other tabletop role-playing games, and it can feel like it’s very hard to get into a game or to find a safe space. But there are safe spaces out there.

What are your takeaways from this experience?

Get your people. One of the biggest takeaways that I have is that you need to have a support network around you. You need to have mentors. You need to have people that you can call up in the middle of a crisis and go, “I’m drowning,” and they’ll be able to stand by you and say, “You know what? You really do have this.” And if you don’t have this, then we know who we can talk to in order to get you that support.

What is your advice to aspiring business owners?

Again—have a support network in place. I think that’s one of the biggest things for building a business at any time, but especially right now with the climate the way it is for starting a business and with financial aspects being so up in the air. You really need to have a strong support network.