We are unbelievably excited for the launch of the second book in the Game Master's Handbook series, and follow-up to the Proactive Roleplaying book: The Game Master's Handbook of Collaborative Campaign Design! This book walks GMs through planning and executing full campaigns, from a full Session -1 system to kick things off to finishing every arc in a satisfying conclusion. We are so, so, so proud and grateful to share this with you, and we can't wait to hear what folks think! You can find it on Amazon (link below) or with all major book retailers, so check what's available near you! We can't wait for you to read it! We'll have more news for you soon, so keep an eye out! Thank you all again for being a part of the journey, and we'll be chatting with you a ton in the coming days. There's an invitation to this lab in the book this time, so we're expecting a few new friends in the coming weeks. We can't possibly convey to you all how grateful we are for the welcoming, helpful, and kindhearted people here, and we trust that vibe will continue as we meet new folks. Talk to you soon! Tristan https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Handbook-Collaborative-Campaign-Design/dp/1964487048

GenCon is coming up in just a few months (will anyone from this group be there? Let's meet up) and all the GMs are hard at work working out the details of what they'll be running for the masses. I have never run a game at a con (next year, maybe). My games tend to be years-long, elaborate, overwrought, etc. So there's something very romantic to me about the idea of writing a 3-hour scenario that other GMs will pick up and run. It would have to be a perfect little Swiss Army knife of tools and mechanics that anyone could run without explanation, the layout would have to be readable and compact, the premise would have to be interesting, etc. And all that sounds pretty tough to write. But we had a chance to sit down with Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan recently (who is my favorite adventure designer of all time and I think should be seriously in the running for the best to do it) and ask him how he writes convention games. He's been doing it for about 25 years now, so he's a font of knowledge. He was kind enough to share with us a PDF resource that I think you'll all find interesting. It's his guide for writing convention-style games, but I found a lot to learn from it about designing sessions of play. In it, he talks about planning on a 3-hour time block, which scenes to include (and which ones to cut), the dynamics at play in the party and the character group, and how to get the party involved in the action. Some of it is only relevant for cons, sure, but I think a lot of it will be helpful for GMs trying to write tighter and more action-packed sessions. Check it out: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wh3tlhs7fmpytfm6kpm7f/How-to-Write-Con-Scenarios-the-Gar-Hanrahan-way.pdf?rlkey=mgzmjl7gbx1fbmsu8loafeha5&e=1&dl=0

Hi friends! I was hoping for some advice. In my head, I’ve collected a lot of “settings” some of which are mired in very complicated or just terrible game mechanics. Some were just so niche that I knew I would never gather enough interested people to play (and now are super obscure). So I’ve always wanted some way of bridging them together (also, I like the anachronistic juxtapositions, and potential fun “advantages” characters might have in gathering abilities and things from different realities, à la Time Bandits). I guess a more traditional reference for D&D fans is Planescape? I think the downside to this kind of meta-setting framework, though, is a kind of “analysis paralysis” that happens when someone is presented with what is ostensibly limitless options (I would like to give Players a choice of reality to base their character). The other side of this is goal setting, though. I keep wondering, now that I have lots of Indie TTRPGs that are easily hacked, do I just explore each universe separately, maybe stringing them together thinly, suggesting they’re all set in the same shared multiverse (which ironically seems a bit cliché now in a world that has an MCU, etc.).

I am running something next week that is just ripped straight from the pages of Dune Messiah (pro GM tip literally no one will notice if you do this). It got me thinking: What are the books you've read (I'm thinking Sci-Fi/Fantasy but I guess anything) that you feel have had the biggest influence on the way your games run? For example: I wouldn't say they're my favorites, but the old REH Conan pulp stories have had an outsized impact on how I run games. I love the mystery of the wilderness and the idea that magic is ancient and dangerous, and I love that the action is usually driven forward because Conan is trying to steal something or kill someone, and not because the action finds him and he gets wrapped up in it. What comes to mind when you think about SF/F books and the way you play and run your games?

If you've been around you probably have seen me talk about the wild amount of games that I have played. I am wondering what rule or tool did you steal from an RPG that you use or want to use going forward? I played Bunkers and Badassses this year and I love the badass moves. For a more cinematic game, you can let players completely break action economy once per session, and you just give it a particularly high dc to do so. Other players can kick in their use to lower the DC if the fictional positioning supports it. For example you can do multiple actions in the same Action but need to balance not only the difficultly to generate the DC but also how many actions it would normally take.