Hey folks, Jonah and I try not to use the lab to spew our own cynical, penny-pinching schemes too often, but this is both pretty relevant to the lab and has a really big impact on our work, so I thought I’d share it anyway. You can preorder our book through Barnes and Noble here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-game-masters-handbook-of-collaborative-campaign-design-jonah-fishel/1147035456 Barnes and Noble is running a preorder discount on a bunch of books, including our own! Preorders make a huge, HUGE difference in the success of a book in physical retailers—they’ll decide how many books they want to buy/stock when it actually releases, so if you’re at all interested in our next book, please consider checking it out. If the book preorders well, they’ll place a larger order, which (1) helps us sustain our authorial careers, (2) makes our publishers more likely to approve future projects for them, and (3) helps us work on future cool projects for here! With that said, we always advocate for shopping with your friendly neighborhood bookstore, so if you prefer, hold off until they’ll carry it! There are other folks who’ll carry it as well, the easiest to access for most people being Amazon. We’re extremely proud of this book, and in many ways we think it’s an overall stronger work than the previous one (and we certainly had a lot more experience when we wrote it). You also don’t need to have read the proactive one if you want to read this one, although the two books can work well with one another. If you’re interested in any level of narrative in your game, consider checking it out! Thanks everyone, we’ll see you in the lab.

Hi everyone! I just finished creating a lost temple with several puzzles for my 5e (2024) campaign, but I would love feedback on the final fight I designed to access the vault, as this is quite a unique fight. I got the inspiration from here and hearing how achieving a specific goal can be the way to win the fight, but I have no idea of how to balance it properly. Basically, it would be a non-lethal fight where enemies are only there to prevent the players from moving around and place themselves where they need to be in the room for as long as possible. So CR is not much of a guidance there. Would any of you experienced D&D DMs be kind enough to either read the script & enemy stat block and share your thoughts, or even playtest that fight in an online sesh one of these days?

https://youtu.be/Hg9BWF7KYqE?si=hSY00HhcOV_6yiAZ I'm definitely going to apply this into the next session. It's just about getting more movement in battles through a special mechanic in each battle, and I Absolutely love it.

I've launched my first proactive role-playing campaign with a group of teens and elementary school kids and it's been an absolute blast. The world that they've created feels fun and vibrant and all of the tools that you guys provided worked extremely well. I want advice on how to help them think about smaller goals that will get them to their bigger ones. They had no problem thinking through their big long-term goals which are: 1. Recover a magic item that was taken by an abominable yeti in a group of evil paladins. 2. Overthrow the dominant political force and free a smaller land that's being oppressed by it. 3. Free and underground Dwarven City that's being oppressed by a giant purple worm. 4. Defeat an evil druid that is overthrowing powerful demigods of the land and siphoning their power for himself. Needless to say these are level 14 and up goals as I see it. So where I'm struggling with is where to start them off. We're starting at level one and our first session is on Thursday. I have an idea to start them going towards the abominable yeti but again that's not something I would want them to go up against by themselves. How do you think I could start things off to help them get to those bigger goals?

Ive been trying to come up with a BBEG and im losing my mind trying to make it all make sense in my head. Help me simplify. I want a warforged BBEG that could be a boss they face around level 15. High fantasy magic world, gods recently took a step back to let their creations thrive on their own (not totally gone just watching now). Maybe a guardian that feels less human everytime they are slain (slain many times)? I'm also trying to incorporate some macguffins that they need to collect to solve their problem just to make it simpler. Any suggestions?