There’s a reason it’s called a tabletop roleplaying game. Taking on the personae of different characters in the story brings a richness and depth to the experience and can make your game sessions exciting and memorable. But how can the poor, harried Game Master wrangle a whole slew of unique personalities on top of all the other work that goes into preparing each week? The Kobold Guide to Roleplaying has the answers you seek.

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master builds off of the concepts of the well-received GM's guidebook Lazy Dungeon Master, updating that book with five years of new experiences, new approaches, and new observations of the way people prepare and run RPGs. This new book is a completely self-contained work, which does not require anyone to have previously heard the Lazy Dungeon Master. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master offers a new focused approach for preparing and running our roleplaying games.

In The Monsters Know What They're Doing, Keith Ammann lightens the DM's burden by helping you understand your monsters' abilities and develop battle plans before your fifth edition D&D game session begins. Just as soldiers don't whip out their field manuals for the first time when they're already under fire, a DM shouldn't wait until the PCs have just encountered a dozen bullywugs to figure out how they advance, fight, and retreat.

From the author of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing comes a follow-up strategy guide with MOAR! monster tactics for Dungeon Masters playing fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons.

The world is a dangerous place—especially when you’re up to no good. Whether you’re a rampaging monster, a calculating mastermind, or the current possessor of the Golden MacGuffin, someone’s going to come at you. In How to Defend Your Lair, gamemaster Keith Ammann pulls back the curtain on an underrated but crucial part of any tabletop roleplaying game: the theater of battle. Say goodbye to encounters in randomly generated dungeons and hello to a game in which where the fight takes place is just as important as who is doing the fighting.

Whether you're new to game mastering or have been running the same campaign since 1974, Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Session Prep will help you prepare for games faster, avoid common pitfalls, and have more fun in the process. Never Unprepared breaks game prep down into its component phases - Brainstorming, Selection, Conceptualization, Documentation, and Review - and provides the tools you need to make the most of each phase. If you hate prep, you'll find ways to make it more enjoyable.

Has your game got the blahs? Are your players spending more time thumbing through your book collection than hunting down clues, more energy heckling one another than in crushing their cruel foes? Never fear, o beleaguered Game Masters, for Robin D. Laws, noted game designer (Feng Shui, Hero Wars, Dying Earth, Rune) and columnist for Dragon magazine is here to help. Know your players! Analyze your system! Build your campaign! Design adventures! Prepare to be spontaneous, and improvise like a fiend!

Inside this audiobook, you will find advice and suggestions for enhancing your RPG experience at the table and away from it. This is an insider's look at everything that isn't part of the game rules - building chemistry for a gaming group that really clicks, making a character you will love and remember forever, running engaging and exciting games your players will always look forward to, creating thrilling adventures, finding all the right ideas, hosting memorable game nights...and that's just for starters.

Writing advice tends to be full of "rules" and "tips" which are either too broad to be helpful or outright wrong. In On Writing and Worldbuilding, we will discuss specific and applicable ideas to consider, from effective methods of delivering exposition and foreshadowing, to how communication, commerce, and control play into the fall of an empire.

Have you written a story with an exciting concept and interesting characters - but it just isn't grabbing the attention of readers or agents? It's time to look deeper into the story beats that create realistic and compelling character arcs. Internationally published, award-winning novelist K.M. Weiland shares her acclaimed method for achieving memorable and moving character arcs in every book you write.

Here's what started the phenomenon: This book has been a best seller for over 15 years and has been used by screenwriters around the world! Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny, and candid look inside the movie business. Save the Cat is just one of many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying.

Roleplaying games have come a long way since the 1970s. Possessed of this second edition of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, you can become and x-treme dungeon master, and as an XDM you'll stand ready for the next 50 years of RPGs.

In Of Dice and Men, David Ewalt recounts the development of Dungeons & Dragons from the game’s roots on the battlefields of ancient Europe, through the hysteria that linked it to satanic rituals and teen suicides, to its apotheosis as father of the modern video-game industry. As he chronicles the surprising history of the game’s origins (a history largely unknown even to hardcore players) and examines D&D’s profound impact, Ewalt weaves laser-sharp subculture analysis with his own present-day gaming experiences.

Be you an established planner, pantser, or unsure new author, this comprehensive guide has you covered. Adopting a "tools not rules" approach, you’ll discover dozens of definitive worldbuilding tricks and strategies, including surveys showing what audiences want; identifying ineffective, effective, and inspired worldbuilding; the ins and outs of immersion; enhancing audience experience with fantasy conceits; and the four Cs of worldbuilding.

The original Dungeons & Dragons released by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1974 created a radical new medium: the role-playing game. For the next two decades, TSR rocketed to success. But by 1997, a series of ruinous choices and failed projects brought TSR to the edge of doom—only to be saved by their fiercest competitor, Wizards of the Coast. Unearthed from Ben Riggs’s own adventurous campaign of in-depth research, interviews with major players, and acquisitions of secret documents, Slaying the Dragon reveals the true story of the rise and fall of TSR.