Although time has been incredibly tight over the last week or so, in any gaps I have had I have been reading (and making notes on!) Justin Alexander's new book about being a Gamesmaster in a role-playing game, So You Want to be a Gamesmaster. I am a big fan of his blog and Youtube channel but reagrdless, this
is a superb book for those players who want to be, or are,
gamesmasters.
It is a detailed guide on how to prepare and run the vast
majority of the types of adventure and campaign that you might want to.
All the advice is specific and actionable. It provides guidelines and
scaffolding for the design, with lots of practical tips, notes on how
the preparation interacts with the roleplaying and rulings on the table -
and importantly, the limitations and constraints inherent in the
different adventure types. For example, wilderness travel might be best
played via a 'route' adventure, a hexcrawl, a pointcrawl...or just 'the
party arrives after 5 days of travel' and it explains why you might
choose one over another in a given situation. The section on writing
mystery adventures is genuinely superlative, as are some of the
techniques around urban adventures. Just reading it made me start
sketching out some mysteries and some campaign ideas to run at my table.
It
isn't a book which re-invents the wheel or radically changes how we
think about adventures. What it does is show, in the simplest terms, so
the newest GM can follow, is how each type of scenario works, how you
can build one which will work, and if you want, how it can be
incorporated into a campaign which can vary from the simple and
effective to the almost incredibly subtle and complex.
The book is
rounded off with lots of sound and subtle GM advice on all kinds of
things, from when and how to split the party, how much (or little) to
prep, which types of adventure or campaign use the most prep and which
the least, and when that prep is best done, how to roleplay parties and
combats...all kinds of things.
It is entirely system agnostic,
although with more nods to D&D than any other individual system. No
type of system is left out.
The writing is friendly, clear and witty.
The tone is spot on, certainly not taking itself too seriously but the
author's enthusiasm for this form of entertainment is absolutely
infectious. It is honestly the best book of its type I have read - it is
a little difficult to imagine how it could be better at what it does. I
am a bit sorry in a way that this review perhaps sounds a bit gushing
in case that puts people off reading it. Don't be! If this is a subject
you are interested in, it gets the highest possible recommendation.
