This Issue: Social Encounters! The second issue our monthly zine, the Game Master's Field Notes, is out now! Written in the style of the Game Master's Handbook series (the Proactive Roleplay and Collaborative Campaign books), these 36+ page issues are packed with advice, articles, mechanics, and encounters suitable for any game. - Articles cover how to make social encounters interesting, easy to run, and avoid over-mechanization - Encounter creation guidelines provide a variety of ways to run social encounters and other challenges in any system - Encounters, built to drop into any game with little to no prep, cover common social encounters your group might undertake at the drop of a hat This issue is currently available to all Gold members, but it'll be up later this week to buy individual on DriveThruRPG and RPGTrader (I'll leave a comment). Gold members also have access to our monthly (returning this month) workshops, every packet we've ever made, and a slew of other game materials/recordings, plus the playtest draft of our upcoming RPG, The Ordained! You can find a writeup about the series as a whole, as well as a preview of the first issue, here: https://www.skool.com/game-masters-laboratory/now-out-the-game-masters-field-notes?p=095e95ad

UPDATE: This issue is now available for purchase at RPG Trader! You can buy it here: https://rpgtrader.com/products/10182/the-game-master-s-field-notes-issue-1 It will be available on DriveThruRPG at a later date as well! The first issue of our new monthly zine, the Game Master's Field Notes, is out now! Written in the style of the Game Master's Handbook series (the Proactive Roleplay and Collaborative Campaign books), these 36+ page issues are packed with advice, articles, mechanics, and encounters suitable for any game. This month's theme: Travel. This issue is currently available to all Gold members, but I'm working on getting it up at DriveThruRPG with our other packets for those who want to purchase individual issues. Gold members also have access to our monthly (returning this month) workshops, every packet we've ever made, and a slew of other game materials/recordings, plus the playtest draft of our upcoming RPG, The Ordained! In the meantime, I've attached a free, shortened preview to take a look through, which you can download right from this post. Each issue contains: - Articles written in the style of the Game Master's Handbook series. These are a essentially condensed book chapters, covering all-new topics. - System-agnostic mechanics suitable for any game, made to be easy-to-use and understand. Each is table-tested and made to encourage proactive and/or emergent roleplaying. - Encounters, ready to drop into any game! These are modular and made specifically for proactive roleplaying games. We're excited to keep the momentum! I'll comment under here once this issue is available on DriveThruRPG (I was hoping to have it up by now, but there's a brief review process and I didn't wanna wait!). For now, Gold members can access it in the Classroom tab alongside all other materials.

https://tophost.org/2026/alex-newman As something of a lark, I entered a contest being run by the Ryan Seacrest Foundation. The top prize is a lot of exposure and a fair bit of gear towards creating a home podcast studio. I didn't expect to be doing as well as I am. Every week, they cut the group down -- from 80 to 20 to 15 to 10 - and so far, I've managed to make the cut each time. *But* the next cut is coming up on Thursday (11/5) and it's from the Top 10 to the Top 5 and I'm currently in 8th place... so - HELP! You can vote once a day (and if you're inclined to throw a few bucks at charity, you can increase my vote count that way). As a shameless and seasonal bribe, I've recorded two Halloween poems for y'all and they're up for free* on my website at https://7minutegm.com/store#audio-files My plan in the unlikely event that I win is to use this to launch a really professional in-depth interview show with TTRPG creators and storytellers. So -- who knows? -- you could be a guest! *- you have to register to be a member of the site, but that's free too.