New Game Master's Handbook! · Game Master's Laboratory

New Game Master's Handbook!

Big news everyone!

Jonah and I have been hard at work, and it's finally time: the next book in the Game Master's Handbook series is almost here! You can take a look here.

The Game Master's Handbook of Collaborative Campaign Design is the follow up to our Proactive Roleplaying Book, with lots of the same core philosophies but covering new challenges and topics. We're super proud of this one, and we think we've taken all the lessons we learned from the Proactive Handbook and made something really special for this one. If the first book was about creating player-driven narratives, this is about creating collaborative campaigns: how to discover a story with your friends together, not tell them one you've already written yourself. We've worked super hard to make this concept as approachable as possible, even for GMs that don't enjoy using improvisation at the table, and I'm pretty confident we've succeeded. While I'm very proud of our first book, it was definitely a learning experience, and I think those lessons were put to good use---I genuinely believe every single chapter in this book has something useful for a GM's table (and you don't need to have read the Proactive book to enjoy this one---they cover different topics!)

The incomparable Jeff Ashworth, creator of the original "Game Master's Book of ____" series, of which our handbooks are cousins, continued to consult with us on this entry, providing invaluable feedback along with Phil Sexton and Tim Baker. Will Earl (of DnD Shorts fame) is writing the foreward, and Luke Eidenschink returns with his fantastic illustrations.

We could probably write about this book for a very, very long time, so we're going to try to spare all of you from that by hosting a *live Q&A here in the lab Tuesday, April 8th, at 8:30 PM EST.* We'll post more details soon, and for those who can't make it, we'll be collecting some questions beforehand and recording the session to post in the lab, so don't worry!

This has been our passion project for the past few years, and I'm not sure how to express the genuine excitement we have to share it with everyone. We'll put more details about the live event up soon, (along with some other exciting plans) and we can't wait to talk with you all!

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