I recently ran the final session of my long-running D&D 5e campaign, a West Marches–style campaign centered around the frontier town of Phandalin on the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms. Using the “Dragon of Icespire Peak” adventure from the Essentials Kit as a foundation and mixing in elements from the associated DLCs, “Lost Mines of Phandelver,” Tales from the Yawning Portal, Neverwinter Campaign Setting, and more, I was able to turn this map by Mike Schley into a living sandbox. Starting in December 2021 and wrapping up in August 2024, I ran 69 sessions and 34 discrete adventures total for 18 characters across 15 players. The PCs started at level 3 and worked their way up to level 9 by the end, slaying multiple dragons and defeating the ghost of a dreaded dracolich.

I’m really proud of being able to maintain and finish a campaign that lasted almost three years. Typically, my interest in any given campaign begins to wane at the tenth session or thereabouts, by which time I start getting the itch to run a different game. For this campaign, a couple of factors made a big difference in helping me continue to run adventures without burning out. What follows is something of a campaign post-mortem of lessons learned from my experience running the game. Perhaps you’ll find some of these reflections useful in your own campaigns, especially if you’re considering using the West Marches structure for your next game.

Often, aspiring writers ask me how to break into the worlds of tie-in fiction or role-playing game writing. My advice for folks looking to get their foot in the door includes knowing somebody, making cool stuff and putting it out there, making it easy for folks to find you, and applying to freelancer open calls. In this article, I’ll go into detail on each of these four ways to get noticed and hired, and then give my recommendations for ways you can stand out from the crowd.

Tip 1: Know Somebody

The hard truth is that knowing somebody working in the industry is the most surefire way of getting hired to write for them. If you can put yourself in a position where people doing the hiring can contact you—or you can contact them—you’ve overcome the hardest part already. Even if you don’t have a contact inside the company, someone in your network who has worked for them before could recommend you for that new project or assignment.

Although cultivating those connections can be challenging, there are ways you can grow your network without seeming disingenuous. When trying to make new connections, the key lies in networking with your peers—those at a similar level in their professional career. Folks in your cohort can provide valuable feedback on your work, share useful resources, serve as accountability partners, and help keep you motivated. And as you and your connections make headway within the RPG- and tie-in fiction-writing industries, opportunities might arise where they can recommend you for projects, and vice versa.

So how can you meet folks in your cohort? Try joining subreddits or Discord communities for the games, genres, and fandoms you’re looking to break into. Attend conventions and game days both online and in person, or consider hosting a game day yourself. Chances are, you’ll find local creators who are demoing or playtesting their games or supplements. You can also look for writing groups to join in your local community or for specific fandoms. You might also consider seeking out folks to collaborate with on projects such as podcasts, actual plays, game supplements, setting sourcebooks, or fanfiction. Note that LinkedIn is not the greatest platform for building genuine connections (in my opinion), but it is a good spot to showcase the work you’ve created (see tips 2 and 3).

At the 2021 Origins Game Fair, I experienced one of the best convention one-shot RPG sessions I’d ever played in—as well as the worst—back to back. This gave me a unique opportunity to compare and contrast what went well in the first session and what went awry in the second, especially in light of my experience as a tabletop RPG professional responsible for developing one-shots as well as demoing RPGs for convention play. Over the last ten years, I’ve run open and VIP tables at large flagship conventions like GenCon and Origins, regional cons such as AcadeCon and Con of the North, and local mini-cons on college campuses and at my own home. Over the years, I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes that I hope you can learn from.

Although there are many aspects to consider when planning and running an RPG one-shot at a convention, focusing on three elements of the session can give you a solid foundation and yield the best payoff per hour of prep spent. These three essential ingredients are: 1) exciting and accessible pre-generated character sheets, 2) a scenario that is optimized for one-off play, and 3) excellent player management at the table. In this third and final part, we’ll take a look at the hardest part of running a great one-shot: handling the players themselves.

In January, I kicked off a new roleplaying game campaign using Night’s Black Agents. The premise of this GUMSHOE-based RPG is basically “what if a couple of Jason Bournes were hunting vampires?” Intrigued, I ran the NBA one-shot “The Van Helsing Letter” from Free RPG Day 2016, and the group liked the system and concept well enough that we decided to dive in with our own characters and story. Who’s behind Unternehmen Braun, and what do they want? Is Operation Edom friend, or foe? And what else besides vampires might stalk the night?

To facilitate character creation at today’s session zero, I quickly worked up this Agent Creation Cheat Sheet to help guide the group through the process. Along with printed out character sheets and a copy of the core rulebook, the session ran as smoothly as I could hope for. Download the PDF for free here.

Who can’t believe that 2023 is nearly over? *raises hand* As the year winds down, this seems like the time to reflect on the things that helped us or brought us joy. The following is a list (not exhaustive) of my favorite apps, books, music, TV, and video games from the last year, including many that I would recommend to others. You can find my list from 2021 here. (I missed compiling this list in 2022, in no small part because I was sampling eastern Germany’s best Christmas Markets all through December.)

Apps

• Airalo. My new go-to for international data, but you’ll need an unlocked phone. I was able to save a ton of money by setting up a second e-SIM to access Japanese mobile data networks. (It cost $10 for 10GB of data across 30 days, which was plenty for the week I spent there, and much cheaper compared to my phone plan’s offerings.) I wish I’d heard of this before my trips to England and Europe this year, but I was able to try it out in Japan successfully. I’ll definitely be making use of this app when traveling in the future. The only downside is that I can’t have both e-sims active, so I had to restart my phone in order to check my text messages. Luckily, most communication is done over apps these days instead of SMS, so I wasn’t missing much.
• ​Reverso. This app pulled more than its weight for me while I was traveling abroad this summer. The thing I liked most about it is how it pulls up example sentences so you can help see the context and usage of a given word. It also saves your searches for you, so if you were a more disciplined language student than me, you could write down any new vocabulary in a notebook to study later. Also, it’s free and works fairly well offline, and it’s able to handle multiple languages in the same app.
• Vivino. When in France, drink as the French do, I suppose. But when you’re at the supermarket trying to decide between the many, many wines available for less than 10€, this app helps to narrow down the field. Scanning the label gives you the user score for that vintage, plus a personalized rating for how it compares to previous wines you’ve enjoyed. By rating the wines I tried, I was able to get a better sense of my preferred styles and remember which labels to avoid in the future. It was also excellent to have on hand when we went to Bordeaux and sampled various Grand Crus. The app helped me to get a sense for how much those bottles would fetch back home, and whether it was worth it to buy it in France to bring home or to seek it out at my local liquor store.