Happy International Game Master’s Day! Without folks willing to sit “behind the screen,” there wouldn’t be much of a hobby, so today I’d like to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to every GM out there who’s put in time and creative effort to help groups play roleplaying games. I’m especially grateful for all the GMs who helped me discover this hobby and grow as a game master, including A.P. Klosky and the Elders of the Wittenberg Roleplaying Guild.

To celebrate, I’ve compiled some of my favorite articles I’ve written on the topic of gamemastering. You can also check out some of my recommended books for GMs that are part of the GM’s Day sale going on today at DriveThruRPG.

March Fourth for GM’s Day! Today’s the day to tell your GM how much you appreciate all that they do. And if you’re the GM, today’s a great day to treat yourself to a little something to help “fill the well.” DriveThruRPG is having a huge sale on a ton of PDFs and ebooks to help you run a better roleplaying game. What follows are some of my favorite game master resources that are currently free or discounted.

Updated for 2025

Are you gearing up to run a new RPG campaign and not sure how to keep track of the cast of characters, world information, and session notes? Do you need to get a better handle on your long-running game to more easily pull up information during the session? The following overview of different organization methods can help you choose the campaign management option that best suits your group’s needs and your personal prep style.

A Three-Ring Binder

Put the “pen and paper” back in pen and paper RPGs.

It’s for You If:

• ✔ You’re on a budget.
• ✔ You’re a crafty, DIY, or “by hand” type of person.
• ✔ You want flexibility: you can fill the binder with handwritten or printed notes, move pages and sections around easily, and you can be as vague or detailed as you please.
• ✔ You like to run your games in electrically challenged locations.
• ✔ You want to enjoy a beautiful campaign keepsake at the end.

It’s Not for You If:

• ✘ You’re constantly forgetting to bring things with you. There’s no backup or cloud access with this analog option.
• ✘ You want a “Search” function for your materials.
• ✘ You want to let players or a co-GM reference campaign material on their own time.

What came first, the group of roleplayers, or the campaign premise?

The answer varies for each campaign—at least it has in my 15 years’ experience as a game master.

I think there are benefits to deciding up front whether you want to plan your next campaign around the players you expect to have at your table (especially if you have an established group or limited pool of players), or if you want to prioritize your current interests with regards to system, setting, and story premise. Each comes with its own risks and rewards, and it’s up to you what challenges you want to sign up for.

I’ve been sitting at that crossroads for a few weeks now, deciding whether I want to run a campaign that’s more suited to my existing player group’s tastes and interests, or if instead I want to focus on choosing the campaign that I would be most excited to run, knowing there’s a good chance it isn’t what most of the players in my current gaming network would typically want to play.

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.