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.
Gamemastery Basics
One of the first books dedicated to gamemastery that I read was Gamemastering by Brian Jamison, which I’m able to offer as a free download owing to it being licensed through Creative Commons. The book originally appeared at gamemastering.info (link courtesy the WayBack Machine), but is sadly no longer live as of 2021. The book is over 10 years old at this point, but I think the fundamentals are still sound.
When I first began running my own games, I benefited hugely from this quartet of GM guides from Engine Publishing. They are what they say on the tin, and they benefit from a clear, conversational tone throughout.
- Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep contains advice on how to maximize the time you spend preparing for games ahead of time.
- Focal Point: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Running Extraordinary Sessions expands on ways to make each game night run smoothly and leave an impression on your players.
- Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management provides lots of considerations for those longer games, including how to start and end them well.
- Unframed: The Art of Improvisation for Game Masters’s principles are there to help when you don’t have the time or care to prep, or when you want to get better at returning those curveballs the players throw at you.
More recently, SlyFlourish’s Lazy DM series has really streamlined my prep for my ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Start with Return of and then grab the companion for more advice, inspiration, and random tables.
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is my new go-to for prepping sessions, and if you had budget for only one product from this list, this would be my recommendation.
- The Lazy DM’s Companion features a smorgasbord of miscellaneous tips and tricks for DMs. When I’m stuck during prep and looking for inspiration, I start rolling dice and consulting tables, which is a pretty surefire way of reigniting my creative spark.
- The Lazy DM’s Workbook is worth it if you want ten stock locations to fill with your own monsters, cults, and treasure. There’s also random tables and a smattering of name lists to use.
Special Topics
If you want to put verisimilitude into your medieval fantasy campaigns, or you’re a dedicated worldbuilder, A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe Third Edition from Expeditious Retreat Press provides a wealth of useful information on daily life in a feudal society.
How to Write Adventure Modules That Don’t Suck from Goodman Games tackles more advanced considerations for writing scenarios, especially for folks looking to do freelance RPG adventure writing. (Joseph Goodman’s short essay on “A Publisher’s Perspective On Adventure Modules That Don’t Suck” alone is worth the price of admission, in my opinion.) The essays are interspersed with encounters and short adventures for you to steal for your home games.
Jury is Still Out
Here are some titles I’ve purchased but which are still on my to-be-read pile. Perhaps they will also be of interest to you!
- The Adventure Crafter from Word Mill Games
- Be Awesome at Dungeon Design from Raging Swan Press (Free)
- Your Best Game Ever from Monte Cook Games
You can also check out the full list of titles discounted for GM’s Day here.
I hope the above list inspires you to continue running games! If you found this post helpful, please share it with a friend or on your preferred social media platform. Once again, my appreciation goes out to all the game masters out there—you are the lifeblood of this hobby.
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