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The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Guide: Advice and Tools to Help You Run Your Best Game Ever!
Up your game with everything you need to run your next tabletop roleplay game with expert advice, gameplay guidance, and playable content from RPG expert James D’Amato.
How do I make combat more interesting?
How do I encourage my players to role-play?
How do I avoid my sessions ending in disaster?
Leading an RPG can be a challenge, but The Ultimate Game Master’s Guide is here to help! With advice from RPG expert James D’Amato, you’ll find answers to all these questions and more, along with guidance for bringing your game to life from behind the GM screen. James covers everything you need to know to bring your GM game to the next level
-How to make player decisions meaningful
-How to add more roleplay to your adventure
-How to keep combat interesting—and memorable
-How to make NPCs dynamic, but keep them from stealing the show
-And so much more!
Add excitement to your game and keep players fully engaged with The Ultimate RPG Game Master’s Guide.
How do I make combat more interesting?
How do I encourage my players to role-play?
How do I avoid my sessions ending in disaster?
Leading an RPG can be a challenge, but The Ultimate Game Master’s Guide is here to help! With advice from RPG expert James D’Amato, you’ll find answers to all these questions and more, along with guidance for bringing your game to life from behind the GM screen. James covers everything you need to know to bring your GM game to the next level
-How to make player decisions meaningful
-How to add more roleplay to your adventure
-How to keep combat interesting—and memorable
-How to make NPCs dynamic, but keep them from stealing the show
-And so much more!
Add excitement to your game and keep players fully engaged with The Ultimate RPG Game Master’s Guide.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 26, 2024
28 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 9, 2024
4/7/2024 So much food for thought. Really loved the Divination Deck bit, too. Full review tk at TheFrumiousConsortium.net.
4/9/2024 There is so much useful information packed into this relatively slender volume, not only for anyone aspiring to run role-playing games but also for more experienced Game Masters looking to hone their skills. All the advice here is system agnostic by design, which makes this a really great resource that isn't limited to just one kind of game. Its 200+ pages also make it very accessible for readers who already have a ton of material to get through with prepping most RPGs and don't need yet another massive, small-text tome on top of that.
And frankly, most GM's guides written specifically for one game are kinda terrible. I've been running Dungeons & Dragons for years and still haven't been able to get past the very first chapter of the official Dungeon Master's Guide, as my eyes keep glazing over from the potent mixture of confusion and boredom it evokes. Plus, it's fifty bucks! (And don't get me started on the diminishing quality of Wizards Of The Coast book bindings over the years.)
Fortunately, The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Guide is a much more budget- and brain-friendly alternative to collecting a whole bunch of different guides that may or may not prove helpful to the vocation of being a versatile and successful GM. The contents of this volume are well-structured, really going over everything GMs need, from prep to actual play. The bulk of the book is organized into two large parts: GMing Basics (mostly philosophy) and Leading The Game (mostly exercises.)
And I'm ngl, the opening segment on GM Basics gave me bizarre, almost-PTSD-like flashbacks from my first years of playing in and running RPGs. I actually had really good experiences for the most part, but James D'Amato's frank but kind breakdown of how GMs should best facilitate games really had me reeling, as I realized exactly how much bullshit I put up with and how the GMs I played under should have better protected players at the table. Like, I already knew that the one GM who crowed to a table of strangers about how good he was at killing Player Characters was a walking red flag. As was the GM who told me that my obviously uninterested PC failing a Willpower check against a Seduction role had to sleep with her superior. But being explicitly told that my favorite GM was wrong to do certain things regarding communication with and between players that definitely made me feel uncomfortable at the time... well, that was validating, and allowed me to be more compassionate towards past me.
In fairness, it wasn't my old GM being malicious -- roleplayers are at heart weird nerds, after all, and communication can be difficult even for the most well-meaning and/or articulate. I also learned more about things that I should have been better at myself when I stepped into the GM's seat. A lot of it boils down to communicating better, particularly in the specific instances Mr D'Amato highlights as being crucial moments and possible pitfalls in any RPG. Honestly, it's all an ongoing process -- I'm certainly a MUCH better and more considerate GM now than I was before -- but the whole part on GM Basics was a great reminder of overall best practices when it comes to facilitating games.
The second section of the book, Leading The Game, breaks RPGs into their component parts and offers specific tools for overcoming any difficulties. This section felt a lot more optional to me, tho there was one very cool thing that I'm going to bring with me to pursuits outside of RPGs. That was the bit about building a divination deck for your game, which is just such a very neat and interesting thing to do. Better still, the advice given in the book is totally applicable to building an oracle deck for any purpose, and is something I plan on exploring soon.
Overall, I found this to be an invaluable guide to not only being a great GM moving forward, but also to figuring out and potentially unlearning the negative experiences that may have shaped you as a player and GM. The tools listed here are also surprisingly versatile for non-gaming purposes. Beyond the excellent guide to building a divination deck, the Advanced Narration section is great for storytelling of any kind, just as the Counting To Twenty game is good for team-building.
You don't have to read this book in order to be the kind of GM players clamor for and applaud, but it's a really useful way of learning that isn't sheer trial and error. Best of all, everything is written in a way that's clearly rooting you on to more fun and greatness. Recommended for any storyteller, tbh, but especially of the role-playing kind.
The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Guide by James D’Amato was published March 26 2024 by Adams Media and is available from all good booksellers, including Bookshop!
4/9/2024 There is so much useful information packed into this relatively slender volume, not only for anyone aspiring to run role-playing games but also for more experienced Game Masters looking to hone their skills. All the advice here is system agnostic by design, which makes this a really great resource that isn't limited to just one kind of game. Its 200+ pages also make it very accessible for readers who already have a ton of material to get through with prepping most RPGs and don't need yet another massive, small-text tome on top of that.
And frankly, most GM's guides written specifically for one game are kinda terrible. I've been running Dungeons & Dragons for years and still haven't been able to get past the very first chapter of the official Dungeon Master's Guide, as my eyes keep glazing over from the potent mixture of confusion and boredom it evokes. Plus, it's fifty bucks! (And don't get me started on the diminishing quality of Wizards Of The Coast book bindings over the years.)
Fortunately, The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Guide is a much more budget- and brain-friendly alternative to collecting a whole bunch of different guides that may or may not prove helpful to the vocation of being a versatile and successful GM. The contents of this volume are well-structured, really going over everything GMs need, from prep to actual play. The bulk of the book is organized into two large parts: GMing Basics (mostly philosophy) and Leading The Game (mostly exercises.)
And I'm ngl, the opening segment on GM Basics gave me bizarre, almost-PTSD-like flashbacks from my first years of playing in and running RPGs. I actually had really good experiences for the most part, but James D'Amato's frank but kind breakdown of how GMs should best facilitate games really had me reeling, as I realized exactly how much bullshit I put up with and how the GMs I played under should have better protected players at the table. Like, I already knew that the one GM who crowed to a table of strangers about how good he was at killing Player Characters was a walking red flag. As was the GM who told me that my obviously uninterested PC failing a Willpower check against a Seduction role had to sleep with her superior. But being explicitly told that my favorite GM was wrong to do certain things regarding communication with and between players that definitely made me feel uncomfortable at the time... well, that was validating, and allowed me to be more compassionate towards past me.
In fairness, it wasn't my old GM being malicious -- roleplayers are at heart weird nerds, after all, and communication can be difficult even for the most well-meaning and/or articulate. I also learned more about things that I should have been better at myself when I stepped into the GM's seat. A lot of it boils down to communicating better, particularly in the specific instances Mr D'Amato highlights as being crucial moments and possible pitfalls in any RPG. Honestly, it's all an ongoing process -- I'm certainly a MUCH better and more considerate GM now than I was before -- but the whole part on GM Basics was a great reminder of overall best practices when it comes to facilitating games.
The second section of the book, Leading The Game, breaks RPGs into their component parts and offers specific tools for overcoming any difficulties. This section felt a lot more optional to me, tho there was one very cool thing that I'm going to bring with me to pursuits outside of RPGs. That was the bit about building a divination deck for your game, which is just such a very neat and interesting thing to do. Better still, the advice given in the book is totally applicable to building an oracle deck for any purpose, and is something I plan on exploring soon.
Overall, I found this to be an invaluable guide to not only being a great GM moving forward, but also to figuring out and potentially unlearning the negative experiences that may have shaped you as a player and GM. The tools listed here are also surprisingly versatile for non-gaming purposes. Beyond the excellent guide to building a divination deck, the Advanced Narration section is great for storytelling of any kind, just as the Counting To Twenty game is good for team-building.
You don't have to read this book in order to be the kind of GM players clamor for and applaud, but it's a really useful way of learning that isn't sheer trial and error. Best of all, everything is written in a way that's clearly rooting you on to more fun and greatness. Recommended for any storyteller, tbh, but especially of the role-playing kind.
The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Guide by James D’Amato was published March 26 2024 by Adams Media and is available from all good booksellers, including Bookshop!
June 9, 2024
I don’t think this is as good as D’Amato’s Gameplay Guide, but there is a lot of interesting food for thought in this book.
There are times when D’Amato’s advice tends towards things that would, for me, demand a lot of prep work. One example is the discussion of narration: for each of the senses there are example passages of narration that I cannot imagine ever having the presence of mind to extemporise in play. I would have found advice on how to deploy that advice without writing lots of prose before the game very useful.
There are times when D’Amato’s advice tends towards things that would, for me, demand a lot of prep work. One example is the discussion of narration: for each of the senses there are example passages of narration that I cannot imagine ever having the presence of mind to extemporise in play. I would have found advice on how to deploy that advice without writing lots of prose before the game very useful.
July 19, 2024
has some great information about how to run a campaign. i will definitely be using some of it for my campaign at work and hopefully in a future campaign at home. not all of it is relevant to every campaign or game format but it does a great job of recognizing that and saying that it may not all be necessary for every party
December 9, 2024
I started playing TTRPGs about a year and a half ago but I haven’t played in too many sessions. When I initially saw this book, I felt like it would provide valuable advice on how to be a good GM (Game Master). What i needed was an in-depth view of GMing and how to make it the best experience possible. Tips that you wouldn’t find on a Reddit post. Boy was I wrong.
The book provides advice about GMing that are helpful at times, but for the most part, are either generic as all hell or just have plain old bad ideas (Ideas that make the process of GMing much more difficult). I will go over some examples. First, one idea the author comes up with is building a Divination Deck. I have read this section over and over again and have no idea how this tool is useful. It's a fun gimmick, but I would not have included it in the book at all. The second thing is some of the generic advice. In the end the author talks about boss fights. I obtained nothing new from it since most of it is pretty common knowledge. Many of the advice he provides anyone could have come up with after watching a movie or a show (Which all of us have done).
Not all of it was a waste. I think the “Safety” section of the book provided me with questions I should consider when running a campaign. The advice on “Players being the center of your story” was important to me as someone who gets sucked up in building a world that is very much avoiding making players the focus. But other than that, I just don’t see myself recommending this book to anyone regardless of experience in playing TTRPGs.
The book provides advice about GMing that are helpful at times, but for the most part, are either generic as all hell or just have plain old bad ideas (Ideas that make the process of GMing much more difficult). I will go over some examples. First, one idea the author comes up with is building a Divination Deck. I have read this section over and over again and have no idea how this tool is useful. It's a fun gimmick, but I would not have included it in the book at all. The second thing is some of the generic advice. In the end the author talks about boss fights. I obtained nothing new from it since most of it is pretty common knowledge. Many of the advice he provides anyone could have come up with after watching a movie or a show (Which all of us have done).
Not all of it was a waste. I think the “Safety” section of the book provided me with questions I should consider when running a campaign. The advice on “Players being the center of your story” was important to me as someone who gets sucked up in building a world that is very much avoiding making players the focus. But other than that, I just don’t see myself recommending this book to anyone regardless of experience in playing TTRPGs.
October 4, 2025
A pretty interesting book on GMing for different role-playing games. It's got a soft touch, lots of nudges to be player-centric, good advice and encouragement on ways to make sure everyone has fun, and a variety of other hints for making games fun. I didn't like everything (the part on Divination Decks felt like space filler, and the method for involving large groups of NPCs in the action was a good idea, but the system was much too complicated), but I've read so many D&D books that were a disappointment or just packed with self-evident info, that it was a real pleasure to read something clever and well thought out.
October 9, 2024
Ak excellent book on how to be a good in person RPG game master. Covers many topics including interacting with the protagonist characters, setting up the game. Advice on how to make parts of the game go more smoothly for the characters, and things like that.
May 7, 2024
Excellent collection of tips and advice for GMs, new and experienced. I will be using this for future games!
June 24, 2024
Some useful tips and processes for the inexperienced and veteran GM alike.
I enjoyed the insight into pacing and narrative.
I enjoyed the insight into pacing and narrative.
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January 14, 2025Only read part for dnd
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews