So You've Decided To Run A Role-Playing Game

by Steve Johnson

Everybody’s heard of tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), but unless you’ve actually played one you probably don’t know how they work. You know RPGs have something to do with nerds sitting around a table pretending to be elves and rolling funny dice, but the details are a little fuzzy. Even if you’re an experienced RPG player, most game manuals spend more time explaining rules and genre trappings than offering practical advice for first-time Game Masters.

Whether you’re a wannabe gamer who’s never rolled a twenty-sided die or a long-time player who’s decided to take the plunge and run your own game for the first time, So You’ve Decided To Run a Role-Playing Game teaches you how to go from thinking about running a role-playing game to actually doing it. So You’ve Decided To Run A Role-Playing Game starts by describing what actually goes on during a role-playing game, then provides step-by-step advice for organizing and running your own RPG campaign, from finding a gaming group to plotting your ongoing story.

So You’ve Decided To Run A Role-Playing Game is geared toward first-time Game Masters, but contains lots of practical advice and helpful tips that even veteran Game Masters are likely to find helpful.

72 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Steve Johnson is the co-creator of the QAGS Second Edition role-playing game system and the ENnie-award-winning Hobomancer RPG setting and author of Obscure Early Bluesmen Who Never Existed as well as numerous RPG sourcebooks from Hex Games. He blogs about gaming at The Death Cookie and about other things at Goat Head Gumbo.