Dungeon Master for Dummies
Bill Slavicsek - 2006
It gives you the basics on running a great game, info for more advanced dungeon mastering, guidelines for creating adventures, and tips for building a campaign. It shows you how to: Handle all the expressions of DMing: moderator, narrator, a cast of thousands (the nonplayer characters or NPCs), player, social director, and creator Use published adventures and existing campaign worlds or create adventures and campaign worlds of your own Conjure up exciting combat encounters Handle the three types of encounters: challenge, roleplaying, and combat Create your own adventure: The Dungeon Adventure, The Wilderness Adventure. The Event-Based adventure (including how to use flowcharts and timelines), The Randomly Generated Adventure, and the High-Level adventure Create memorable master villains, with nine archetypes ranging from agent provocateur to zealot To get you off to a fast start, Dungeon Master For Dummies includes:A sample dungeon for practice Ten ready-to-use encounters and ten challenging traps A list of simple adventure premises Mapping tips, including common scales, symbols, and conventions, complete with tables Authors Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker wrote the hugely popular Dungeons and Dragons For Dummies. Bill has been a game designer since 1986 and leads the D&D creative team at Wizards of the Coast. Richard is a game developer and the author of the fantasy bestseller Condemnation. They give you the scoop on:Using a DM binder to keep records such as an adventure log, PCs' character sheets, NPC logs/character sheets, treasure logs, and more Knowing player styles (role players and power games) and common subgroups: hack'n'slasher, wargamer, thinker, impulsive adventurer, explorer, character actor, and watcher Recognizing your style: action movie director, storyteller, worldbuilder, puzzlemaker, or connector Using miniatures, maps, and other game aids Using 21st century technology, such as a Web site or blog, to enhance your game The book includes a sample adventure, The Necromancer's Apprentice, that's the perfect way to foray into DMing. It includes everything you need for a great adventure--except your players. What are you waiting for? There are chambers to be explored, dragons to be slain, maidens to be rescued, gangs of gnoll warriors to be annihilated, worgs to be wiped out, treasures to be discovered, worlds to be conquered....
Don't Rest Your Head
Fred Hicks - 2006
days? Or is it weeks now? It's hard to remember. You've been so busy with... well, whatever it is that's been keeping you awake. Then one night you're walking down the block toward your apartment, when you realize there's a new building on your street. A new building, somehow... in between two buildings that used to be side by side... that's impossible, isn't it? You pause to take a closer look. It's a bar. The sign says "Serious Moonlight", and a bright white moon blinks through the phases from new to full and back again, waxing and waning with the buzz of neon. It's been a stressful week. Or is it month now? It's hard to remember. But you could sure use a drink. So you cross the street and step inside.The citizens of The City welcome you with open arms. After all, you're one of them now. With all the gifts and curses that come with being Awake in a world of sleepers.Just be careful. The Nightmares you've been dodging haven't forgotten about you. They're waiting, just around the corner; waiting for you to nod off- and then they'll have you.They won't wait much longer.Whatever you do... don't rest your head.
Volo's Guide to the North: Forgotten Realms Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Accessory
Ed Greenwood - 1993
The Forgotten (The MacKinnon Legacy #2)
J.A. Templeton - 2015
Before she can enjoy her freshman year, she's targeted by the spirit of Jaime, a girl who had gone missing months before. Jaime needed Madison's help to find her killer, but now that her body’s been found, she’s MIA. The same can’t be said for the malevolent spirits who want Madison to steer clear of the killer and his victims. Despite the danger she is in, Jaime’s brother, Haven continues to push Madison to find the killer. He won't stop until he gets justice for his sister. Madison’s hometown crush, Shane insists she forget about Jaime and the killer and get on with her life, but that's hard to do when no one will leave her alone. Torn between the two handsome men and her conscience that is telling her to find the killer, Madison has to make a decision—ignore the psychic visions and clues or keep digging for answers and become the killer’s next victim. The Forgotten is the final book in The MacKinnon Legacy series and is intended for readers over 17.
Delta Green: Countdown
John Tynes - 1999
As our darkened globe spins through the eternal night, the lasting legacy of the human race is nothing but a scream - drowned out by the road of the destiny devouring us all. This is your last chance to show the cosmos what it means to be human: The will to fight.Delta Green: Countdown blows the doors of the world of Delta Green, reaching wider and digging deeper to map the terrain of the twisted pulp apocalypse we call the dawning of the 21st century. Brace yourself for the final world order: The Insects from Shaggai, alien parasites subverting the leadership of a nation; PISCES, the UK's attempt to harness the unknown; The Army of the Third Eye, terrorists fighting a bloody battle against alien invaders; GRU SV-8, a band of desperate operatives fighting darkness in the ruins of Russia; The Skoptsi, occult fanatics with an eight-hundred-year legacy; The OUTLOOK Group, where Majestic-12 tests its elite; Phenomen-X, a syndicated TV news show that pokes its camera in all the wrong places; Tiger Transit, a former CIA airline now in the clutches of a Tcho-Tcho drug cartel: The D Stacks at the American Museum of Natural History, where Dr. Jensen Wu classifies the unclassifiable; The Keepers of the Faith, traditionalist ghouls fighting the lean and hungry Heretic ghouls beneath the streets of Manhattan: and The Hastur Mythos, a twisted skein of surreal destruction weaving its way through humanity. Plus: new skills, new spells, new Mythos tomes, rules for psychics, a microbiologist's dossiers on paranormal lifeforms, profiles of international intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, dozens of useful NPCs, two scenarios, a short campaign, and more.
GURPS Illuminati: The World is Stranger Than You Think
Nigel Findley - 1995
-- Ties in with current Hollywood hits...aliens and conspiracy -- Illustrated by award-winning cartoonist and satirist Alexis Gilliland.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures
Jason BulmahnTracy Hurley - 2013
Many adventurers pick up swords or call upon strange powers in times of trouble, yet only a few are chosen by fate or the gods to change the course of history. These are mythic heroes—legendary figures whose every footstep shakes the heavens. With Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures, it's your turn to change the world. Choose a mythic path and take on unbelievable powers by completing mythic trials tied to your character's story. Each mythic path works in parallel with your character class, allowing you to continue advancing in your chosen calling even as you seek a greater destiny. Best of all, you can start playing a mythic character at any point—even as early as 1st level!Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and open playtests featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era.Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures is a 256-page hardcover book that includes:- Complete rules for playing mythic characters of six different paths: archmage, champion, guardian, hierophant, marshal, and trickster.- New mythic feats for every class, such as Powerful Shape, which allows druids to transform into enormous animals, or Deadly Stroke, which lets a mythic character dispatch even a formidable enemy with a single blow.- A whole grimoire of new and supercharged spells. Bring down a castle with a mythic meteor swarm, transform the landscape with terraform, or make every memory and record of someone disappear with mythic modify memory!- Tons of monsters enhanced with mythic abilities and ready to challenge your heroes, from dragons to vampires!- A hoard of new mythic magic items and artifacts. Brandish the sword of inner fire, capable of burning even elemental creatures, or turn your enemies to stone with the medusa-headed shield aegis!- A complete mythic adventure for 7th-level characters.- Advice on running a mythic game and forging your own legends.... and much, much more!Cover art by Wayne Reynolds
Changeling: The Lost
Ethan SkempTravis Stout - 2007
Now you have found your way back through the Thorns, to a home that is no longer yours. You are Lost. Find yourself.The Core Rulebook for Changeling: The Lost• A rulebook for playing the changelings, those humans changed by durance in Faerie to something more than human• A vivid imagining of the fae beings and places that hide unseen in the World of Darkness• Provides new player types and antagonists for crossover chronicles as well as chronicles focusing on changelings aloneChangeling: The Lost is the fifth game in the World of Darkness.
Changeling: The Dreaming
Ian Lemke - 1997
Only the world of humanity remains. Without any awareness of our true nature, humankind crushes us beneath its banal heel. Joy and laughter are gone; only the Dreaming remains.We are changelings, the forgotten ones, neither fully fae nor wholly mortal. The last of our kind on Earth, we have built ourselves an invisible kingdom. We are everywhere, yet you have never seen us. We hide, not behind some fragile Masquerade, but in plain sight with the power of our Glamour. We exist within a real world of make-believe where "imaginary" things can kill and" "pretend" monsters are real.The storytelling game of modern fantasy. The Kithain are heirs to Earth's secret kingdom of faerie. And yet they are only part fae; they are forced to adopt mortal guises to survive disbelief in magic. The fae must strive to forestall the coming Winter and bring about an endless Spring lest Banality consume all and the Dreaming be lost.Changeling Second Edition features a clarified and expanded setting and cosmology, as well as completely new and revised rules. Yet it's fully compatible with first edition and the rest of the Storyteller games. A full-color, hardcover book with art and graphics like you've never seen before.
Game Night
Jonny Nexus - 2007
unless it's game night. A twelve-thousand-year quest is about to be completed, prophecies will be fulfilled, ancient riddles answered, legendary evils bested, and the nature of the universe revealed. All that's needed is a band of mighty heroes to do the completing. Unfortunately for the locals, some of the gods have taken a personal interest in the chronicle of these heroes' adventures. Now they are each guiding one of the characters towards the conclusion of their epic journey. That is, when they're not squabbling, backstabbing each other, blowing things up by accident, refusing to play by the rules, and turning the Allfather's creation into a mess of petty arguments, fantasy cliche, gratuitous combat and unnecessary dice rolls. If you thought your games group couldn't be any worse, Game Night shows just how bad things can get when a bunch of unruly deities decide they want to play. And may the heavens help us all. Jonny Nexus is editor of the acclaimed webzine Critical Miss and author of The Slayers' Guide to Games Masters
Werewolf: The Forsaken
Carl Bowen - 2005
To one side stretches the forest, to the other the city. Your claws are stained with blood. Your senses whisper of prey that runs before you, and of predators who stalk even the likes of you. You hear the howls of your brothers and sisters. Luna rises. Your blood boils. It is time to hunt. Wolves at the Door Werewolf: The Forsaken -- the game of bestial violence and supernatural terror -- is the second core setting sourcebook intended for use with White Wolf's new Storytelling System(tm). Werewolves are creatures of original sin, tainted by ancestral crimes and driven to hunt by the shame of being abandoned. This book details what it is to be Forsaken, one of the Tribes of the Moon. Create your own werewolf pack and seek redemption or give in to your savage nature. Hardcover. For use with the World of Darkness Rulebook.
Until the Sun Goes Down (Until... Book 1)
Ike Hamill - 2019
He doesn't laugh when I mention vampires."They're in the cellar," he says.It must be the heat. The old man is delusional. At least that's what I tell myself. Things are different in the middle of the night. When monsters come tapping, it's impossible to dismiss the idea that the Maine woods hold secrets--deadly secrets.
Until the Sun Goes Down - a terrifying and inventive novel by Ike Hamill
A new look at the vampire genre, this book draws you into the slow madness that overtakes our protagonist. There's not much time Until the Sun Goes Down.
Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips
Michael E. Shea - 2010
You’ve read both Dungeon Master’s guides. You’ve run a few games. You pick up ideas here and there on the net. Or maybe you're an old grizzled vet who has run games for 20 years.Maybe your game is feeling a little stale. Maybe your encounters didn’t run exactly as you wanted them too. Maybe you feel like you're stuck in a rut. Maybe you feel a bit overwhelmed when you have to come up with an exciting, creative game every week.You’re not looking for a huge tome on game theory. You don’t need yet another take on world-building. You’re looking for some practical tips you can use today to help you focus your energy in the right places and make some kick-ass D&D games for you and your friends. You want something you can read quick and start using right away.My friend, here is the book for you.This book was written to give you solid usable tips to help you build your story, design exciting encounters, and run a great game when you’re at the table. It’s a short book, designed to be read quickly and referenced often.Oh yeah, and it’s got some awesome original artwork by Jared Von Hindman of Head Injury Theater.This is a completely original book. Every chapter was written from scratch to help you focus on what’s important and get past some of the roadblocks we all face when designing a D&D game.