This guide includes suggestions on how to prepare a campaign, running each session, dealing with problem players, how to create memorable NPCs and more.Please note that this is not a basic how-to for role-playing and is not affiliated with any particular gaming system or company.Table of ContentsForeword, by Erica LindquistChapter 1: On StorytellingChapter 2: Before Your GameChapter 3: Building Your StoryChapter 4: Running Your GameChapter 5: Players Player CharactersChapter 6: ProblemsChapter 7: Rules MechanicsChapter 8: Setting NPCsChapter 9: The EndPlease note that this is not a basic how-to for role-playing and it is not affiliated with any particular gaming company.

    A world ruled by fear and horror. Vampires who command the night. Shapeshifters who prowl the forests. Eldritch ghouls and undead skeletons who prey upon a fearful populace. If ever a world needed heroes, it is the world of Ravenloft.

     Fate Core is that engine. Fate Core is the latest evolution of the award-winning Fate roleplaying game system from Evil Hat Productions. We’ve streamlined and clarified the rules while maintaining the system’s trademark flexibility. Name your game; Fate Core can make it happen. Inside, you’ll discover: Easy-to-follow rules for character and world creation. Rock-solid storytelling advice for players and GMs to produce the best play experience. Clearly-defined systems to guide players both new and old. New and improved approaches to character actions, aspects, compels... and more! TELL YOUR TALE. ROLL THE DICE. EMBRACE YOUR FATE!

    11,000 proposals and two years of development later, the Eberron Campaign Setting is the result of that search. This brand-new setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is an avenue for any D&D fan to experience swashbuckling adventure and explore mysterious new territories.Designed to introduce a new, fresh world with unlimited possibilities for exploration, the Eberron Campaign Setting includes everything needed to develop characters and run campaigns in this exciting new arena. It includes new character races, monsters, prestige classes, feats, organizations, and equipment unique to the world, and it introduces a new base class to the D&D game. It contains substantial information on new elements of magic, including spells, domains, items, artifacts, and more. Also included are historical and cultural details of the world, along with extensive illustrations and a wealth of maps that put the setting into vivid context. This title will also include both adventure hooks and a full adventure so that players and Dungeon Masters can immediately begin enjoying everything this rich new setting has to offer.

    This is a prequel to The Murder Complex, by Lindsay Cummings, and it is set in a blood-soaked world where the murder rate is higher than the birth rate. For fans of Moira Young's Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.Meadow Woodson's father calls it The Fear Trials, and it is a rite of passage in their family. Meadow is up against her brother Koi. The Fear Trials will both harden her and make her brave. If Meadow wins, she will get a weapon of her own and the right to leave the Woodsons' houseboat without her father or mother at her side. Set in the violent, complex, and mysterious world of The Murder Complex, and introducing Meadow Woodson—a teenage girl trained to survive no matter what the cost—and her family, who are together for the last time on their houseboat in the Florida Everglades.

    From a vast survey of primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World distills the story of how gamers first decided fictional battles with boards and dice, and how they moved from simulating wars to simulating people. The invention of role-playing games serves as a touchstone for exploring the ways that the literary concept of character, the lure of fantastic adventure and the principles of gaming combined into the signature cultural innovation of the late twentieth century.

    It’s the best possible memorial for Zachary Hill and everything he thought was awesome. Tracy and Genesse did a fantastic job finishing this excellent book filled with samurai robots, evil megacorporations, jetpacks, espionage, hacker battles, anime fights, cyber nukes, bullet bikes—all with a badass, headbanging, horn-throwing, stage-diving soundtrack, blessed by the goddess of heavy metal herself. I loved it.”—Larry Correia, NYT bestselling author of HOUSE OF ASSASSINS “A hard-rocking literary mosh pit about a heavy-metal android who becomes both the hero and villain of a brutal cyberpunk thriller. Sakura is loaded with more computers, guns, music, and hard-edged futurism than any five other books working together, and it gives you both barrels straight to the face. STOP HOGGING ALL THE AWESOME, SAKURA; LET THE REST OF US HAVE SOME.”—Dan Wells, NYT bestselling author of BLUESCREEN “Sakura: Intellectual Property lands like a power chord from a world-class rock opera. From the first chapter, we are card-carrying members of the Sakura fan club. The story is tighter than a lead guitarist’s E string and twice as resonant. Any fan of outstanding science fiction will be rocked. Just press ‘play’ on Sakura.”—Michael Darling, #1 Amazon Bestselling Author of GOT LUCK“ Sakura is a myth-tinted, hard-rock Japanese cyberpunk thriller that starts with a bang and gets louder. Full of mystery, mayhem, guitars, and swagger, recommended for readers who like THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME.”—D.J. Butler, author of WITCHY EYE “Heavy metal with hints of Ghost in the Shell, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the Illuminati. It’s a super fun ride.”—Joe Monson, coeditor of TRACE THE STARS “A cybernetic tour de force starring a plucky heavy-metal heroine—in which we find out if music really can save us all.”—Julie Frost, award-winning author of the PACK DYNAMICS series "A stunning book, and not only because of its fast-paced, action-driven story, thrilling plot twists, gorgeous illustrations, and meticulously crafted playlists that engage the readers’ senses in ways other books never could. What makes this volume so exceptional is its capacity to make the readers interrogate both their own humanity and the personhood of others, to delve deep into the different and surprising aspects of being human and experience the wide spectrum of ways in which we show up in the world: imperfect, flawed, and broken, yes, but also brave, glorious, and alive in more ways than one. This work teaches us that the soul is never lost but may be hiding in the most unexpected of places, patiently waiting to be rediscovered and recognized for what it is: a “spiritual electricity,” as Rilke describes it. This is a book not to be missed.——Dr. Masha Shukovich, multiple award winning author “A high-octane story, fueled by rocket-grade heavy metal. Sakura: Intellectual Property tells a high-tech tale of intrigue, action, and rock and roll. The main character, an android/rock star/Manchurian candidate, is written in vivid 3-D. This book is a page-turner from beginning to end. It reads like a full-stack Marshall amplifier. If I could, I would plug my guitar right into this book and shake down the rafters.” —Craig Nybo, author, musician, and creator of CHOPS: THE OFFICIAL GUIDEBOOK TO AN ALTERNATE ROCK AND ROLL UNIVERSE SAKURA is the most famous android rock star of all time.

    It's a time of turmoil, of clashing cultures, as civilizations shudder and collapse before the might of a benevolent empire ten millennia old.In the Solenine Cluster, things are going from bad to worse, as hyper-advanced technologies destabilise a world in chaos. Thaddeus Clay and his special ops team from the Security and Cultural Integrity Instrumentality are on the trail of the Transmigration Heresy. But what they find is something beyond even their imagining - something which could tear the whole Commonality apart!

    Design alien races and monsters.Create campaigns of every style, from science fantasy to space opera to star merchants. Build worlds, from asteroids to Dyson spheres.With this book, you can create anything from a single alien beast to a whole galaxy of civilizations and star systems... quickly and randomly, or with a detailed step-by-step process that's true to biology and astrophysics as we understand them today.

    In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it's nothing short of miraculous.Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—even as it nearly ripped their studio apart. Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable.

    Incredible powers also await existing characters, with more than a hundred new archetypes and class options. Prepare characters for their most legendary adventure ever with massive selections of never-before-seen spells, magic items, and more!The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Class Guide is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 15 years of system development and an open playtest 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 the new millennium.Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Class Guide includes:- Ten new base classes—the magic-twisting arcanist, the ferocious bloodrager, the cunning investigator, the daring swashbuckler, the formidable warpriest, and others.- Variant class abilities and thematic archetypes for all 29 base classes, such as the counterfeit mage and the mutagenic mauler.- Nearly a hundred new feats for characters of all classes, including style feats, teamwork feats like Coordinated Shot, and more.- Hundreds of new spells and magic items, such as feast on fear and skullcrusher gauntlets.- An entire armory of amazing equipment, from vital new adventuring gear to deadly alchemical weapons.... and much, much more!Cover art by Wayne Reynolds

    In one of the few remaining quarantine zones, thirteen-year-old Ellie begins her new life as a ward of a military boarding school, where a friendship with fellow student Riley leads to her first trip into the outside world. Beyond the walls of the regimented civil order they know, Ellie and Riley are soon confronted with the violent way of life of the insurgent group the Fireflies--and with the monstrous victims of infection!

    and more?Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a complete roleplaying game. In it, you will find:• An introduction to roleplaying and the Buffyverse.• A roleplaying guide to all seven season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.• Detailed character creation, including pre-constructed Heroes and White Hats, for your quick-play pleasure.• Roleplaying specifics for the entire Original Cast, from Buffy to Dawn, including their wild and wacky changes.• The Buffy Unisystem, streamlined for cinematic slayage and sneakage.• A primer on magic mojo, for those who dare.• A guide to the hotspots of Sunnydale.• The monsters of mayhem, all stat-ed out and ready-to-slay, and the skinny every season's Big Bad.• Blow-by-blow instructions for creating Buffy roleplaying Episodes, Seasons, and Series.• A complete Episode to get slaying fast and easy.• A guide to Buffyspeak to add sparkle to your dialogue .

    The psionicist is a completely new character class for AD&D games, both for player characters and NPCs. Explore inner space! Now you can really put mind over matter with The Complete Psionics Handbook.

    and whose gifts are destined to end up in the hands of another. And it is this teen's heart-breaking story that inspired Lev to choose the clapper's path.Pulling elements from Neal Shusterman's critically acclaimed Unwind and giving hints about what is to come in the long-awaited sequel, UnWholly, this short story is a must for fans of the series.