The Game Master’s Handbook of Collaborative Campaign Design: A game-changing approach to homebrewing emergent TTRPG stories, character arcs and worlds with your players

This new volume in the Game Master series guides GMs through the process of campaign design, showing readers step-by-step how to set up, create and run their own original settings, stories and character arcs.

 

The second volume in the bestelling Game Master’s Handbook series shows you how to do more than run a game—it shows you how to build a world!

Following the example of the first volume in the Game Master’s Handbook series, this new entry forgoes stat blocks and maps in favor of clear explanations and guides that focus on developing and running an original campaign.

Homebrewing an original setting and story is one of the most challenging and rewarding things a GM can do. It’s tough to get started with worldbuilding, plotting, and resolving your campaign—but this book walks GMs already somewhat familiar with running the game through a process for designing a homebrew campaign to be proud of, from scratch. At the core of the book is one big idea: The purpose of a TTRPG is to discover a story together with your friends, not to tell them a story you’ve already written.

Have an idea for a game? If so, this book teaches you the process for transforming pages of notes into a fully-realized campaign outline. You’ll learn how to write narrative arcs that develop with the players and end satisfyingly even without an ending being written in advance. You’ll even learn how to design mechanical details for your setting that complement the story the group is telling at the table.