The world is a dangerous place—especially when you’re up to no good. Whether you’re a rampaging monster, a calculating mastermind, or the current possessor of the Golden MacGuffin, someone’s going to come at you. In How to Defend Your Lair, gamemaster Keith Ammann pulls back the curtain on an underrated but crucial part of any tabletop roleplaying game: the theater of battle. Say goodbye to encounters in randomly generated dungeons and hello to a game in which where the fight takes place is just as important as who is doing the fighting.

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master builds off of the concepts of the well-received GM's guidebook Lazy Dungeon Master, updating that book with five years of new experiences, new approaches, and new observations of the way people prepare and run RPGs. This new book is a completely self-contained work, which does not require anyone to have previously heard the Lazy Dungeon Master. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master offers a new focused approach for preparing and running our roleplaying games.

There’s a reason it’s called a tabletop roleplaying game. Taking on the personae of different characters in the story brings a richness and depth to the experience and can make your game sessions exciting and memorable. But how can the poor, harried Game Master wrangle a whole slew of unique personalities on top of all the other work that goes into preparing each week? The Kobold Guide to Roleplaying has the answers you seek.

One of the hardest parts of game mastering is coming up with interesting adventure locations for our characters to explore. These locations need to be fantastic, detailed places that capture the minds of our players every session we run. Sly Flourish's Fantastic Locations is an audiobook of 20 system-agnostic locations you can drop into your favorite fantasy role-playing game. Each location builds on a fantastic theme, such as a mysterious ancient structure under the ice, a cursed castle of a mad king, or a fallen celestial fortress.

From the author of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing comes a follow-up strategy guide with MOAR! monster tactics for Dungeon Masters playing fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons.

This is the audiobook for Sly Flourish's Fantastic Adventure, a book of 10 short adventures for the fifth edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game. This audiobook helps the listener bring these adventures into their head and is intended to be used along with the print copy of the book for use at the actual gaming table. Listening to these adventures helps prime your DM mind with the material you need to run the game at the table.

In The Monsters Know What They're Doing, Keith Ammann lightens the DM's burden by helping you understand your monsters' abilities and develop battle plans before your fifth edition D&D game session begins. Just as soldiers don't whip out their field manuals for the first time when they're already under fire, a DM shouldn't wait until the PCs have just encountered a dozen bullywugs to figure out how they advance, fight, and retreat.

You love Dungeons and Dragons. As an experienced dungeon master, you've run dozens, if not hundreds of games. You put a lot of work into making your games great. What if there's another way to look at how you prepare your game? What if it turned out you could spend less time and less energy and have a better game as a result? It's time to unleash the Lazy Dungeon Master.

Here's what started the phenomenon: This book has been a best seller for over 15 years and has been used by screenwriters around the world! Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny, and candid look inside the movie business. Save the Cat is just one of many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying.

Inside this audiobook, you will find advice and suggestions for enhancing your RPG experience at the table and away from it. This is an insider's look at everything that isn't part of the game rules - building chemistry for a gaming group that really clicks, making a character you will love and remember forever, running engaging and exciting games your players will always look forward to, creating thrilling adventures, finding all the right ideas, hosting memorable game nights...and that's just for starters.

Lifelong friends, they went their separate ways. Now they are together again, though each holds secrets from the others in his heart. They speak of a world shadowed with rumors of war. They speak of tales of strange monsters, creatures of myth, creatures of legend. They do not speak of their secrets. Not then. Not until a chance encounter with a beautiful, sorrowful woman, who bears a magical crystal staff, draws the companions deeper into the shadows, forever changing their lives and shaping the fate of the world.

Writing advice tends to be full of "rules" and "tips" which are either too broad to be helpful or outright wrong. In On Writing and Worldbuilding, we will discuss specific and applicable ideas to consider, from effective methods of delivering exposition and foreshadowing, to how communication, commerce, and control play into the fall of an empire.

This stunning new release of the classic R.A. Salvatore novel recounts the origins of Salvatore's signature dark elf character, Drizzt Do'Urden. This title kicks off The Legend of Drizzt series, which will showcase the classic dark elf novels in these new audiobook editions.

Has your game got the blahs? Are your players spending more time thumbing through your book collection than hunting down clues, more energy heckling one another than in crushing their cruel foes? Never fear, o beleaguered Game Masters, for Robin D. Laws, noted game designer (Feng Shui, Hero Wars, Dying Earth, Rune) and columnist for Dragon magazine is here to help. Know your players! Analyze your system! Build your campaign! Design adventures! Prepare to be spontaneous, and improvise like a fiend!

Roleplaying games have come a long way since the 1970s. Possessed of this second edition of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, you can become and x-treme dungeon master, and as an XDM you'll stand ready for the next 50 years of RPGs.

A game is only a game if you can quit. This is something I learned the hard way. I just wanted to let off some steam in virtual reality and ended up getting murdered and imprisoned in the body of one of the undead - slow, clumsy, and cursed to die at the hand of other players over and over again. The only way out of this awful predicament was to find the legendary Scroll of Rebirth, but the helpless plague-ridden corpse would need to be turned into a real killing machine. If only people knew what it was like to level up a dead rogue....

He made it to the top. As CEO of an asteroid mining company, Austin has accomplished everything he ever wanted in business. Now, he needs more. To get away he turns to a fantasy video game. He just wants peace and quiet, play as a dwarf, build a house, do some smithing and character building. His idea of the perfect fantasy game. Then he learns their secret. If he gets caught, it means death. He’ll need help along the way. How can he convince anyone they’re slaves in a bigger game and stay under the radar?

Tricked into a world of banished gods, demons, goblins, sprites and magic, Richter must learn to meet the perils of The Land and begin to forge his own kingdom. Actions have consequences across The Land, with powerful creatures and factions now hell-bent on Richter's destruction. Can Richter forge allegiances to survive this harsh and unforgiving world or will he fall to the dark denizens of this ancient and unforgiving realm? A tale to shake "The Land" itself, measuring 10/10 on the Richter scale, how will Richter's choices shape the future of The Land and all who reside in it?

Elorion has just finished a VR gaming session to find a monster waiting for him. With 19 other students who have also been kidnapped, he is now subject to the whims of a thousand year old succubus, and he must survive deep under the Earth in the lost realm of the Underworld. Gifted with the ability to use magic and advance in power, he is given an ultimatum: Level up or die!

Joe's body is failing him. In order to make his last weeks of life more palatable, he goes into full digital immersion. This new process will allow him to play in a virtual environment with a fake but healthy and strong virtual body. As soon as he steps into this new environment he meets his virtual assistant, an Evolving Intelligence (E.I.), who takes the form of someone close to him. But before Joe and Spooky can begin playing the game, they are both summoned to a reality where magic is real.

When virtual reality becomes real enough that people feel as if they're being transported to another world, Valia Online arrives. A man running from his past joins the game to forget it all. Calling himself Jack Thorn, he chooses an undead race, Deathlord. A mage by choice, and a swordsman by necessity, he soon finds out that he'll need to use much more than magic and steel to survive; strategy, creativity, and carefully chosen words can often accomplish what simple attacks can't.

A new update arrives to the ultra-popular online game, Realm of Arkon. With Patch 17, the level of immersion experienced by players in their gaming capsules has made virtual reality indistinguishable from the real world. But every gamer's dream becomes a nightmare for Roman Kozhevnikov after he gets confined to Arkon against his will. And not just to Arkon, but to its deadliest zone - Demon Grounds. Playing - or rather living - as his character Krian, it's not just about survival for Roman.

When second son Alexander Valentine loses his brother to an assassin's arrow, he discovers that his family protects an ancient secret and reluctantly finds himself at the center of the final battle of a war that was supposed to have ended two thousand years ago. Pursued by the dark minions of an ancient enemy, Alexander flees to the mountain city of Glen Morillian where he discovers that he is the heir to the throne of Ruatha, one of the Seven Isles, but before he can claim the throne he must recover the ancient Thinblade.

Be a hero in the ultimate game. Are you a top-rated gamer? Then you might have the skills to play the Game...where players are sponsored by actual demon lords, gods and goddesses, or Lovecraftian nightmares. Enter Thera, a real kingdom at the crossroads of many other worlds, but with all the augmented-reality interfaces, character progression, and game mechanics that players know and love.

If you mix Sword Art Online and The Land, and make them both darker - Project Chrysalis is what you get in this new Gamelit series. Chrysalis is the project of the century. It’s a hyper-realistic fantasy RPG set in the Middle Ages. Chrysalis is a perfect virtual reality game where every orphan under governmental care is placed in an in-game family to finally obtain all the love and care from the parents which kids need so desperately. But for one orphan who took part in this program something went horribly wrong. Instead of a happy childhood Anji suffers from demonification.

Skree loved playing Massively Multiplayer online role-playing games. When he becomes the first player to reach level 100 in his favorite game, he is offered the chance to test a brand new game. Never one to read the fine print, he jumped at the chance to be the very first player to see the brand new game. But some opportunities are just too good to be true. Awaking to find himself trapped in a brand new world and struggling to survive, James must find a way to master the game and escape the world of Raiya.

Launch day. That was what they called it. The day when over four million people vanished in an instant from the island of Manhattan. The day earthquakes ravaged the east coast. The day a 101-kilometer tall tower rose from the wreckage of the now empty city. The day every screen, newspaper, and smart phone displayed a single message from an unknown source: The Great Emperor has issued his challenge.

Pro-gamer and eighth grade teacher Chris is preoccupied by thoughts of how to save his brother when he gets an invitation he can't resist: Want to play Euphoria for free? The free pass brings him to a portal for the newest and most awesome game in the universe. Chris agrees to play Euphoria Online in Death March mode, a secret and deadly level of the game.

In his job as the county's spook, 17-year-old Thomas Ward is used to battling boggarts, witches, and other creatures of the dark. But now he and his apprentice, Jenny, must team up with former rivals and enemies to fight the evil Kobalos warriors intent on destroying the county. The fight has cost the life of a strong ally, Grimalkin, the witch assassin. Determined to end the war with the demons, Tom leads Jenny and Alice to Pendle for one last epic clash. Loyalties will be tested, alliances will be broken, and not everyone will survive.

The War of the Spider Queen begins here. While their whole world is changing around them, four dark elves struggle against different enemies. Yet their paths will lead them all to the most terrifying discovery in the long history of the drow and set them on a quest to save not only Menzoberranzan but the entire dark elf race from Dissolution....