James DAmato - The Ultimate RPG Game Masters Worldbuilding Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create and Customize Your Own Game World

Foreword by Patrick Rothfuss, New York Times #1 Bestselling Author

The Ultimate RPG Game Masters Worldbuilding Guide

Prompts and Activities to Create and Customize Your Own Game World

James DAmato

Author of The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide

[T]his book is pure fun.Newcomers to the genre and returning heroes from past fellowships will find something in this for them.

Horror Fuel

Its not only a useful tool for building and fleshing out characters, its also written in an incredibly entertaining way, making it a fun way to get the creative juices flowing.

Gaming Trend

Its akin to a graduate school course in role-playing games.

Review Fix

The ideas are brilliant, the breadth of content, completely creative.

Borg

Innovative.

Nerdist

[This book has] lots of play value.

NPR Milwaukee

James DAmato is one of those rare storytellers who can not only make those delightful and unexpected choices that make the table laugh or their eyes go wide, but he has that second, rarer gift. When doing it, he can build upon whats already been established, weaving a little more and passing the tapestry to someone else to be inspired from.

Alan Linic, writer for Saturday Night Live and cohost of the tl;dm podcast

James DAmato is doing the coolest, most exciting, and original work in tabletop game design right now If I were you, Id be getting this book in my hands as fast as possible!

Brennan Lee Mulligan, host of CollegeHumors Dimension 20 D&D RPG show

James has put together a great collection of ideas thatll appeal to a wide range of players, from newbies to old hands.

John Rogers, writer and showrunner for Leverage, The Librarians, and Jackie Chan Adventures

I started role-playing back in 1984, way before D&D was cool.

Luckily, I wasnt cool either, and immediately fell in love. I remember flipping through the Dungeon Masters Guide, finding the parasitic infection table, and being filled with strange delight at the thought of a world Id never imagined before: a place of fetid bogs where the air and water themselves were perilous.

Since then, Ive built so many worlds. Some for stories. One for a computer game I tried to write. Another for a high school novel. Many were for games I played with friends, or for games that never happened at all. Some of the worlds were no bigger than a single room, a town, a piece of river. Some were vast, fantastic, and thin as paper. Others were gritty, grounded, and apocalyptic.

In 1994 I started a new world and spent fourteen years expanding, refining, and revising it until my first book was published in the setting. And these days, its not odd for me to be brought in as a consultant for video game companies or movie studios, usually to help them build worlds for their stories to live.

What Im getting at here is that Ive been doing worldbuilding for a long time. Its in my bones, and I do it the way other people knit or build model trains. If left to my own devices with nothing else to do, Ill invent magic systems, doodle maps, create imaginary currency systems.

Jump forward to 2018. Im scheduled to make a guest appearance on a gaming podcast. I dont know much about the game, but Im not worried. Im pretty much a pro gamer. Im OG with the RPG. Ive thrown dice with Critical Role and the McElroys. Ive played D&D on stage to cheering crowds of thousands (a fact that would baffle my younger self, and honestly still baffles me sometimes).

More embarrassingly though, I dont know anything about the podcast. This has happened a couple times. Im doing too many projects. Im exhausted and behind on everything. But its too late to cancel.

I call in. Turns out the podcast is called One Shot. The host and game master is James DAmato. And what follows is possibly the best RPG experience of my entire life. There were so many things I loved about that game. The system itself is a masterwork (its called Kids on Bikes). The genre speaks to my heart. The other players were amazing performers who made delightful characters, but what truly stunned me was how gently and deftly James helped us build the world together. A unique, fully realized world, perfect for the story, created in about fifty minutes. Its a world I still remember and tell people stories about to this day. Since then, Ive listened to more than five hundred episodes of Jamess podcasts, many of them multiple times. Theyve brought me immeasurable joy and expanded my horizons as a player, and storyteller, and worldbuilder.

And now here you are, holding his book. I think of myself all those years ago, flipping through the Dungeon Masters Guide, my imagination sparking. I remember that book fondly. It started me stumbling down a path Id follow all my life. But it wasnt a great guide to where I wanted to go. It was rough, opaque, full of harsh rules and columns of numbers charts more suited to war games than stories. You are so lucky. With this book as your stepping stone and guide, I cant imagine how much easier your path will be. I cant imagine how much further youll go.

Patrick Rothfuss

M aybe youre a new game master sitting down to create your first campaign. Or youre an experienced GM whos been playing role-playing games for years, and youre looking for new ideas. Perhaps youre a longtime RPG player flirting with the idea of becoming a GM, or a writer developing a novel or screenplay. In any case, allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your decision to create a world!

This book is here to help you on this journey. Itll show you where to start and what kinds of questions you need to answer. Itll show you how to make the rules that govern your new world work together and create challenges for your players without frustrating them. In this, youre not alonethousands have done it before. So let your creativity run wild.

The Ultimate RPG Game Masters Worldbuilding Guide has more than thirty games and thought exercises to break down the worldbuilding process. This makes setting development as easy and fun as playing one of your favorite games. We cover some of the most popular genres in RPGs: fantasy, x-punk, sci-fi, horror, and more. A few exercises will work anywhere. Together, theyll help you build the stage for your next great story.

Youre about to embark on a journey in which you have unprecedented power. When you use your imagination to build a new world, you control everything: people, places, objects, history, and the fundamental laws of nature! The only rules you have to follow are those you agree to; the only ideas that matter are the ones you find interesting; and the most important tools are your influences and experiences. So relax, and get ready to explore a new world.

A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game in which players generate stories through shared imagination. Its a bit like the imagination games people play when they are young, games like house, using dolls or action figures, and other simple games of pretend. These games all call on players to inhabit a role and interact in a shared imaginary space.