This is the other book I got from Half-Price Books while I was in Phoenix (see my previous review of "The Game Master's Book of Astonishing Random Tables"   for additional details).

At first, I really loved this book. For anyone who's not familiar TTRPGs, the basic setup is that you have a Game Master who runs the game, and players who play the game. The Game Master essentially plays the part of the narrator, as well as all of the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) that the players interact with, whether it's a monster they're fighting, or an innkeeper they're trying to haggle with to get a discount on a room for the night. And the way the game is usually played is that the Game Master tells the story, with the players offering input on that affects how the story turns out. For example, the Game Master might nudge them toward leaving their hometown to go explore a dungeon nearby, but the players inform whether they choose to do that, how they get there, what they do in the dungeon, etc. In essence, the players are reactive to information that the Game Master provides to them. Their choices are determined by options the Game Master presents them with.

This book takes a different approach and encourages the Game Master to take more of a backseat to the players' interests and letting them drive the story more. The Game Master then becomes more of a referee, letting the players dictate what happens in the story to a much larger degree, but guiding them on what happens as a result of their actions. In other words, it turns the standard relationship between players and Game Master on its head, where the Game Master is reactive to the choices the players make for the story, instead of the other way around.

It's honestly not a bad idea, and there's a lot of good advice in this book. But, like the Astonishing Tables book, I'm not sure I'm going to use it as intended that much, because it kind of assumes two things about how D&D games which may be true for some groups, but certainly not all.

First, it assumes that a Game Master wants to run a campaign reactively to the players who are setting the scene. And as I mentioned in my Astonishing Tables review, that's not really how I play the game. The reason why I dedicate hours of my time outside of our weekly game to developing a campaign is because that's the part that I really enjoy. So if someone is telling me, "Hey this will save you tons of prep time," that's certainly appealing up until the point where they're saying, "You can save time by having the players do the part that you love the most!"

And for those Game Masters that do love that part of running a game, it does then run afoul of a cardinal rule of D&D which is that everyone at the table should be having fun (the Game Master included!). This could be great for a Game Master that does only want to be a glorified referee... but my enjoyment of the game comes from collaborative storytelling with them, not being the judge who arbitrates their application of the rules. I want to be a part of the improv troupe, not the guy who sits off to the side and goes, "Wow, you all sure are having lots of fun. Let me know when you need me to make a ruling on whether it's okay to do that idea you had."

Second, it assumes that the players want to run a campaign where they're the ones running the show. I think this would be very appealing to longtime players who are very experienced with the game and enjoy thinking through things like storytelling and character development. And who all get along and like working toward a mutual goal. But those groups are only one subset of D&D players. There are also groups where the players are antagonistic toward one another (so telling them to control the story will just devolve everything into chaos), and there are others who don't have the experience — either with D&D itself or the storytelling process writ large — to make this an enjoyable experience.

If your D&D group is a bunch of writers who all like the idea of playing a collaborative game nicely, this is an amazing opportunity to make sure they're not sitting there while a Game Master has all the fun creating the world. But if your D&D group is a bunch of people who are completely new to D&D and/or don't habitually think about things like their character's backstory or what larger narrative arc or themes they want to explore, or are maybe more on the socially reserved side and prefer a game where they're more passive participants, a game where they're essentially in charge and dictating how the story goes is not going to be successful.

All in all, this was an interesting read, but I'm not sure I'm sold on the premise. Sure, the goal should be to give players as much agency as possible (you don't want to railroad them with a story where they don't feel like their actions matter), and looking for ways to do expand that should be an ongoing goal. But that's not the same thing as turning the game over to your players, which this book seems to strongly advocate for (even as it does repeatedly say there are many ways to play D&D) and is something that I think only works with a very specific configuration of gaming groups, i.e., a Game Master who doesn't want to drive the story, supported by players who do want to be the ones primarily driving the story.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying: Guidelines and strategies for running PC-driven narratives in 5E adventures (The Game Master Series)   from Amazon.Com!

Created Jul 07, 2025 at 7:00pm • Submit your own review...