86 books like The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide

Understanding story structure, narrative drive, and world-building are incredibly helpful when running tabletop role-playing games.

As you run games you will often find that the players do not do what is expected and as the Game Master (GM) you have to adjust the story as you go. Understanding common story tropes and character arcs can help GM’s with building their world, their campaign, and adjusting the story as needed.

Hickson uses examples from literature, anime, and popular media to help illustrate the different themes explored in his series. 

For many Game Masters it can be difficult to understand how the monsters and adversaries in their worlds would act.

In his book, and its sequel, Ammann helps to provide guidance for how different adversaries might act towards the group of heroes. This book helps GMs think critically about the monsters in the world and can help with teaching how to provide a more dynamic and consequential experience for players.

Ammann also helps readers think in terms of a world with magic and how those living in such a world might think and approach problems differently than we do in our magic-free world.

This book is a series of essays from some of the most well-known writers and creators in tabletop gaming.

This book is filled with tips and tricks to help you build your world and create a compelling plot that your players will want to engage in. This book will help you learn how to use different storytelling devices effectively in an RPG as it is slightly different than how you would use such devices in a written novel.

This book really helped me to start wrapping my mind around how shared narrative stories can work and how as a GM I can steer the story without taking away the agency of my players. This is a great quick read for new and experienced GMs alike! 

When I first started GMing I had pages and pages of notes that took hours to prepare.

It was unsustainable and I knew there had to be a better way. The Lazy Dungeon Master technique of session and campaign planning helps to ensure that while you are prepared for your sessions you are not wasting time planning too much.

Using the methods in this book, my session preparation time went from several hours to around an hour and I think my sessions improved as a result. 

Lone Wolf is a book that is also a game. A LitRPG for Kids, originally written in the 80s, it is the start of a wonderfully long series of illustrated books that both allowed children to choose their actions as the protagonist of the story and also gave them choices on how to develop the hero and make him progress.

It’s a model of book that I really would like to see more of today.

Lone Wolf might be the series that started me on my gaming path, and it is a magical and beautiful quest that teaches about honor, teamwork, and clever tactical planning.

Even better, the author made the series free online in 2015. So it is now available all over the internet and even as a number of free phone apps.

This book is an exploration of “geek culture” including Dungeons and Dragons but also other aspects of fandom like live-action-role-playing (LARPing), and Harry Potter fandom. 

This is not a theoretically weighty book, but the author did substantial field work trying to explore and understand these subcultures. The throughline of the book concerns the human fascination with imaginary realms and the cultural forms people will invent to connect with these realms and bring them to life. As a religious studies scholar, I see this longing for other worlds as a “religious” impulse.

This was the first sociological study of fantasy role-playing games. Fine was able to detect and articulate what is sociologically significant about these games. 

The book takes dynamics that role-players just “get” and articulates them as sociological concepts. For example, he uses “frame theory” to explain how players verbally transition from the frame of the game mechanics and the story world of their characters. 

He also explains how games like Dungeons and Dragons are “autotelic.” In other words, you do not “win” at and these games, the purpose is “engrossment” or being absorbed into the fantasy world. 

Fine also did a great deal of participant observation for this book and it provides a great historical insight into the culture surrounding these games in the early 1980s––warts and all.

If you want to know about the origins of Dungeons and Dragons but are intimidated by Jon Peterson’s massive tome, this is a good alternative. 

Ewart’s writing is fun and enjoyable to read. This book also came out right before the release of 5th edition D&D. Readers who first learned that edition may be interested in Ewart’s coverage of playtesting and design.

The Unlikely Ones is a favorite fantasy novel from back in my teenage days (it is an adult fantasy, not children’s or YA).

An unsteady heroine, a cursed knight, and talking animals round out this unexpected cast who find themselves on a journey to become heroes none of them expected. The characters are the star of this book, though the story and world are also wonderful, as they grow from self-doubt and convinced of their unworthiness to beautifully realized saviors of the day.

Written over 30 years ago, this is still one of the most original fantasies I’ve read. 

A hybrid Dungeons & Dragons fantasy novel and a gruesome supernatural horror story meet head-on in this story of a Stoner whose job it is to save the world with his RPG skills. You guessed it, the world is doomed. As is the case with most of Communale’s novels, the absurd meets the hilarious to produce the terrifying.