The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying: Guidelines and Strategies for Running PC-Driven Narratives in 5E Adventures

by Jonah Fishel, Tristan Fishel, Ginny Di (Introduction)

Introducing the first book in The Game Master's new " Handbook " series!

Is your roleplaying in a rut? Flip the table and try something new! Proactive roleplaying will re-energize your players – and your game.

Most adventures in traditional TTRPGs start out the same Something bad happens and your players have to muster their courage to stand against it. Whether it’s rescuing the little dog that was kidnapped by the local troll, stopping an assassination attempt at the archduke’s wedding or recruiting an army to disrupt the construction of a world-ending ritual site, the party will always find a way to save the day. After all, what kind of heroes would they be if they let the dog, duke or entire population die? Saving the day is fun, but it starts to get repetitive after a while. If you’re using a “bad guys try to do stuff, good guys try to stop them” engine to drive all your sessions, you’re taking all the agency out of your players’ hands. Bad stuff happens, good people have to try to stop it, roll, rinse, repeat.

There’s a better way to play (and prep) your sessions . The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying shows you how to convert your TTRPG gameplay from predictable action/reaction cliches to player-driven narratives that put all the choices (and most of the prep work) in the hands of your players. The goals are theirs. The decisions are theirs. Everything that happens in the world you’re building together occurs not because you planned it, but because the PCs are following their own paths, rather than Game Master breadcrumbs, to the scene of the next adventure.

The proactive approach ensures every battle has tension, every faction has a function and every session is high-stakes (and an absolute blast), putting the players and their characters in the driver’s seat so you can sit back and simply put giant goal- (and soul-) crushing roadblocks in their way.

You’ll also

• Foreword by Ginny Di with an afterword by Jeff Ashworth
• Writer’s block-breaking charts
• Case studies from decades of sessions
• Templates for goal-driven NPCs and factions
• A modular adventure setting and much more!

The Game Master's Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying is compatible with your favorite 5th edition Fantasy Tabletop RPGs!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Nonfiction, Dungeons and Dragons, Gaming, Reference, Writing, Games

237 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2023

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I consider this a must read for GMs and players, and for me it's up there with great books like "Play Unsafe" and "Unframed". Many GM advice sections in TTRPGs have strategies on prep and recommend basing the "story" around the player's characters, but this book does such a superlative job of explaining how to actually put that into practice.

It breaks things down in such a nice way, and best of all, is simple enough to understand and add to your table (though you will need to get player buy in, but there are lots of great approaches on how to do this).

I just love how everything is tied up succinctly and neatly, with great examples (love the pop culture references, by the way). I simply cannot wait to put the ideas from the book into practice in my own gaming groups, and intend to update this review once I've properly tested everything out.

One quick aside, I played lots of D&D in the distant past, but I as a story game adherent (which this book seems partially inspired by, namely Blades in the Dark), I can't help but flinch a little when books reference that D&D and more traditional RPGs too heavily, but after reading it cover to cover a few times, I can safely say that the advice can be applied to just about any TTRPG.

This is a really great book and is undoubtedly worth most people's time. Life is too short to play in games that meander and fizzle out, and not for lack of the GM's or any of the player's effort. The concepts in this book I think will greatly improve everyone's experience at the table.

[James Tomasino · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise here is that by developing and defining goals for player characters, we can extract from that information ways to craft our games to be proactive, avoid railroading, and stay engaging. From that premise the rest of the book explores strategies for those goals and ways to evolve those into your settings, NPCs, factions, and so on. It certainly favors use in homebrew games moreso than modules or adventure paths, but some element of goal setting can be helpful in these other forms as well. I see some ideas to pull into my own games.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Anyone starting out in GMing should read this. A lot of it is stuff experienced GMs have hopefully come to intuitively from their years behind the screen, but it still provides a lot of great insights and tips into making games more engaging. I'll need to reread it in the future, giving it more time to sink in than I have on this pass. Still, full recommendation with no hesitation.

[Artem S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overall and give some fresh perspective and good advice. I found it useful even considering the fact that I have quite a lot of experience both as a DM and as a player. However, I would warn not to take this book as a solution to every problem. It is good to promote proactivity, but there might be situations when GM literally needs to take full control of the narrative. Also, implementing this approach with a group of complete newbies would also be difficult and would probably feel complicated to them, as it is often quite a task to dive into roleplay if you've never done this before.
That being said, this is good advice, and actually I've been doing some of the things that they suggest in the book without even realizing that.

[Eivind Eklund · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I recommend an RPG book, this book is the book I most often recommend. And by that I mean I recommend it more than all other books combined.

The book has a fantastic introduction to the techniques that are used by gamemasters for games in the PbtA and BitD game design families. Italso has a lot of extra depth created for the prep so you don't need a lot of experience to know how to deal with particular types of entities; in particular, I've never seen anything anywhere near as good on faction.

The lower rated comments here all seem to be variants of "I've not tried this, but I don't think it can consistently work." It can work and has worked for a large number of GMs, for a large number of games. Using it for prep should in many ways work better for D&D than the games it originates in, since D&D progress story much slower than in PbtA and BitD games, and a common problem in PbtA is the GM "running out of prep". The story is driven so quickly by the players that halfway into a session, you'll have to wing it anyway.

[Leo Devick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really changed my perspective n stuff

[Natalie Dunn-Billings · Rating 5 out of 5]

a super helpful and eye opening guide that I am positive I will be referencing constantly. can't wait to apply it at my table!

[Janis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Das Buch vermittelt wirklich gut das, was man beim Buchtitel erwartet.
Nämlich wie man eine Proaktive Rollenspiel Kampagne vorbereitet und durchführt.

Ich finde die Punkte dort super hilfreich und freue mich, sie bei der nächsten Kampagne anzuwenden.

Das einzige Manko, dass ich habe, ist der teilweise sehr ausschweifende Ton um ein besseres Verständnis für die Tools und Methoden zu bekommen.
Da hätte ich mir entweder weniger Seiten gewünscht oder mehr Tiefgang in die Methoden selbst.

[Pedro Echanove · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un bueno libro que explora cómo conseguir con pequeñas herramientas el desarrollo de la imaginación y la proactividad en el roleplay, pero te da herramientas a su vez para la escritura y entender un poco que hace a una historia cautivadora.

[Aleksander Brobak]

Not just a handy tool, but an inspiring read as well. Will be looking forward to use some of these techniques in my own D&D game.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool to read this after I finished my first DnD campaign :)

[Ramón Nogueras Pérez · Rating 3 out of 5]

No le doy una nota más alta porque se extiende muchísimo y podría ser más conciso, y poner más y mejores ejemplos. Pero las ideas detrás de este volumen son muy necesarias. Muy muy recomendado.

[Emma Cenderello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book for anyone looking to run a ttrpg campaign. It's a MUST read for anyone who wants to run a story heavy / character arc heavy campaign!

I personally love running character arc driven campaigns, and I enjoy planning the story with my players. This book was very helpful in giving me more tips and information on how to push that beyond what I was already doing!

For me, DnD (and other systems) thrive the most when the GM and players work together to make a story that everyone cares about. There is nothing I love more than seeing my players get excited when planning their character arcs and then seeing their faces when things start happening in game. To me GMing is all about constantly making / evolving the world WITH your players.

I think this book is amazing both for people who have never GMd (and played) in this way, and for those who have but are looking to expand on their knowledge. For players specifically, although this book is mostly catered to GMs, I would still reccomend reading it as it is incredibly helpful in explaining how to be a proactive player.

My only small issue with the book is it's sometimes not well written? I'm not sure if it's the copy I own (or maybe I'm misinterpreting language as I'm not a native English speaker) but I think there were a handful of spelling mistakes and a few bits where the sentences weren't as smooth? Again this could be my not being a native speaker, but it still felt this way.

[Agustín Fest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si te gustan los bullet points, disfrutarás este libro y su propuesta: básicamente te invita a que definas objetivos para tus jugadores en tus campañas, y que ellos se animen a dirigir la historia. Está muy bien explicado, sintético, concreto, como les gusta a los gringos.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basic Premise: Tips for GMs to create and run more player-driven, responsive games.

First things first, in all honesty I skimmed a lot of this book more than close-read it. I have been running games for a long time, and a lot of different types of games. Some are more rules heavy (D&D, Pathfinder), but a lot have been rules-light and heavy on the creativity (Call of Cthulhu, all things White Wolf). I cut my GM teeth on Call of Cthulhu. I used to run a Vampire: The Masquerade LARP. So the reason I skimmed is that I'm intimately familiar with the style of gameplay this book espouses.

For players and GMs sick of having/being a fantasy party of murder-hobos that get fishhooked from encounter to encounter, this is your book. The honest truth is that letting the players set goals can help a GM not only get more engagement and role-play out of their players, but it also makes the GM's job that much easier. The players give you ideas, you run with them, add complications, and voila, you have an epic game that everyone will remember. It is also fairly easy to adapt these concepts into a pre-written adventure or campaign. You just make sure that the players have a bit of knowledge of the world/locale, some real stake in the actual adventure, let them set their personal goals and once again you're off to the races. This book is at its best when trying to help the GM who has never done this before. It also uses actual examples from the authors' own gaming experience as well as referencing some very common fantasy novels/movies that gamers would likely be familiar with.

[Billy Kid · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has 25-50 pages of interesting ideas --- sadly it's 239 pages long.

The focus on GMing tips for fantasy games doesn't help because I'm not interested in tropey fantasy stories told "straight" --- most of the book assumes that's what the reader is interested in.

This seems like a whole book digging into a version of the Beat system from the 9781913032111 RPG with the serial numbers filed off.

Using goals set by players to help guide the GM's hand towards building the kinds of roleplaying experiences and character beats that the players want their characters to have is genius and writing a whole book about how to maximize the effectiveness of this tool makes sense.

But moving forward I'll be sure to make this goal setting process an explicit part of the character creation process and end of session wrap-up in my campaigns because I've had mixed results when I've given players the opportunity to do this but I haven't forced it.

[Friday · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a helpful but frustrating read. A lot of the tables and information are things I'll be considering when GMing, but much of the book is trying to convince you that there is a certain way to play that is better than all others. Such is the nature of TTRPGs & the players who play them. Below are a couple of notes that I wrote while I was reading.

"If you have a few important NPCs, you can flesh those out separately - but I think you will find yourself doing this less frequently once you see the flexibility and utility of a factions-first approach." - Do people seriously play like this? Myself and my players adore interpersonal drama and high emotional stakes. I assumed that's what everyone who plays roleplay-heavy campaigns liked! It's not that I'm criticizing those who don't. I'm genuinely befuddled!

"We've chosen to leave all exploration (wilderness traversal; locating people, places and things) and most skill encounters (traps, puzzles) out of this book because those are not built around conflict in the same way combat and social encounters are: They don't represent the dramatic tension that arises between the clash of two or more wills." - for a book about PC-driven roleplay, THIS IS A BAD THING. Providing in-depth information and examples about these types of gameplay are exactly why I picked up this book! I don't need to encourage my players to want physical battles - they already do! I don't need to know the why - they want to (and so do I) because it's fun to win! It's fun and engaging for good to triumph over evil through a series of difficult challenges. This books is about ROLEPLAY. Why are they leaving out the places where roleplay needs help?

I picked up this book for fun and because I thought it might give me some interesting ideas. The only thing I got out of it were the tables provided for encounters and goals. Seriously! I don't understand this idea that it's the GM's job to act as a shepherd and spoon-feed fun to the players. It's a COLLABORATIVE game. I'm the GM and I want to have fun too! My players care about my world because they're my friends. And because they help craft it! We're playing the game together. It's everyone at the table's job to make sure everyone else is having fun.

[Jon Thysell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this was an excellent book for teaching GMs a fairly comprehensive way for running games, in almost any system.

That said, some systems already have this kind of play baked in - Fate for example is practically built for proactive play right off the bat. But even for a Fate player like me, it was interesting to see someone "figuring it out" from reactive D&D perspective and saying it a different way.

Though, the real problems are probably with subverting expectations from long-standing TTRPG players and GMs. The material is probably hardest to digest if you're "locked in" with the reactive play style that D&D has pushed for decades, especially if you line it that way. I've seen lots of comments and reviews along the lines of:

1. This could have been a blog post, it's just "have players goals", then a bunch of fluff that repeats that one premise over and over! OR
2. I already have enough to do as a GM, now I have to create and track all these goals, it's just more work!

I think people fundamentally miss that this proactive play style straight up replaces a ton of the usual GM work. You're spreading the load with the players in a way that, gopefully makes them want to help you because they get more agency in making their character do cool things.

Saying it's "have player goals" fluffed out to book length is as reductive as saying D&D books are "roll d20 and add modifiers against a target" fluffed out to book length. The book does a pretty good job of applying the premise through almost every aspect of GM prep for a TTRPG (minus system specific stat blocks) with plenty of examples. The adventure at the end is a great template for applying everything the book teaches.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seems like some really solid advice overall for a player-goal-driven campaign. The advice is actually less about what might come to mind when you think of roleplay—eg. character emotions, encouraging players to take and give conversational space, accents, etc.—and more about all the ways a DM can make it exciting and easy for players to really take to the story and drive that with their own interests. I haven't had the chance to apply the learnings yet, but I've already felt inspired in my own planning process for an upcoming campaign. It feels like a lot of ideas in this book would yield fun, exciting results.

Some of the advice does feel a little shoehorned to fit into the book's theme of making the campaign player-driven, and is more so just good advice in general. But that's hardly an awful problem to have.

They even include a one-shot example of how to create a player-driven story... which is impressive given that these authors don't have the benefit of, you know, like actually talking to your players and asking them what their goals are. The result shows how you can have some great, malleable ideas for a story, and adjust them based on what players might be most interested in.

Overall, really great little guide - highly recommend picking up, but might update this review after making use of some of the material.

PS: For best results, consider picking this up before doing *too much* campaign planning, since some amount of the content, while effective regardless, is probably *most* effective if you take it into consideration from the very beginning.

[Huge Fleur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tout part d'une très bonne observation: le jeu de rôle est trop souvent réactif (ou un brin trop passif pour les joueurs). Les auteurs enchaînent avec une excellente réflexion sur la liberté qu'emmène une campagne de "méchants" et toute la liberté qui vient avec. Cette proactivité, qui devrait être encouragée, est l'idée centrale du livre.

On continue avec l'élaborations d'objectifs par et pour les joueurs (histoire de les impliquer et d'alléger la charge du MJ), de factions plus ou moins opposées pour compliquer la route jusqu'à ces objectifs et on remonte étape par étape jusqu'aux rencontres (encounters) elles-mêmes.

Bravo pour la quantité, la variété et la qualité des exemples très concrets à chacune des étapes, jusqu'au mini scénario donné dans les 30 dernières pages. Le tout aide vraiment à montrer des applications concrètes de ces idées.

Peut-être que le livre est trop basé sur une seule idée, mais les chapitres servent à aider l'application de cette idée sur chacun des aspects avec de nombreux exemples et tables de suggestions pour éviter d'en faire un ouvrage trop théorique. On a donc une ressource intéressante, bien séparée avec une structure qui aide fortement à la réutilisation, en plus que tout ça tient dans moins de 250 (petites) pages. L'objectif est fort réussi; manque juste les années pour savoir sa force comme ouvrage de référence (la structure est prometteuse là-dessus) mais la première lecture est fort intéressante.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every GM has been there: hours spent preparing an adventure and the players get interested in an irrelevant detail from a few sessions previous and wander off into terra incognita, forcing a lot of improvisation on the fly and a flat, dull, frustrating session. This book aims to help with that, by putting the player's aims and goals at the center of the game rather than a those of the campaign villains provided by the GM. The book gives advice on designing factions that the players will interact with, memorable locations and NPCs, and exciting encounters.
The focus on factions removes the biggest challenges with villains in most campaigns, i.e., how to have recurring a antagonist that interacts with the players: if the players kill a major NPC villain, the faction can recover with new leadership and modified goals, or another faction can usurp the original villain's place. This is the BBEG equivalent of the teleporting dungeon, and it works because the factions are interfering with the players' goals rather than the players thwarting the schemes of the BBEG.
This is a great resource and I am looking forward to putting its ideas into practice. In fact, the outline of its principles can be seen in BG3, with the companion characters guiding things with their personal goals. In a way, individual player goals could be seen as loyalty quests for the rest of the party, which leads to interesting storytelling opportunities.

[Jonas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book does a decent job of introducing the concept of proactive roleplaying, but does so in a way that presents it as "the right way to play RPGs", and that irks me. Because of course, it is only one way among many. But cultures of play and different philosophies of game design aren't really a thing the authors concern themselves with. The book is very clearly aimed at one specific subgroup of 5e players, and essentially takes concepts from more modern storygame systems and "backports" them to 5e or rather tries to formulate them in a system-agnostic way. This does make sense, but would be way more interesting and helpful if it was contrasted with other ways to nurture player agency and creativity – like the more mechanical, procedure-focused style of OSR/NSR systems for example.

Also, it would be interesting to talk about all the ways a kitchen-sink system like 5e might actually make it harder than necessary to run a proactive campaign, and why it makes sense that systems that are "forged in the dark" or "powered by the apocalypse" exist.

It could do all of that while still targeting the same audience, but serving it better. The way it stands, it gives its readers a fish rather than teaching them to fish, so to speak. And feels weirdly uninterested in the grander discussion on which it ostensibly represents the last word.

[Matthew J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is sort of in this realm of "could have been a blog post," but there are enough nuggets throughout that I think it does earn its value as a full book. The basic premise is fairly basic, but very worth looking into. Even if I don't implement it fully into my games, it gives me some things to think about while I'm putting a game together, for sure.
Overall, it expands on something (I don't know if it was intentional, or just different people going down a similar thought line when trying to solve a problem) to something Matt Colville said years ago about players and their characters having ambition.
This book is about your PCs having goals, short, mid, and long term goals, which they can then pursue.
There's more to it. There's stuff about making better factions and NPCs, and about giving your players the ability to follow their interests. There's even a sample adventure (encounter) in the back to show you how you might think differently about design.
As with writing advice books, GMing advice often turns out to be fairly obvious, and something you've either done or experienced in a less purposeful way before. But it's nice sometimes to see the ideas in print. It helps me, at least, to get a better handle on things.

[Alej · Rating 4 out of 5]

PLAYERS WANT TO WRITE THEIR OWN STORIES WITHOUT KNOWING THEY’RE DOING SO. Sort of.

Foundational text for anyone looking to improve their DMing skills. I forget when I started reading this but in the couple of months of on and off reading, I began implementing the lessons and tips from the book into a pre-written ongoing campaign and an original one shot to great success, though to varying degrees. As good as the lessons are, they really lend themselves a lot more to the more flexible and malleable nature of an original campaign rather than a pre-written expansion. Obviously you can bend and rewrite stuff in an expansion module to suit your heart’s content, but it is harder to work around than a campaign you write yourself with those lessons already in mind.

Taking half a point off because of the cringe millenial humor, I mean Ginny Di writes the foreword, but if you can make it past that you’re in for a treasure trove of advice.

[David Wurtsmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those rare ideas which is deceptively simple, and which once realized forever alters the way you approach your hobby. Instead of having the GM say "the bad guys are doing bad stuff and I hope you feel like stopping them", players are instead encouraged to ask themselves "what does my character want to accomplish? what are their short, medium, and long-term goals?" The GM then does the same for the villains (who are perhaps better thought of as "factions", since their goal is not to mess with the heroes but to get the things that they want for themselves), and the various groups butt heads until one or more of them emerges victorious. From this humble beginning, the entire metaplot of your campaign practically writes itself.

[Forrest Crock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good book that gives a different strategy to running a TTRPG. This strategy allows the players to drive more of the storyline of the campaign you are running and takes some of the work off of the DM (GM/judge/title of who is running the session). It goes over the whole process of character creation with players coming up with goals they wish their characters to attempt to achieve, and how to create the obstacles and support their characters will have to deal with. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to expand their gaming experiences.

[Alexandre Quenon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce livre a été une véritable révélation pour moi qui assume le rôle de MJ depuis quatre ans.
Les auteurs ont une vision intéressante du déroulement d'une session et d'une campagne, et l'exposent en déroulant leurs arguments avec pédagogie et beaucoup d'exemples à l'appui.
C'est un must-have, que je conseille toutefois de lire après avoir maitrisé quelques parties. En effet, l'ouvrage se base énormément sur l'expérience, et aura d'autant plus d'impact pour un ou une MJ qui a quelque peu roulé sa bosse.

[Lily Cott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content of the book and ideas itself were good and helpful - I did have to dock a star for the formatting because it made the book somewhat difficult to read. There would often be full page case studies/blurbs cutting off paragraphs in the middle of a sentence or the text would reference a blurb/chart later in the book that the reader hadn’t gotten to yet. I did get good ideas and tips from this book, just wish it overall flowed better for less work on the reader’s part.

[Ryne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sets out to establish a different approach to DMing, and succeeds with flying colors. Everything is explained incredibly clearly, to the point where the concepts feel intuitive once you’ve finished reading. I often found myself forming questions or hoping for further elaboration on specific points, only for the book to immediately address those thoughts. Highly recommend to anyone who DMs and is looking for a new approach to their campaigns.

[Alexa · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a new Game Master that loves story telling, this was a great read. I'm happy to try and implement this style of GMing at my table. Just note that this won't be for every table. This one has a heavy focus on storeys and characters. If your table is there for a fun session of combat, the methods in this book probably won't work well.

That said, it's really great for campaign inspiration, and gives lots of great examples for how to build a campaign in a proactive way.