Run Your First Session

You said yes to running the game. The session is on the calendar. Now what?

The rulebook tells you what a saving throw is. It does not tell you what to say when five people look at you and wait. Run Your First Session is the book for that moment: 72 techniques for running a tabletop roleplaying game, one per page, each with a diagram or a table, a short explanation of why it works, and a box that says exactly what to do and when.

Nothing here assumes you have run a game before. Nothing here needs a second reading. Open any page, read it once, and use it tonight.

Nine parts. One idea per page.

• Before the game. Session zero in twenty minutes, the lines you do not cross, one hook per character.
• What the GM actually does. How to pick a number, what a roll is asking, how a fight actually runs, your first five minutes.
• Running a mystery. The clue they cannot miss, the three-clue rule, the dead end that is not.
• Running a fight. Two weak enemies instead of one strong, telegraph the big hit, why monsters run.
• Pacing the night. Open on a scene, cut to the interesting part, end on a question.
• The people at the table. Spotlight is a budget, the quiet player, the player who wants to win.
• Prep that survives. Situations, not plots. The reusable NPC. What happens if they do nothing.
• Improvising. Buy yourself time out loud, name it and it exists, own the retcon.
• Between sessions. Write down what changed, three clocks running at once, when to end a campaign.

Made for the table, not the shelf

Large 8.5 x 11 pages, readable at arm's length with the book propped behind your screen. Black and white throughout. Every diagram is drawn to be understood in one look.

The four pages that touch rules use the fifth edition (5E) system. The other 68 work with any fantasy tabletop RPG. If you know what a d20 is, you know enough to start.

Also the right gift for the friend who just agreed to run the game.