Now a "New York Times" bestseller
Fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy basketball, even fantasy sumo wrestling: the world of fantasy sports is huge, and still growing. Today, more than 35 million people in the United States and Canada spend hours upon hours each week on their fantasy sports teams. And as the Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst for ESPN, Matthew Berry is on the front lines of what has grown from a niche subculture into a national pastime.
In "Fantasy Life," Berry celebrates every aspect of the fantasy sports world. Brilliant trash talk. Unbelievable trophies. Insane draft day locations. Shake-your-head-in-disbelief punishments. Ingenious attempts at cheating. And surprisingly uplifting stories that remind us why we play these games in the first place.
Written with the same award-winning style that has made Berry one of the most popular columnists on ESPN.com, " Fantasy Life" is a book for both hard-core fantasy players and people who have never played before. Between tales of love and hate, birth and death, tattoos and furry animal costumes, the White House Situation Room and a 126-pound golden pelican, Matthew chronicles his journey from a fourteen-year-old fantasy player to the face of fantasy sports for the largest sports media company in the world.
Fantasy will save your life. Fantasy will set you free. And fantasy life is most definitely better than real life. You'll see.

This history of role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons explains their evolution and gives complete definitions and descriptions for related game products. Arriving on the scene in 1973, such games caught on rapidly and spawned a thriving industry. These games are regularly played improvisations, with rules that allow for consistent resolution of action, in which heroic characters created by the players battle enemies or solve mysteries. Featuring essays by eighteen top industry designers, Heroic Worlds explains the evolution of role-playing games and their influence on other forms of entertainment. The art and jargon of game design, play, and collection are defined in detail.

A historical supplement for Mythras. Welcome the birth of the Roman Republic, and follow it through to its murderous end, on a tumultuous ride through some of its most turbulent history.Mythic Rome encapsulates the dark and gritty past, allowing players to take part in the founding of Rome: as a bandit on the Tiber; to overthrow the tyrannical Seven Kings; conquer the rival Etruscan city states; watch the city be sacked by Gauls; battle Hannibal during the Punic Wars; take part in the malevolent Bacchanalian conspiracy; fight alongside Spartacus or against him; or choose sides during the civil war between Caesar and Pompey.This invaluable book contains rules for everything from political standing to chariot racing, along with comprehensive Roman careers and guides for the weapons, armour and combat styles of Rome's legions and her enemies. Also included are obscure supernatural creatures and new magic systems to reflect the way magic works from the perspective of the Romans themselves.Continuing the quality and historical depth of the Design Mechanism's Mythic series, Mythic Rome stands as one of the best historical roleplaying supplements of all time, describing in intricate detail every aspect of everyday Roman life. Indeed, this book is packed with quotations written during the last days of the Republic, revealing shocking details of Rome the eternal city... a shining pinnacle of civilisation built upon a grisly foundation of crime, superstition, war and treachery.Mythic Rome is not a stand-alone game. You will need the Mythras rules to make full use of the content.

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 way: 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 find:

• 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!

Shoot, ram, skid, and loot your way through the ruins of civilisation with Gaslands: Refuelled, the tabletop miniature wargame of post-apocalyptic vehicular mayhem. With all-new material including expanded and enhanced perks, sponsors, vehicle types, and weapons. Gaslands: Refuelled contains everything a budding wasteland warrior needs to build and customise their fleet of vehicles in this harsh post-apocalyptic future. With a host of options for scenarios, environmental effects, and campaigns, players can create their own anarchic futures.

There are many tales of the Frozen City, and not all of them tell of battles between rival wizards. Often, the greatest adventures are those that pit a wizard and his trusty warband against the myriad perils found amidst the ruins of Felstad. This new supplement for Frostgrave presents rules for playing solo and cooperative games in which the focus shifts from the feuds of wizards to exploring the city, unlocking its mysteries... and surviving what is discovered. With guidelines for scaling game difficulty, dungeon crawls, monster generation, and more, as well as ten scenarios demonstrating these options, this volume offers players everything they need to venture alone - or with allies - into Frostgrave. Why should wizards fight amongst themselves? There is plenty of treasure for all and the Frozen City is enemy enough!

It's larger on the inside! Adventurers can carry all their equipment, weapons, items, and more with the official Dungeons & Dragons: Bag of Holding Magnet Set. This kit includes: * 30 2D magnets depicting iconic weapons, equipment, items, and more * a felt "bag of holding" * an illustrated mini "inventory" book

Set off with your adventuring party to gather 25 days' worth of gifts from the world of Dungeons & Dragons! Collect dozens of little treasures inspired by the Forgotten Realms in this official Dungeons & Dragons countdown calendar. Your party may have all the weapons they need, but this engaging gift calendar is filled with dozens of items you'd never think to bring on a quest. With mini books, stationery, buttons, tech accessories, and more, you can celebrate your love for the game with this countdown calendar featuring a monstrous assortment of presents!

HARDCOVER. The Robotic Age is a game where man lives long side machine. Sentient androids are trying to find their place among people that, at best, don't trust them and at worst want to destroy them. Weapon technology is spiraling out of control, killer drones can be built in a garage, and anyone on the street can have enough cybernetic enhancements to make them a killing machine. The world is changing rapidly and no one knows if the new age will be that of peace, or dominance. Build the android, transhuman, cyborg, or human character you always wanted and equip them with the weapon of your dreams, from plasma cannons, to grenade launchers, energy swords and more. Explore cyberspace, fight for android rights, travel to mars, or just help prevent the world from descending into chaos in The Robotic Age.

Role-playing games seemed to appear of nowhere in the early 1970s and have been a quiet but steady presence in American culture ever since. This new look at the hobby searches for the historical origins of role-playing games deep in the imaginative worlds of Western culture. It looks at the earliest fantasy stories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the fans--both readers and writers--who wanted to bring them to life, at the Midwestern landscape and the middle-class households that were the hobby's birthplace, and at the struggle to find meaning and identity amidst cultural conflicts that drove many people into these communities of play. This book also addresses race, religion, gender, fandom, and the place these games have within American capitalism. All the paths of this journey are connected by the very quality that has made fantasy role-playing so powerful: it binds the limitless imagination into a "strict" framework of rules. Far from being an accidental offshoot of marginalized fan communities, role-playing games' ability to hold contradictions in dynamic, creative tension made them a necessary and central product of the twentieth century.

As the wars of Napoleon ravage Europe, chaos and fear reign and the darkness that once clung to the shadows has been emboldened. Supernatural creatures - vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and worse take advantage of the havoc, striking out at isolated farms, villages, and even military units. Whether they are pursuing some master plan or simply revelling in their newfound freedom is unknown. Most people dismiss reports of these slaughters as the rantings of madmen or the lies of deserters, but a few know better... The Silver Bayonet is a skirmish wargame of gothic horror set during the Napoleonic Wars. Each player forms an elite band of monster hunters drawn from the ranks of one of the great powers. Riflemen, swordsmen, and engineers fight side-by-side with mystics, occultists, and even those few supernatural creatures that can be controlled or reasoned with enough to make common cause. The game can be played solo, co-operatively, or competitively, with players progressing through a series of interlinked adventures with their soldiers gaining experience and suffering grievous wounds, and their units triumphing... or falling in the face of the shadows. It is a game of action and adventure, where musket and sabre meet tooth and claw.

A BRAND-NEW COLORING BOOK FEATURING ICONIC ART FROM THE COMIC BASED ON THE VIDEO GAME LIFE IS STRANGE. Color your way through the universe of the award-winning videogame Life is Strange, using stunning artwork by Claudia Leonardi from the bestselling comic series. Featuring eighty pages of stylish black and white linework from the story of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price, complemented by distinctive doodles from Max's journal. Bring new life to Arcadia Bay, create fresh t-shirt designs for the cast, and explore time-twisting new realities at the tips of your pencils and pens! What color will Chloe's hair be in your timeline?

In the course of a Dungeons & Dragons game, a Dungeon Master has to make one decision after another in response to player behaviour-and the better the players, the more unpredictable their behaviour! It's easy for even an experienced DM to get bogged down in on-the-spot decision-making or to let combat devolve into a boring slugfest, with enemies running directly at the player characters and biting, bashing, and slashing away. In The Monsters Know What They're Doing, Keith Ammann lightens the DM's burden by helping you understand your monsters' abilities and develop battle plans before your fifth edition D&D game session begins. Just as soldiers don't whip out their field manuals for the first time when they're already under fire, a DM shouldn't wait until the PCs have just encountered a dozen bullywugs to figure out how they advance, fight, and retreat. Easy to read and apply, The Monsters Know What They're Doing is essential reading for every DM.