A review of

Game Mastering Secrets, by Wade Guthrie

Published by Wade Guthrie Press, PO Box 4373 Laguna Beach, CA 92652

Typical Retail Price: $19.95

Game Mastering Secrets is a sourcebook for Game Masters of Roleplaying Games. It is a primer for inexperienced GMs covering many topics, including:

• The First Time Game Master
• Modifying the Rules
• Your Players and the Rules
• Fitting the Characters into Your World
• Your Relationship with the Players
• NPCs, Monsters & treasure
• Making the Game Fun
• Game Mastering Styles
• Writing Adventures
• Building and Developing the Campaign
• Playing the Game

It also includes a glossary of RPG terms, a guide to online sources for GM tips and a list of books essential to any GMs reference library.

While the back cover announces that this book is great for anyone from the first time GM to Game Mastering veterans, I have to disagree. It is an excellent book for first timers, or those new to GMing, but is of dubious help to those who have doing it for long.

The writing is quite readable with few typos. The book is a little light on artwork, and what is there is not of the best quality, but it's better than nothing. The layout is a little odd, it being a 136 page book (8.5" x 11” size) but only printing on about 2/3 of the page. The top and bottom margins are large and the left margin of each page is huge, intended for a sidebar or notes, but rarely used. The spacing between the lines of text is also large, giving the impression that the author ran out of things to say but still had to fill his page count.

Good Points:

• An excellent book for the new or learning Game Master. Many good tips and snippets of advice.

Bad Points:

• Not of much use to experienced GMs.
• Poor layout and graphics.
• Condescending author-voice.

Overall rating (1 being worst - 10 best): 7 (for new GMs); 2 (for experienced GMs)

Review by Tim Morgan