For Humble Bundle's Very Humble Holiday, Adams Media is running a flash bundle sale that will give you all the skills and knowledge you need to be a great dungeon master. The bundle, which raises money for Worldreader, includes 22 books collected from Ultimate RPG series, Teri Litorco Civilized Guide to Board GamesDüngeonmeister food and drink recipe books and a collection of mythology books to inspire you in building your world.
Adams Media, one of the only major publishers to venture into tabletop role-playing games, began publishing books on tabletop gaming in 2016, with Litorco's guide including 100 rules of gaming etiquette that “every player must follow.” “. In 2018 he published the Ultimate Guide to RPG Characters Backstory by James D'Amato, Polygon collaborator and founder of the one shot real game network. The book offers prompts and exercises to develop the backstories of player characters, creating a fuller personality that players can embody once they sit down at the table.
The success of D'Amato's guide launched the line of guides that appear in this package. Other D'Amato books in this series include the RPG Game Masters Ultimate World Building Guide, he Ultimate RPG Guideand He Definitive micro-RPG bookwhich includes 40 board games with simple rules.
Other books in the series include Ultimate Random Encounters Book by Travis Wheeler (offering hundreds of encounters to incorporate into any fantasy game of your choice) and The book of everything about board games by Bebo. The latter promises to introduce the uninitiated to the world of the board, explaining different genres of games and teaching strategies to win them. Also included in the package are three books by Jef Aldrich and Jon Taylor: the A dragon enters a bar joke book, Düngeonmeister Beverage Master's Guide cocktail recipe book and Dungeonmeister's Cookbookwhich has 75 RPG-inspired recipes geared toward game night snacks.
The last genre of books in this pack is less specific to board games, but is intended to provide a wealth of inspiration for dungeon masters to draw upon. That includes mythology anthologies covering specific creatures such as mermaids, fairies, unicorns, dragons, vampires, and wizards, as well as specific cultural traditions from Viking, Celtic, and Greek mythology. One book, by Jenny Williamson and Genn McMenemy, focuses specifically on the role of women in mythology around the world. To top it off, the last book in this package is A dictionary of invented languages by Stephen D. Rogers, which is exactly what it says on the tin and covers Klingon, Elvish, and other languages.
Through December 19, all of that is available for under $20. A portion of the proceeds raised from this bundle goes to Worldreader, a global nonprofit that has donated millions of digital books to children in more than 100 countries.