66 Books Like The Monsters Know What They're Doing

Understanding story structure, narrative drive, and world-building are incredibly helpful when running tabletop role-playing games.

As you run games you will often find that the players do not do what is expected and as the Game Master (GM) you have to adjust the story as you go. Understanding common story tropes and character arcs can help GM’s with building their world, their campaign, and adjusting the story as needed.

Hickson uses examples from literature, anime, and popular media to help illustrate the different themes explored in his series. 

Sometimes you might find you have a great idea for a campaign, or know what theme you want to explore but are struggling to understand how to bring those ideas together.

D’Amato takes you through building your campaign through both a discussion of storytelling devices as well as pointed questions you can use to help flesh out your ideas and turn them into a full campaign. This book also helps GMs learn how to make their world feel lived in through descriptions and building history.

This is the book you want to use to build a small idea into a full campaign! 

This book is a series of essays from some of the most well-known writers and creators in tabletop gaming.

This book is filled with tips and tricks to help you build your world and create a compelling plot that your players will want to engage in. This book will help you learn how to use different storytelling devices effectively in an RPG as it is slightly different than how you would use such devices in a written novel.

This book really helped me to start wrapping my mind around how shared narrative stories can work and how as a GM I can steer the story without taking away the agency of my players. This is a great quick read for new and experienced GMs alike! 

When I first started GMing I had pages and pages of notes that took hours to prepare.

It was unsustainable and I knew there had to be a better way. The Lazy Dungeon Master technique of session and campaign planning helps to ensure that while you are prepared for your sessions you are not wasting time planning too much.

Using the methods in this book, my session preparation time went from several hours to around an hour and I think my sessions improved as a result. 

The 3rd and final book in the Dragonlance Chronicles installment, Weis & Hickman finished an incredible tale inspired by their Dungeons & Dragons role playing group.

Elves, humans, dwarves, and kender must work together to beat back the rise of an evil goddess seeking its way into the world to ensave its inhabitants. Having been a Dungeon Master for many years, I devoured these books, and remain appreciative to this day that role playing geeks love to read novels as well.

If you want to know about the origins of Dungeons and Dragons but are intimidated by Jon Peterson’s massive tome, this is a good alternative. 

Ewart’s writing is fun and enjoyable to read. This book also came out right before the release of 5th edition D&D. Readers who first learned that edition may be interested in Ewart’s coverage of playtesting and design.

This was the first sociological study of fantasy role-playing games. Fine was able to detect and articulate what is sociologically significant about these games. 

The book takes dynamics that role-players just “get” and articulates them as sociological concepts. For example, he uses “frame theory” to explain how players verbally transition from the frame of the game mechanics and the story world of their characters. 

He also explains how games like Dungeons and Dragons are “autotelic.” In other words, you do not “win” at and these games, the purpose is “engrossment” or being absorbed into the fantasy world. 

Fine also did a great deal of participant observation for this book and it provides a great historical insight into the culture surrounding these games in the early 1980s––warts and all.

I didn’t know I wanted a story about a girl and her talking animal friends, but when it turns out that all of them have been enslaved by an evil witch and are shackled by her torturous magic, I couldn’t put it down. 

Seemingly insignificant creatures decide to try and take their fate back, all while their frailty remains. I found myself invested in the whimsy of the fairy tale juxtaposed with the horrors of enslavement. Watching the girl called “Thing” navigate the human condition was beautiful and painful, and several times, I held my breath, unsure what the outcome would be.

This story is an unusual tale of hopelessness transformed into determination and a beautiful bond formed through shared trauma and circumstance.

Lone Wolf is a book that is also a game. A LitRPG for Kids, originally written in the 80s, it is the start of a wonderfully long series of illustrated books that both allowed children to choose their actions as the protagonist of the story and also gave them choices on how to develop the hero and make him progress.

It’s a model of book that I really would like to see more of today.

Lone Wolf might be the series that started me on my gaming path, and it is a magical and beautiful quest that teaches about honor, teamwork, and clever tactical planning.

Even better, the author made the series free online in 2015. So it is now available all over the internet and even as a number of free phone apps.

A hybrid Dungeons & Dragons fantasy novel and a gruesome supernatural horror story meet head-on in this story of a Stoner whose job it is to save the world with his RPG skills. You guessed it, the world is doomed. As is the case with most of Communale’s novels, the absurd meets the hilarious to produce the terrifying.