James D'Amato

Just a super useful, incredibly accessible, and also deeply informative all at the same time. D'Amato manages to draw together all these different parts of storytelling theory, improvisational theory, and practical solutions to figure out both how you want to play, how you can better your play with others, and how you can turn your tabletop roleplaying into the kind of narrative play that makes popular shows like The Adventure Zone (and D'Amato's own show, One Shot) so compelling.

Really strongly encourage folks looking to get more out of their roleplaying, or even just explore other possibilities for telling stories at the table, to check this book out!… (mere)

Just a really fun book that can be useful for both your RPG characters and also just like writing exercises to better know and flesh out characters! D'Amato does an amazing job of asking these really, really insightful questions that strike at the heart of knowing more, and strikes the perfect balance of serious and also silly. Probably my favorite exercises in the book include building a familiar/mount/apprentice, where you are forced through the exercise mechanics to build a balanced (and therefore more likely to be fleshed out) character for yours to interact with. Some of the charts I found a little confusing, but otherwise I think this is a really handy book for any writer or roleplayer to keep around!… (mere)