Mike Shea

Well, that's, that's lame.

Because my, of course, my books, all of my books.

No, that's a good question.

So I have two, I'm going to give you two.

And I'm not going to say that you need both.

But the question has some subtlety to it that I think is important.

One is, I assume you're talking about 5e.

Because you say knowledge of 5e erased from your brain.

But then you talk about no knowledge to GMing as though maybe I don't really understand RPGs.

So if I was going to say one general purpose RPG book, the one that comes to mind is Dungeon World.

And it's because Dungeon World was the first book I remember, certainly around the fourth edition day, late fourth edition days, kind of early 5e.

I didn't think 5e was really out yet, but it was right around that time.

And when I read it, it really changed how I thought about the role of a game master and how I thought about the role of a player.

And the most powerful thing from that was the idea of being a fan of the characters.

changed my perspective completely in how I ran RPGs and it really changed it from fourth edition where I felt like I was the antagonist to the characters.

I was running the villains.

I'm the bad guy and I'm running the villains against the characters.

I'm there to challenge them and I'm there to, you know, thwart them.

And, you know, doing so, of course, fairly and in a way.

But I never really said to myself, being a fan of the characters, that has stuck with me so much that it's things like lightning rods.