REVIEW: So You Want To Be A Game Master by Justin Alexander [2/5]
Good advice but derivative, confused who is going to use it, completely directionless.
For those unaware, Justin Alexander is a seminal writer for modern roleplaying games. His blog (The Alexandrian) has been running from 2005, and it has had big impacts on tabletop game design ever since.
Justin is not the most original writer in the world. He has often been accused of taking the meat of the discussion off of a forum or G+, grinding it up and giving people a nice juicy sausage to chew on.
To me, there isn’t anything really wrong with that. Being able to present complex information in a way that even I can understand is a skill in and of itself.
He has recently been actually published and has his book available in real shops, which is a ridiculous step up from the scrabbling blogger and freelance game writer he has been in the past.
Which makes this bizarre fumble so disappointing.
Basic information first. The book is around 550 pages long, cost me 20 euros, and has seven main chapters in it.
The advice given in this book is fine.
It doesn’t break any new ground. The most interesting portion of it is a distinction made between raids and heists, and I am pretty sure that is drawn from a meme about how players determine the game tone.
If you are expecting something original, look elsewhere.
The level of advice given in the book is confused.
The Introduction is the only section which actually seems focused towards new gamemasters. The rest would be useful for a gamemaster who has ran a few games and is looking to improve themselves significantly, but the language it is couched in would feel condescending to anyone at that level.
The direction of the book is all over the place.
The front calls it out as being for Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder players, but then the advice inside is almost purely OSR-based. Two of the sections are Dungeons and Wilderness Exploration, cornerstones of OSR play and irrelevant to your standard 5e rollmop.
And then at the end of the book is a list of “Justin’s Favorite RPGs”. There’s not a single fucking OSR game in the list. Most of the advice in the book is useless for the games in the list, such as Blades in the Dark, Call of Cthulhu, Microscope and more.1
What the fuck, Justin?
I have no idea who I would recommend this book to. I am convinced that your standard 5e gamemaster would give up twenty pages in, because they seem more attached to watching YouTube videos than reading.
The book just seems years out of date.
If this was published in 2004, it would have been a game changer. If it was published in 2014, it would have been praised as a beautiful advice guide for old-school play.
But it’s 2024. The advice is fine, but a waste of pages for a book that is actually going on shelves. The level of advice isn’t directed at the people the book is marketed to. The direction is old-school but the games listed are very much not.
And that’s why this book is getting a 2/5.
If you want to buy So You Want To Be A Game Master, please use my Amazon referral link here and then I get money off it:
If you want an article going into a particular paragraph from the book where Justin is completely wrong, check out this one:
Full list of “Justin’s Favorite RPGs”: Numenera, Ars Magica, Pendragon, Technoir, Blades in the Dark, Night’s Black Agents, Eclipse Phase, Call of Cthulhu, The Quiet Year, Microscope, Shock: Social Science Fiction, Ten Candles.
550 pages? You are going to have to sift the nuggets from the filler pages demanded by his publisher. The Alexandrian is a good blog, but there is no reason for making actionable advice to the DM that kind of chore.
Actionable advice is probably found in something that is boiled down to the range of 20 pages or less. Drop it into a summary section that can be easily referenced. Save the other 530 pages for casual reading or speculative discussion.
Thanks for taking the bullet for us on this one so we don't have to.
I'm a beginner DM and really liked this book. First i had it in PDF then i bought the real book. The advices are very great, and well described. I learnt a lot of things and tips. It basicly covers all forms of adventures from dungeon crawls to mysteries, etc.