Book Rec: The Anatomy of Adventure

One hobby I’ve revived interest in recently is Dungeons and Dragons. In my younger years, I played dnd for around 6 hours at a time (gosh, those 4e games were long) twice a week. Gathering round a table to roleplay a character of my own creation was a huge part of my life back then, and honestly, I’ve long missed it. Not necessarily the length of the games, as I don’t have that much time to commit these days, but the roleplay, the exploration of a fantasy world through imagination and limited visuals, camaraderie between players, and finding ways to get my character out of dicey situations—those are the things I missed.

While back then I experienced the game as a player character, this time around I’m the Dungeon Master. It’s a heck of a challenge, which I expected, but there’s more to keep track of than I feel I have the brain-space for (so grateful to have the player’s handbook, monster manual, and DM manual on hand, plus the plethora of online resources for dungeon masters).

We’re starting this first adventure in Exandria (the world crafted by Matthew Mercer of Critical Role fame) and then progressing to Eberron (much more information to keep track of, it’s an older world with many more details) once we play through the pre-generated adventures within the Exandria handbook… and maybe go through a few adventures of my own creation.

Which leads me to this particular book recommendation:

The Anatomy of Adventure by M.T. Black is a book I supported on Kickstarter, and the book explains how to craft your own adventure throughout twenty chapters filled with practical tips, quality examples, and guides to show the reader exactly how they can create their own adventures for Dungeons and Dragons. Since I’m new to the Dungeon Master side of things—and new to crafting my own adventures—I was happy to find this book on Kickstarter, and I’ve absolutely enjoyed reading through the chapters and learning how to piece together my own adventures in a game I love.

I’ll have to share more here on the blog once I’ve completed my own adventure, but it’ll be a while, as we’re working through the pre-generated adventures first.

If you want The Anatomy of Adventure from M.T. Black, you can purchase a copy on DriveThruRPG.