Most game master advice is either a restatement of the rulebook or a lecture on how you're doing it wrong. These five aren't. Each one changed something concrete about how I prep or how I sit at the table — not how I feel about the hobby. I own all of them.
| Item | Description/Purpose |
|---|---|
| So You Want To Be A Game MasterJustin Alexander | The one I'd hand somebody who has never run a session and is scared to. Structured, practical, and it never once tells you that you're the god of your world. |
| Play DirtyJohn Wick · 15th Anniversary Edition | Argumentative, occasionally wrong, and worth more than three polite books put together. You will disagree with parts of it. That's the point — it makes you say out loud why you run the way you do. |
| The Monsters Know What They're DoingKeith Ammann | Written with 5e in mind, yes, but still valuable for any fantasy game that uses the monsters Keith highlights. Not every monster is the proverbial nail to the players’ hammer. |
| Play UnsafeGraham Walmsley | The shortest book here and the best value per page. Improv principles aimed at people who prep too much — which is most of us, me included. |
| Return of the Lazy Dungeon MasterMichael E. Shea | Cuts prep down to what actually gets used at the table. If you've ever built a dungeon nobody entered, this book is about you and it is not unkind about it. |
The stuff on my side of the screen. Most of it is office supplies, and none of it is fancy. It's what I actually reach for mid-session.
| Item | Description/Purpose |
|---|---|
| Legal pads | Easy to jot down details at the table in the moment. |
| Cardstock | Table tents for home games or cons. Preprint them and make the PC name, class, etc. big enough to read! |
| Sand timers | Speed up combat, limit player delays. Put these on the table. |
| Dry-erase tokens | 5 goblins? Put G1, G2, G3… on each and put them on the mat! Easy. |
| Index cards | Used for everything from adventure prep to initiative counters on top of the GM screen. |
| Index card case | Helps sort your cards: monsters, items, room descriptions, etc. |
| Sticky notes | Pass notes at the table, stick one inside the GM screen for when a spell ends, and more. |
| Pen loop | Great for journals to hold your pens and pencils. |
| Gel pens | Smooth writing. I prefer the .7mm tip. |
| Mechanical pencil | The pencil of pen(cil), paper and dice! |
| Journal | There are cheaper knock-offs, but these are the best, IMO. I prefer dots over lined or blank. |
| Stencil bookmark | Spice up your journal. Great for players too: mapping, adding emphasis, drawing straight lines, etc. |
| Dice | THUD! Just don’t use them on your friend’s nice wooden table without a dice tray. |
| Dice trays | Don’t be ‘that guy’ whose dice fly off the table, under the table. |
| Battlemat | The mat to have if you like minis, positioning, tactics. |
Nothing here is aspirational. This is the kit that actually produces 255 live streams and two podcasts, in a house with cats and dogs in it.
| Item | Description/Purpose |
|---|---|
| Audio | |
| Electro-Voice RE320Large-diaphragm dynamic · Variable-D | A dynamic mic hears what's in front of it and mostly ignores the rest of the room. When you record at home with rescue animals in the house, that's the whole ballgame. |
| Cloudlifter CL-1Inline mic activator · +25dB | The RE320 is a quiet microphone. This sits between it and the interface and gives it the gain it needs without turning the preamp up until you can hear the furnace. If you own a low-output dynamic and your recordings sound thin and hissy, this is the missing piece, and I wish I'd bought one sooner. |
| Focusrite Scarlett SoloUSB-C audio interface · 4th Gen | What everything plugs into on its way to the computer. Mine is a 3rd Gen and still fine — the link goes to the current one, because that's what you'd actually be able to buy. |
| Control | |
| Elgato Stream Deck MK.215-key studio controller · white | Scene changes, overlays and stingers on one keypress, so the show never stops while I hunt for a window. |
| Elgato Stream Deck PedalThree macro footswitches | The same idea for when both hands are already holding dice and a book. |
| Camera & light | |
| OBSBOT Tiny 24K tracking PTZ webcam | Follows me when I turn to grab a book off the shelf instead of leaving the audience staring at an empty chair. |
| GVM 80W softbox kitKey light · 5600K · 23.6″ softbox | The main light. A softbox is the difference between looking lit and looking interrogated. |
| VIJIM VL120 RGB panelAccent light · 2500–9000K · rechargeable | Small, battery-powered, and the reason the background isn't a beige wall. |