Worldbuilder’s Toolkit 3

In December 2015 we presented the Worldbuilder’s Toolkit +3, our third annual offering of ebooks designed to help you build dynamic, engaging worlds for your roleplaying campaigns. Like previous installments, this new, authoritative collection covers every aspect of your campaign, from your setting’s geography and trade routes to the nonplayer characters you improvise on the fly. This was a strong collection with two Engine Publishing titles, three parts of Expeditious Retreat’s “Magical Society” series, Kevin Crawford’s An Echo, Resounding, NPC Essentials by Johnn Four (his Bundle of Holding debut), and — a particular highlight — the first .PDF anywhere of the 2002 Grey Ghost Press essay anthology Gamemastering Secrets.

Our Starter Collection included three titles (retail value $62) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:

• A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture and A Magical Society: Silk Road (Expeditious Retreat Press, total retail $52): Map your world using tectonics, ecological conflict, and historical patterns of cultural development. Then develop realistic overland trade routes and a trade system with over 1,000 goods — everything from owlbear skins to adamantium.
• Never Unprepared (Engine Publishing, retail price $10): Gnome Stew‘s Phil Vecchione shows how to prepare games faster, avoid pitfalls, and have a more relaxed kind of fun. (Previously presented in the August 2013 Bundle of Holding +5.)

Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Bonus Collection with five more titles (retail value $57):

• Unframed – The Art of Improvisation for Gamemasters (Engine Publishing, retail $10): Improvise like a — like a — uh, well, like someone who thinks really fast with these essays from Jason Morningstar, Emily Care Boss, Robin D. Laws, and others.
• Gamemastering Secrets (Grey Ghost Press, retail $18): This 2002 treatise (on becoming an amazing GM) debuts in .PDF in this offer. Aaron Rosenberg and guest contributors cover everything from choosing a game system to closing out a long-running campaign. Featuring articles by Matt Forbeck, Kenneth Hite, and other star designers, with Dork Tower comic strips by John Kovalic.
• An Echo, Resounding (Sine Nomine Publishing, retail $10): Kevin Crawford (Stars Without Number) gives practical tools to create empires, run mass combats, and transform ordinary adventurers into monarchs.
• GM Mastery: NPC Essentials (RPGObjects, retail $10): Johnn Four of RoleplayingTips.com shows how to inject life into your nonplayer characters.
• A Magical Medieval Society: On the Naming of Places (Expeditious Retreat Press, retail $9): Create interesting and believable location names for your campaign with this extensive list.

Buying all these books at retail price in a Silk Road bazaar would cost you US$119, or the equivalent in owlbear skins.