First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

As of early-November 2017, this is really the weakest of all the author's current products. Cut and paste headlines from today's news and you reproduced the content here. The idea of using news and current events as inspiration is good advice. Perhaps instead, he should have provided a short article explaining and illustrating his techniques for selecting and re-purposing such events in RPGs scenarios and settings.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well.

If I could suggest only one thing to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well.

If I could suggest anything to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well.

If I could suggest anything to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well.

If I could suggest anything to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well. The update was an improvement.

If I could suggest anything to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well.

If I could suggest anything to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well.

If I could suggest anything to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

First, I would simply recommend getting Mr. Arto Saari's "All Think Different BUNDLE". I'd value the bundle at about $5.

I assume Mr Saari isn't a native English speaker. His products contain many odd sentences, grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc.

The page count of the documents aren't a good benchmark; many pages appear to be presentation slides with text.

That all said, much of what he writes about is interesting from a game master/referee perspective. His illustrations are mostly good and reinforce his ideas well.

If I could suggest anything to the author, it would be to reorganize and consolidate all his work in a single document. Target that document to GM's for about $5.

I think the author has a strong interest in Modiphius' Conan RPG using a 2d20 system. Perhaps he could expand his existing content to include a more generous description of his play-style and techniques using that system as well.

There is potential here, but it requires better organization and editing.

A strong offering from ThinkDifferent, this book talks about tabletop adventures for what they are: interactions with players in a time frame. The ssay discusses how to handle pacing, player death, villian behavior, and other topics in a way that's both practical and exciting. And in ways a lot of other "How to GM" guides do not talk about, at all. This book pairs well with "Elegant Encounter Design" for a guide on how to take your gaming to the next level.

These worksheets take up a lot of space, and they lack easy-to-find blanks for common deatils like "name" and "location." The advice is great: "think in terms of what a character wants, and what they will do if they get or if they don't". But that idea was presented better elsewhere, including the author's own "Structured Free Association Story Plot Method" and "Elegant Encounter Design." Those other books would be better if they integrated these ideas. Any GM trying to use these worksheets will have a worksheet with 20% useful information, 10% more scribbled in the spaces NOT provided, and 70% toner used up for nothing.

A slideshow with brief ideas for role-playing game plot ideas. Brief and to the point. One warning: the ideas are presented with a generic Dungeons-and-Dragons type fantasy in mind. (Many ideas talk about monsters, or farming, or shape-shifters, or multiple-diety pantheons, etc.) So despite the title, this book is useful for fantasy-type games and not so much for historical, sci-fi, or even modern-day adventures. A good read.

There's some great advice here for recognizing that the story may diverge based on what players may do, and that the players should be the stars of their own story. But where this book falls down is the "free association" part of the title. A short list of keywords is presented at the end, and there's talk of using them randomly, and that's about it. The advice on "don't over-prepare" is particularly good. Free association needs to be building on what the players are already doing, and there's not a lot of advice on how to deal with players going off on tangents. For all the talk about procedural generation, there's very little here. (And even less, if you're not interested in fantasy.) "Elegant Encounter Design", by the same author, has better advice for how to structure stories around branching paths.

Not a book, but a slide-show presenting different types of encounters. Presents a variety of ways to tell a story. While it's nice to have a lot of charts, all too often they're reather confusing. (Where do we start? Why are some arrows clashing but others are in a clear path? What's the difference between an 'obstacle' and an 'encounter'?) Some good forward-thinking ideas here. (Antagonists presented as people with goals of their own; creating urgency by having time-sensitive goals; encounters as a purposeful event rather than a random happenstance, etc.) Good reading for beginning game masters who want to take the next step from "monsters wait in a dungeon."

A slide-show presentation on initiative methods, as seen in many RPGs. The graphics and writing are clear and concise. It's not clear where "elegance" comes in -- most of the presentation is about describing the methods and how they work, and then there's a wrap-up on "try new things." A breakdown of the pros and cons of each method would have been useful, especially with references of the games that use them. (And there's some glaring omissions: no mention of ticks, abort-to-defense, action-point systems. etc.) Might be useful to a designer looking for alternative initiative systems, but it's not comprehensive or critical enough.

The author responded to earlier comments and added in examples of how to use the guide at your table. I like all the changes.

I'm impressed by the effort put in and it's easily worth the recommended price.