Results by "Michael Shea" in All categories

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master builds off of the concepts of the well-received GM's guidebook Lazy Dungeon Master, updating that book with five years of new experiences, new approaches, and new observations of the way people prepare and run RPGs. This new book is a completely self-contained work, which does not require anyone to have previously heard the Lazy Dungeon Master. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master offers a new focused approach for preparing and running our roleplaying games.

You love Dungeons and Dragons. As an experienced dungeon master, you've run dozens, if not hundreds of games. You put a lot of work into making your games great. What if there's another way to look at how you prepare your game? What if it turned out you could spend less time and less energy and have a better game as a result? It's time to unleash the Lazy Dungeon Master.

There’s a reason it’s called a tabletop roleplaying game. Taking on the personae of different characters in the story brings a richness and depth to the experience and can make your game sessions exciting and memorable. But how can the poor, harried Game Master wrangle a whole slew of unique personalities on top of all the other work that goes into preparing each week? The Kobold Guide to Roleplaying has the answers you seek.

Una palanca es una máquina simple. Las máquinas simples facilitan el trabajo. Usamos la palanca muchas veces sin darnos cuenta porque es muy sencilla. ¿Qué más pueden hacer las palancas?

Una rampa es una máquina simple. Las máquinas simples facilitan el trabajo. Las rampas ayudan a los trabajadores a mover las cosas pesadas de un lugar alto a otro bajo. ¿Qué más pueden hacer las rampas?

La rueda es una máquina simple. Una máquina es cualquier herramienta o aparato que facilita el trabajo. Las ruedas giran alrededor de un eje. Las ruedas nos permiten movernos más rápido de un lugar a otro. ¿Qué más pueden hacer las ruedas y los ejes?

Una polea es una máquina simple. Las máquinas simples facilitan el trabajo, como levantar cargas pesadas o mover cosas de arriba a abajo. Las poleas nos ayudan a levantar cosas que no podemos levantar solos. ¿Qué más puede hacer una polea?

Michael Shea (1946-2014) was one of the finest American authors of speculative fiction of modern times, and Polyphemus (1987), originally published as a limited edition hardcover by Arkham House, features the best of his short fiction, in which he deftly blends the genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. A landmark collection of modern speculative fiction returns at long last in this edition.

Skateboards, roller coasters, and playground slides, all of these are ramps. From award-winning author Michael Dahl, this book provides an introduction to one of the most important machines humans rely on. With fun facts, find out how people use ramps every day.

The best 5e fantasy roleplaying games are often the most unpredictable. When the plans of the Gamemaster meet the actions of the characters, the incredible creative energy that results can spin encounters off in different directions, creating a largely spontaneous campaign story that keeps the GM and the players alike on the edge of their seats. But when it comes to the climactic boss battle encounters that cap off single adventures or entire campaigns, it's often much harder for GMs to work things out on the fly. That's where this audiobook comes in.

A countdown from twelve to one as a space shuttle awaits liftoff.

Levers are simple machines used to lift, push, and move a load. Learn all about levers.

This audiobook describes many different kinds, uses, and benefits of wheels and axles. Includes information on gears, sprockets, and cranks.

Introduce young scientists to the basics of pulleys. This nonfiction book introduces listeners to the benefits of these engineering marvels, providing everyday examples of a flagpole, a crane, an elevator, and window blinds. Award-winning author Michael Dahl delivers a fun, fact-filled audiobook for an engaging listen. Includes hands-on experiments!

Ruins of the Grendleroot is a collection of 10 short, easy-to-run adventures for the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy role-playing game. Designed for characters of first to fifth level, these adventures take place in the caverns, chambers, tunnels, and ruins of the mountain known as Blackclaw, within which lurks the Grendleroot - a strange and otherworldly sentience.

This is the audiobook for Sly Flourish's Fantastic Adventure, a book of 10 short adventures for the fifth edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game. This audiobook helps the listener bring these adventures into their head and is intended to be used along with the print copy of the book for use at the actual gaming table. Listening to these adventures helps prime your DM mind with the material you need to run the game at the table.  

One of the hardest parts of game mastering is coming up with interesting adventure locations for our characters to explore. These locations need to be fantastic, detailed places that capture the minds of our players every session we run. Sly Flourish's Fantastic Locations is an audiobook of 20 system-agnostic locations you can drop into your favorite fantasy role-playing game. Each location builds on a fantastic theme, such as a mysterious ancient structure under the ice, a cursed castle of a mad king, or a fallen celestial fortress.

Less than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy have brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which Los Angeles may be the worst. Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who - with the help of a couple of very gutsy women - survived being anonymous players in a "live-action" film in which death on-screen meant death in real life. Surviving the shoot made them rich enough to escape the post-apocalyptic hell that LA has become.

The Extra is set in a future California where members of a desperate populace sign contracts to participate in reality death films, knowing that less than 20% of them will survive. It’s a view of the future—and Hollywood—as delightfully cynical as Kurt Vonnegut with sympathetic characters, Hollywood executive sleazeballs and much more.

How does the brain work? How different is a human brain from other creatures' brains? Is the human brain still evolving? In this fascinating book, Michael O'Shea provides a non-technical introduction to the main issues and findings in current brain research, and gives a sense of how neuroscience addresses questions about the relationship between the brain and the mind.