The GM's Guide

Great show! Lots of information! Makes me wish I had questions to ask, but the host is always answering questions that I didn’t know I had! Thank you!

Dan Felder does an excellent job of distilling specific problems in game design down to their key components and explaining how to solve them. In my opinion, he is the best content producer out there right now. Once you get past the first level of advice about GMing ("Yes, and...", it's about the players not you, etc) there's a real dearth of usable content. There's a bunch of people endlessly diagraming and defining new vocabulary about games who never actually expose any new territory to explore. There's an equal number who churn out weekly content that's examples of good design, but doesn't do anything to teach you how to make your own stuff. Felder understands why what he makes is good, and he explains the system he uses so you can use it too. After I listened to his advice on dungeon design (a dungeon is a biography of the creature that made it), everything else seemed derivative. I'd look at specific guides (how to design a five room dungeon, how to design a mega dungeon, etc) and think, yeah, that's all obvious now. Same with encounter design, plot pacing, and boss battles. TL;DR: Once you're past the absolute beginner stage, this podcast is the best advice available.

Have been listening to this here and there for about a month or two from the beginning and as it goes on, I just love it more and more. It's completely transformed how I approach building adventures and running games. The combination of perspectives from both writing and game design backgrounds that Dan brings really just key in to fantastic ideas. Also, to be noted, these are more than just tips of which there are a plethora around the web, but hearing about how they were implelemented and used in his own games is an excellent path to inspiring how you can adapt or use similar ideas in your games. Just a fantastic show, and I can't describe how pleased I was to see new episodes pop up midway through going through the series. Lastly, as should be noted, the show starts out with a Dungeons & Dragons focus, but quickly veers away. However, it never impedes how it might inspire ideas in other games. I myself commonly run Numenera / Cypher System and as I've already mentioned, the ideas and insights have been equally as fantastic and transformative to my games there. 100% recommended listen.

Best DM advice ever! Helped me up my game so much!