These are the fundamentals. The three things that matter most when it comes to tabletop roleplaying games.
How do you structure your campaign? How do you engage players at the table? What goes into making a monster scary? How do you plan a session?
Hook&Chance is a resource center and podcast for GMs and players who seek to improve their craft and find their answers in service to these fundamentals.
With new episodes every second Monday and an ever-growing library, the podcast tackles a wide range of topics focused on making stories and games more immersive and impactful. Occasionally we are joined by masterful guests from the industry to share ideas and insights from their areas of expertise.
With each episode, we strive to dig deeper, below surface content, to discover the how and why behind topics like game pacing, backstory creation, culture creation, classes, and character details. The list goes on. You can find the show here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Try searching for a monster, class, topic you want a fresh perspective on.
Sometimes throughout our learning journey, we discover an approach or system that could be useful to help structure or organize our thoughts and plans. When this happens, a resource is born!
We have many form-fillable PDF resources for DM’s and players to use to plan faster and easier their stories. Cutting down on prep time and focusing on only the relevant content makes games more incredible.
Paige Ford
Prolific writer and contributor to projects like the Uncaged Anthology and many other DMs Guild titles.
Matt Sernett
Writer, world-builder and game designer for AAA titles and TTRPGs (D&D 3E), Editor-in-Chief of Dragon Magazine.
Roz Young
A scientist turned filmmaker and professional GM on the “Ready to Roll” YouTube series.
Keith Ammann
Creator and author of “The Monsters Know” blog and book series. TTRPG tactician extrodinare.
The GM Tim
Professional GM, gay-mer, writer for numerous D&D Adventurers League modules, and DM for D&D in a Castle.
Mendez
ENnie Award-winning writer, game designer, and cultural consultant for projects like Avatar Legends and Jackbox.
Beth Ball
Fantasy author, half of ENnie-nominated D&D Duet, tabletop RPG designer, and a brilliant literary scholar.
Erik Frankhouse
A master professional GM, cartographer, three-time Iron GM champ, and host of EFP Presents.
We have an awesome Discord community filled with really amazing players and DM’s. We share ideas, techniques, and stories with one another to help each other constantly improve.
Additionally, Patreon contributors gain access to bonuses like early episodes, Discord flair, bonus content, and hangouts to further brainstorm game improvement together.
“My first podcast interview was with the guys at @HookandChance. Like me, they like their D&D plots and settings informed by real life. They nailed it.”
KEITH AMMANN - THE MONSTERS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING
“You guys are killing it. Please do not stop! It’s super enjoyable, I like that it’s cordial, and I love that its people… you two are brothers. There is a chemistry there that isn’t on every podcast. Please do not stop."
ERIK FRANKHOUSE - 3 TIME IRON GM CHAMPION
“I’ve found something in every episode of this podcast that I want to use in my campaign.”
DAVID RAE
Originally launched in 2015 we sought to publish adventures and stories for games like Pathfinder and D&D. Unsatisfied with the stories we were producing and of content readily available by mainstream publishers we set out to answer specific questions for ourselves:
What makes great D&D stories so powerful?
Is there a process to guide any story in any world?
Can it be simplified and reapplied to great results?
Perhaps by unlocking these foundational rules of storytelling, we could refine the process for ourselves. We re-launched in January of 2019, as a podcast in an attempt to share what we were slowly learning; that there IS a process to unlock, that when used as a guide, crafting a reliably fun, flexible, and gripping story for players is as simple as 1, 2, 3.
Jordan (left) and Travis. Brothers by choice… also blood, mostly blood.
