Many thanks to Emi Smith, Jenny Davidson, and Joshua Smith for their editing and production efforts that led to this completed book. I am especially thankful to Emi for giving me extra time to make this a labor of love rather than just another book. I absolutely enjoyed this subject and trust the end result reflects the attention that went into it.

Thanks to my wife, Jennifer, and our little ones, for your wonderful distractions. When the first edition was published in 2004, we had only two: Jeremiah and Kayleigh. By the time the second edition went to print in 2007, we had added two more to our family: Kaitlyn and Kourtney. Some day when you read this, know that you have filled my life with joy.

Much appreciation goes out to Eden Celeste for her beautiful character art featured on the cover and in several chapters—all of the hero and monster illustrations are hers. See her work at www.edenceleste.com. It seems like she can draw anything I can imagine and always surprises me with her work.

I am grateful to Reiner Prokein for allowing me to use his extraordinary artwork, which has made the examples in this book possible. His website, Reiner’s Tilesets, is located at www.reinerstileset.de. I would not have even attempted to create a role-playing game for this book had Reiner not made his artwork available in the first place. The game artwork is all from Reiner.