Archive for the ‘House-Rules’ Category

Wham! Clang! Kapow! Character Conventions In Pulp

This entry is part 5 in the series Reinventing Pulp for Roleplaying

The Story So Far… This article is being co-written by Blair Ramage, with whom I co-referee a Pulp Hero campaign. Although it started as a single item, it has grew so substantially that it became necessary to split it into multiple parts. The first part dealt with the relationship of genre to other aspects of [...]

Comments (1)

Pow! Bam! Crunch! Story Conventions In Pulp (continued)

This entry is part 4 in the series Reinventing Pulp for Roleplaying

This article is being co-written by Blair Ramage, with whom I co-referee a Pulp Hero campaign. Although it started as a single item, it has grown so substantially that it has become necessary to split it into multiple parts. The first part dealt with the relationship of genre to other aspects of a roleplaying game, [...]

Comments (6)

Pow! Wham! Bang! Story Conventions In Pulp

This entry is part 3 in the series Reinventing Pulp for Roleplaying

This article is being co-written by Blair Ramage, with whom I co-referee a Pulp Hero campaign. Although it started as a single item, it has grown so substantially that it has become necessary to split it into multiple parts. The first part dealt with the relationship of genre to other aspects of a roleplaying game, [...]

Comments (8)

Bam! Zap! Crunch! World Conventions In Pulp

This entry is part 2 in the series Reinventing Pulp for Roleplaying

This article is being co-written by Blair Ramage, with whom I co-referee a Pulp Hero campaign. Although it started as a single item, it has grown so substantially that it has become necessary to split it into multiple parts. World Conventions In researching this article, a couple of other websites came to our attention, one [...]

Comments (3)

Blat! Zot! Pow! The Rules Of Genre In RPGs

This entry is part 1 in the series Reinventing Pulp for Roleplaying

This article is being co-written by Blair Ramage, with whom I co-referee a Pulp Hero campaign. Although it started as a single item, it has grown so substantially that it has become necessary to split it into multiple parts – yet another series! It’s pointless re-creating precisely a historical period or past fictional genre. For [...]

Comments (14)

Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 5: Rules Touchstones – Combat

This entry is part 5 in the series Rules Mastery

In the course of part 2 of this series, which was all about overcoming a resistance to studying rules for their own sake, I suggested that the GM learning a new set of rules should watch for patterns, and use them to make understanding the rules a little easier. Starting in this part of the [...]

Comments (22)

Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 4: The Quality of Rules

This entry is part 4 in the series Rules Mastery

A lot of blogs and articles talk about “realism” (or verisimilitude) in RPGs and how to achieve it. Campaign Mastery is no different in this respect, a number of my articles having dealt with the subject. Over the last few weeks, as I write this, I’ve been spending time thinking about a fundamental question that [...]

Comments (15)

“How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope

Fans will recognise the quote used as the title of this article as something often said by Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear when the trio of presenters are about to attempt a challenge posed by the show’s producers. Since it inevitably turns out that the correct answer is “Very!”, it is usually followed by one [...]

Comments (8)

Ask The GMs: How to set up a fun fishing mini game

Campaign Mastery reader Andy S. asks, “I want to set up a fishing mini game, and I have all the fish and weight/length charts. I just want a better challenge then a STR vs. STR(strength) one for them to haul the fish in. Any suggestions on how to do it?” Johnn’s answer: Andy, I have [...]

Comments (1)

Let’s Have A Good Clean Fight…

I’ve written on this topic before, but only as part of a larger subject. But I recently had occasion to expand the EL-CR chart that I created for my own use, and decided to share it with our readers – and have written this Blog Post to explain what it is and how I use [...]

Leave a Comment