Campaign Mastery

We hesitated before running this piece, which was written prior to the disaster on Haiti. It is certainly not our intent to trivialise what has occurred or in any way to be insensitive to the ongoing emergency there. Ultimately, we chose to run it at this time so that we could encourage all those reading [...]

This post is the end of a long road! It started with a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. Parts two and three highlighted what I believe to be the causes of the problems Garry identified, and provided an alternative perspective on Alignment that turned it into one of the most useful [...]

For a long time, I’ve been dissatisfied with the way some games handle wild, improbable, luck.
D&D, for example, has no luck mechanism per se; only the critical hits subsystem comes close, where if you roll well enough, you score multiple damage, and in the skills subsection, whereby rolling a 20 on a skill check permits [...]

How do you create a campaign that gives the players absolute freedom but still leaves the GM in control?

Recently, Campaign Mastery was asked,
Is it possible to create a truly player-choice driven campaign (within reason)? I’m trying to create a campaign that’s anywhere from 75 – 90% roleplaying (there will be dice, but not battle so [...]

How do you extrapolate from existing rules to cover new situations?

Recently, Campaign Mastery was asked,
If a giant has rapid shot can he throw 2 rocks in a full round action? (d&d 3.5)
This sparked some debate over whether Campaign Mastery should answer rules questions of this sort; we aim to deal with big-picture and comprehensive situations [...]

Part 1 of this blog post listed nine general supplements. Parts 2, 3, and 4 added three planar supplements, four supplements about magic, and four supplements about game settings and gaming environments.
That makes a full twenty-count by my tally. This fifth part is all about honourable mentions: supplements that didn’t make the final list, but [...]

Someone once asked me why D&D bothers to include skills at all. After all, the GM generally tells the players anything they really need to know (rather than seeing all his hard work in preparing the game crash and burn); and even if he doesn’t, players can always take a twenty.
After further discussion, this person [...]

Means, Motive, and Opportunity.
The M-M-O triad are the foundation of mystery stories and crime fiction in general, and have been for centuries. To be fair, most stories rely on the fallability and limitations of the triad as a means of solving those mysteries, especially on the first and third of the trio. Motives, after all, [...]

This isn’t the blog post that I intended to make this week; unfortunately, I’ve been struck down by the ‘flu and had no time to get anything finished except for something that I’ve been able to recycle from my house rules for the various D&D campaigns that I run. That’s also why I’m posting a [...]

The Roleplay of Prestige Classes
My games normally enforce the roleplay (non-game-mechanics) requirements for Prestige Classes (and, where relevant, feats and level progressions). It’s not enough for the character (PC or NPC) to simply meet the prerequisites, they usually have to DO something.
Pages 204-205 of DMG II, in discussing the design of new prestige classes, calls [...]