Archive for the ‘Zenith-3 (Original system based on Hero System 4th Ed)’ Category

Patterns Of Unpredictability: Superheroics and the Stock Market

A long time ago, when I had an idle six months or so, I came up with a theoretical model for chaotic systems from a roleplaying point of view. I was looking for a way to simulate the behaviour of the stock market in the Champions Universe. The result was 31 pages of 6-point type [...]

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Superhero combat on steroids – pt 2 of 2: Moving with a purpose

Hero Game’s Policy on publishing house rules is both enlightened and occasionally maddening. They have no problem with people posting their own characters, or discussing their rules, or publishing house rules – provided that you don’t quote directly from their rulebooks and your rules don’t exceed 5,000 words in length. You can’t publish variations on [...]

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By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics

GMs are called apon to make decisions all the time. Sometimes we can make our choices off the top of our heads using common sense and our knowledge of the in-game environment/circumstances, sometimes we can be guided by the rules after identifying an analogous situation, and sometimes when both of these fail us, we can [...]

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Superhero combat on steroids – pt 1 of 2: Taking the initiative with the Hero System

Hero Game’s Policy on publishing house rules is both enlightened and occasionally maddening. They have no problem with people posting their own characters, or discussing their rules, or publishing house rules – provided that you don’t quote directly from their rulebooks and your rules don’t exceed 5,000 words in length. You can’t publish variations on [...]

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The Physics Of Uncertainty

A bit of a departure from the usual today, with an article that is only indirectly game-related. Every now and then, you have to let your imagination run wild or it gets soft and flabby… normal service will resume on Thursday, this was just something that I had to get out of my system. Hopefully, [...]

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The Ultimate Disruption: The loss of a player

The death of a player naturally forces a GM to reassess his campaign and plans. But this sort of tragic event is not the only reason why this might become necessary – a player might move away, or might simply tire of the campaign and want to play something else, or might even give up [...]

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Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2)

This entry is part 7 in the series A Good Name Is Hard To Find

Introduction (reprised from Part 1) I use scenario/adventure titles all the time. Used correctly, they can put players into the correct frame of mind to react in the “right” way to the events in a scenario, conceal the identity of a villain until or hide a plot twist until the big reveal, heighten the drama [...]

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The Imperial History Of Earth-Regency Part 12: 1998

This entry is part 12 in the series The Imperial History of Earth-Regency

Pieces Of Creation is an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike offers game reference and other materials that he has created for his own campaigns. All images used to illustrate this article are public-domain works hosted by Wikipedia Commons, or derivations of such works. This article is a work of fiction and [...]

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The Imperial History Of Earth-Regency, Part 11: The Post-Modernist Dark Age – 1998-2015

This entry is part 11 in the series The Imperial History of Earth-Regency

Pieces Of Creation is an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike offers game reference and other materials that he has created for his own campaigns. All images used to illustrate this article are public-domain works hosted by Wikipedia, Wikipedia Commons, or derivations of such works, except as noted, and except for the [...]

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The Imperial History of Earth-Regency, Part 10: The Crumbling Of Icons – 1980-1997 continued

This entry is part 10 in the series The Imperial History of Earth-Regency

Pieces Of Creation is an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike offers game reference and other materials that he has created for his own campaigns. All images used to illustrate this article are public-domain works hosted by Wikipedia, Wikipedia Commons, or derivations of such works, except as noted. This article is a [...]

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