Thanks for reading Mike Bourke‘s blog about gaming. Campaign Mastery is a place for tabletop RPG enthusiasts to discuss the art of game mastering and campaigning.

These policies were last updated Feb 8, 2024.

Material Connections

We take pride in the reputation and credibility of our site and will never recommend a product which doesn’t measure up for the purposes of use that we describe. Nevertheless, it is always prudent to assume that, as authors and publishers of the website, we may have an affiliate relationship or other material connection to the providers of goods and services that we recommend or link to on the site and may be compensated when you purchase a product that we bring to your attention.

You should always make whatever checks and perform whatever due diligence you consider necessary before buying goods and services from anyone over the Internet or offline.

And if you have a bad experience buying or using something we’ve recommended, we want to know about it! We might not be able to help you, but your cautionary tale might just help the next person to come along – and helps us to preserve that reputation and credibility.

    Remuneration

    Campaign Mastery earns a modest income through a number of channels. We strive not to let potential remuneration impact the quality of the content that we provide, and have rejected articles for being of insufficient quality, depth, or relevance despite being offered money to publish them. More frequently, we will write an article and embed a paid link within it, to ensure that readers get something worth reading. In all other respects, these articles are held to the same standard as any other article that appears on the site.

    We may collect a small reward if you click on any advertising on the site – but we keep this to a minimum, and aim to keep the advertising content relevant to readers.

    Some product links generate a small income if you purchase the product that we recommend. These products are only ever recommended if they are relevant to the subject. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, for example. Any such fee does NOT alter the price to the customer of the product in question.

    The choice to consider a purchase is always the readers’. We will NEVER accept pop-up (or worse, pop-under) advertising at Campaign Mastery.

Reviews Policy

While any product or kickstarter campaign offered for review will be considered, we make no commitments or promises to actually review any such product or proposed product except on a case-by-case basis. When we do accept a review, that review will be as honest and unbiased as possible, in keeping with the Review Ethics described in The Ethical Reviewer.

We welcome and encourage the authors, editors, publishers and creators of the products and proposed products that we review to respond to the published comments and any criticisms that we might have through the comments section, and will happily update a review if we feel it is justified (ie if we stuffed it up the first time around).

As a guideline and context to our reviews, we would also like to point to this article Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 1 of 2 and Part 2 of 2 which (indirectly) explains the standards that will be applied to any product reviewed.

Copyright

All content published by or through Campaign Mastery is considered copyright, either by Campaign Mastery / Mike Bourke, or (in the case of Guest Authors) by Campaign Mastery and the author of the material. But there are a number of exceptions that have been made to this rule, and permissions that have been granted.

    Campaign Usage

    If you want to use anything published here for an RPG campaign or adventure (that are not to be professionally puiblished), you have our permission to do so.

    If the material is to be professionally published, the same thing goes – but we would request a link back to the site in some appropriate location within the product.

    Game System Usage

    If you are creating a homebrew game system, the same rules apply – completely free until you publish it somewhere, a link back to Campaign Mastery if and when you do publish.

    Material from outside sources

    Most of the graphics that we use to illustrate articles are provided by third parties, and their copyright policies are considered binding. We will always strive to provide a link to both the relevant terms and to credit the source in a caption or in the text.

    Whole-of-article translations

    These are always welcome and will always get permission, but we do like to be informed, we do require the inclusion of an appropriate copyright notice, and we do want to be able to link to the translation on the source article.

    Fair Usage

    Doing anything else with the material generally comes under a simple rule – if it’s covered by Fair Usage, go for it (and we will be generously inclined in interpreting that usage), if it’s not – contact us and ask. Permission may be little more than a click away.

    As a general rule

    Unless something has an explicit copyright or terms-of-use statement attached, you’re free to use it as you see fit. We have to carve out an exception for material quoted or presented as part of a review; we are ourselves using that material with permission and usually under the aegis of Fair Usage. The only thing that’s absolutely forbidden is republishing something from the site as your own work.

Comments Policy

We love comments on this blog, and your comments are welcome and appreciated. Please read our policies before leaving a comment.

    Comment Moderation

    To maintain the friendliness, spirit of sharing, and the integrity of the blog and its content, all comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks made to the CampaignMastery.com blog are moderated. I review comments regularly for approval, but there might be some occasional delays before you see your comment posted.

    Spam

    Spam will be eliminated at the moderation stage to the best of our ability. When Spam reaches unacceptable levels, our anti-spam policy as described in Fighting The Spam War will be activated. This may compromise some readers’ ability to view the site. When Spam reaches truly intolerable levels, the far more aggressive antispam policy described in The Spoor Of Darkness: Dealing with Spam will once again come into effect. I apologize in advance to anyone caught in the crossfire for the inconvenience, as assure you that normal services will be restored as quickly as possible.

    Comment Window

    Regrettably, spam levels approaching 300 per day even with the aggressive policy mentioned above in effect have forced the difficult decision to close old posts to comment. Specifically, you now only have one year (365 days) of comment access before comments on a post are closed. The good news is that this restriction has been so effective that all other anti-spam measures are – for the moment – disengaged.

    Comment Content

    This blog has a diverse audience with different sensibilities and opinions. Please avoid harsh language and the use of profanity. Flaming or use of threatening language is not allowed nor will it be tolerated.

    Comment Rights

    We reserve the right to edit or delete comments. We will rarely edit a comment, but will do so if we think it will help clear up ambiguities or issues.

    You, and only you, are responsible for your words. By posting your comments to the CampaignMastery.com blog you are granting us the right, in perpetuity, to use, alter, and/or display them however we see fit without recompense, including using your comments in other media, publications, and commercial endeavors. For example, we might use your comment in an eBook, and though we will not pay you for your comment, we may list you – with thanks – in a contributors section.

    By posting a comment you agree to indemnify CampaignMastery.com, Mike Bourke, and Johnn Four, both separately and in combination, from and against all liabilities, judgments, damages, and costs (including attorney’s fees) incurred by any entity, that arise out of, or are related to, the content that you post.

    We respect the copyrights of others and ask that comments not contain material copyrighted by someone else, though you are welcome to link out to other sites. Exceptions may be made where material usage is in line with the normal US “Fair Use” permissions or where the material is no longer publicly available for purchase through other means at retail levels (if something has become a collector’s item, in other words).

    From time to time, this comment policy may be updated, and any changes may be applied retroactively, so please make sure to check back every so often.

Privacy

Other than information that you explicitly provide, such as email addresses in comments, and anonymous basic visitor tracking, Campaign Mastery collects no information about your visit or who you are, other than as described below.

Any information that we do receive which is not routinely displayed, such as visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string (used to help spam detection and site analytics), will not be shared voluntarily with anyone for any reason except where it may be necessary for site security – in other words, if you attempt to disrupt the site, any information you have provided is fair game. Even then, it will only be shared with appropriate security personnel or law-enforcement authorities. However, this information may be publicly disclosed in aggregate form.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. Additionally, the Akismet Anti-spam plug-in, or some similar plug-in, may collect the information for use in establishing who is a spammer and, more importantly, who is not. This information typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL, along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment content itself.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

If you have any privacy concerns, please employ the contact-us form accessible from the top of the page.

    Cookies

    If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

    If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

    When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

    If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

    Embedded content from other websites

    Articles on this site may (but usually do not) include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

    These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

    Campaign Mastery has no control over any embedded content or its availability, and does not accept any responsibility or liability for such content, its security impact, or its misrepresentation (that’s one reason why we don’t include such content very often). Any embedded content is provided in good faith and may be removed if we become aware of any abuse of that good faith.

    Security

    Campaign Mastery is secured with the best plugins and technologies that we can find that are within our budgetary reach. For security reasons, we will not reveal what they are; suffice it to say that they are deemed sufficient to protect the site owner’s personal information and that the same level of protection is provided to safeguard visitor information. These may collect information such as IP numbers etc.

    That doesn’t mean that there can never be an unauthorized site intrusion. Should that occur, as soon as we become aware of it, we will notify all visitors to the site.

Your privacy and security matter to us. We will do everything we can to protect it.

Thanks for taking the time to read our Policies page.

– Mike Bourke