Campaign Mastery

I know I’ve written about this before (An Epic Confusion, Or How To Stage A Blockbuster Finish), but I’ve been thinking some more about big finishes to campaigns, prompted by the fact that my superhero campaign is currently in what I hope turns out to be an epic conclusion. As I developed this final scenario, [...]

How do you handle PCs who seem to be immune to magic?

A recent inquiry in Ask The GMs asked us,
Hi! I’ve just started an AD&D campaign where the all the PCs have got really good saving throws. Less than 50% of any spells I cast on them will work on the Dwarfs and Halfling Priests [...]

What are the best ways to handle splitting the party up – especially over the long term?

An interesting question was asked of us recently:
I’m planning a pretty good science fiction game that will most likely involve party splits during a good percentage of the game. While this seems like it may be a bad idea, [...]

There came a time when I had to move out of the city (where my players were), and back to the small town in which I had grown up, for financial reasons.
That would spell the end of most campaigns, but I had willing players and exceptional determination. I would write a scenario each week while [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

How much, if at all, should the final villain of a long running campaign pull his punches?

My campaign boss [villain] is a high level wizard with access to epic spells, and my party just made 20th level. They are on the way to fight him. Should I open up with his most powerful abilities, or [...]

The third dimension of the battlemat has long been a problem. How do you represent it with minis, other than by holding them up with your hand and making airplane noises?
The first problem is marking which minis are going vertical because they are hovering, levitating, swimming or flying.
The second problem is tracking height or depth. [...]

Many games use experience points, and if you game master such a game, you might wonder when the best time is to handout XP – before, during, or after? I’ve done all three, and there are pros and cons to each approach. Here are a few tips.
Character wants
Characters live for experience points. They want to [...]

This is part five of this six-part series. Parts 1 and 2 discussed the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers. Parts 3 and 4 described a step-by-step procedure for conducting battles between two armies. But if the PCs are mere bystanders, there is not a lot of point to it all. [...]