Campaign Mastery

We all have problems with our imaginations freezing up on us every now and again. While there are a number of things that you can do to kick-start your creativity when this happens, I have always found that it’s a good idea to have a stockpile of ideas that can be developed as needed for [...]

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 can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world?

Sometimes, the simplest questions have the most complicated or profound answers. So it was with some trepidation that we’ve approached this question, which was asked virtually exactly as it’s quoted at the head of this article.
The short answer is, you [...]

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 can a campaign last for decades, and what does such longevity imply?

A question recently asked us,
I remember Mike mentioning his decades-long superhero game a few times, and am currently planning my next campaign, so I was just wondering how y’all can extend a game so far. Even if the players are still having [...]

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 [...]

Like all GMs, there are times when I know I need an idea, I know what the reason is and what will be done with it – I just don’t know what it is. There’s this empty spot in my mind labelled “Idea goes here”, but I’m absolutely bereft of inspiration, and the deadline is [...]

What do you do when the PCs start recruiting people as information sources? A game master writes:

Hi Mike and Johnn,
I’m running a 3.5 D&D campaign, where the player characters are largely based in a major city. Because of the structure and history of the campaign world, my major cities are quite large, which makes for [...]

This is the third part of a four-part article. The first part gave a relatively straightforward technique for creating a unqiue society; the second identified four ways of communicating the uniqueness of the result to the players, selling them on its credibility, and exploiting it for scenarios and subplots, and examined the first two, Expression [...]