Campaign Mastery

In January, I wrote an article called The Hierarchy Of Deceit: How and when to lie to your players. There’s one type of deception that was poorly covered in the original article, though it was hinted at in the subsequent article on deceptions that are meant to be penetrated, I See It But I Don’t […]

I come up with more ideas than I can ever use. Until I co-founded Campaign Mastery, I simply threw away the excess that I couldn’t use; since CM came along, it’s been my practice to give these away for free to the readers here. Yesterday, I woke up with a complete campaign outline in my […]

Despite many articles in development, today I’m choosing to scratch a pure fantasy-gaming itch that’s been growing for a while. Specifically, I’m going to look at how I go about creating a village for an RPG. There are some aspects of the process I employ that I’ve never seen written up anywhere else – whether […]

So here we are on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Spring (at least in my neck of the woods, YMMV). What on earth am I doing posting something on a day like this, when I am usually Gaming (or catching up on all the non-gaming activities that often get swamped by game needs or Campaign […]

This series has been predicated on the belief that the real difference between game prep and a lack of game prep could be summarized as felicity of style: better-presented maps and illustrations, better thought-out plans, better characterization of NPCs, better depiction of that characterization, and more stylish Narrative, and has aimed at presenting a masterclass […]

This series is predicated on the belief that the real difference between game prep and a lack of game prep could be summarized as felicity of style: better-presented maps and illustrations, better thought-out plans, better characterization of NPCs, better depiction of that characterization, and more stylish Narrative. This article is part 4 of a masterclass […]

At the start if this series, I argued that the real difference between game prep and a lack of game prep could be summarized as felicity of style: better-presented maps and illustrations, better thought-out plans, better characterization of NPCs, better depiction of that characterization, and more stylish Narrative. This article is part 3 of a […]

The real difference between game prep and a lack of game prep, in a lot of ways, can be summarized as felicity of style: better-presented maps and illustrations, better thought-out plans, better characterization of NPCs, better depiction of that characterization, and more stylish Narrative. This article is part 2 of a masterclass in the last […]

What’s the real difference between game prep and a lack of game prep? I think the most overt differences can all be summarized as felicity of style: better-presented maps and illustrations, better thought-out plans, better characterization of NPCs, better depiction of that characterization, and more stylish Narrative. Better-presented maps & illustrations Although this article is […]

How many types of dinosaurs were there? And how can a theoretical examination of the question be applied to RPG games? This is going to be one of the more unusual posts here at Campaign Mastery. For a start, it’s full of maths, and for another it’s about real science (at least at first). But […]