Campaign Mastery

Okay, I need to be up-front about a couple of things. First, I’m not an expert in this area, and my memory is anarchic at best, remembering some things easily, some things easily with prompting, some things easily once reminded, and some things not easily at all. My advice and techniques in this area is […]

The Fourteenth Shelf: Odds & Sods II – Practicalities – Introduction by Mike Practicality can mean many things when it comes to RPGs, and the contents of this shelf touch on many of them. Practicality can be utilizing things that have already been done for game content. There are many intriguing stories of lost treasures, […]

I’d like, in this article, to take a closer look at something that I mentioned in passing on a previous occasion – specifically, the concept that sports simulations and similar games can get away with less engaging storylines because competition itself generates its own narrative. In a sporting contest, one side scores, taking the lead […]

The fundamentals of what a campaign is and how to manage one.

There must be something in the air. Or maybe it’s a reaction to Alternative Facts. I had this week’s article scheduled and outlined before I even became aware of Updated: Elf or Scroll, Handling the Info dump by Phil over at Takes Of A GM on essentially the same subject. Since I agree with everything […]

The Thirteenth Shelf: Odds & Sods I – GMing, Tools, and Fiction – Introduction by Mike Being the GM can be isolating at the Game table, especially when a problem strikes. It’s usually too late when you’re in the hot seat to do much research into solutions (unless the problem is so grave that you […]

I’m trying a new layout approach in this article. It sacrifices some screen real estate for indented subsections. Do readers like it? Let me know what you think of it! A lot of the advice here at Campaign Mastery sometimes gives the impression that there’s a shortcut to solving every problem, because offering alternative perspectives […]

There’s a whole spectrum of collaborative modes in existence these days, ranging from the cameo appearance or recurring pastiche all the way through cross-overs to the tightly-knit true shared creative spaces that are almost completely collaborative in nature. Although in literature, the Thieves’ World series is generally thought of as the first shared world that […]