Campaign Mastery

This started off as a simple idea for a quick little article. It grew….. How rulers gain their offices should be reflected in the society around them. Think about that for a moment. How rulers gain their offices should also be reflected in the personality and capabilities of the ruler, either at the time of […]

Last week, in Into Each Plot, A Little Chaos Must Fall, I discussed the inevitability of chaos in adventures, the cumulative effect of three compounding sources of randomness: Player Decisions (unscripted player-plot interactions), Die Rolls (unscripted character-plot interactions), and GM Thought Bubbles (unscripted GM-plot interactions). In essence, if the last quarter or so of what […]

A Narrative Evolution Of Reality I construct very detailed plotlines for most of my campaigns. There are: Primary Campaign-Level Plotlines that permanently shape or reshape the context within which all the individual adventures take place. Usually consist of tent-pole Events and paradigm shifts within adventures, and are often describable as the outcome of a string […]

The March 2019 Blog Carnival challenges GMs to revisit and re-purpose material from the first half of their career behind the scene. For Campaign Mastery’s first entry (I have another in mind but might not have time to write it) I’m going Waaaay back – all the way, in fact, to my very first AD&D […]