Campaign Mastery

Getting Reviewed by Campaign Mastery

I’m selective about what I review. Part of the reason is that I am technologically-handicapped – I have a laptop on which I am utterly dependant (and hence am very protective of) and no smartphone – so a lot of products I simply can’t or won’t use. Part of the reason is that I want to call out products that excel, or that excite – if I can’t get enthusiastic about it, I don’t expect my readers to, either. Part of the reason is that there’s a lot of work behind the scenes that’s required, getting artist credits and permissions and the like. And part of the reason is that there are already a lot of blogs doing such reviews already. The upshot is that if you see a review on Campaign Mastery, I think it’s worth the time that it’s going to take to read it. Well over 95% of the fundraisers I review meet their targets and deliver on their promises, a percentage I’m in no hurry to diminish. All that said, if you think you have a product that might interest me, feel free to drop me a line…

• A Campaign Mastery 750th-post Celebration includes advice from a host of GMs on just about every subject as the climax of the party (and some from stragglers in the comments). So I’m listing it at the start of each page, as well as a handful of places where specific content warrants inclusion.
• Taking Care Of Business: The Corporia Kickstarter Campaign – As part of this article, I look at what makes a product or fundraising campaign more likely to get a review on Campaign Mastery.
• The Ethical Reviewer – I enunciate and review what Campaign Mastery considers ethical behavior when it comes to reviews. These policies formed organically over time, but have remained unchanged since I described them here.
• Ethics For Sale? – The Role of Native Advertising – Inspired by a mini-documentary on the subject, I look at Native Advertising, it’s implications for society, media, publishing, and RPGs. This is an especially fascinating article to re-read in light of the whole “Fake News” obsession certain quarters have.

Product Ideas

These are ideas for commercial products that I have offered through Campaign Mastery in hopes that someone will become inspired and actually produce them.

• The Perfect Monster Manual – A Wishlist – Johnn asks what would be in the Perfect Monster Manual. In the comments, I explain the technical details of how to meet Johnn’s requirements, and point out the similarities to my (theoretical) proposal in Google Groans: Misplacing the Rules.
• Perfect Skin: Some Musing On The Design Of Monsters – Inspired by a free review copy of by 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, I revisit the concept of Reskinning and ask how a Monster Supplement should be designed to best facilitate it.
• A Game For All People: The Perfect DnD Recipe – I respond to the announcement of D&DNext by extending a previous article (Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe?) to outline how I would create a Universal D&D game system – in other words, what I would like to see in D&DNext when it came out.
• Principle, Cause, and Course – Complexities In Motivation – Reveals one of my secret techniques for getting into character quickly while consuming a minimum of my attention, freeing up my attention for other things, whether I am a player or a GM. It is based around four questions that define a personality. I go into detail using my personal ethos as an example. Principles define which Causes a character supports and how actively; they stipulate how a character will react upon finding that an organization he is a part of has adopted a more radical position than he’s expecting, or has sold out; they define the character’s sense of responsibility. Answering these four questions defines a character’s Alignment, his Morality, the circumstances that could produce a moral shift, what the character will do to improve himself and his abilities (when combined with a sense of the opportunities that are open to the character), define his biases and prejudices, explain his past decisions (in combination with the character’s capacity for percieving the options open to him), his current status, what he thinks of that status, and what he’s done and is doing to prepare for the future. The only thing they won’t tell you is how indecisive the character will be. They also enable snap decisions to be made in character. In a sidebar, I discuss an online product that I still wish for whenever I contemplate a modern form of D&D.

Publishing

I don’t write many articles about Publishing products, because I don’t publish many products; I don’t consider myself an expert.

• Dark Shadows In The Night: Lessons from the writing of Assassin’s Amulet – This article steps behind the scenes to offer 18 lessons that we learned in the course of writing Assassin’s Amulet. These not only offer insight to our readership on why the content of the E-book is what it is, but a lot of them apply in general to campaign creation and administration.
• Listing to one side: The problems of List Products – Making a list is a quick and easy way of creating a low-cost RPG product, if your mind inclines in that direction. Johnn’s does, mine doesn’t – not naturally, anyway. But the format has limitations. This article examines those limitations and ways to overcome them. Astonishingly, this had an impact on the RPG industry (in a small way) in less than a week!

Copyright

Copyright is another subject that I rarely visit, mostly because it often doesn’t help achieve the site’s core mission.

• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – In the comments, I discuss CM’s policy on artwork and copyright.
• Writing The Game: Using RPGs to Create Fiction – As soon as a non-writer discovers what RPGs are about, they immediately seem to think of using them as a writing tool. I examine the notion – the benefits, the pitfalls, and the verdict, which was borne out by those with far more experience as a fiction writer than I have. One of the points discussed along the way is the copyright that might be held over PCs (by players) and Races (game companies).

Pricing

The price of RPG products is something about which I have very strong opinions, but once it’s been said, it’s time to move on. So there aren’t many posts on the subject.

• Ghosts Of Blogs Past: All The World’s A Suggestion Box – The first of an irregular series that resurrects and updates relevant blog posts from my long-defunct personal blog. This one deals with the way that suggestions we make improve the world often without our even being aware of the impact that we are having. It then connects this notion with gameplay and game feedback and examines the consequences on the economics and reality of Gaming and Game Publishing.
• Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 1 of 2 – I got a lot of kudos for this two-part article, which was really gratifying – even gaming pros told me they got valuable insight from it, or found that it encapsulated a number of things they wished they had known years earlier. It examines the perceived value-for-money of RPG rules, supplements, modules, etc, and how that relates to the price, and what all that means for the pricing of eBooks. Along the way I do a breakdown of production costs using ‘traditional’ methods relative to eBook publishing. Note that all opinions are derived from Australian pricing perceptions, which are somewhat different to those in continental North America, and may yield different conclusions.
• Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 2 of 2 – The analysis conducted in part one suggested that e-books would only be economic if they were sold for roughly half what a product would cost in physical form. In this part I examine the question of why and how e-books can be sold for less than this – and quantify how and why perceived value-for-money can make or break a product.

Achieving Kickstarter Success

I’ve never run a Kickstarter campaign, so you might think that undermines the credibility of anything I might say under this heading – but I have invested in multiple Kickstarter fundraising campaigns (about 1/3 of the ones I would have like to). amd paid careful attention to what made me want to invest in one, and not another. One piece of advice not contained below that I can’t ignore: If you ask me to review your campaign and I respond, don’t ignore the email! – there was a recent case where that happened just as I was considering backing the project at a reasonably high tier. Because of this failure to respond, I suddenly lost all confidence in the campaign’s ability to deliver on its promises and pulled out; someone else got my money (I never commit to a fundraiser unless I have the money in hand to back it). Take heed of the cautionary tale!

• Taking Care Of Business: The Corporia Kickstarter Campaign – As part of reviewing Corporia, I discuss what – in my opinion – improves the odds of a kickstarter campaign being successful.
• One Spot 3 and the shift to Pre-Product Marketing – This article doesn’t quite fit here, but it’s close enough to be relevant. Before reviewing the third product in the One Spot series from Moebius Adventures, I spend some time thinking about the impact that Kickstarter was having on the gaming industry, and some of the ethical dilemmas that were sure to arise as a result.

Product & Tool Reviews & Previews

I said earlier that I don’t do many of these… but, over the years, they’ve accumulated. In fact, it’s been so long that some of the products reviewed might no longer be available. I think, however, that most of them are!

• Ultimate Toolbox of Ideas – Johnn reviews Ultimate Toolbox by AEG, a product that’s still on my wishlist.
• Nobis: Going Renaissance and loving it – I review Nobis and find an awful lot to like!
• The Gold Standard – The twenty must-have RPG supplements in my collection reviewed (9 in part 1 and 11 in parts 2,3,& 4 (All in one post)) plus why I consider them indispensible. These two are only counted as one article toward the 500. Part 5 lists 28 honorable mentions that almost made the list – and why they didn’t quite get into the top twenty. Some of these may be getting harder to find, others may be available as cheap PDFs – that’s what happens after a couple of years. I sincerely hope that all of them are still available in one format or another, it would be a shame if they had vanished.
• Mine Fiction For Campaign Qualities – Johnn starts with a review of FantasyCraft and extrapolates one of the ideas within to find a way of customizing RPG worlds and drawing on fiction for inspiration.
• Plot Stat Block For The Organized Game Master – Johnn and I were so impressed with Eureka that we each wrote a review of the supplement and each got something different out of it. This is Johnn’s, about how he can better organize the plotlines that he has running at any given time in his campaigns.
• Eureka! – Some inspiring notions – I dig into the operating principles under the hood at Eureka and extend the concepts and usefulness even further than the book’s authors – by their own admission! (And if you don’t think I’m proud of being able to impress pro game supplement writers like that, you’ve got rocks in your head!)
• Perfect Skin: Some Musing On The Design Of Monsters – Inspired by a free review copy of by 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, I revisit the concept of Reskinning and ask how a Monster Supplement should be designed to best facilitate it.
• On The Nature Of Flaws – I review Player Option: Flaws from 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, and find it inspirational but incomplete, then set about addressing the holes that I found. The subject: how do you integrate the concept of racial or character flaws into game systems that don’t have them?
• 50 Barbarian Hooks – Johnn’s initial article in the series Character Hooks includes a brief review of the revised Barbarian character class in the D&D 4e version of Player’s Handbook 2, which inspired the series.
• Creating Alien Characters: Expanding the ‘Create A Character Clinic’ To Non-Humans – I extend Holly Lisle’s e-book course in character creation, the Create A Character Clinic, to cover the creation of Alien Races, twisting the central concepts of Dwarves in entirely new directions as an example. And touch on some others.
• My Game Master Bucket List – D&D Modules – Johnn assembles a bucket list of the modules he wants to run – or to run again.
• Pieces Of Creation: The Hidden Truth Of Doppelgangers – Goodman Games published an excellent sourcebook, The Complete Guide To Doppelgangers. The only problem was that at least one of my players had read it. So I wrote a sequel that completely inverts the rationale of the species so that the Goodman Games product is what the Doppelgangers want the rest of the world to think. The article discusses the how and why I did that in detail, and includes my follow-up text as a free PDF, with the kind permission of Goodman Games.
• The Color Of Pulp – I review Arcana Agency – The Thief Of Memories and its value as a game aid for a Pulp Campaign.
• The Dark Secrets of Hacking Interface Zero 2.0 – Dave Viars, one of the developers, penned this guest article previewing a cyberpunk RPG being funded through Kickstarter, at my suggestion. I contributed the artwork used to illustrate the article, the full-sized version of which has become the most-downloaded free extra from the site.
• Places to go and people to meet: The One Spot series from Moebius Adventures – I review a series of new products from that collectively offer a trio of ready-to-use locations to drop into your fantasy RPG: Hand’s Goods, The Painted Man, and Angar’s Magic Shoppe.
• On The Edge: Implications of the D&DNext Advantage mechanic – I respond to an article by The Online DM by considering the consequences of the results that he generated. There’s lots of tables and mathematical analysis, and more than 15 implications identified. If you don’t want to know how to conduct such an analysis, you can skip down to the interpretation, but be warned: I have no idea of how relevant these results are to the still-in-development/playtest system. One of the few posts at Campaign Mastery that is topical more than evergreen in nature.
• Taking Care Of Business: The Corporia Kickstarter Campaign – I review Corporia, a kickstarter fundraising campaign that did most things very very right. Along the way, I explain what makes a product or fundraising campaign more likely to get a review on Campaign Mastery, and discuss what – in my opinion – improves the odds of a kickstarter campaign being successful.
• Digging into Difference: A review of The Unconventional Dwarf – The Unconventional Dwarf offers eight unique and detailed original variations on the Dwarven race. But I spend most of the review replying to the introductory note by the author, Tof Eklund, in the process examining the cultural standards of RPG gaming and popular media as they were in 2013, and forecasting how those standards would evolve over the next decade or so. Anyone interested in such social questions will find the discussion worth their time. Be warned, the topics are definitely PG-13.
• Kickstarted Creativity: Two fundraising campaigns of interest – I review the enormously successful Mutant Chronicles 3rd Edition kickstarter (recommended for SciFi and Superhero campaign ideas) and the smaller-scale fundraising campaign of Orin Rakatha (recommended for Fantasy campaign ideas). Both these campaigns were successful, so these are now actual products out there for anyone interested to hunt down.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – In a footnote to the article, I give mini-reviews of three products: Sheet Yourself 1.2, Realm Works, and Rollable d4s.
• One Spot 3 and the shift to Pre-Product Marketing – This article doesn’t quite fit here, but it’s close enough to be relevant. Before reviewing the third product in the One Spot series from Moebius Adventures, I spend some time thinking about the impact that Kickstarter was having on the gaming industry, and some of the ethical dilemmas that were sure to arise as a result.
• Things That Are Easy, Things That Are Hard – before reviewing a Fantasy Adventure raising funds through Kickstarter, The Book of Terniel, I ruminate about two elements of Campaign Design that some GMs find very difficult – Low-level adventures and providing multiple paths to success for the PCs to choose between.
• Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive) – a reader asks why I go to so much effort to distinguish Elves from Drow when the latter are an offshoot of the former. I spend most of the article looking at the advantages that derive from making the races of a campaign distinctive, not only from each other within the campaign, but from other campaigns, before providing some resources and sources of inspiration on the subject.
• A Serpentine Slithering To Adventure – I review The Snake’s Heart, an adventure for Swords & Wizardry from Wild Games Adventures in collaboration with Moebius Adventures. Conclusion: it’s worth the price tag, but needs some work before it can be used. I’m careful not just to talk about the good and the bad, I look at why, so this serves as a guide to other game authors.
• Part 4 of the Basics For Beginners series, is About Players. I didn’t intend for this series to become a slayer of sacred cows, but for the second post in succession, that’s a theme. In this case, it’s spelled out in the opening line, “I’ve read a lot of nonsense and enlightened theory over the years when it comes to players”. I then go on to walk that back as being too dismissive of RPG Theory. After looking at the factors that go into making a particular part of a particular day’s play “the most enjoyable part” for a particular player-character combination in a particular campaign of a particular genre on one day in particular (try saying that three times fast!), I link to various pages discussing player types in various ways, each of which (I contend) have some validity but which also fail in various ways. Since it’s unfair to criticize without at least attempting to offer something better, I then present a richer 9-axis classification system in which preferances inhabit “zones” or “regions”, not pinpoints. After a few caveats, I discuss the nine (Character, World, Concept, Drama, Conflict, Plot, Interaction, Amazement, and Heroism) individually, especially looking at the sensitivity to GMing style, genre, and campaign. As usual at Campaign Mastery, theory is then translated into practical advice: classification of campaigns, recruiting of players, and designing campaigns and adventures, before considering the impact on player surveys and finally, on game prep requirements. After diving deeper than I really should have for an artiicle aimed at a beginner, I wrap up the article with a pair of much simpler general principles that, in combination, won’t steer beginners wrong: “Give every player a focus on something they enjoy in each and every game session, and your game will be a success,”, and “Predefining some aspects of the game to achieve that in the majority of cases frees your attention up to the task of being creative in all the other areas. The rest takes care of itself.” As a post-script, I (very superficially) review “Era: The Consortium & Secret War” in case I didn’t get to a more substantial review in time (I did, just barely).
• Part 11 of the Basics For Beginners series returns to the subject of Campaigns, more specifically the differences between a campaign and a larger, multi-adventure plotline. With plot relationships between individual adventures the subject of Part 8 of this series, this takes as its topic the other ways that adventures can integrate. The discussion starts by defining, for the umpteenth time, a campaign. I then step through the way the campaigns a GM is likely to run evolve, using diagrams – and stopping at the point where things are likely to get too complicated for a beginner. I then discuss Campaign Structure, offering a couple of alternative types, which then segues into a discussion of Simulationist vs Gamist (I argue against the existence of “Narrativist”, often touted as a third axis), and Strong Continuity vs Episodic, with examples from my own campaigns. Next, I introduce (again) the concept of Sandboxing vs “Temporally-Constant” campaigns, discuss the advantages of sandboxing, and the substantial downsides; that’s followed by the downsides of “non-sandboxed” campaigns, before introducing a third option, the Phased Campaign, which is a hybrid of the two that avoids the worst vices of both but doesn’t completely capture the advantages of either. After discussing 5 campaign aspects that are amenable to Sandboxing, and 4 aspects that are always excluded (even in Sandboxed campaigns), and providing a free blank map, I explain the principles of Phased Campaigns and the impact of the solution on the downsides previously identified. After noting that Note Organization is critical to all three approaches, I look at the Sandboxable material from the Phased Campaign approach (offering another cautionary tale along the way). I then interrupt to review the Kickstarter campaign for Song Of Swords that may represent a fourth option. Discussion then turns to some advanced tools that can be used even by a Beginner to good effect – Campaign Themes and Nested and/or Parallel Plot Arcs (i.e. subplots that thread together to form a larger narrative), with a 22-episode example.
• Morgalad In Reflection – I review the Morgalad starter book, finding some excellent content and some flaws. I offered the author the chance to rebut or reply to my comments and he stated that many of the issues I raised were in the process of being rectified – since that was 2015, and it’s now more than three years later, I would hope that this process is now complete. At the conclusion of my review, I recommend Morgalad as a “d20-lite”-like system (in feel, not mechanics) for the purposes of educating new players, playing with children, first-time GMs, and for convention play, all applications which would take maximum advantage of its virtues.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – I describe in detail the concepts and processes involved in one of my most useful creative tools. What makes this technique so powerful is a method of free association that is especially capable of direction and stepwise refinement. In effect, you shake ideas loose and then shape them into useful constructions. There are two primary uses for the tool: reinventing old content that has reached its use-by date, and inventing new game content. The list of subjects to which the tool has been applied also determined where in the blogdex this article should be listed: Characterization, PCs, NPCs, Villains, Races, Societies, Character Classes, Theologies, Organizations, Deities, Plots, Subplots, and Plot Threads. At the end of the article, I briefly review Fantasy Coins’ Kickstarter campaign for their Treasure Chests, which continued the trend of mostly backing winners.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• Yrisa’s Nightmare and other goodies – This article contains reviews of four products for consideration by readers. The featured review is for Yrisa’s Nightmare from Embers Design Studios, which gets an almost-total tick of approval, and includes an RPG collaborative app. I also show off the space station I had been working on for my Zenith-3 campaign. The other reviews are much more brief. The first is for Awaken, a Dark Fantasy RPG; then Neodygame Scenography, a 3D mapping system that locks walls “in place” that hadn’t even launched it’s fundraising yet; and finally, a fantasy novel, “Bloodbound” by F. Wesley Schneider, one of the co-creators of Pathfinder.
• The very-expected Unexpected Blog Carnival Roundup – This lists all the posts submitted to the Nov 2015 Blog Carnival, “The Unexpected”. I start by analyzing a couple of mistakes that I made as host in introducing the topic and blaming them for the lower-than expected turnout. There’s the “Void Shock” series, my Gates and Portals series (linked to individually), a post on the game mechanics of surprise (again from CM and listed individually in the blogdex) and some ideas for plot and narrative surprise from my fellow GMs.

Dice Sets & Props Reviews

Postage to Australia is expensive, postage to Canada much less so. As a result, Johnn got the majority of these. Once again, be aware that some products may no longer be available.

• 7 Gamefull Uses for Campaign Coins – Johnn reviews Campaign Coins and offers seven ways he thinks he can use them in his games.
• Alea Tools Magnetic Markers Mark The Spot – After his article on how to handle airborne minis, Johnn was sent a set of Magnetic Markers by Alea Tools. This is his review of the product – which I think is now a permanent part of his GMing kit.
• I’ve Been Framed – Johnn reviews a set of Pathfinder Curse Of The Crimson Throne dice and offers a random generator for a political plot that follows the pattern, “In the [Type of State] of [State Name of Your Choice] ruled by a [Type of Government], a character must undergo a [Type of Trial]. He has been framed by [Power Behind the Throne], and if found guilty of [Type of Serious Crime], his punishment will be [Spell-Based Punishment].”
• High Elf Generator – Johnn follows up his review of Q-workshop’s Curse of the Crimson Throne dice set with this review of their Pathfinder Elven dice set and offers a random generator for High Elves – Names, Quirks, Motives, Appearances, Secrets, and Power Base. He then offers our readers the chance to win a set (sorry, the contest has closed) in response for additional add-ons for the generator – so don’t skip the comments on this one!
• New Generator: Roleplaying A Black Dragon – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Black and Yellow Dragon Dice and constructs a generator using them to create personalities for a Black Dragon.
• D&D Minis Giveaway Contest – Another out-of-continuity contest. Note that the contest is long-over, it does no good to enter now – though you may want to read the tips and advice on Battlemats in the comments and on the entry page. All told there are about 80 of them – more than enough reason to actually count this post as one of the 500.
• Treasure Detail Generator & Dice Giveaway – Another Generator based around Q-workshop’s dice sets, this time their Green-and-Black dragon dice set. This generator is all about adding color by using one or more of the tables to make treasure more interesting.
• Drow Generator & Dice Giveaway – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Second Darkness dice set and constructs a generator for fleshing out Drow NPCs using them. Unfortunately, this dice set doesn’t seem to be available any more; the link I’ve given here is to the Q-Workshop home page.
• Undead Foe Generator – The last of Johnn’s Q-workshop dice articles is all about giving personality to the undead. The contest was over long ago, but the tables are still just as functional. This article was inspired by the Red and black Skull Dice set which appears to be no longer available (the link is to Q-Workshop’s home page).
• Super-heroics as an FRP Combat Planning Tool – An unlikely confluance of fragmentary half-thoughts came together to yield an insight and a theoretical construct based on that insight. By the time I got to write the article, that theoretical construct had evolved into practical advice – but to explain the advice (and justify the unlikely principle behind it), I had to re-create the mental process that led me to it within the text of the article. I conclude the article with mini-reviews of a couple of kickstarter campaigns – one (flat plastic miniatures) that was doing incredibly well, and another that unfortunately did not succeed, for running adventures online.
• Taking advantage of the sensory heirarchy – This article was prompted by the invitation of Campaign Coins to review a kickstarter campaign they had underway at the time – a successful one, raising more than US$150,000. The article starts with the flat statement that there is a hierarchy of human senses, and that the wily GM can take advantage of it. I then step through that hierarchy, starting with the weakest senses and proceeding to the most powerful, pointing out along the way that the ease of working with these senses at the gaming table also increases as you go up the scale. Under the sense of hearing, I provide a list of resources about Oratory, some free, others links to the option to purchase. I also discuss the use of audio backdrops and campaign soundtracks. There’s a sight trick in the relevant category but for the most part, I simply refer people to other dedicated articles I’ve written on the subject. Finally, I discuss several ways of using props to engage the tactile sense before reviewing the kickstarter campaign that started the whole train of thought. There’s another product mentioned in the comments for those interested in the campaign soundtrack part of the article.

Online Tools & Software Reviews

…and there are even fewer of these, though they are spread more evenly despite my technological handicaps.

• Building The Perfect Beast: A D&D 3.5 online monster generator – I review and experiment with an online monster/NPC generator. Still one of our most popular articles, it continues to generate traffic for both sites to this day.
• Hexographer – RPG Mapping Dream – Hexographer is a piece of software that’s been on my personal wish-list ever since I read this review by Johnn. Note that the link given in the article is out of date; while there is a redirect in place, it might not be there forever. So use this link instead: http://www.hexographer.com/.
• Game Master Tool Illustrated: Plot Flowcharts – The Blog Carnival for September 2010 was on the subject of Preparation. Johnn provides Campaign Mastery’s entry by considering Plot Flowcharts. At the end of the article and in the comments, several software aids are listed for producing flowcharts to help.
• Plot flowchart example – Guest Author and Campaign Mastery reader Yong Kyosunim follows up Johnn’s article on using plot flowcharts with a real example.
• Hero Lab for Pathfinder: 7 out of 10, but oh so close! – Guest author Ian Gray reviews the then-new Pathfinder option for the Hero Lab software. While he rated it 7 out of 10, it could very easily have been 9 out of 10. It was especially gratifying to get a response from one of the developers in the comments, and from what he wrote, at least two of the major issues will have been partially or completely resolved by now, so I can quite happily recommend Hero Lab to anyone considering it.
• Have WordPress, will Game – I consider the advantages and benefits of using WordPress as a campaign wiki, and how to structure it to get the most bang for your buck. This includes a mini-review of a dice roller WordPress plugin from Awesome Dice.
• If Then Else or Maybe: Witchmarsh and Plot Interactivity – It might be a little presumptuous calling this “software” at this point, but that’s what it was intended to be, and I still get updates every now and then about the project. The last one was in March, but there is a development log that shows ongoing activity. Ultimately, the developers were overly optimistic and underestimated the scale of delivering what is essentially an animated tabletop RPG with original system and mythos. When the truth dawned, they had a choice: they could press on, accepting that the original deadlines were pie-in-the-sky, or massively cut back their ambitions to something that wouldn’t even come close to what they wanted to deliver, and that would be massively late, anyway. They chose the more ethical route. At this point, I doubt there will be any funding left from the Kickstarter by the time they finish, and a less-ethical company might well have simply killed the project. So Kudos to them for their choices.
• Super-heroics as an FRP Combat Planning Tool – An unlikely confluance of fragmentary half-thoughts came together to yield an insight and a theoretical construct based on that insight. By the time I got to write the article, that theoretical construct had evolved into practical advice – but to explain the advice (and justify the unlikely principle behind it), I had to re-create the mental process that led me to it within the text of the article. I conclude the article with mini-reviews of a couple of kickstarter campaigns – one (flat plastic miniatures) that was doing incredibly well, and another that unfortunately did not succeed for running adventures online.

App Reviews

This is where those tech handicaps really bite. Though there is a tendency these days to describe any tool as an “App” so at some point this category will probably have to merge with the one above, or vice-versa.

• iPad App Review: RPG Cartographer – Johnn reviews an iPad App that I would definitely add to my system if I had the requisite technology. Our readers suggest more apps that you might want to check out in the comments.
• iPad RPG App Review – iAnnotate PDF – Johnn reviews another iPad App which was fast becoming one of his most heavily used in-game resources. This is one of the Apps suggested in the comments concerning Johnn’s earlier iPad App review (above).
• iPad RPG App review – Dungeon Master Toolkit – Dungeon Master Toolkit sounds like a really cool App, but it’s not available any more. Once again there are some more App recommendations in the comments.
• My Group’s Time Thief Revealed – Chronology iPad App Review – Combat takes a long time to resolve in most tabletop RPGs. Johnn uses the Chronology iPad to work out why that’s the case in his Riddleport campaign and comes to a surprising conclusion, reviewing the product in the course of reporting his findings. Johnn didn’t offer any solutions in this article, so I wrote Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques to solve two of the specific difficulties he encountered. Not specifically part of the review, but mentioned here for the sake of completeness. In a later article, Fastest Pathfinder Combat Ever – How We Did It, Johnn reports on how well some of the advice worked.
• How To Fall In Love With GMing Again + iPad App Review of Daily Notes – Johnn starts with the oft-repeated advice to “write it down” and leads into a review of Daily Notes, an iPad App to let you do just that.
• Top Apps in 2012 for DMs: a guest article by Melanie Gray – Melanie reviews 6 of the best apps for GMs at the time of writing. There are more suggestions in the comments. This continues to be a very popular article, receiving regular visitors. I really should think about getting someone to do an update sometime. As a result of this article, I went to Dropbox for file sharing (even though I don’t have a Smartphone or iPad) and have never regretted it.
• Yrisa’s Nightmare and other goodies – This article contains reviews of four products for consideration by readers. The featured review is for Yrisa’s Nightmare from Embers Design Studios, which gets an almost-total tick of approval, and includes an RPG collaborative app. I also show off the space station I had been working on for my Zenith-3 campaign. The other reviews are much more brief. The first is for Awaken, a Dark Fantasy RPG; then Neodygame Scenography, a 3D mapping system that locks walls “in place” that hadn’t even launched it’s fundraising yet; and finally, a fantasy novel, “Bloodbound” by F. Wesley Schneider, one of the co-creators of Pathfinder.

Other Reviews

I don’t often review material that’s not directly game related – but when I do, usually because I’ve discovered a gaming connection – this is where the links will categorized.

• Fantastic Flop: GMing Lessons from a filmic failure – I deconstruct the failure of the rebooted Fantastic Four movie to discover lessons every GM should learn from. It’s a shame that those responsible for Man Of Steel and Batman Vs Superman didn’t read the article, because they made many of the same mistakes – admittedly to a lesser degree – and compromised their products earning powers and entertainment value as a result.

General Posts about Adventures

• A Campaign Mastery 750th-post Celebration includes advice from a host of GMs on just about every subject as the climax of the party (and some from stragglers in the comments). So I’m listing it at the start of each page, as well as a handful of places where specific content warrants inclusion.
• The Plot Thickens – Hooking Players Into Adventures – Johnn offers advice about connecting existing players to a new (published) adventure.
• Downsize Your Disasters: GMing catastrophes in your RPG – How not to use disasters in your RPGs.
• Dungeonaday.com Sponsors Campaign Mastery – An article with much more than a sponsorship announcement, this contains an interview with the famous Monte Cook with Monte’s advice on dungeon and encounter design, and more!
• I’ve Been Framed – Johnn reviews a set of Pathfinder Curse Of The Crimson Throne dice and offers a random generator for a political plot that follows the pattern, “In the [Type of State] of [State Name of Your Choice] ruled by a [Type of Government], a character must undergo a [Type of Trial]. He has been framed by [Power Behind the Throne], and if found guilty of [Type of Serious Crime], his punishment will be [Spell-Based Punishment].”
• GM’s Toolbox: Prep Tools Part One: Campaign and Adventure Planning – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article deals with the upper-level planning that goes into running a game.
• GM’s Toolbox: Running The Game Part Two: Notes and Organization – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. Campaigns sprout pieces of paper like mushrooms; this article deals with the organization of all that paper so that you can find what you need when you need it.
• GM’s Toolbox: Beyond The Game Part One: Handouts and Props – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at enhancing a game with extras.
• It’s Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Game Fraud and Counter-Fraud in RPGs – In a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world, how might people cheat at games of chance – and what would casinos have to do to stop them?
• The final two articles in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series – Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames (Part 1) and (Part 2) – discuss adventure names, with hundreds of examples (with explanations) and general principles based on style & genre of campaign.
• An Adventure Into Writing: The Co-GMing Difference – It’s unusual, but I regularly Co-GM a Pulp Campaign. This article describes the impact on how adventures get written for the campaign and along the way discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls of Co-GMing.
• The Gap In Reality: Immersion in an RPG Environment – Four years on, I update “Are Special Effects Killing Hollywood” and focus on the impact of changing expectations of immersion on RPGs, leading to suggestions for the use of multimedia in games.
• There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two of my series on Writer’s Block offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks (Ideas), Specific-Scene Blocks (Scenes within an adventure), and Setting Blocks (Locations).
• Part Four of the series on Writer’s Block offers solutions to Dialogue Block and Narrative Block.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• Pieces of Creation: Mortus is an extremely radical reinvention of the Marvel Villain, Thanos, one whose backstory and personality conflict with what he does so strongly that it poses fundamental questions of morality and ethics of the PCs who encounter him. In the course of this write-up, I briefly relate a couple of stories of Behemoth, because Mortus originally thought that he was a Behemoth-clone. In dealing with Mortus, the PCs of my campaign went WAY beyond what was expected of them, but I had enough notes about the “Big Picture” prepared to go with the flow – a lesson that justifies including this article in the relevant campaign and adventure plot sequencing sections. Mortus should be adaptable to any campaign in which the PCs are “the good guys”; his impact might be diminished in campaigns where that’s not the case.

Adventure Structure & Format

Includes advice on Writing Adventures.

• See also the Campaign Pacing subsection on the Campaign Plotting page.
• See also the “Cinematic Combat” series on the Rules & Mechanics page.
• See also the “We All Have Our Roles To Play” series on the Characters page.
• See also the “One Player Is Enough” series on the Game Mastering page.
• See also the Fiction & Writing content and in particular, the “Secrets Of Stylish Narrative” Series.

• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs – after exploring what Negative Space is in art & layout design, mounting brief excursions into Optical Illusions and Eyewitness Testimony along the way, I examine the benefits and pitfalls of leaving things out in eight areas of RPGs: Narrative, Descriptions, Characterization, Maps, Adventures, NPCs, Rules, and Campaign Planning.
• To Module Or Not?: A legacy article – I originally wrote this article in 2006, but Johnn never got around to writing the second half of what wa planned to be a two-part article to cross-promote CM and Roleplaying Tips. It details the differences between writing your own adventures and running published 3rd-party modules while strenuously avoiding any suggestion that one approach is better than any other. Favorably reviewed as “another article that every GM should read” in a couple of places.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.
• Growing Plot Seeds Into Mighty Oaks – At their heart, every plot idea listed in the following section (or anywhere else) is a plot seed. It may have had additional development, but that development contains assumptions, and it may be necessary to strip all of that away and get back to the core idea before the content can be integrated into your campaign. This article describes the complete process of taking such a plot seed and building it into something on the scale of The Lord Of The Rings, on the premise that steps can be shortcutted or even eliminated altogether if something less epic is required.
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping.
• A tabula rasa – focusing the mind before writing – In response to the question, “How do you clear your mind before writing?” I wrote this article. Hint: I focus the mind, I don’t clear it.
• Things That Are Easy, Things That Are Hard – before reviewing a Fantasy Adventure raising funds through Kickstarter, The Book of Terniel, I ruminate about two elements of Campaign Design that some GMs find very difficult – Low-level adventures and providing multiple paths to success for the PCs to choose between.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 1 – Eight Tips for Cliffhanger Finishes – I love ending game sessions on a cliffhanger, especially if I can get the players talking about how it’s all going to work out. This two-part article takes a good hard look at Cliffhangers, starting with these eight tips for employing them. In particular, I offer three methods that I reserve for improvising a cliffhanger when planning has gone awry.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 2 – Fourteen Types of Cliffhanger Finishes – Wikipedia asserts that there are 2 kinds of cliffhanger, and neither of them are defined in such a way to be useful in an RPG. Other people also told me that they doubted there were 14 types of cliffhanger (prior to the pubication of this article, at least). For each of the 14, I describe it, describe how to implement it at the end of a session, describe the best way to restart play in the following session, and – in some cases – provide further discussion and deliberately over-the-top examples from various genres.
• An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session – If you’re human, you make mistakes. If you’re a fair or better GM, you learn from them. Better still, you can learn from the mistakes of others. This article (and the discussion in the subsequent comments) is one big mea culpa on my part (and on behalf of my Pulp GM) for a total trainwreck of a game session. I detail what went wrong, why it happened, what could have been done to avert the trainwreck and why it wasn’t, what was done to get the campaign back on track, and conclude with ten lessons that I (and any reader) can take out of the experience, including what early warning signs were there to see but were ignored. In the comments, there’s a discussion between myself and one of the most-affected players, extending several of the threads mentioned above. How effective were the lessons identified? This was more than four years ago, as I compile the Blogdex, and not only is the campaign still running (with the same GMs) but the same player is still a regular. Now remember that the trainwreck was supposedly a bigger-than-life adventure to celebrate the campaign’s tenth anniversary…
• The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues – The first part of a two-part article examining the techniques used to ensure each player is engaged in the plot even when the party is split up and everyone’s doing their own thing. The first part functions as introduction and foundation, looking at character Prologue Scenes and subplots, and the functions that they serve in the Adventurer’s Club campaign. This process makes the adventures longer, both to play and prep, but the benefits – not all of which are listed in the article (because I didn’t recognize them at the time) – more than justify the extra time.
• The Wandering Spotlight Part Two of Two: Shared Stories – The second part of this two-part article addresses main adventures and how we work to ensure spotlight time is shared amongst all the players. As the article closes, I also look at epilogues. One of the key points is discerning what makes an individual PC different from another PC; another key point is discerning what makes one Player different from another. These are both vectors to customizing content to shine the spotlight, however briefly, on a PC.
• Race To The Moon – a lesson in story structure – a number of superficially-unrelated thoughts come together to offer a new explanation for why America lost interest in the space race after Apollo 11, regained it during Apollo 13 and then lost it again, and why some campaigns seem incapable of holding onto more than a minimum number of players, and ultimately provide a subtle but profound insight into good campaign design.
• Pretzel Thinking – 11 types of Plot Twist for RPGs, Part 1 – Wikipedia lists 11 kinds of plot twist mechanic and for one reason or another, not one of them is relevant to an RPG. After briefly looking at the need for plot twists, I set some ground rules about playing fair with the players, and then identify my own 11 plot twist mechanics that are relevant to an RPG. I then look at the first three in detail. This inspired John Large at Red Dice Diaries to post his own thoughts on the subject.
• Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2 – summarizes the introductory material from Pt 1 (like the ground rules) and then details the remaining eight types of plot twist. Along the way, I discuss plot sequencing and the relevance to Plot Twists.
• Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail? – Some articles are easily summarized for the Blogdex. This isn’t one of them. I noticed some patterns to the reasons some clearly skilled chefs lost in a series of cooking contests, and then realized that they provided insights into why one game fairs better than another – even if the GM running the second is superior to the first in some key attributes of the GMing craft. I then looked at what the “loser” could do to correct his situation, discovered a link through to good adventure and campaign design. This is one of the more profound articles at Campaign Mastery. It would be too easy to synopsize those results and oversimplify the findings, missing half the message. So I won’t try.
• Phase X: Beginning from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with the transition from the design & construction stage of the campaign to designing and constructing adventures on an ongoing basis, and especially the (arguably) most important adventure, the first. The subjects are Campaign Prep, Adventure Prep (and why the two are different), Fixing Campaign Plot Holes, and Writing Adventures.
• The Final Twist: Dec 2014 Blog Carnival Roundup – As host of the Blog Carnival in Dec 2014, it was my responsibility to compile the posts submitted. Some just list them, I like to review the submissions and classify them into some sort of rational overview. So this contains everything offered on the subject of plot twists and surprises.
• Random Encounter Tables – my old-school way – I originally intended this to appear in an earlier article about the uses of randomness, but it started to dominate everything else in that article, which I didn’t want. So I extracted it and published it as a seperate item. I firmly believe that every geographic region and location should have its own unique random encounter table (sometimes referred to as a Wandering Monsters Table). This shows how I go about creating one. For a change, I put the process first and the logic behind using that process afterwards. I then discuss modernizing the technique so as to utilize more modern technology than pen-and-paper, leaving that option open to the reader. Finally, I conclude the article by looking at how random encounters can form part of the plotline, rather than being something superficial that gets.tacked on as an afterthought.
• Adventure Structure: My Standard Formatting – I describe the standard format and nonclemanture that I have evolved for writing the adventures that I run. Also deals with prep management. In the comments I describe how much game prep I do and how long it takes me to write an adventure.
• Ask The GMs: “Let’s Split Up.” – “Good Idea, we can do more damage that way!” – What are the best ways to handle splitting the party up – especially over the long term?
• Ask The GMs: How do you GM Player Characters as Spectators? – Something I mentioned in the last part of my series on alignment sparked the question, “How do you handle scenes where the PCs are spectators?” from one of our readers. Johnn and I offer our advice in reply.
• Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures – I examine the creation of an adventure and how the plot can be structured. This was very much written with Beginner GMs in mind.
• Turning Reaction into Proaction – plotting techniques to get your players moving – After a couple of ‘soft’, speculative articles, I turn my attention back to practical measures. In this article, I consider ways to make your players active participants in campaign plotting and plot development.
• Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation – There are three tricks that I use all the time – and this article gives you the keys to all three. Along the way (as an example) I use the techniques to develop a master plan for a Mastermind in a generic D&D/Pathfinder campaign.
• Phase 3: Rejuvenation from the “New Beginnings” series – In addition to a proven method of recharging all your batteries before you drain your reserves to the point of mental damage and risk of breakdown (see Phase 2 for the theory), other subjects that get considered include Campaign Tone and Adventure structure.
• Phase 9: Completion from the “New Beginnings” series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• The End Of The Adventure – Although it deals with tone on an adventure-by-adventure scale and applies an even smaller granularity, looking at how the tonal quality of an ending influences the start of the beginning that follows, this is just a close-in zoom of what happens throughout the campaign – it’s one domino after another, with limited option for taking control. It’s therefore important to seize those opportunities when they arise. To that end, this article provides a somewaht-dubious list of 31 possible tones for ending adventures, and analyzes them before considering the plot structures that enable them to be controlled by the GM.
• Always Something There To Surprise You – Plots as Antagonists – This article is all about the right and fair and practical way to use metagaming, taking the most difficult type of plotline – a mystery – as its context and example. This is an article that memory and first impressions always underestimate, for some reason, yet the techniques here can solve many otherwise almost-unsolvable problems for the GM.
• Stealth Narrative – Imputed info in your game – This builds on the techniques described in the Secrets Of Stylish Narrative series to further compress, compact, and polish narrative by sneaking it into other parts of the game. There are considerable side-benefits that result. One small section discusses perception / spot checks and when it’s least-disruptive to the game to request them.
• Ask The GMs: On Big Dungeons – Johnn and I both offer advice on handling a big dungeon, then my fellow GMs rip that advice to shreds, forcing me to discover and solve the real issue with Big Dungeons (and other larger settings like Cities). Big is not necessarily better, but it can be – if approached in the right way by the author and the GM.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• The Power Of The Question-mark in RPG Plotting – I struggled in deciding where this post should be indexed. It’s kind of about plot structure and kind of about plot writing and kind of about agency and giving some to players while keeping a measure of control as GM. I discuss 7 different uses for the question mark.
• Part 4 of the Basics For Beginners series, is About Players. I didn’t intend for this series to become a slayer of sacred cows, but for the second post in succession, that’s a theme. In this case, it’s spelled out in the opening line, “I’ve read a lot of nonsense and enlightened theory over the years when it comes to players”. I then go on to walk that back as being too dismissive of RPG Theory. After looking at the factors that go into making a particular part of a particular day’s play “the most enjoyable part” for a particular player-character combination in a particular campaign of a particular genre on one day in particular (try saying that three times fast!), I link to various pages discussing player types in various ways, each of which (I contend) have some validity but which also fail in various ways. Since it’s unfair to criticize without at least attempting to offer something better, I then present a richer 9-axis classification system in which preferances inhabit “zones” or “regions”, not pinpoints. After a few caveats, I discuss the nine (Character, World, Concept, Drama, Conflict, Plot, Interaction, Amazement, and Heroism) individually, especially looking at the sensitivity to GMing style, genre, and campaign. As usual at Campaign Mastery, theory is then translated into practical advice: classification of campaigns, recruiting of players, and designing campaigns and adventures, before considering the impact on player surveys and finally, on game prep requirements. After diving deeper than I really should have for an artiicle aimed at a beginner, I wrap up the article with a pair of much simpler general principles that, in combination, won’t steer beginners wrong: “Give every player a focus on something they enjoy in each and every game session, and your game will be a success,”, and “Predefining some aspects of the game to achieve that in the majority of cases frees your attention up to the task of being creative in all the other areas. The rest takes care of itself.” As a post-script, I (very superficially) review “Era: The Consortium & Secret War” in case I didn’t get to a more substantial review in time (I did, just barely).
• Part 6 of the Basics For Beginners series, Challenges is really about how hard to make challenges to overcome, and building safety nets into your plots in case you get this decision wrong. It starts by describing a challenge I was facing in real life, which seems both ironic and appropriate in retrospect. I then discuss the question, and point out the number of results produced by Google searches at the time for the term “Encounter Balance” (123 million results), “Encounter Level” (another 123 million results) and “Challenge Rating” (145 million results). This shows, I argue, that a lot of people find the subject difficult, and that there’s no shortage of people who consider it important, or even critical. I then look at the reasons why it’s so hard to do, why it’s so important, whether or not it’s actually essential, and whether or not it’s realistic to aim to ptovide balanced challenges every time. The next two sections detail the very abstract process that I employ in written adventures to get a quick and satisfactory answer, and then describe an alternative based on narrative that I employ when improvizing. I discuss plotting within character limitations (the first of two tools that I employ), how it permits the narrative solution to present multiple possible pathways to an overall success or failure, and how to use a skill-check to thus direct the narrative rather than determine the outcome. There’s a very large paragraph containing an example – make sure to read this because subsequent sections keep referring back to it. The second tool is a beginner’s checklist that I use osmotically to set the difficulty numbers of any challenge (regardless of game system). I discuss each item of the checklist seperately, some deeply, others very briefly, look at when such assessments should occur, and illustrate the whole process with a metaphor. I wrap up the article by examining a list of 5 DO’s and 5 DON’Ts (considering a couple of side-issues and the resulting advice along the way), discuss the problems of linking challenges with xp, and recommending that the two experience a permanent divorce. I wrap up with some final advice and a progress report on that real-life challenge.
• Part 7 of the Basics For Beginners series, Adventures begins by acknowleding that, (at the time of writing), there had been 140 articles at Campaign Mastery tagged “Adventure Creation”. That’s now up to 228. Most of this article selectively recapitulates, and sometimes expands upon, advice contained in this or that past article. After describing the usual growth path of GMing expertise, I look at how a GM can take shortcuts – and the limited value of those shortcuts. Next, I address the question of GMing confidence, both over- and under-confidence, before providing a simplified process for beginners to employ in creating a campaign, with an example. In the process of describing how to GM that campaign, I discuss the role of the GM and give further advice on how to avoid plot trains, before discussing sandboxing, prep schedules. and prep as an investment. In the conclusion, I provide a long list of topics that merit following up by the reader before announcing our 2016 Ennie nomination!
• Fantastic Flop: GMing Lessons from a filmic failure – I deconstruct the failure of the rebooted Fantastic Four movie to discover lessons every GM should learn from. It’s a shame that those responsible for Man Of Steel and Batman Vs Superman didn’t read the article, because they made many of the same mistakes – admittedly to a lesser degree – and compromised their products earning powers and entertainment value as a result.
• What is An Adventure? – Trying to find the perfect name for the amalgum of plot, planned dialogue, and narrative that the GM brings to the table is not as easy as you might think – but it matters. Mismatched expectations have been the cause of more than a few player drop-outs in campaigns. Finding an answer requires a close examination of what “game prep” really is.
• Getting Into Character pt 1: NPCs – If your characterization is too deep, you’ll never be able to retain it when the time comes to quickly step in-and-out of character. In this article, I offer 7 techniques for getting into character as an NPC, and they all come down to extracting key points and simplifying either the characterization or the situation in some way. But the article goes beyond that, discussing how to use plot to show off the characterization and uniqueness of the individual, and how to use characterization to solve some plot problems..
• The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs – I look at the reasons why RPGs make for the most difficult literary challenge there is. The final paragraph addresses Burnout.
• The Conundrum Of Coincidence – Players know that the GM has total control over the game world, and so expect that there’s no such thing as coincidence. Yet, if the game world is to be believable, it must have coincidence as part of its makeup. This combination makes coincidence the hardest phenomenon in gaming to simulate with verisimilitude, which is what makes this article (that explains how to do it) so valuable. As usual, this starts with theory and proceeds to assemble practical advice; I mention this because the “theory” section of this piece is some of my best writing to date. Plato, Aristotle, Quantum Theory, RPGs, and a measurable improvement in my gaming as a result – what more could you want?
• Blog Carnival: The Unexpected Reality – A submission to the RPG Blog Carnival (that CM was hosting at the time) opened a pandora’s box of a concept: deliberately leaving things out of player briefing materials so that they can be revealed as surprises in the course of play,” in other words, using Plot as a Rules Delivery System. This article uses my Shards Of Divinity campaign extensively, and especially the Illusion rules, as an example and as a tool to test the arguements along the way. I identify three specific dangers inherent to the proposal, but when examining solutions to those problems, find that there are indeed circumstances (including a variant on the sci-fi campaign rules/campaign that inspired the article in the first place) in which this can be an asset to, and positive virtue of, a campaign – if they are used properly. Mid-way through outlining the article, I realized that this sort of thing happens on a smaller scale all the time – every time you encounter a situation in which the established rules are inadequate and have to concoct a house rule to resolve the situation.
• The very-expected Unexpected Blog Carnival Roundup – This lists all the posts submitted to the Nov 2015 Blog Carnival, “The Unexpected”. I start by analyzing a couple of mistakes that I made as host in introducing the topic and blaming them for the lower-than expected turnout. There’s the “Void Shock” series, my Gates and Portals series (linked to individually), a post on the game mechanics of surprise (again from CM and listed individually in the blogdex) and some ideas for plot and narrative surprise from my fellow GMs.
• Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv.

In-Adventure Locations

These entries are not so much about places as locations within places. If a dungeon is a singular “location”, this would be about populating the rooms.

• Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower – Part three of two in the articles about creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign offers an example of the process of adventure creation and connection from one of my actual campaigns, describing a rather unique location in the process. This article was carefully written and edited to conceal the actual ideas that I chose for the real adventure in the campaign.
• Grokking The Message – The fifth article in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series looks at naming places and campaigns, and I explain how I chose the names for some of the campaigns that I have run.
• The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs – How to use descriptive language more effectively when conveying information about a location or event to the PCs. With a fictional D&D city invented just to serve as an example.
• There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks (Ideas), Specific-Scene Blocks (Scenes within an adventure), and Setting Blocks (Locations).
• Location, Location, Location – How Do You Choose A Location? – I examine the various considerations that should weigh into the decision of where something is to happen. There’s also some useful advice on the subject in Parts 2 And 5 of the Breaking Through Writer’s Block series – look for the sections on “Setting”. This was to be the lead-off article in the September 2013 Blog Carnival and I wanted to make it a strong one.
• Adjectivizing Descriptions: Hitting the target – I offer a seventh entry into the Blog Carnival with practical advice on How to describe locations, especially Wonders.
• People, Places, and Narratives: Matching Locations to plot needs – Your cast of characters isn’t limited to PCs and NPCs; this article shows you how to access and use the current location as another member of that cast.
• Location, Location, Location: Nyngan – I describe my home town (and get a number of people into a nostalgic frame of mind in the process) – then adapt it to a number of different genres (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Pulp, Horror, Westerns, Cyberpunk, and Superhero games).
• Places to go and people to meet: The One Spot series from Moebius Adventures – I review a series of new products from that collectively offer a trio of ready-to-use locations to drop into your fantasy RPG: Hand’s Goods, The Painted Man, and Angar’s Magic Shoppe.
• Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder – For my sixth post in the Blog Carnival, I raise the question of Wonders Of The Known World and the qualities they need to possess in order to live up to the label; four reasons they are hard to do well, ten reasons why they are worth doing, and 12 sources of wonders to help overcome those difficulties.
• Six Wonders: A selected assortment of Wondrous Locations for a fantasy RPG – When I sat down to list ideas for the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I only intended to do one article on Wonders. But when you get inspired… The offerings in this post are: The Broken Man, The Pool Of Reflection, The Palace Of Winter, The Citadel Of Secrets, The Spire Of Contention, and the Library Of Shelves.
• Five More Wonders: Another assortment of Locations for a fantasy RPG – My Ninth article for the September 2013 Blog Carnival continues where the last one left off, with five more Wonders Of The Known World (that I didn’t have time to complete for the previous article). This offers The Pyramid of Reason, The Caves Of Rockbeard, The Rainbow Of Eternity, The Desert Of Gold, and The Emerald Falls.
• Still More Wonders: Fifteen Amazing Locations for a Sci-Fi RPG – I snuck this one in because September 2013 wasn’t quite long enough to fit everything into the Blog Carnival (actually, it was delayed because I needed an extra half-week to deal with Fantasy Wonders and because I was having trouble gathering enough ideas. Thanks to the players in my superhero campaign, I got there in the end). This article offers The Orouberus Molecule, The Cascade Nebula, “Birth And Death” By Garl, The Dyson Superplant Of Epsilon Centauri, The Spiderweb Of Rukh-C, The Torus of Andraphones, The Confusion of Hydra, The Waltz Of Minos IV, The Diaphanous Assembly of Omicron Boötis, The Billboard Of Greeting, The Halo Rock, The Necrotis Plague Planet, The “Cosmic String” of 18 Delphini, The Arena Of Canopia, and The Fireworx Swarm.
• Location, Location, Location! – the Roundup and Wrap-up (for now) – The September 2013 Blog Carnival brought in 27 entries, including 10 from Campaign Mastery. This article synopsizes all 27 entries plus one extra that I thought belonged there.
• The Remembrance Of The Disquiet Dead: A Spooky Spot and Campaign Premise – For the October 2013 Blog Carnival I offer a cemetery that follows the PCs wherever they go. Explaining the cause of the phenomena led to three or four different interpretations, each with their own resolution to the series of encounters, so this will fit into more than one type of campaign.
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping.
• Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places – How to choose a location, how to delineate it, how to present it, and how to use it to your benefit. Plus lots of advice on the side about travel, and the spacing between settlements, and other location-oriented tips.
• Thatch and Confusion – creating a village – “for a fantasy RPG” is what’s missing from this article title. Don’t miss the articles at the bottom of the page, which show that I got a little carried away in the writing – because I wanted to be able to set an adventure in my example village, I built it accordingly, but failed to note where you should stop if you don’t want to do that. There are also some great reader contributions there, including a reader-supplied list of 100 points of conflict around which to build your village. This article also discusses larger population centers briefly, and the process (modified as described in the article) scales up as necessary.
• Abandoned Islands – Iconic Adventure Settings – I discuss why abandoned islands are one of my favorite settings for a whole adventure or part of one, look at abandoned islands in modern settings, and in fantasy settings, then share some tips and tricks for using google image search to ferret out real islands for the purpose. Some of those tricks are still valid, even though the Image Search interface has been completely redesigned at least twice since.
• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – the first of two articles for the November 2014 Blog Carnival, this one asks “How do you create an original alien species?” then immediately points out the Fantasy RPG applicability before providing three answers, with multiple examples, including an entire alien environment and ecology. More examples and discussion in the comments.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not.
• Ask The GMs: On Big Dungeons – Johnn and I both offer advice on handling a big dungeon, then my fellow GMs rip that advice to shreds, forcing me to discover and solve the real issue with Big Dungeons (and other larger settings like Cities). Big is not necessarily better, but it can be – if approached in the right way by the author and the GM.

Maps & Dungeon Tiles

Again, this is about representing Interior locations. For larger-scale maps, refer to “props” in the metagame section.

• Maps Have Three Parts – Johnn started the very first series here at Campaign Mastery way back in December 2008 – before the site went public. He suggests that maps have three constituents: Lines, Spaces, and Negative Spaces – and examines each in detail.
• Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps – The second article in my occasional series of “Lessons From The West Wing” considers how maps both influence and reflect the way we see the world – and hence, that they should be very different if deriving from another society.
• Hexographer – RPG Mapping Dream – Hexographer is a piece of software that’s been on my personal wish-list ever since I read this review by Johnn. Note that the link given in the article is out of date; while there is a redirect in place, it might not be there forever. So use this link instead: http://www.hexographer.com/.
• 8 Easy Ways to Organize Your Dungeon Tiles – When Johnn wrote this article (with contributions from other GMs), I had no dungeon tiles. That is no longer the case, since one of my players has been collecting them for use in the games I run, and has left them in my care, and I have supplemented those with some extras that I’ve acquired. So I really need to pay closer attention to this article. More tips in the comments, especially the last one.
• The Nth Level Of Abstraction – GMs abstract things to varying degrees all the time. This article attempts to put some systematic analysis into the how, when, and why of abstraction, and the consequences. In the comments, I discuss ways of expressing the different levels of abstraction within maps. This is one of those ‘deep’ articles that needs to be read two or three times to get the full benefit.
• Out Of Sight does not mean Out of Mind: Maps I Could Not Find – I list a number of game maps that didn’t seem to be on the market – anywhere – in hopes of inspiring some cartographers to plug the gaps, with some success.
• Straightening a bent line: Measuring complex distances on a map – I offer a practical solution to measure complicated distances, like the by-road distance between journey start and destination – then toss in some neat tricks that you can incorporate into the process.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – As a giveaway with this post I offer a high-res map of the part of the Game World where the campaign has (mostly) taken place – but bereft of labels and captions so other GMs can use it as they see fit, and another with captions detailing the PCs travels.
• 52+ Miniature Miracles: Taking Battlemaps the extra mile – My 3rd entry in this month’s blog carnival looked at ways of extending the functionality of battlemaps by adding Found and Made objects. The general response to this article has been “now why didn’t I think of that?” which was very gratifying.
• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs – after exploring what Negative Space is in art & layout design, mounting brief excursions into Optical Illusions and Eyewitness Testimony along the way, I examine the benefits and pitfalls of leaving things out in eight areas of RPGs: Narrative, Descriptions, Characterization, Maps, Adventures, NPCs, Rules, and Campaign Planning.
• 3-D Battlemaps for the financially challenged – Updated & Enhanced – Most CM articles start by looking at the theory of something, then deriving practical advice from that study. This article is different; it shows how to transform a tissue box and some selected battlemaps into a three-dimensional structure. In response to some reader requests, I went back and added some additional details and clarifications (that’s the “Updated” part of the title); and while I was there, I thought of another (optional) refinement to the design (that’s the “Enhanced” part).
• Fogs, Clouds and Confusion: A Battlemap technique – I offer a completely theoretical technique for simulating mist and fog on the battlefield. As usual, you can simplify this down to its basic elements and get 90% of the benefits. I also suggest a variation that works for underwater scenes. Some GMs (including one commentator) thought the whole thing was excessive – “Overkill” was the term employed – while others absolutely loved it because they had everything the needed at hand and had never thought of using them in this way.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• Part 2 of the Basics For Beginners series, Creation, could be more accurately entitled ‘creativity’. It starts by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
• Part 8 of the Basics For Beginners series deals with Depth In Plotting. Like “Adventure Creation”, there have been a number of articles that deal with expanding a GM’s plans from isolated adventures into campaigns. Like Part 7, this focuses on the plot of adventures, but instead of focusing inward at the adventure content, it looks outward to the context within the campaign in which that adventure takes place. Once again, I start by spelling out the ‘natural’ progression most GMs experience. I then clarify the purpose of Back To Basics: Campaign Structures, a relevant article when it is read and used properly, before offering a shortcut through the rather lengthy GM-development path enunciated earlier. I then present two simplified methods of constructing complex plotlines: Russian Babushka Dolls and Spiderweb Plots. I go into the first of these in some depth, with a substantial example; the second is explained by the ‘Back To Basics’ article linked to earlier. I then point out that many of the more complex techniques actually used, such as the one described in the New Beginnings series, are actually combinations of these two simplified approaches. Next, I classify all adventures as being one of just two types – plot-driven adventures, or adventure-driven plots. These discussions use the earlier example campaign to explain various aspects of the differences. I then propose just two rules that every GM (Beginner or expert) needs to remember – “Make the adventures fun” and “The Forest Mandate,” i.e. don’t get so wrapped up in making the trees look pretty that you lose track of making the shape of the Forest look attractive, too. I then point readers at the campaign ideas that I’ve given away here at Campaign Mastery, discussing each in terms of the two simplified methods of Deep Plotting described earlier, before wrapping up the article with some concluding advice on choosing the plot structure that is right for you, at your current level of expertise.
• Part 11 of the Basics For Beginners series returns to the subject of Campaigns, more specifically the differences between a campaign and a larger, multi-adventure plotline. With plot relationships between individual adventures the subject of Part 8 of this series, this takes as its topic the other ways that adventures can integrate. The discussion starts by defining, for the umpteenth time, a campaign. I then step through the way the campaigns a GM is likely to run evolve, using diagrams – and stopping at the point where things are likely to get too complicated for a beginner. I then discuss Campaign Structure, offering a couple of alternative types, which then segues into a discussion of Simulationist vs Gamist (I argue against the existence of “Narrativist”, often touted as a third axis), and Strong Continuity vs Episodic, with examples from my own campaigns. Next, I introduce (again) the concept of Sandboxing vs “Temporally-Constant” campaigns, discuss the advantages of sandboxing, and the substantial downsides; that’s followed by the downsides of “non-sandboxed” campaigns, before introducing a third option, the Phased Campaign, which is a hybrid of the two that avoids the worst vices of both but doesn’t completely capture the advantages of either. After discussing 5 campaign aspects that are amenable to Sandboxing, and 4 aspects that are always excluded (even in Sandboxed campaigns), and providing a free blank map, I explain the principles of Phased Campaigns and the impact of the solution on the downsides previously identified. After noting that Note Organization is critical to all three approaches, I look at the Sandboxable material from the Phased Campaign approach (offering another cautionary tale along the way). I then interrupt to review the Kickstarter campaign for Song Of Swords that may represent a fourth option. Discussion then turns to some advanced tools that can be used even by a Beginner to good effect – Campaign Themes and Nested and/or Parallel Plot Arcs (i.e. subplots that thread together to form a larger narrative), with a 22-episode example.

Miniatures

• DM Tool: Scrabble Tiles for your Minis & Battlemats – Using Scrabble tiles as miniatures and map symbols on a battlemat. This article went mini-viral in August.
• Elevate Your Game – Tracking Airborne Minis – John examines solutions to the vexing problems of integrating the third dimension into a two-dimensional battlemap.
• D&D Minis Giveaway Contest – Another out-of-continuity contest. Note that the contest is long-over, it does no good to enter now – though you may want to read the tips and advice on Battlemats in the comments and on the entry page. All told there are about 80 of them – more than enough reason to actually count this post as one of the 500.
• Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques – In Johnn’s review of the Chronology iPad app, he identified three major problems that he felt were responsible for the slow pace of combat resolution in his Riddleport campaign, but offered no solutions. In this response I offer the techniques that I use to solve the problems of 1)Not knowing the spells and supernatural abilities of the monsters in the encounter; 2)Being unfamiliar with the specialized combat subrules that applied to this particular battle; and 3) Being unable to identify which Mini went with which PC, which Mini went with which monster, and who was attacking who. There are some more great solutions in the comments, especially to the last of those three questions, and some great discussion of the first problem and my solutions.
• Super-heroics as an FRP Combat Planning Tool – An unlikely confluance of fragmentary half-thoughts came together to yield an insight and a theoretical construct based on that insight. By the time I got to write the article, that theoretical construct had evolved into practical advice – but to explain the advice (and justify the unlikely principle behind it), I had to re-create the mental process that led me to it within the text of the article. I conclude the article with mini-reviews of a couple of kickstarter campaigns – one (flat plastic miniatures) that was doing incredibly well, and another that unfortunately did not succeed for running adventures online.

Encounters

Includes new varieties of monsters

• See also the “Races” section of the Campaign Creation page..
• See also the “Casual Opportunities For Priests” series in the Character Classes & Archetypes section of the Campaign Creation page.
• See also the “Characterization Puzzle” series on the Characters page.

• Break Down The Door – 5 Encounter Seeds – Johnn expands on a point he made in his two-part article on How To Be A Confident GM by describing the concept of adventure seeds – with some great examples and links to many more.
• New Generator: Roleplaying A Black Dragon – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Black and Yellow Dragon Dice and constructs a generator using them to create personalities for a Black Dragon.
• The Perfect Monster Manual – A Wishlist – Johnn asks what would be in the Perfect Monster Manual. In the comments, I explain the technical details of how to meet Johnn’s requirements, and point out the similarities to my (theoretical) proposal in Google Groans: Misplacing the Rules.
• Drow Generator & Dice Giveaway – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Second Darkness dice set and constructs a generator for fleshing out Drow NPCs using them. Unfortunately, this dice set doesn’t seem to be available any more; the link is to the Q-Workshop home page.
• Undead Foe Generator – The last of Johnn’s Q-workshop dice articles is all about giving personality to the undead. The contest was over long ago, but the tables are still just as functional. This article was inspired by the Red and black Skull Dice set which appears to be no longer available (the link is to Q-Workshop’s home page).
• Perfect Skin: Some Musing On The Design Of Monsters – Inspired by a free review copy of by 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, I revisit the concept of Reskinning and ask how a Monster Supplement should be designed to best facilitate it.
• Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons – I discuss the inadequacies of Dragons in 3.x when Epic Levels are involved and offer a custom redevelopment of the Monsters to beef them up. A lively discussion in the comments leads to an unrelated article about House Rules.
• GM’s Toolbox: Prep Tools Part Two: Encounter and Scene Planning – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at the detailed planning within an adventure or game session.
• Casual Opportunities: Mini-encounters for… Barbarians – The Casual Opportunities series was (and is) about presenting opportunities for archetypes to put their character on show. It did so by breaking the archetype down into a comprehensive set of variations, identifying the key features in common to most of these variations, then providing encounter ideas that emphasized one of the key features or stressed the uniqueness of one particular variation. The first part in the series focused on Barbarians.
• Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over five million – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10.
• 3 Feet In Someone Else’s Shoes: Getting in character quickly – A potpourri of techniques for bringing NPCs to life quickly and easily, enabling you to switch from “being” one to “inhabiting” another with scarcely a breath in between.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 1 – Eight Tips for Cliffhanger Finishes – I love ending game sessions on a cliffhanger, especially if I can get the players talking about how it’s all going to work out. This two-part article takes a good hard look at Cliffhangers, starting with these eight tips for employing them. In particular, I offer three methods that I reserve for improvising a cliffhanger when planning has gone awry.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 2 – Fourteen Types of Cliffhanger Finishes – Wikipedia asserts that there are 2 kinds of cliffhanger, and neither of them are defined in such a way to be useful in an RPG. Other people also told me that they doubted there were 14 types of cliffhanger (prior to the pubication of this article, at least). For each of the 14, I describe it, describe how to implement it at the end of a session, describe the best way to restart play in the following session, and – in some cases – provide further discussion and deliberately over-the-top examples from various genres.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive) – a reader asks why I go to so much effort to distinguish Elves from Drow when the latter are an offshoot of the former. I spend most of the article looking at the advantages that derive from making the races of a campaign distinctive, not only from each other within the campaign, but from other campaigns, before providing some resources and sources of inspiration on the subject.
• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – the first of two articles for the November 2014 Blog Carnival, this one asks “How do you create an original alien species?” then immediately points out the Fantasy RPG applicability before providing three answers, with multiple examples, including an entire alien environment and ecology. More examples and discussion in the comments.
• Phase 8: Enfleshing from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure to form the additional ’tissue’ referred to by the title.
• Random Encounter Tables – my old-school way – I originally intended this to appear in an earlier article about the uses of randomness, but it started to dominate everything else in that article, which I didn’t want. So I extracted it and published it as a seperate item. I firmly believe that every geographic region and location should have its own unique random encounter table (sometimes referred to as a Wandering Monsters Table). This shows how I go about creating one. For a change, I put the process first and the logic behind using that process afterwards. I then discuss modernizing the technique so as to utilize more modern technology than pen-and-paper, leaving that option open to the reader. Finally, I conclude the article by looking at how random encounters can form part of the plotline, rather than being something superficial that gets.tacked on as an afterthought.
• Pt 3: Tab A into Slot B provides a template for creating exotic spell components and then dives into some examples: Perfect Octarine (carries Cosmological implications), Etherial Alloy (carries more Cosmological implications), Firesphere (logically consistent with the preceding two, same implications), Ghostwood (carries Cosmological implications, Life & Death implications, and plot implications; mandates sentient trees; consistent with Positive and Negative Planes being two poles of a single structure), Heavenly Airs (profound implications for Death & The Afterlife, profound plot implications). Many of these substances are extremely valuable. After detailing those 5, I was completely out of time…
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not.
• Principle, Cause, and Course – Complexities In Motivation – Reveals one of my secret techniques for getting into character quickly while consuming a minimum of my attention, freeing up my attention for other things, whether I am a player or a GM. It is based around four questions that define a personality. I go into detail using my personal ethos as an example. Principles define which Causes a character supports and how actively; they stipulate how a character will react upon finding that an organization he is a part of has adopted a more radical position than he’s expecting, or has sold out; they define the character’s sense of responsibility. Answering these four questions defines a character’s Alignment, his Morality, the circumstances that could produce a moral shift, what the character will do to improve himself and his abilities (when combined with a sense of the opportunities that are open to the character), define his biases and prejudices, explain his past decisions (in combination with the character’s capacity for percieving the options open to him), his current status, what he thinks of that status, and what he’s done and is doing to prepare for the future. The only thing they won’t tell you is how indecisive the character will be. They also enable snap decisions to be made in character. In a sidebar, I discuss an online product that I still wish for whenever I contemplate a modern form of D&D.
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• Part 2 of the Basics For Beginners series, Creation, could be more accurately entitled ‘creativity’. It starts by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
• Part 5 of the Basics For Beginners series, Characters is actually about generating NPCs. It starts by examining the five general sources of character ideas, and finds them all inadequate in the same basic way. I then explain a process of organizing, filtering, and combining the ideas that work (as opposed to those that don’t) – there are 10 steps, but most of them are brutally simple. I then list (and link to) allt the articles at campaign mastery to date that are about generating ideas and NPCs, most of which was a direct cut from the original blogdex, and so is now out of date. I conclude the article by creating an NPC for a D&D / Pathfinder campaign, expanding on the concepts of the game world in the process, and conclude by deriving two adventure seeds and several additional encounters revolving around or involving the NPC.
• Part 6 of the Basics For Beginners series, Challenges is really about how hard to make challenges to overcome, and building safety nets into your plots in case you get this decision wrong. It starts by describing a challenge I was facing in real life, which seems both ironic and appropriate in retrospect. I then discuss the question, and point out the number of results produced by Google searches at the time for the term “Encounter Balance” (123 million results), “Encounter Level” (another 123 million results) and “Challenge Rating” (145 million results). This shows, I argue, that a lot of people find the subject difficult, and that there’s no shortage of people who consider it important, or even critical. I then look at the reasons why it’s so hard to do, why it’s so important, whether or not it’s actually essential, and whether or not it’s realistic to aim to ptovide balanced challenges every time. The next two sections detail the very abstract process that I employ in written adventures to get a quick and satisfactory answer, and then describe an alternative based on narrative that I employ when improvizing. I discuss plotting within character limitations (the first of two tools that I employ), how it permits the narrative solution to present multiple possible pathways to an overall success or failure, and how to use a skill-check to thus direct the narrative rather than determine the outcome. There’s a very large paragraph containing an example – make sure to read this because subsequent sections keep referring back to it. The second tool is a beginner’s checklist that I use osmotically to set the difficulty numbers of any challenge (regardless of game system). I discuss each item of the checklist seperately, some deeply, others very briefly, look at when such assessments should occur, and illustrate the whole process with a metaphor. I wrap up the article by examining a list of 5 DO’s and 5 DON’Ts (considering a couple of side-issues and the resulting advice along the way), discuss the problems of linking challenges with xp, and recommending that the two experience a permanent divorce. I wrap up with some final advice and a progress report on that real-life challenge.
• A Stack Of Surprises: Blog Carnival November 2015 – After introducing the month’s Blog Carnival (it was once again Campaign Mastery’s turn to host), listing all the things that could be written about under the heading of “Suprise” and “The Unexpected”, I turn to analyzing the sticky question of “Should Surprise Stack?” – or it’s more intrinsically comprehensible alternative form, “Do multiple surprises compound?” in both D&D / Pathfinder and the Hero System. This article does NOT follow the usual Campaign Mastery pattern, with practical application first, then generalizing and theory afterwards. As usual, when pushed too hard, I find that all three game systems’ rules have a hole that may need to be patched with a House Rule. There’s a lot of logical analysis of combat mechanics and principles, and both alternative answers are given a thorough going over before avoiding a definitive general conclusion. Instead, this is shown as one issue that each GM and each campaign could and perhaps should handle differently. The impact of genre on that choice is also discussed.
• Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – Where does a GM go for help and advice? I discuss the history of GM connectedness from GM Bull sessions through to social media before creating a list of places where a GM could go for advice in a reasonable time-frame (read: a couple of days or less). Most of the advice contained in this post is still 100% accurate – the one thing that stood out is that these days FBook won’t even show you all the posts that you’re specifically tagged in, just the ones that IT thinks you are mostly likely to interact with. That’s a good thing – just because I liked a movie or a book or a TV series or whatever doesn’t mean that I want my FB timeline to be filled with posts about it, and you are still more likely to get a quick response through Twitter. I’m listing this in all the categories for which help has been asked and seen to have been recieved in recent years through my Twitter account, and redundancy be damned.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

The “Creating ecology-based random encounters” series

‘Wilderness Encounters’ in D&D are as old a subject as D&D itself. This 3-part series attempts to put some rationality into those encounters. Even experienced GMs have told me that they’ve gotten something new out of it.

• Part One, The Philosophy of meanderings, examines the philosophical underpinnings and game-play purposes of the unplanned wilderness encounter, why they seem to be declining in favor, and why they should still matter.
  
• Part Two, This Eats That, looks at ways to create better, smarter, encounter tables, by creating a simplified, summarized, ecology and then converting it into an encounter table. Be warned, it’s very long even by my standards, but it defied being further subdivided.
  
• Part Three, Encounters With Meaning, applies the same processes and analogous theory to create encounter tables for Urban Settings and Dungeon Settings, and then wraps the series with integrating random encounters with your plotlines to infuse them with meaning. I also explore some strange but related back alleys along the way – like the ecology of Undeath, and Devils & Demons…

Puzzles & Mysteries

• Ask The GMs: Penetrating the veil of mystery – Campaign Mastery was asked ‘Where can you find mysteries that can be fitted into a campaign?’ We try to answer that but find that the best answer is to make them yourself – so we focus on why that’s so hard to do, and how to remove some of that difficulty. There’s some great material on the subject in the comments, as well. This is such a difficult subject that it’s one I return to in a couple of other articles.
• Ask The GMs: Puzzles In Your Games – How to find and use puzzles (that aren’t riddles) in your games. More suggestions can be found in the comments.
• The Butler Did It: Mystery Plotlines in RPGs – I consider a fresh angle on the anatomy of a mystery, and how to structure mystery plotlines in RPGs. There’s some additional discussion of techniques in the comments. In response to a request in those comments, I later wrote a sequel article offering some examples of the plotting techniques. This one got a lot of interest on Twitter.
• The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch: Two Mystery Examples – I follow up, by reader request, The Butler Did It: Mystery Plotlines in RPGs with two example mysteries that illustrate the plotting process.
• Ghosts Of Blogs Past: An Air Of Mystery – Using an RPG to write mystery fiction – I resurrect an article from my 2006 personal blog to reverse the usual process (adapting fiction to an RPG) to argue why mystery writers should use RPGs to develop their plots.
• The End Of The Adventure – Although it deals with tone on an adventure-by-adventure scale and applies an even smaller granularity, looking at how the tonal quality of an ending influences the start of the beginning that follows, this is just a close-in zoom of what happens throughout the campaign – it’s one domino after another, with limited option for taking control. It’s therefore important to seize those opportunities when they arise. To that end, this article provides a somewaht-dubious list of 31 possible tones for ending adventures, and analyzes them before considering the plot structures that enable them to be controlled by the GM.
• Always Something There To Surprise You – Plots as Antagonists – This article is all about the right and fair and practical way to use metagaming, taking the most difficult type of plotline – a mystery – as its context and example. This is an article that memory and first impressions always underestimate, for some reason, yet the techniques here can solve many otherwise almost-unsolvable problems for the GM.
• The Power Of The Question-mark in RPG Plotting – I struggled in deciding where this post should be indexed. It’s kind of about plot structure and kind of about plot writing and kind of about agency and giving some to players while keeping a measure of control as GM. I discuss 7 different uses for the question mark.
• The Conundrum Of Coincidence – Players know that the GM has total control over the game world, and so expect that there’s no such thing as coincidence. Yet, if the game world is to be believable, it must have coincidence as part of its makeup. This combination makes coincidence the hardest phenomenon in gaming to simulate with verisimilitude, which is what makes this article (that explains how to do it) so valuable. As usual, this starts with theory and proceeds to assemble practical advice; I mention this because the “theory” section of this piece is some of my best writing to date. Plato, Aristotle, Quantum Theory, RPGs, and a measurable improvement in my gaming as a result – what more could you want?
• Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – Where does a GM go for help and advice? I discuss the history of GM connectedness from GM Bull sessions through to social media before creating a list of places where a GM could go for advice in a reasonable time-frame (read: a couple of days or less). Most of the advice contained in this post is still 100% accurate – the one thing that stood out is that these days FBook won’t even show you all the posts that you’re specifically tagged in, just the ones that IT thinks you are mostly likely to interact with. That’s a good thing – just because I liked a movie or a book or a TV series or whatever doesn’t mean that I want my FB timeline to be filled with posts about it, and you are still more likely to get a quick response through Twitter. I’m listing this in all the categories for which help has been asked and seen to have been recieved in recent years through my Twitter account, and redundancy be damned.

Combat & In-Game Environment

• See also the “This Means WAR! series in the “Actual House Rules” section of the Rules & Mechanics page.
• See also the “Cinematic Combat” series on the Rules & Mechanics page.

• A strong wind blows: Environmental effects for RPGs – This is the second of four articles containing the House Rules in use within the Pulp campaign that I co-GM. This is all about cold weather and wind-chill and their very dangerous effects, bringing together research from a number of sources. The rules are available as a free download from the site. These rules can be adapted to any campaign. I recommend anyone reading this article to also read the unexpected follow-up, Stormy Weather – making unpleasant conditions player-palatable about how to use weather in-game as something other than a boring-but-deadly background element.
• My Group’s Time Thief Revealed – Chronology iPad App Review – Combat takes a long time to resolve in most tabletop RPGs. Johnn uses the Chronology iPad to work out why that’s the case in his Riddleport campaign and comes to a surprising conclusion, reviewing the product in the course of reporting his findings.
• Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques – In Johnn’s review of the Chronology iPad app, he identified three major problems that he felt were responsible for the slow pace of combat resolution in his Riddleport campaign, but offered no solutions. In this response I offer the techniques that I use to solve the problems of 1)Not knowing the spells and supernatural abilities of the monsters in the encounter; 2)Being unfamiliar with the specialized combat subrules that applied to this particular battle; and 3) Being unable to identify which Mini went with which PC, which Mini went with which monster, and who was attacking who. There are some more great solutions in the comments, especially to the last of those three questions, and some great discussion of the first problem and my solutions.
• Fastest Pathfinder Combat Ever – How We Did It – Johnn tries out some suggestions for improving the speed of combat. They seemed to work for him at the time, but as my comment shows, I thought he might comparing apples and oranges. Or not. If your combats are dragging, there are worse ideas than trying Johnn’s solutions.
• Five (Plus One!) Effective Combat Tactics for Assassins – Another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, this time offering techniques on how to make them more effective in combat.
• GM’s Toolbox: Running The Game Part Three: Rules and Combat – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article details a subject that many GMs and players seem to obsess about – the rules.
• 11 Table Rules For Speed – Johnn offers an expanded excerpt from the Faster Combat course he and Tony Medeiros co-authored, in which he discusses 11 rules of table etiquette designed to speed up combat.
• The Tactical Masterclass – Preparing a player to lead on the battlefield – How to prepare a player who’s character has to lead the other PCs into battle.
• Part Three of my series on Writer’s Block addresses two of the remaining primary types of writer’s block: Action (Combat) and Personality Blocks (Characterization).
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Super-heroics as an FRP Combat Planning Tool – An unlikely confluance of fragmentary half-thoughts came together to yield an insight and a theoretical construct based on that insight. By the time I got to write the article, that theoretical construct had evolved into practical advice – but to explain the advice (and justify the unlikely principle behind it), I had to re-create the mental process that led me to it within the text of the article. I conclude the article with mini-reviews of a couple of kickstarter campaigns – one (flat plastic miniatures) that was doing incredibly well, and another that unfortunately did not succeed for running adventures online.
• The Unexpected Creeps Up Behind You – Dec 2014 Blog Carnival – I take a look at the effects of being surprises in the real world and discover that most game mechanics get it wrong to a greater or lesser extent – then put together some alternatives for consideration. There’s some discussion of the issue and the proposals in the comments, but most of them are pingbacks or announcements of other posts in the Blog Carnival (this post was the anchor for the month).
• Part 10 of the Basics For Beginners series covers the under-utilized subject of Rhythms. “All of the prep and improv practice and knowledge of rules and experience in the world can’t really assist GMs in nailing down pacing and rhythms and flows of the game,” wrote J.T.Evans at Ravenous Roleplaying when reviewing this article. Nevertheless, however disconcerted it might be, all games have a rhythm, and that’s the subject of this article. It might seem esoteric, especially in an article for beginners, but I contend that awareness of the rhythm of the game you are running can be a vital, neglected, and useful diagnostic tool, and one that’s more easily accessed by beginners. What’s more, attuning your inner ‘ear’ to that rhythm is the first step in tweaking it to make it more engaging and satisfying. The article first dives into the phenomenon – when it’s most observable (during combat) and noticeable (when it’s interrupted, eg by someone not being ready to take their turn). I then describe how I handle that particular problem, and offer two alternatives – one disastrous and one that works. After that brief practical interruption, I continue exploring the principles, including ways of manipulating the rhythm, before turning to ways of applying them. After an exercise that enables GMs to find their own natural rhythm, the first practical application (after combat, already noted) is in improved dialogue, both improvised and prepared (with examples), then GM-Player interaction in general. I specifically call out the relevance to another pair of related series (“Emotional Pacing,” “The Yu-Gi-Oh Lesson,” and “Further Thoughts On Pacing”, all collected in a single subsection of the Campaign Plotting page). This is one of the shortest articles in the series.
• A Stack Of Surprises: Blog Carnival November 2015 – After introducing the month’s Blog Carnival (it was once again Campaign Mastery’s turn to host), listing all the things that could be written about under the heading of “Suprise” and “The Unexpected”, I turn to analyzing the sticky question of “Should Surprise Stack?” – or it’s more intrinsically comprehensible alterntative form, “Do multiple surprises compound?” in both D&D / Pathfinder and the Hero System. This article does NOT follow the usual Campaign Mastery pattern, with practical application first, then generalizing and theory afterwards. As usual, when pushed too hard, I find that all three game systems’ rules have a hole that may need to be patched with a House Rule. There’s a lot of logical analysis of combat mechanics and principles, and both alternative answers are given a thorough going over before avoiding a definitive general conclusion. Instead, this is shown as one issue that each GM and each campaign could and perhaps should handle differently. The impact of genre on that choice is also discussed.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.

The “Hazards Of Combat” series

Johnn defines a combat hazard as an “element other than the PCs and their foes that brings danger, risk, or difficulty to the fight” – and then begins a series dedicated to examining possible combat hazards in detail.

• Part one, What is a combat hazard?, asks what – beyond terrain – might actually be a combat hazard, and offers many ideas in answer to the question.
  
• Part two, Craft a spirited name for your hazards, considers an essential element of combat environment psychology.
  
• In part three, Terrain, looks at the terrain as a critical combat element.
  
• The fourth entry in the series, Environment, looks beyond ‘terrain’ to a more comprehensive appraisal of the conditions under which combat takes place, and how these can be enhanced to further enliven combat.
  
• The final part, Traps, focuses on what has always been a staple element of fantasy RPGs (and Pulp/Superhero RPGs!) in isolation, and how integrating their presence into the combat can dress up an otherwise routine encounter.

Rewards

• See also the “Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required” series in the “Magic, Sorcery, and The Arcane” section of the Campaign Creation page.

• A Different Experience: A variation on the D&D 3.x Experience Points System – In which I describe the alternative 3.x Experience system that I use in my campaigns.
• Breaking The Bank: controlling treasure in D&D – I run through a few measures that GMs can use to control the amount of hard currency in the PCs hands.
• With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality – I talk about ways to give objects personalities in RPGs – and why.
• 6 Ways to Enhance Magic Items – Johnn’s article offers exactly what it says on the label. There are some “fun” ideas and important thoughts in the comments.
• Treasure Detail Generator & Dice Giveaway – Another Generator based around Q-workshop’s dice sets, this time their Green-and-Black dragon dice set. This generator is all about adding color by using one or more of the tables to make treasure more interesting.
• Objective-Oriented Experience Points – I extend the line of thought offered in Experience for the ordinary person to completely revise the experience paradigm.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 1 – As part of the blog carnival, I offer an excerpt from one of the free bonus eBooks that are part of the Assassin’s Amulet package. Legacy Items are a new form of magic item, and the bonus eBook aims to give players everything they need to know about how they work.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 2 – The second part of the two-part excerpt, which discusses the powers of Legacy Items – from a Player’s point of view. This should all have been one article, it was split for practical reasons, so I haven’t counted this second half toward the overall total.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic – I consider just what “loot” might be, and how it can be used as a plot mechanic. There’s a link to an interesting related article in the comments.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items – As a followup to an Ask-The-GMs question I was asked what I want to do when players want to sell magic items. The article starts by examining the economic foundations of fantasy societies, goes on to provide systems for determining how many people can afford what, and then looks into the population density of levelled characters (very D&D) before showing that the standard assumptions built into most Fantasy games simply don’t work. With all that as preamble, I then provide three basic answers to the original question.
• Why I Fell In Love with Staves Again After 10 Years (PFRPG) – Johnn returns to Campaign Mastery with this article on how Staves have changed in the Pathfinder game system – and why the changes are good for his campaign. This was part of the Blog Carnival.
• October Blog Carnival Wrap-up: A cavalcade of posts about goodies – The Blog carnival produced a huge number of great entries. I review them all. There are a couple of clarifications in the comments in response to what I had to say, and at least one more article worth reading on the subject.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 – In part four of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time I offer an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.
• Stride The Earth in 7-league boots: Travel (and Maps) in FRPG Pt 2 – I look at the concept of a league, and what 7-league boots are therefore capable of. I then discuss map scales, making the radical suggestion that travel time instead of distance be the scale. I then use those maps to put the whole concept of 7-league boots into perspective. I then turn my attention to the map-making techniques that would be used in-game, and the resulting error rates in positioning of locations, and then feed that back into the 7-league boot concept, before applying the error rates to the standard scales that I recommended earlier in the article.
• Part 9 of the Basics For Beginners series discusses Rewards With Intent. This is one of the longer and more complex articles in the series. In fact, I would find it difficult to defend against an allegation of forgetting who it was supposed to be aimed at. Fortunately, if that was the case (I don’t recall), I discovered the problem before it was too late to do something about it. I start by making the bold statement that thinking of rewards as having no meaning beyond powering up PCs and being either dreaded or reveled in when they threaten the campaign has probably destroyed just as many campaigns as giving away too much in rewards. After justifying that assertion, I move on to listing four purposes for rewards; later in the article, I will argue that the fourth is by far the most important. I then break rewards into 15 categories, and how to value each of them; along the way, I offer the occasional bit of specific advice. The categories of Secrets, Reputations, and Enemies get special attention. There are lots of adventure plot hooks offered. After the fifteen, I describe an unresolved debate over the entitlement of PCs to rewards. I then discuss an expanded version of the rewards system described in Objective-Oriented Experience Points, which was itself an expansion of principles spelt out in another article. After describing the basic premises of the system, I offer two variations on the approach, and then propose an entirely new system that is simpler and hence better-suited to use by Beginners. I then walk back through the two basic mistakes that GMs make, time and again – too much and too little reward – and describe a third situation, the Dirty Snowball, just as deadly to campaigns, before offering a method of breaking that cycle by changing what magic items can do, within limits. I also point out that the presence of identify as written in the standard rules will completely destroy this solution, and recommend that readers adopt one of the solutions to the problems posed by this spell in Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot as a House Rule if they are going to employ this approach. I then sum up the article into eight bullet points that I want to be the takeaways from the article.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• Sequential Bus Theory and why it matters to GMs – I start by looking at the logic (some might say, ‘Illogic’) of bus timetables and why any given bus is almost always early or late. I then use the phenomenon of passangers getting on or off the bus to create a means of getting rid of monty haulism once and for all, and the distribution of game rewards like wealth and treasure, and (finally) consider a hypothetical way of letting PCs benefit from good character design without coming to totally dominate combat. That last is more of a thought experiment, not yet ready to be seriously advocated.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.

Adventure Plot Ideas

• See Also the “Touchstones Of Unification” series on the Genre Overviews page.
• See Also the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series in the Magic section of the Campaign Creation page.
• See Also the “Character Hooks” series in the Plot Ideas section of the Campaign Plotting page.

• Sophisticated Links: Degrees Of Separation in RPGs – We’ve all heard of the “Six Degrees Of Separation” game. I apply the concept to RPG Characters and come up with ways to take advantage of it within the game. This article only scratches the surface of what can be done with this tool.
• Ethics For Sale? – The Role of Native Advertising – Inspired by a mini-documentary on the subject, I look at Native Advertising, it’s implications for society, media, publishing, and RPGs. This is an especially fascinating article to re-read in light of the whole “Fake News” obsession certain quarters have.
• The Pattern Of Raindrops: A chessboard plotting technique – a technique of building up plotline that is more white noise than orchestrated plotline. The concepts can be really hard to follow (and almost as hard to explain), but everyone whose read this concurs that there’s a brilliant idea in there somewhere. One of these days, I might draw on my additional years of experience and have a stab at a simplified process, because I can almost see one…
• Domino Theory: The Perils and Practicalities – I can’t do better than quote the article itself: How to create the most spectacular domino-theory chain-reactions of events within a campaign, what can go wrong, how to use them to create adventure seeds, and – ultimately – how to ride the whirlwind as the dominoes start to tumble.
• Thatch and Confusion – creating a village – “for a fantasy RPG” is what’s missing from this article title. Don’t miss the articles at the bottom of the page, which show that I got a little carried away in the writing – because I wanted to be able to set an adventure in my example village, I built it accordingly, but failed to note where you should stop if you don’t want to do that. There are also some great reader contributions there, including a reader-supplied list of 100 points of conflict around which to build your village. This article also discusses larger population centers briefly, and the process (modified as described in the article) scales up as necessary.
• Abandoned Islands – Iconic Adventure Settings – I discuss why abandoned islands are one of my favorite settings for a whole adventure or part of one, look at abandoned islands in modern settings, and in fantasy settings, then share some tips and tricks for using google image search to ferret out real islands for the purpose. Some of those tricks are still valid, even though the Image Search interface has been completely redesigned at least twice since.
• Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive) – a reader asks why I go to so much effort to distinguish Elves from Drow when the latter are an offshoot of the former. I spend most of the article looking at the advantages that derive from making the races of a campaign distinctive, not only from each other within the campaign, but from other campaigns, before providing some resources and sources of inspiration on the subject.
• Gifts In Gaming: Overlooked Seasonal Plot Hooks – a serious seasonal plot idea, suitable for any genre, dressed up with some fun quotes (both real and invented). Give the PCs a gift…
• Phase 4: Development from the “New Beginnings” series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
• Phase 8: Enfleshing from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure to form the additional ’tissue’ referred to by the title.
• Phase X: Beginning from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with the transition from the design & construction stage of the campaign to designing and constructing adventures on an ongoing basis, and especially the (arguably) most important adventure, the first. The subjects are Campaign Prep, Adventure Prep (and why the two are different), Fixing Campaign Plot Holes, and Writing Adventures.
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” Series takes my revised version of the draft scale from part 1 and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.
• Inn Through The Side Door – Reinvigorating the cliché – This was a filler article that I wrote and then set aside until the next time I was caught short. After discussing the cliché of starting a campaign with the PCs gathering in an Inn, I offer 26 plot seeds for interesting and new twists on the idea.
• Pt 3: Tales From The Ether from the “Plunging Into Game Physics” series shows how a Game Physics can be used to generate adventure ideas that are unique to a specific campaign.
• Part 5 of the Basics For Beginners series, Characters is actually about generating NPCs. It starts by examining the five general sources of character ideas, and finds them all inadequate in the same basic way. I then explain a process of organizing, filtering, and combining the ideas that work (as opposed to those that don’t) – there are 10 steps, but most of them are brutally simple. I then list (and link to) allt the articles at campaign mastery to date that are about generating ideas and NPCs, most of which was a direct cut from the original blogdex, and so is now out of date. I conclude the article by creating an NPC for a D&D / Pathfinder campaign, expanding on the concepts of the game world in the process, and conclude by deriving two adventure seeds and several additional encounters revolving around or involving the NPC.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• Fantastic Flop: GMing Lessons from a filmic failure – I deconstruct the failure of the rebooted Fantastic Four movie to discover lessons every GM should learn from. It’s a shame that those responsible for Man Of Steel and Batman Vs Superman didn’t read the article, because they made many of the same mistakes – admittedly to a lesser degree – and compromised their products earning powers and entertainment value as a result.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – I describe in detail the concepts and processes involved in one of my most useful creative tools. What makes this technique so powerful is a method of free association that is especially capable of direction and stepwise refinement. In effect, you shake ideas loose and then shape them into useful constructions. There are two primary uses for the tool: reinventing old content that has reached its use-by date, and inventing new game content. The list of subjects to which the tool has been applied also determined where in the blogdex this article should be listed: Characterization, PCs, NPCs, Villains, Races, Societies, Character Classes, Theologies, Organizations, Deities, Plots, Subplots, and Plot Threads. At the end of the article, I briefly review Fantasy Coins’ Kickstarter campaign for their Treasure Chests, which continued the trend of mostly backing winners.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• The very-expected Unexpected Blog Carnival Roundup – This lists all the posts submitted to the Nov 2015 Blog Carnival, “The Unexpected”. I start by analyzing a couple of mistakes that I made as host in introducing the topic and blaming them for the lower-than expected turnout. There’s the “Void Shock” series, my Gates and Portals series (linked to individually), a post on the game mechanics of surprise (again from CM and listed individually in the blogdex) and some ideas for plot and narrative surprise from my fellow GMs.
• Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – Where does a GM go for help and advice? I discuss the history of GM connectedness from GM Bull sessions through to social media before creating a list of places where a GM could go for advice in a reasonable time-frame (read: a couple of days or less). Most of the advice contained in this post is still 100% accurate – the one thing that stood out is that these days FBook won’t even show you all the posts that you’re specifically tagged in, just the ones that IT thinks you are mostly likely to interact with. That’s a good thing – just because I liked a movie or a book or a TV series or whatever doesn’t mean that I want my FB timeline to be filled with posts about it, and you are still more likely to get a quick response through Twitter. I’m listing this in all the categories for which help has been asked and seen to have been recieved in recent years through my Twitter account, and redundancy be damned.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

Seasonal Adventures

• A strong wind blows: Environmental effects for RPGs – This is the second of four articles containing the House Rules in use within the Pulp campaign that I co-GM. This is all about cold weather and wind-chill and their very dangerous effects, bringing together research from a number of sources. The rules are available as a free download from the site. These rules can be adapted to any campaign. I’m including them in this category even though they aren’t an adventure because they detail a problem that could become a serious factor in a seasonal adventure. I recommend anyone reading this article to also read the unexpected follow-up, Stormy Weather – making unpleasant conditions player-palatable about how to use weather in-game as something other than a boring-but-deadly background element.
• Holiday Hell: Re-creating real holidays for RPGs – How to transform a real seasonal Holiday into a festive occasion within an RPG
• ‘Tis The Season: A Christmas Scenario – To celebrate Christmas 2010, I pass on the outline of a quick-and-easy Christmas Scenario that I ran a couple of years earlier. And, for good measure, half-a-dozen variant ideas.
• The Season Of Optimism – As a celebration of Christmas, I examine the concept of celebrations taking place within RPGs, generally. Using Christmas and its many variations in other cultures as a template, I derive a framework for integrating original celebrations into a campaign.
• Parable and Play: Fables and Morality Plays as the basis for adventures – Every year, the Christmas season brings variations on the same old stories. There’s a reason for this – there are certain plots that just work better that time of year due to the Holiday Season. This article discusses the process of deriving adventures and new plots from traditional sources.
• Gifts In Gaming: Overlooked Seasonal Plot Hooks – a serious seasonal plot idea, suitable for any genre, dressed up with some fun quotes (both real and invented). Give the PCs a gift…
• There’s Something About Christmas” examines some of the often-overlooked aspects of the holiday season that can be used by the GM to amplify his plots or even make some things possible that would be unlikely at any other time of year.

Complete Adventures

• The Flói Af Loft & The Ryk Bolti – A complete adventure from my Seeds Of Empire campaign, published here in three simultaneous parts for practical reasons only, modified to stand alone from the campaign. Complete with three-D-layer map. This was part of the Blog Carnival for February 2009.
• Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower – Part three of two in the articles about creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign offers an example of the process of adventure creation and connection from one of my actual campaigns. This article was carefully written and edited to conceal the actual ideas that I chose for the real adventure in the campaign.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.

Ad-hoc Adventures

See also the “Improv” section of the Game Mastering page.

• A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies – There are times when everything seems to go wrong for the GM, and he needs help. When you’re in an emergency and the ship is sinking, you need a lifeboat. Here are eight to choose from.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On the Fly – I share my secrets for generating adventures on the fly, and doing it so well that most of the time your players won’t notice. This article focuses on the process.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure – I follow up the previous article by expanding on the sources of instant adventure ideas.
• Fire Fighting, Systems Analysis, and RPG Problem Solving Part 3 of 3: Complexity and Nuance completes a series on GM problem-solving with more general but practical advice for more complex situations, covering everything from Surprises to Insoluble Problems, with a bit of advice on ad-hoc GMing on the side.
• By the seat of your pants: the 3 minute (or less) NPC – I break an NPC into smaller pieces: three general framing decisions, the eight most important details, a list of secondary items that aren’t needed for every character, and a pair of optional extras that may be needed for some campaigns – and show how to employ the structure to generate an NPC in less time than it takes to hard-boil an egg. Even experienced GMs get something out of this article, I’ve been told. It’s a perennial favorite amongst our readers. I’d completely forgotten that I intended to develop a worksheet for it – but I mentioned it in replying to a pingback. So that’s back on my radar, for anyone who’s been waiting!
• Boxed In: A problem-solving frame of reference for players & GMs alike – Using a box as a metaphor for problems you may encounter at the game table can reveal surprising solutions. This article shows you how to apply the concept as a problem-solving tool. I provide an original political D&D/Pathfinder adventure (and a variation) as one example. And discuss some possible relationships between the concepts of Life and Death.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics – There are always situations that the official rules don’t cover. This article offers a guideline that can help solve them – while adding color to the game world.
• Refloating The Shipwreck: When Players Make A Mistake – For the April 2013 Blog Carnival, I look at how GMs can cope when the players make a major, potentially campaign-ending, mistake.
• Part Five of the series on Writer’s Block discusses translation blocks, also known as transition blocks, and shows that the solutions already provided work just fine – if you have plenty of time to implement them. But, when you need a solution in a hurry, this article will come to your rescue with emergency solutions to five subtype types.
• Which leaves five more to be covered in Part Six, plus a solution to another type of problem, “Crowding Blocks”, and some final advice on the subject.
• 3 Feet In Someone Else’s Shoes: Getting in character quickly – A potpourri of techniques for bringing NPCs to life quickly and easily, enabling you to switch from “being” one to “inhabiting” another with scarcely a breath in between.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 1 – Eight Tips for Cliffhanger Finishes – I love ending game sessions on a cliffhanger, especially if I can get the players talking about how it’s all going to work out. This two-part article takes a good hard look at Cliffhangers, starting with these eight tips for employing them. In particular, I offer three methods that I reserve for improvising a cliffhanger when planning has gone awry.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 2 – Fourteen Types of Cliffhanger Finishes – Wikipedia asserts that there are 2 kinds of cliffhanger, and neither of them are defined in such a way to be useful in an RPG. Other people also told me that they doubted there were 14 types of cliffhanger (prior to the pubication of this article, at least). For each of the 14, I describe it, describe how to implement it at the end of a session, describe the best way to restart play in the following session, and – in some cases – provide further discussion and deliberately over-the-top examples from various genres.
• The End Of The Adventure – Although it deals with tone on an adventure-by-adventure scale and applies an even smaller granularity, looking at how the tonal quality of an ending influences the start of the beginning that follows, this is just a close-in zoom of what happens throughout the campaign – it’s one domino after another, with limited option for taking control. It’s therefore important to seize those opportunities when they arise. To that end, this article provides a somewaht-dubious list of 31 possible tones for ending adventures, and analyzes them before considering the plot structures that enable them to be controlled by the GM.
• Always Something There To Surprise You – Plots as Antagonists – This article is all about the right and fair and practical way to use metagaming, taking the most difficult type of plotline – a mystery – as its context and example. This is an article that memory and first impressions always underestimate, for some reason, yet the techniques here can solve many otherwise almost-unsolvable problems for the GM.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

General Articles

• A Campaign Mastery 750th-post Celebration includes advice from a host of GMs on just about every subject as the climax of the party (and some from stragglers in the comments). So I’m listing it at the start of each page, as well as a handful of places where specific content warrants inclusion.
• 40 Great Name Resources, Lists and Generators – Johnn offers a compendium of resources on the subject of Names. Some may be gone to the Great Internet Node In The Sky since, but most should still be around. This was so good a list that I ended up cutting my planned delivery of a similar resource out of my later series on Names!

The “A Good Name Is Hard To Find” series

How to choose and attach meanings to names for PCs, NPCs, places, adventures, campaigns. A series that remains popular.

• The first article in the series, A Good Name Is Hard To Find, discusses why good character names are important and offers a bucketload of advice on what to do and what not to do when choosing one.
  
• The second, The Wellspring of Euonyms, introduces the concept of Name Seeds, a symbolic distillation of a character that can form the foundations of a name, and shows how to generate a name seed.
  
• Article three, Sugar, Spice, and a touch of Rhubarb: That’s what little names are made of, discusses simple name structures and how to create a name using a name seed, and as a bonus, shows how to generate a monosyllabic language.
  
• Article four, With The Right Seasoning: Beyond Simple Names, extends this approach to cover complicated name structures, and explores byways such as non-human languages, and Superhero & Villain naming.
  
• With the fifth article, Grokking The Message, we leave character names behind and move on to naming places and campaigns, and I explain how I chose the names for some of the campaigns that I have run.
  
• The next two articles,Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames (Part 1) and (Part 2), discuss adventure names, with hundreds of examples (with explanations) and general principles based on style & genre of campaign.
  
• Memorials To History – an ‘a good name’ extra – I expand the “A good name is hard to find” series in this article by pointing out that inn and town names can be conduits to the campaign background. I then descuss integrating that conduit, and the history that flows through it, into an adventure. A very short post by Campaign Mastery standards.

Character Names

Once you have players, those players are going to need characters, and you are going to need antagonists and supporting cast. And once those are created, you are going to need to know how to express the personalities that you have invented for them in-play.

NB: The first four parts of the “A Good Name Is Hard To Find” series also deal with character names.

• High Elf Generator – Johnn follows up his review of Q-workshop’s Curse of the Crimson Throne dice set with this review of their Pathfinder Elven dice set and offers a random generator for High Elves – Names, Quirks, Motives, Appearances, Secrets, and Power Base. He then offers our readers the chance to win a set (sorry, the contest has closed) in response for additional add-ons for the generator – so don’t skip the comments on this one!
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin). Includes a little content on Orcish Names.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.
• Who Are You? – An original character naming approach – Naming patterns are generally ubiquitous within and unique to a society – until the modern era, anyway. Some misheard commentary on TV and this fact inspired a new naming pattern – one that comes close to encapsulating an entire biography into the name. This idea can only reasonably be used in Fantasy and Sci-Fi campaigns.

Place Names

The name of a place could be an indelible link to that adventure location, or a generic signpost that, through its very mundanity, captures the essence of a generic location. Everything that occurs in an RPG needs someplace to happen, after all.

NB: The first and fifth parts of the “A Good Name Is Hard To Find” series (in the General Articles section) are also relevant to place names.

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the series points out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign (and lists them) – something that the players themselves would only peripherally have been aware of. There’s also a demonstration of how a common cultural foundation can unify the look-and-feel of a place during the introduction to and adventures within, The Golden Empire.
• Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places – How to choose a location, how to delineate it, how to present it, and how to use it to your benefit. Plus lots of advice on the side about travel, and the spacing between settlements, and other location-oriented tips.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.

Adventure & Campaign Names

Campaign Names help an in-game environment and set of events become unified. Sure, you could just call it “Phil’s Campaign” if you wanted to. By why miss a golden opportunity to not only distinguish this campaign from all the others that have been, will be, or are being run with the same game system and/or referee? Campaign Names can give direction from the get-go by hinting at a unifying principle, object, person, place, or theme.

• NB: The first and fifth parts of the “A Good Name Is Hard To Find” series (listed in the General Articles section) are relevant to Campaign Names. The first, sixth, and seventh parts are relevant to Adventure names.

• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. The subject of Campaign Names is discussed briefly.

Vehicle Names

• See Also “With The Right Seasoning: Beyond Simple Names” from the “A Good Name Is Hard To Find” series.

• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.

• A Campaign Mastery 750th-post Celebration includes advice from a host of GMs on just about every subject as the climax of the party (and some from stragglers in the comments). So I’m listing it at the start of each page, as well as a handful of places where specific content warrants inclusion.

Campaign Concepts

• See also the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series, below.
• One of the defining concepts of any campaign is the Game Physics. See the “Plunging Into Game Physics” series on the Metagaming page for an essential primer to this key element.

• Phase 1: Inspiration from the “New Beginnings” series – I list and analyze 23 sources of inspiration, and discuss what to do with the ideas that they generate. Along the way, House Rules Theory and Campaign Ideas get discussed.
• Phase X: Beginning from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with the transition from the design & construction stage of the campaign to designing and constructing adventures on an ongoing basis, and especially the (arguably) most important adventure, the first. The subjects are Campaign Prep, Adventure Prep (and why the two are different), Fixing Campaign Plot Holes, and Writing Adventures.
• Shadows In The Darkness – The nature of True Evil – My pulp co-GM and I debate and discuss the question of what is “Absolute Evil”? The goal was to define a functional answer that was universal in nature. Did we get there in the end? Well, kinda…
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• Part 4 of the Basics For Beginners series, is About Players. I didn’t intend for this series to become a slayer of sacred cows, but for the second post in succession, that’s a theme. In this case, it’s spelled out in the opening line, “I’ve read a lot of nonsense and enlightened theory over the years when it comes to players”. I then go on to walk that back as being too dismissive of RPG Theory. After looking at the factors that go into making a particular part of a particular day’s play “the most enjoyable part” for a particular player-character combination in a particular campaign of a particular genre on one day in particular (try saying that three times fast!), I link to various pages discussing player types in various ways, each of which (I contend) have some validity but which also fail in various ways. Since it’s unfair to criticize without at least attempting to offer something better, I then present a richer 9-axis classification system in which preferances inhabit “zones” or “regions”, not pinpoints. After a few caveats, I discuss the nine (Character, World, Concept, Drama, Conflict, Plot, Interaction, Amazement, and Heroism) individually, especially looking at the sensitivity to GMing style, genre, and campaign. As usual at Campaign Mastery, theory is then translated into practical advice: classification of campaigns, recruiting of players, and designing campaigns and adventures, before considering the impact on player surveys and finally, on game prep requirements. After diving deeper than I really should have for an artiicle aimed at a beginner, I wrap up the article with a pair of much simpler general principles that, in combination, won’t steer beginners wrong: “Give every player a focus on something they enjoy in each and every game session, and your game will be a success,”, and “Predefining some aspects of the game to achieve that in the majority of cases frees your attention up to the task of being creative in all the other areas. The rest takes care of itself.” As a post-script, I (very superficially) review “Era: The Consortium & Secret War” in case I didn’t get to a more substantial review in time (I did, just barely).
• Part 5 of the Basics For Beginners series, Characters is actually about generating NPCs. It starts by examining the five general sources of character ideas, and finds them all inadequate in the same basic way. I then explain a process of organizing, filtering, and combining the ideas that work (as opposed to those that don’t) – there are 10 steps, but most of them are brutally simple. I then list (and link to) allt the articles at campaign mastery to date that are about generating ideas and NPCs, most of which was a direct cut from the original blogdex, and so is now out of date. I conclude the article by creating an NPC for a D&D / Pathfinder campaign, expanding on the concepts of the game world in the process, and conclude by deriving two adventure seeds and several additional encounters revolving around or involving the NPC.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• Fantastic Flop: GMing Lessons from a filmic failure – I deconstruct the failure of the rebooted Fantastic Four movie to discover lessons every GM should learn from. It’s a shame that those responsible for Man Of Steel and Batman Vs Superman didn’t read the article, because they made many of the same mistakes – admittedly to a lesser degree – and compromised their products earning powers and entertainment value as a result.

Campaign Creation & Development

• See Also the “Touchstones Of Unification” series on the Genre Overviews page.
• See also the “One Player Is Enough” series on the Game Mastering page.

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• How much Campaign do you Plan before the Start? – Finding the sweet spot between over-planning campaigns (My vice) and under-planning. There are some great tips on campaign development in the comments.
• FreeMind Tips for Game Masters – Johnn explains how he uses FreeMind to mindmap his campaign plans.
• Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul – How is it that my campaigns can last for decades? What are the implications and consequences, and how do I deal with them?
• Mine Fiction For Campaign Qualities – Johnn starts with a review of FantasyCraft and extrapolates one of the ideas within to find a way of customizing RPG worlds and drawing on fiction for inspiration.
• Legendary Achievements: Coloring Your Campaign with Anecdote and Legend – Which is better: ‘The Target is too far away for bowshot,’ or ‘Not even the legendary Halwein, holder of the record for longest bowshot at 2,192 yards, would dare attempt such a shot’? Rhetorical question, right? This article is all about using the limits of achievement to add color to your game world.
• Ask The GMs: PC Choices and Consequences – How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world? A simple question but like an iceberg, nine-tenths don’t show. In order to properly answer this question, Johnn & I had to answer five even more complicated questions: How can the players impact the game world? How are the consequences of PC actions determined? How do the PCs become aware of these consequences? How can the GM ensure that the Players recognize the connection between action and consequences? And how can the administration of these changes be kept practical? All those answers, and more, are in this article.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Things Done and left Un-done – I maintain a list of undeveloped ideas for Campaign Mastery articles, and got to thinking about why there had been so little movement of ideas off that list. That leads to an analogy between the list and the reasons my campaigns tend to last such a long time, something I had discussed in Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul, so this article becomes a sequel to that discussion in how to produce longevity for your campaigns. I use a synopsis of my “Fumanor: One Faith” campaign as an example.
• A Twist in Time: Alternate Histories in RPGs – I offer the general principles that I use to construct a viable, believable, alternate history or parallel world.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part One: Geography and Landmarks – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things for which you will need tools and techniques, to successfully run a campaign. This article starts the world building by considering the physical features of the in-game environment.
• Grokking The Message – The fifth article in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series looks at naming places and campaigns, and I explain how I chose the names for some of the campaigns that I have run.
• In Someone else’s Sandbox: Adventuring in an established setting – For the September Blog Carnival, I wrote this article considering the pros and cons of adventuring in an established third-party setting instead of creating your own, what some of the difficulties are that you might face, and how to solve them.
• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity – I consider the implications of Divine Beings manifesting as objective reality in RPGs and the complicated question of Deus Ex Machinas when that is the case, the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative, and how a big-picture perspective on divine beings can make or break plausibility in a fantasy campaign. I offer possible answers to the question, “Where Do Clerics get their spells from?” along the way. There’s a fascinating discussion of the issues raised by the article in the comments.
• Big Changes For The Little Guy: How to go from Premise to Campaign – I demonstrate how I take the seed of an idea and build a campaign from it – coming up with a whole new campaign, “Arignoza”, to use for the example, which gets given away to the readership in the course of the article.
• How to Design a Cool Holiday for Your Game – 3 Templates – Johnn excerpts one of his books to tell our readers how to create a seasonal holiday for their game world.
• The Frozen Lands: A Science-Fiction Campaign Premise – I offer a complete, ready-to-develop science-fiction campaign premise for anyone to use, with enough work left to do that every use will be just a little different. Even if you don’t want to use the idea yourself, you can get some tips on how I develop a campaign premise by reading the article.
• Life & Death in RPG Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – We wrap up our hosting of the March 2011 Blog Carnival with the usual compendium of synopses of the articles submitted. If you find either Life or Death to be important in your games (or want to make it so), these are worth reading.
• All Is Three: A 3.x Fantasy Campaign Premise – I offer an original but unfinished campaign idea, fleshing it out in the course of the article as an example of how I go about designing a campaign.
• The Foundation Of Averages: Psychohistory and RPG Rules – I look at the process of extrapolating from rules systems to the larger worlds and nations that they describe using elementary statistical analysis.
• Theologies at 30 paces: The Hell of Evil in D&D – I consider the theological implications of the cosmology of D&D (and to some extent, Pathfinder), especially the implications of having demons, devils, and dark gods, how to resolve the contradictions implicit in this cacophony of ill-digested theological influences, and how the consequences would manifest in the everyday lives, motivations, etc, of the inhabitants of the world. More suggestions and ideas in the comments.
• Round Pegs In A Square Wheel: Reinventing Roulette for RPGs – Human nature doesn’t change. I examine human vices and foibles and how to use them to reinforce the genre of a game, then consider how to reinvent gambling, taking roulette as an example, for different genres.
• Been There, Done That, Doing It Again – The Sequel Campaign Part One of Two: Campaign Seeds – The first half of a two-part discussion of how to create a new campaign that is a sequel of one you have already run. In this part: the foundations of the campaign, a list of ideas, and initial ideas for possible plotlines.
• Been There, Done That, Doing It Again – The Sequel Campaign Part Two of Two: Sprouts and Saplings – Organizing the seeds of the campaign, making decisions about the interval between the campaigns, the consequences to campaign structure, managing player expectations, and more on sequel campaigns in general.
• Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign – I break down the general concept of “Science Fiction” into 21 specific subgenres and look at each from a gaming perspective. As examples, I offer 11 specific sci-fi campaign premises. Along the way, I give readers a copy of “Buy Low, Sell High”, a set of quick game rules I wrote for handling Trade in Traveller, which can be easily adapted to other campaign genres.
• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs – after exploring what Negative Space is in art & layout design, mounting brief excursions into Optical Illusions and Eyewitness Testimony along the way, I examine the benefits and pitfalls of leaving things out in eight areas of RPGs: Narrative, Descriptions, Characterization, Maps, Adventures, NPCs, Rules, and Campaign Planning.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.
• The Personal Computer analogy and some Truths about House Rules – I realized that constructing a campaign was analogous to constructing a Personal Computer, that the analogy revealed some valuable insights into the relaionships between different bodies of rules, and that there were some especially notable points to be made in this context about House Rules and importing rules from other game systems.
• Taming The Wild Frontiers – This article starts out as a think-piece inspired by the oft-cited comparison between the early internet and the American Wild West and marches headlong into the subtle but profound impact on RPGs of Political Correctness and then the socio-political models on which most Sci-fi games (and novels!) are traditionally based – and showing that there have been opportunities missed on all sides, and that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, in particular serious examination of the issues surrounding colonialism, equality, and exploitation. This article struck a chord with a lot of readers; one even told me that using it, he finally understood what he had been missing in modern games that turned him back towards “old-school” gaming.
• Strangers sharing ideas: RPG writings in a Collaborative World – A guest article by G.F. Pace with Additional contributions & Editing by me that looks at using idea crowdsourcing to collaborate on campaign design specifically and RPG problems in general.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.
• The Premise Of Falsehoods – Luck Vs Skill in RPGs – I start with a question that’s been around forever – “Is it better to be lucky or skilled” – and proceed to analyze just what luck is and what skill is. In the process, an understanding of RPG concepts from different perspectives emerges that verges on the revelatory. Several side topics of relevance are explored, including the role of players in how Campaigns evolve, and by the end, even the concept of what a campaign is has been redefined. While it contains nothing of practical value, this is practically certain to give you a changed awareness of the world, and of the hobby of RPGs – which is either worthless or infinitely valuable to you.
• If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis – You may be wondering what a synopsis from my superhero campaign’s archives is doing in this section. In a nutshell, this takes what is essentially a fantasy idea, wraps it in a classic sci-fi trope, adds a new perspective on life if you could shrink to a quantum scale, and makes the whole thing palatable in a sci-fi or superhero context. The quantum stuff alone makes it worth including, never mind the implied example of how to “retool” ideas from one genre to another.
• Domino Theory: The Perils and Practicalities – I can’t do better than quote the article itself: How to create the most spectacular domino-theory chain-reactions of events within a campaign, what can go wrong, how to use them to create adventure seeds, and – ultimately – how to ride the whirlwind as the dominoes start to tumble.
• Things That Are Easy, Things That Are Hard – before reviewing a Fantasy Adventure raising funds through Kickstarter, The Book of Terniel, I ruminate about two elements of Campaign Design that some GMs find very difficult – Low-level adventures and providing multiple paths to success for the PCs to choose between.
• A Population Of Dinosaurs and the impact on RPG ecologies – I get curious about how many species of dinosaur there were, so I devise some calculations to answer the question. That might be interesting enough in its own right, but then I see how quickly genetic engineering could produce new (well-adapted) species. This is so interesting that it holds my attention until I realize that it has other ecological value to the GMs of D&D / Pathfinder – for example, the same process could be used to tell you how long Dragons have lived in a Fantasy environment just by factoring in their average lifespan and the number of different varieties.
• Race To The Moon – a lesson in story structure – a number of superficially-unrelated thoughts come together to offer a new explanation for why America lost interest in the space race after Apollo 11, regained it during Apollo 13 and then lost it again, and why some campaigns seem incapable of holding onto more than a minimum number of players, and ultimately provide a subtle but profound insight into good campaign design.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive) – a reader asks why I go to so much effort to distinguish Elves from Drow when the latter are an offshoot of the former. I spend most of the article looking at the advantages that derive from making the races of a campaign distinctive, not only from each other within the campaign, but from other campaigns, before providing some resources and sources of inspiration on the subject.
• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – the first of two articles for the November 2014 Blog Carnival, this one asks “How do you create an original alien species?” then immediately points out the Fantasy RPG applicability before providing three answers, with multiple examples, including an entire alien environment and ecology. More examples and discussion in the comments.
• Ask The GMs: Buzz and Background – This article is split into three parts: Ways to deliver campaign background to players, with their respective pros and cons; Ways to generate buzz and enthusiasm about a new campaign; and, finally, What common ground can be found between these two mutually-antagonistic objectives.
• Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail? – Some articles are easily summarized for the Blogdex. This isn’t one of them. I noticed some patterns to the reasons some clearly skilled chefs lost in a series of cooking contests, and then realized that they provided insights into why one game fairs better than another – even if the GM running the second is superior to the first in some key attributes of the GMing craft. I then looked at what the “loser” could do to correct his situation, discovered a link through to good adventure and campaign design. This is one of the more profound articles at Campaign Mastery. It would be too easy to synopsize those results and oversimplify the findings, missing half the message. So I won’t try.
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• Part 2 of the Basics For Beginners series, Creation, could be more accurately entitled ‘creativity’. It starts by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
• Part 11 of the Basics For Beginners series returns to the subject of Campaigns, more specifically the differences between a campaign and a larger, multi-adventure plotline. With plot relationships between individual adventures the subject of Part 8 of this series, this takes as its topic the other ways that adventures can integrate. The discussion starts by defining, for the umpteenth time, a campaign. I then step through the way the campaigns a GM is likely to run evolve, using diagrams – and stopping at the point where things are likely to get too complicated for a beginner. I then discuss Campaign Structure, offering a couple of alternative types, which then segues into a discussion of Simulationist vs Gamist (I argue against the existence of “Narrativist”, often touted as a third axis), and Strong Continuity vs Episodic, with examples from my own campaigns. Next, I introduce (again) the concept of Sandboxing vs “Temporally-Constant” campaigns, discuss the advantages of sandboxing, and the substantial downsides; that’s followed by the downsides of “non-sandboxed” campaigns, before introducing a third option, the Phased Campaign, which is a hybrid of the two that avoids the worst vices of both but doesn’t completely capture the advantages of either. After discussing 5 campaign aspects that are amenable to Sandboxing, and 4 aspects that are always excluded (even in Sandboxed campaigns), and providing a free blank map, I explain the principles of Phased Campaigns and the impact of the solution on the downsides previously identified. After noting that Note Organization is critical to all three approaches, I look at the Sandboxable material from the Phased Campaign approach (offering another cautionary tale along the way). I then interrupt to review the Kickstarter campaign for Song Of Swords that may represent a fourth option. Discussion then turns to some advanced tools that can be used even by a Beginner to good effect – Campaign Themes and Nested and/or Parallel Plot Arcs (i.e. subplots that thread together to form a larger narrative), with a 22-episode example.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• Lessons from the Literary Process – takes quotes from a half-hour TV show about writing and the Literary Process and examines the RPG applicability and relevance, and how the RPG writing process differs from the literary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it all comes down to confidence, so I then examine that in some detail, listing for substantial reasons for even a beginning GM to feel confident, and a way out if none of the four helps in your current situation. Note: the source TV show had 13 parts (but the channel went belly-up half-way through showing it), the article is a standalone item, not the start of a series.
• Blog Carnival: The Unexpected Reality – A submission to the RPG Blog Carnival (that CM was hosting at the time) opened a pandora’s box of a concept: deliberately leaving things out of player briefing materials so that they can be revealed as surprises in the course of play,” in other words, using Plot as a Rules Delivery System. This article uses my Shards Of Divinity campaign extensively, and especially the Illusion rules, as an example and as a tool to test the arguements along the way. I identify three specific dangers inherent to the proposal, but when examining solutions to those problems, find that there are indeed circumstances (including a variant on the sci-fi campaign rules/campaign that inspired the article in the first place) in which this can be an asset to, and positive virtue of, a campaign – if they are used properly. Mid-way through outlining the article, I realized that this sort of thing happens on a smaller scale all the time – every time you encounter a situation in which the established rules are inadequate and have to concoct a house rule to resolve the situation.
• The Shape Of Strange is the third part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. This time I loosen the reader’s mental muscles by pointing out the impact on geology and agriculture of being able to erect a handy portal, again recapitulate the basics, and then tackle the next five Big Ideas, which all have the theme of “Reshaping Reality,” starting with #11, A Direct Connection To The Afterlife (there’s nothing in human society that I could think of that would be unaffected!); #12, Portal Transfiguration (in which travel through a portal is akin to the effects that befell Alice in Wonderland); #13, Socio-Ethical Morphology through Portal Networks (alternate worlds, everything from Discworld to Mirror, Mirror); #14, Portals Can Only Connect To Variant Planar Topologies (all Portals led to cosmologies that have only one thing in common – they are all Different to the one that the PCs live in – a world in which a coalition of Water and Air elementals led by General Ulysses S. Grant is fighting a terrible civil war with Fire Elementals over the enslavement of Earth Elementals? Or maybe they are trying to win their independence from the Fire Elementals and are being led by General George Washington?). Idea #15, Variable Difficulty Portals, then gets examined in depth, in fact about half the article is devoted to the subject, which asks, “why should all destinations be equally accessible by Portal or Gate? Why shouldn’t there be lines of least resistance, and to reach a more remote destination, the additional resistance must be forcibly overcome? Why shouldn’t travel to a more remote destination be akin to climbing a hill – with several hundred pounds of gear on your back?.” The problem is that the reshaping of the cosmos by several of these options is totally out-of-control; this mechanism restores that control to the GM. I give a detailed explanation of how to map out the lines of least resistance in a practical manner using a scrabble board or something similar (a chess board doesn’t have enough spaces).
• Feel The Burn is the final part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. In my introduction to this part, I start with Mutually-Assured Destruction by Portal and go to a means of sucking dry any magic items that the PCs shouldn’t have at this level before once again recapitulating the basic parameters. The theme of this final quintet is “Energy Flow In Transit” – as though you were entering a portal at one altitude and exiting at another, gaining potential energy in the process, or vice-versa: #16, Gaining Energy In Transit, has two subtypes, “Balanced” and “Unbalanced” (and be warned, some of these hit game physics with a two-by-four, and in the course of discussing the various “energy forms” that could be gained, I offer up some house rules for making Negative Energy Levels Scary,, which they aren’t in standard D&D / Pathfinder); #17 flips the coin to consider Losing Energy In Transit; #18 considers Portals as Planar Batteries (a possibility that I’ve actually used in one of my campaigns, and attached to a couple of really interesting external links – both still valid, I just checked 5/1/19); and finally, #19 and #20, which look at the momentum of events as a kind of energy (a concept players in my Zenith-3 campaign will be familiar with) that can be gained, lost, or inverted during transit.
• The very-expected Unexpected Blog Carnival Roundup – This lists all the posts submitted to the Nov 2015 Blog Carnival, “The Unexpected”. I start by analyzing a couple of mistakes that I made as host in introducing the topic and blaming them for the lower-than expected turnout. There’s the “Void Shock” series, my Gates and Portals series (linked to individually), a post on the game mechanics of surprise (again from CM and listed individually in the blogdex) and some ideas for plot and narrative surprise from my fellow GMs.

The “Basics For Beginners” series (ongoing)

This still-incomplete series was written to answer just one question: What advice would I have for a GM starting their first campaign? As it took shape, though, I realized that even experienced GMs sometimes need to be reminded of the fundamentals, and it then transpired that there were a few who had missed some of them entirely. Be sure to check the comments section of each post, too; there was a desire to make each part a hub, with links to other posts on the subject that were aimed at beginners.

• Pt I: Beginnings details what you really need before you start, with exercises to help you develop it if you don’t have it. Re-reading it, I was struck by how down-to-earth the advice was. Roleplaying NPCs (it’s harder than roleplaying a PC), System Knowledge, Material requirements, How often you play, how long a game session will be, game complexity & continuity, explaining the fantastic in-game, making room for research and self-improvement, resources and how to accumulate them, and giving yourself permission to fail, all get covered in this first post. One example needs to be excerpted and echoed: Don’t try to make your dream campaign your first campaign.
  
• Pt 2: Creation – or, more accurately, creativity. I start by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
  
• Pt 3: Preparations – there are lots of articles about Game Prep here at Campaign Mastery, and no shortage of them elsewhere on the net, to boot. This is not like them, spending most of its time attempting to persuade the new GM that most prep is not only unnecessary, but potentially deliterious to a campaign. This is not the case for experienced GMs; this is advice aimed directly at the beginner and those of intermediate experience. I discuss using the expertise of more experienced players and GMs, the dangers posed by over-committing (which all GMs do, sometimes), the essential prep that has to be done (a very short list), and how to deal with the players going off-script (it will happen). That’s followed by advice on using and creating iconic moments, on letting prep take care of itself, and how a developing GMing style should start to alter this advice.
  
• After three parts written in mid-2015, the series resumed in early 2016, with Pt 4: About Players – I didn’t intend for this series to become a slayer of sacred cows, but for the second post in succession, that’s a theme. In this case, it’s spelled out in the opening line, “I’ve read a lot of nonsense and enlightened theory over the years when it comes to players”. I then go on to walk that back as being too dismissive of RPG Theory. After looking at the factors that go into making a particular part of a particular day’s play “the most enjoyable part” for a particular player-character combination in a particular campaign of a particular genre on one day in particular (try saying that three times fast!), I link to various pages discussing player types in various ways, each of which (I contend) have some validity but which also fail in various ways. Since it’s unfair to criticize without at least attempting to offer something better, I then present a richer 9-axis classification system in which preferances inhabit “zones” or “regions”, not pinpoints. After a few caveats, I discuss the nine (Character, World, Concept, Drama, Conflict, Plot, Interaction, Amazement, and Heroism) individually, especially looking at the sensitivity to GMing style, genre, and campaign. As usual at Campaign Mastery, theory is then translated into practical advice: classification of campaigns, recruiting of players, and designing campaigns and adventures, before considering the impact on player surveys and finally, on game prep requirements. After diving deeper than I really should have for an artiicle aimed at a beginner, I wrap up the article with a pair of much simpler general principles that, in combination, won’t steer beginners wrong: “Give every player a focus on something they enjoy in each and every game session, and your game will be a success,”, and “Predefining some aspects of the game to achieve that in the majority of cases frees your attention up to the task of being creative in all the other areas. The rest takes care of itself.” As a post-script, I (very superficially) review “Era: The Consortium & Secret War” in case I didn’t get to a more substantial review in time (I did, just barely).
  
• Pt 5: Characters is actually about generating NPCs. It starts by examining the five general sources of character ideas, and finds them all inadequate in the same basic way. I then explain a process of organizing, filtering, and combining the ideas that work (as opposed to those that don’t) – there are 10 steps, but most of them are brutally simple. I then list (and link to) allt the articles at campaign mastery to date that are about generating ideas and NPCs, most of which was a direct cut from the original blogdex, and so is now out of date. I conclude the article by creating an NPC for a D&D / Pathfinder campaign, expanding on the concepts of the game world in the process, and conclude by deriving two adventure seeds and several additional encounters revolving around or involving the NPC.
  
• Pt 6: Challenges is really about how hard to make challenges to overcome, and building safety nets into your plots in case you get this decision wrong. It starts by describing a challenge I was facing in real life, which seems both ironic and appropriate in retrospect. I then discuss the question, and point out the number of results produced by Google searches at the time for the term “Encounter Balance” (123 million results), “Encounter Level” (another 123 million results) and “Challenge Rating” (145 million results). This shows, I argue, that a lot of people find the subject difficult, and that there’s no shortage of people who consider it important, or even critical. I then look at the reasons why it’s so hard to do, why it’s so important, whether or not it’s actually essential, and whether or not it’s realistic to aim to ptovide balanced challenges every time. The next two sections detail the very abstract process that I employ in written adventures to get a quick and satisfactory answer, and then describe an alternative based on narrative that I employ when improvizing. I discuss plotting within character limitations (the first of two tools that I employ), how it permits the narrative solution to present multiple possible pathways to an overall success or failure, and how to use a skill-check to thus direct the narrative rather than determine the outcome. There’s a very large paragraph containing an example – make sure to read this because subsequent sections keep referring back to it. The second tool is a beginner’s checklist that I use osmotically to set the difficulty numbers of any challenge (regardless of game system). I discuss each item of the checklist seperately, some deeply, others very briefly, look at when such assessments should occur, and illustrate the whole process with a metaphor. I wrap up the article by examining a list of 5 DO’s and 5 DON’Ts (considering a couple of side-issues and the resulting advice along the way), discuss the problems of linking challenges with xp, and recommending that the two experience a permanent divorce. I wrap up with some final advice and a progress report on that real-life challenge.
  
• Pt 7: Adventures – At the time of writing, there had been 140 articles at Campaign Mastery tagged “Adventure Creation”. That’s now up to 228. Most of this article selectively recapitulates, and sometimes expands upon, advice contained in this or that past article. After describing the usual growth path of GMing expertise, I look at how a GM can take shortcuts – and the limited value of those shortcuts. Next, I address the question of GMing confidence, both over- and under-confidence, before providing a simplified process for beginners to employ in creating a campaign, with an example. In the process of describing how to GM that campaign, I discuss the role of the GM and give further advice on how to avoid plot trains, before discussing sandboxing, prep schedules. and prep as an investment. In the conclusion, I provide a long list of topics that merit following up by the reader before announcing our 2016 Ennie nomination!
  
• Pt 8: Depth In Plotting – Like “Adventure Creation”, there have been a number of articles that deal with expanding a GM’s plans from isolated adventures into campaigns. Like Part 7, this focuses on the plot of adventures, but instead of focusing inward at the adventure content, it looks outward to the context within the campaign in which that adventure takes place. Once again, I start by spelling out the ‘natural’ progression most GMs experience. I then clarify the purpose of Back To Basics: Campaign Structures, a relevant article when it is read and used properly, before offering a shortcut through the rather lengthy GM-development path enunciated earlier. I then present two simplified methods of constructing complex plotlines: Russian Babushka Dolls and Spiderweb Plots. I go into the first of these in some depth, with a substantial example; the second is explained by the ‘Back To Basics’ article linked to earlier. I then point out that many of the more complex techniques actually used, such as the one described in the New Beginnings series, are actually combinations of these two simplified approaches. Next, I classify all adventures as being one of just two types – plot-driven adventures, or adventure-driven plots. These discussions use the earlier example campaign to explain various aspects of the differences. I then propose just two rules that every GM (Beginner or expert) needs to remember – “Make the adventures fun” and “The Forest Mandate,” i.e. don’t get so wrapped up in making the trees look pretty that you lose track of making the shape of the Forest look attractive, too. I then point readers at the campaign ideas that I’ve given away here at Campaign Mastery, discussing each in terms of the two simplified methods of Deep Plotting described earlier, before wrapping up the article with some concluding advice on choosing the plot structure that is right for you, at your current level of expertise.
  
• Pt 9: Rewards With Intent – This is one of the longer and more complex articles in the series. In fact, I would find it difficult to defend against an allegation of forgetting who it was supposed to be aimed at. Fortunately, if that was the case (I don’t recall), I discovered the problem before it was too late to do something about it. I start by making the bold statement that thinking of rewards as having no meaning beyond powering up PCs and being either dreaded or reveled in when they threaten the campaign has probably destroyed just as many campaigns as giving away too much in rewards. After justifying that assertion, I move on to listing four purposes for rewards; later in the article, I will argue that the fourth is by far the most important. I then break rewards into 15 categories, and how to value each of them; along the way, I offer the occasional bit of specific advice. The categories of Secrets, Reputations, and Enemies get special attention. There are lots of adventure plot hooks offered. After the fifteen, I describe an unresolved debate over the entitlement of PCs to rewards. I then discuss an expanded version of the rewards system described in Objective-Oriented Experience Points, which was itself an expansion of principles spelt out in another article. After describing the basic premises of the system, I offer two variations on the approach, and then propose an entirely new system that is simpler and hence better-suited to use by Beginners. I then walk back through the two basic mistakes that GMs make, time and again – too much and too little reward – and describe a third situation, the Dirty Snowball, just as deadly to campaigns, before offering a method of breaking that cycle by changing what magic items can do, within limits. I also point out that the presence of identify as written in the standard rules will completely destroy this solution, and recommend that readers adopt one of the solutions to the problems posed by this spell in Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot as a House Rule if they are going to employ this approach. I then sum up the article into eight bullet points that I want to be the takeaways from the article.
  
• Part 10: Rhythms – “All of the prep and improv practice and knowledge of rules and experience in the world can’t really assist GMs in nailing down pacing and rhythms and flows of the game,” wrote J.T.Evans at Ravenous Roleplaying when reviewing this article. Nevertheless, however disconcerted it might be, all games have a rhythm, and that’s the subject of this article. It might seem esoteric, especially in an article for beginners, but I contend that awareness of the rhythm of the game you are running can be a vital, neglected, and useful diagnostic tool, and one that’s more easily accessed by beginners. What’s more, attuning your inner ‘ear’ to that rhythm is the first step in tweaking it to make it more engaging and satisfying. The article first dives into the phenomenon – when it’s most observable (during combat) and noticeable (when it’s interrupted, eg by someone not being ready to take their turn). I then describe how I handle that particular problem, and offer two alternatives – one disastrous and one that works. After that brief practical interruption, I continue exploring the principles, including ways of manipulating the rhythm, before turning to ways of applying them. After an exercise that enables GMs to find their own natural rhythm, the first practical application (after combat, already noted) is in improved dialogue, both improvised and prepared (with examples), then GM-Player interaction in general. I specifically call out the relevance to another pair of related series (“Emotional Pacing,” “The Yu-Gi-Oh Lesson,” and “Further Thoughts On Pacing”, all collected in a single subsection of the Campaign Plotting page). This is one of the shortest articles in the series.
  
• Part 11: Campaigns – With the broader plot relationships between individual adventures the subject of Part 8 of this series, this takes as its topic the other ways that adventures can integrate. The discussion starts by defining, for the umpteenth time, a campaign. I then step through the way the campaigns a GM is likely to run evolve, using diagrams – and stopping at the point where things are likely to get too complicated for a beginner. I then discuss Campaign Structure, offering a couple of alternative types, which then segues into a discussion of Simulationist vs Gamist (I argue against the existence of “Narrativist”, often touted as a third axis), and Strong Continuity vs Episodic, with examples from my own campaigns. Next, I introduce (again) the concept of Sandboxing vs “Temporally-Constant” campaigns, discuss the advantages of sandboxing, and the substantial downsides; that’s followed by the downsides of “non-sandboxed” campaigns, before introducing a third option, the Phased Campaign, which is a hybrid of the two that avoids the worst vices of both but doesn’t completely capture the advantages of either. After discussing 5 campaign aspects that are amenable to Sandboxing, and 4 aspects that are always excluded (even in Sandboxed campaigns), and providing a free blank map, I explain the principles of Phased Campaigns and the impact of the solution on the downsides previously identified. After noting that Note Organization is critical to all three approaches, I look at the Sandboxable material from the Phased Campaign approach (offering another cautionary tale along the way). I then interrupt to review the Kickstarter campaign for Song Of Swords that may represent a fourth option. Discussion then turns to some advanced tools that can be used even by a Beginner to good effect – Campaign Themes and Nested and/or Parallel Plot Arcs (i.e. subplots that thread together to form a larger narrative), with a 22-episode example.
  
• Part 12: Relations deals with NPC characterization, building on the content in Part 5. I start by describing a tool that delivers only cliche characters for unimportant NPCs (but that have sufficient depth to be believable, nevertheless); the article then shows how to layer two or three such profiles to create a “complex” character. I then move on to two approaches to using the principles from an earlier article to generate alien/non-human characters that are more than “humans in rubber masks”. The first approach works well for individual exemplars, the second is better when creating a race of aliens who are to exhibit individual variations. However, these characterization techniques only really work when the character is being built around a defined and chosen character profile or niche. That generally means that the characters are needed for a specific purpose within the plot, and that this should be the starting point that leads to a characterization and not an afterthought. Going from need to characterization is the real purpose of the article. I have two solutions – a general one, that is described in detail, and a specific one that can only by highlighted, which I dispose of quickly. After spelling out the criteria that I required the general solution to fulfill, I describe it – 12 questions (two of them optional) that a GM, regardless of experience, should be able to answer in seconds. The results should produce a fit-for-purpose and ready-to-play personality in about 40 seconds.
  
• Morgalad In Reflection – I review the Morgalad starter book, finding some excellent content and some flaws. I offered the author the chance to rebut or reply to my comments and he stated that many of the issues I raised were in the process of being rectified – since that was 2015, and it’s now more than three years later, I would hope that this process is now complete. At the conclusion of my review, I recommend Morgalad as a “d20-lite”-like system (in feel, not mechanics) for the purposes of educating new players, playing with children, first-time GMs, and for convention play, all applications which would take maximum advantage of its virtues. While not technically part of the Basics For Beginners series, I’m including a reference to it in this subsection because of that recommendation.

The “Lessons From The West Wing” series, Article 1 (Posts 1-5)

The occasional ‘Lessons From The West Wing’ series kicked off with one article that was so big that it’s a 5-part series in it’s own right. The subject is uniqueness and excellence in RPGs.

• The first part of this series-within-a-series, The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 1 of 5: Don’t Compromise With Mediocrity discussed the execution and delivery of uniqueness in a RPG campaign and evolved an achievable definition of perfection for doing so. I then identified four elements that were required in order to achieve this, and dedicated a separate article to each of them.
  
• Element number one is about creating the potential for uniqueness through the initial vision of the campaign and is dealt with in A Perfect Vision Through A Glass, Darkly.
  
• The second necessity is to convert that initial vision into a common platform for both players and GMs to build apon, and is dealt with in Laying A Campaign Foundation.
  
• Part Four, Evolving The Campaign, deals with the third element, the extension and development of the initial concept in the course of the campaign.
  
• Finally, in Part 5, Character Evolution, I deal with how the uniqueness of the campaign should impact on the player characters that participate in the world. It was a big article, and a big series, but several people have told me it was worth it!

The “New Beginnings” Series

An epic ten-part series that examines the process of creating a new campaign, breaking it down into nine phases, each of which is the subject of it’s own (usually large) feature article. It can take around 1000 hours to fullly develop a campaign using these procedures, but those campaigns are sufficient for and designed to allow, more than 2 years of continuous weekly play, so you get a fair return on your time.

I don’t expect every GM to employ every one of the design and prep steps that I outline – in fact, I would expect it of less than 1% – but I present the process in it’s entirity, I leaving it to the individual to pick and choose what they think will work for them and what is worth trying. Includes a lot of practical advice as well as theory; ultimately, this is the process that I use.

• Phase 0 is the Introduction. Almost half the article is taken up with the table of contents for the whole series. The remainder takes a fresh look at some general principles of campaign design – practical elements like “How much campaign do I need to design” – offers a new method of creating a campaign called the “The Modular Story-based approach”, and briefly describes an example sci-fi campaign idea, “Reality, But Not As We Know It”, which is a kind of space-opera version of Star Trek. Some issues of races within a campaign get discussed.
  
• Phase 1 is the Inspiration phase. I list and analyze 23 sources of inspiration, and discuss what to do with the ideas that they generate. Along the way, House Rules Theory and Campaign Ideas get discussed.
  
• Phase 2 is the Baggage Dump phase. This is not so much about clearing your head more than temporarily, it deals with what you want to keep from previous campaigns and what to throw away. Significant areas of attention are GMing (stress & exhaustion & recovery), Races, PCs, NPCs, and Players.
  
• Phase 3 is when the real recovery from past exertions takes place, in the Rejuvenation phase. Other subjects that get considered include Campaign Tone and Adventure structure. A special shoutout to Hungry over at Ravenous Roleplaying whose review of the article adds an extra “Rewind & Rejuvenate” technique – just follow the link offered a moment ago.
  
• Phase 4 establishes the framework of the new campaign in what is known as the Development Phase. Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
  
• Phase 5 builds on the results of previous parts to construct the “mid-sized bones” of the campaign skeleton, with a focus on the Surroundings & Environment of the new campaign. Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
  
• It’s arguably the smallest bones, the ones in the feet and hands and ribs and spine, that are the most important skeletal structures. Phase 6, Mindset & Underpinnings completes the structural elements of the campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with special attention to an example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
  
• Once you have the bare bones, it’s time to assemble the skeleton that will give the campaign its shape and hold it together, in phase 7, entitled (naturally enough) Skeleton. Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone are the constituents, in most cases, building and refining work already done and linking elements together.
  
• Phase 8, Enfleshing, is about putting meat on those bones, starting with a little cartelage for additional linkages. Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure form the additional tissue that binds the form together.
  
• Phase 9, Completion, is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily. Well, they can’t be put off any longer. Final decisions are needed in the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign.
  
• Phase X, Beginning, deals with the transition from the design & construction stage of the campaign to designing and constructing adventures on an ongoing basis, and especially the (arguably) most important adventure, the first. The subjects are Campaign Prep, Adventure Prep (and why the two are different), Fixing Campaign Plot Holes, and Writing Adventures. This also wraps up both the series and the campaign-creation project, after 81,318 words.

Johnn’s Riddleport Campaign Development

When Campaign Mastery was about a year old, Johnn started developing a new campaign based on Paizo’s Riddleport, with the intention of migrating his players to Pathfinder (very much with their consent). While much of the campaign development was under wraps, a selection of snapshots dealing with specific campaign elements emerged through this string of articles.

• Mage Guild Mastermind Survives Pirate Haven – Johnn takes readers through his thought process when creating a faction for his Riddleport campaign.
• The Ascended Conflict in my Riddleport Campaign – Following the advice I offered on asking yourself the big questions when planning an RPG (A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs), Johnn outlines his plans for the (Near-)ultimate powers within his then-forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• Revealing the Exotic – Johnn considers the implications of restricting the availability of exotic equipment as part of the campaign development for his (then-) forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• The Cypher Gate – Johnn shows how he has integrated the suggestions & feedback in response to his earlier articles concerning his (then-) forthcoming Riddleport campaign. By comparing the content of the sources with this article, readers can gain insights into how to merge their own ideas to form a complete concept.
• Architecture of Riddleport Inspires Plots – Johnn describes how he is using the architecture within the city of Riddleport to enhance his game, and (by example), how you can do the same for yours.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.

Mike’s Zener Gate Campaign Development

My currently-ongoing Zener Gate campaign is an anomaly with respect to my usual style. Most of the campaign development was creating an original set of rules because none of the alternatives open to me quite fitted the bill. I made more time for doing so by doing the development in full view of both the public and the players through Campaign Mastery.

***** Content To Go Here *****

Campaign Philosophy

• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Jolting The Status Quo – I start by talking about a significant change in my personal life, and the anticipated impact on Campaign Mastery which leads me to write about upsetting the status quo for characters in a game, and how the game can benefit. I still love the illustrations that I put together for this article – the one showing an office type who is smugly proud of his achievement in stacking boxes on the ceiling, the other a befuddled type struggling to comprehend a scene in which a river flows across the sky and a tree grows downwards from its banks. You can almost here him saying “What’s going on here?”.
• The Nth Level Of Abstraction – GMs abstract things to varying degrees all the time. This article attempts to put some systematic analysis into the how, when, and why of abstraction, and the consequences. In the comments, I discuss ways of expressing the different levels of abstraction within maps. This is one of those ‘deep’ articles that needs to be read two or three times to get the full benefit.
• Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe? – I apply the principles of good software design to work out how the perfect game mechanics for a tabletop RPG should be constructed. There’s interesting discussion in the comments.
• Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons – I discuss the inadequacies of Dragons in 3.x when Epic Levels are involved and offer a custom redevelopment of the Monsters to beef them up. A lively discussion in the comments leads to an unrelated article about House Rules.
• What does “Old-School Gaming” really mean, anyway? – I grew irritated by the hardline nay-sayers complaining about WOTC/Hasbro’s announced goal of uniting the best of both “old” and “new” games and rebuke the advocates of both schools while summarizing the benefits of each approach. What follows in the comments is a reasoned, respectful discussion – and as a result, this is one of the most widely-circulated articles at Campaign Mastery, attracting 19 tweets, 11 google+1’s and 11 facebook likes. The goal was to inject some clarity and perspective into the debate before it degenerated into an edition war before the game system was even published, and all indications are that it succeeded, at least at the time.
• Prodigious Performances Provided In Due Course – There are thousands of feats in print and on the net. Some of these will stack improperly, others will have broken mechanics, still others will simply not fit the campaign. This article describes the approval process that I developed and insisted on implementing within my Fumanor campaign to weed out the intolerable and flag the unsatisfactory for revision if and when there was time. Actually, in most cases, the changes that needed to be made (if any) were so obvious that I could make them at the same time as rejecting the original and accepting the modified version.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive) – a reader asks why I go to so much effort to distinguish Elves from Drow when the latter are an offshoot of the former. I spend most of the article looking at the advantages that derive from making the races of a campaign distinctive, not only from each other within the campaign, but from other campaigns, before providing some resources and sources of inspiration on the subject.
• Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail? – Some articles are easily summarized for the Blogdex. This isn’t one of them. I noticed some patterns to the reasons some clearly skilled chefs lost in a series of cooking contests, and then realized that they provided insights into why one game fairs better than another – even if the GM running the second is superior to the first in some key attributes of the GMing craft. I then looked at what the “loser” could do to correct his situation, discovered a link through to good adventure and campaign design. This is one of the more profound articles at Campaign Mastery. It would be too easy to synopsize those results and oversimplify the findings, missing half the message. So I won’t try.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Overprotective Tendencies: Handling Player Risk Aversion – the longer a player lives with a particular character in his pocket, the more attached to that character he becomes, and that can lead to overprotective tendencies and over-planning by players. In this (brief) article, I look at six solutions to the problem, several of which I don’t personally recommend. This post seemed to connect with a lot of readers at the time.
• One of the key campaign philosophies to be decided is the type of Game Physics that will be used within the campaign. Refer Plunging Into Game Physics Pt 4: Better Campaigns Through Physics for the options available and their consequences. Then consult the second part for techniques to actually develop your game physics.
• Feel The Burn is the final part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. In my introduction to this part, I start with Mutually-Assured Destruction by Portal and go to a means of sucking dry any magic items that the PCs shouldn’t have at this level before once again recapitulating the basic parameters. The theme of this final quintet is “Energy Flow In Transit” – as though you were entering a portal at one altitude and exiting at another, gaining potential energy in the process, or vice-versa: #16, Gaining Energy In Transit, has two subtypes, “Balanced” and “Unbalanced” (and be warned, some of these hit game physics with a two-by-four, and in the course of discussing the various “energy forms” that could be gained, I offer up some house rules for making Negative Energy Levels Scary,, which they aren’t in standard D&D / Pathfinder); #17 flips the coin to consider Losing Energy In Transit; #18 considers Portals as Planar Batteries (a possibility that I’ve actually used in one of my campaigns, and attached to a couple of really interesting external links – both still valid, I just checked 5/1/19); and finally, #19 and #20, which look at the momentum of events as a kind of energy (a concept players in my Zenith-3 campaign will be familiar with) that can be gained, lost, or inverted during transit.

Campaign Themes

• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Part 11 of the Basics For Beginners series returns to the subject of Campaigns, more specifically the differences between a campaign and a larger, multi-adventure plotline. With plot relationships between individual adventures the subject of Part 8 of this series, this takes as its topic the other ways that adventures can integrate. The discussion starts by defining, for the umpteenth time, a campaign. I then step through the way the campaigns a GM is likely to run evolve, using diagrams – and stopping at the point where things are likely to get too complicated for a beginner. I then discuss Campaign Structure, offering a couple of alternative types, which then segues into a discussion of Simulationist vs Gamist (I argue against the existence of “Narrativist”, often touted as a third axis), and Strong Continuity vs Episodic, with examples from my own campaigns. Next, I introduce (again) the concept of Sandboxing vs “Temporally-Constant” campaigns, discuss the advantages of sandboxing, and the substantial downsides; that’s followed by the downsides of “non-sandboxed” campaigns, before introducing a third option, the Phased Campaign, which is a hybrid of the two that avoids the worst vices of both but doesn’t completely capture the advantages of either. After discussing 5 campaign aspects that are amenable to Sandboxing, and 4 aspects that are always excluded (even in Sandboxed campaigns), and providing a free blank map, I explain the principles of Phased Campaigns and the impact of the solution on the downsides previously identified. After noting that Note Organization is critical to all three approaches, I look at the Sandboxable material from the Phased Campaign approach (offering another cautionary tale along the way). I then interrupt to review the Kickstarter campaign for Song Of Swords that may represent a fourth option. Discussion then turns to some advanced tools that can be used even by a Beginner to good effect – Campaign Themes and Nested and/or Parallel Plot Arcs (i.e. subplots that thread together to form a larger narrative), with a 22-episode example.

Campaign Tone

• See also the “One Player Is Enough” series on the Game Mastering page.
• See also the “Campaign Pacing” subsection in the Plot Sequencing section of the Campaign Plotting page for information on changing from one tone to another within an adventure or between adventures..

• The Loss Of Innocence: Some unexpected insightsAn examination of the social progress depicted within television series leads to an insight into the Edition Wars and some general observations about the social impact of TV Hyper-Realism, which are relevant to choices of campaign Tone. Not everyone agrees with my position on the subject, and the examples were marred somewhat by a few inaccuracies as pointed out in the comments.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 1 – Eight Tips for Cliffhanger Finishes – I love ending game sessions on a cliffhanger, especially if I can get the players talking about how it’s all going to work out. This two-part article takes a good hard look at Cliffhangers, starting with these eight tips for employing them. In particular, I offer three methods that I reserve for improvising a cliffhanger when planning has gone awry.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 2 – Fourteen Types of Cliffhanger Finishes – Wikipedia asserts that there are 2 kinds of cliffhanger, and neither of them are defined in such a way to be useful in an RPG. Other people also told me that they doubted there were 14 types of cliffhanger (prior to the pubication of this article, at least). For each of the 14, I describe it, describe how to implement it at the end of a session, describe the best way to restart play in the following session, and – in some cases – provide further discussion and deliberately over-the-top examples from various genres.
• Super-heroics as an FRP Combat Planning Tool – An unlikely confluance of fragmentary half-thoughts came together to yield an insight and a theoretical construct based on that insight. By the time I got to write the article, that theoretical construct had evolved into practical advice – but to explain the advice (and justify the unlikely principle behind it), I had to re-create the mental process that led me to it within the text of the article. I conclude the article with mini-reviews of a couple of kickstarter campaigns – one (flat plastic miniatures) that was doing incredibly well, and another that unfortunately did not succeed for running adventures online.
• Phase 3: Rejuvenation from the “New Beginnings” series – In addition to a proven method of recharging all your batteries before you drain your reserves to the point of mental damage and risk of breakdown (see Phase 2 for the theory), other subjects that get considered include Campaign Tone and Adventure structure.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• The End Of The Adventure – Although it deals with tone on an adventure-by-adventure scale and applies an even smaller granularity, looking at how the tonal quality of an ending influences the start of the beginning that follows, this is just a close-in zoom of what happens throughout the campaign – it’s one domino after another, with limited option for taking control. It’s therefore important to seize those opportunities when they arise. To that end, this article provides a somewaht-dubious list of 31 possible tones for ending adventures, and analyzes them before considering the plot structures that enable them to be controlled by the GM.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not. What I didn’t realize at the time is that this has an impact on the campaign Tone, raising the excitement level as levels increase.
• Rat On A Stick – In remembrance of Terry Pratchett – I discuss the work of Pratchett in general terms, contrasting it with that of Robert Asprin and Douglas Adams and Monty Python; discuss the problems that the “Clacks Code” suggestion of memorializing Terry will (in some cases, did!) entail, and conclude by drawing a fundamental connection to RPGs.
• Overprotective Tendencies: Handling Player Risk Aversion – the longer a player lives with a particular character in his pocket, the more attached to that character he becomes, and that can lead to overprotective tendencies and over-planning by players. In this (brief) article, I look at six solutions to the problem, several of which I don’t personally recommend. This post seemed to connect with a lot of readers at the time.
• Fantastic Flop: GMing Lessons from a filmic failure – I deconstruct the failure of the rebooted Fantastic Four movie to discover lessons every GM should learn from. It’s a shame that those responsible for Man Of Steel and Batman Vs Superman didn’t read the article, because they made many of the same mistakes – admittedly to a lesser degree – and compromised their products earning powers and entertainment value as a result.

Campaign Backgrounds

• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article focuses on the mythic and background elements of a campaign.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.
• Memorials To History – an ‘a good name’ extra – I expand the “A good name is hard to find” series by pointing out that inn and town names can be conduits to the campaign background. I then descuss integrating that conduit, and the history that flows through it, into an adventure. A very short post by Campaign Mastery standards.
• Ask The GMs: Buzz and Background – This article is split into three parts: Ways to deliver campaign background to players, with their respective pros and cons; Ways to generate buzz and enthusiasm about a new campaign; and, finally, What common ground can be found between these two mutually-antagonistic objectives.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 9: Completion from the “New Beginnings” series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.

Mike’s Fumanor Campaigns

For almost 20 years, I was stockpiling ideas for a new D&D campaign but unable to find players. Finally, I got the opportunity with the original Fumanor campaign. It proved so popular that I was roped into running first another (created-on-the-spot) campaign based on the ideas Fumanor rejected (The Rings Of Time Campaign) simultanious with sequels to the original Fumanor. As such a central focus in my gaming for the first 5 years or so of Campaign Mastery, the campaigns form the foundation of a number of articles, some of which are very much about Campaign Development.

• Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence – I follow up the issues raised in Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity (such as the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative) by examining the ‘big picture’ answers employed by some of my campaigns in future articles, of which this is the first.
• The Orcs & Elves Series – From the start of my Fumanor Campaign, there have been secrets concerning the history of Elves, Drow, and Orcs in the game world. Now the characters have reached the point where the truth has to be told. This completely reinvents (from the players point of view) the campaign background of the world so far as those particular races is concerned. It is presented here as a very long fantasy novel. I’m not even going to list the contents, here – it’s just too massive a series. With each part, I build up a Glossary of Elvish language used within the story. So far, it’s up to Chapter 85 of 116 originally planned – but I’ve hit all the essentials in terms of its campaign needs, so whether or not I continue on all the way is still to be determined. I could more or less wrap up the series at this point by having the PCs awaken from their dream state and being told, “The rest you know…” On the other hand, the completist in me wants to tell the rest of the story, so we’ll see. It’s a heck of a lot of work.
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” Series takes my revised version of the draft scale from part 1 and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.

Mike’s Zenith-3/Earth Regency Campaign

The Ongoing Zenith-3/Earth Regency Campaign is a sequel to my Zenith-3 campaign, which itself was a sequel to my original superhero campaign that I started back in 1982. Much of it was developed simultanious to the last couple of years of play in the Zenith-3/Earth Halo campaign. Again, as one of the central focuses of my gaming, this campaign and its ongoing development have been the underpinning of a number of articles here at Campaign Mastery.

• The Imperial History Of Earth-Regency – This series (still unfinished because the parts take a long time to write and research) details the historical background of the (parallel) world in which my superhero campaign currently takes place.
  • Part 1: 1189-1220;
  • Part 2: 1220-1782;
  • Part 3: 1782-1910;
  • Part 4: 1910-1945;
  • Part 5: 1945-1959;
  • Part 6: 1960-1972;
  • Part 7: 1973-1975;
  • Part 8: 1978-1979;
  • Part 9: 1980-1997;
  • Part 10: 1980-1997 (continued);
  • Part 11: 1998-2015 (overview);
  • Part 12: 1998.

  One of these days I’ll get back to this series but it won’t be anytime soon, despite having three more chapters half-done and a bunch more outlined.

• Mictlan-tecuhtli is a villain from the Zenith-3 campaign who would readily translate into sci-fi and cyberpunk. Translating him into D&D / Pathfinder would be more work but yields a more fascinating (and unexpected in most campaigns) outcome. The character is described in Pieces of Creation: Mictlan-tecuhtli together with a locked-room mystery that reveals his “style”. The character was inspired by two characters from Larry Nivel stories relating to Gil “The Arm” Hamilton, Loren and Anubis; the latter also inspired the villain’s name. The mystery and character background also add to the background of Earth-Regency.

Campaign Synopses

• Grow The Hobby With Great Game Mastering – The July 2010 Blog Carnival was about how to grow the hobby, RPG Gaming. Johnn approaches the question from the perspective of being able to tell compelling stories about your campaigns – and that requires you to become a great game master. I add my 20-cents-worth in the comments.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.

Johnn’s Carnus Campaign

• D&D 4e

Before his Riddleport Campaign, Johnn was running something he called the Carnus Campaign. This was winding down / building up explosively just as Campaign Mastery was beginning.

• Carnus Session #13 – Bearded in Orcus’s Lair – Johnn synopsizes and reflects on one of his (then-) recent game sessions, and in the process, shows how it’s done.

Mike’s Family AD&D Campaign

• AD&D
• 1981-1982

A short-lived campaign run for my two brothers, and totally ignoring the age recommendations in the rules. The core of the campaign was built around module S1, The Tomb Of Horrors.

• Briefly described in Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear. Paul had a human fighter/cleric, David an elven fighter/rogue/mage – as I recall. Despite entering the campaign at 1st level, ignoring the module recommendations, they beat it, through native caution and excellent game-play.

Mike’s Original AD&D Campaign

• AD&D, Heavily modified
• 1981-1984

My real original D&D campaign was essentially a mega-dungeon, long before the term was invented. 26 levels, about 200′ x 250′ each.

It’s been mentioned a time or two but I couldn’t track those references down. The biggest thing to note was that the campaign introduced “primitive” characters to higher technology without ever explaining exactly how it worked because the characters couldn’t understand the theory. Instead it was treated pragmatically, as tools. The final level was PCs vs the computer that had been genetically-engineering monsters from local animal populations and releasing them to protect itself from the PCs and the “strange energy fields” they maniplated using magic, which the computer couldn’t understand, either. Every five levels or so, the PCs explored more of the game world..

Mike’s Champions Campaign

The original Champions rules changed my gaming life. I started by running a solo campaign for a week, 24/7, to teach myself the rules. That was because I had a hard deadline the following Sunday to run a campaign for others. The “Ultras Campaign” ran infrequently for about 18 months and used my solo campaign as its background. Two weeks after it began, I started the real Champions campaign.

• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns. Nebula is not mentioned by name, but was a central figure in many of the early exploits of the team.
• Several PCs from the predecesser-campaign to Zenith-3 get mentioned, and some of their in-game activities described, in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment.
• Pieces of Creation: Mortus is an extremely radical reinvention of the Marvel Villain, Thanos, one whose backstory and personality conflict with what he does so strongly that it poses fundamental questions of morality and ethics of the PCs who encounter him. In the course of this write-up, I briefly relate a couple of stories from the early days of the Champions campaign.

Mike’s Nebula Campaign

Nebula was a founding member of the team at the heart of the main campaign but dropped out after about 9 months. A year or so later, we reconvened for an irregular series of solo adventures that persisted for about 6 years. The character then faded from public view, becoming an NPC. Attempts were made to restart the solo campaign at one point but they came to nought after only one or two sessions.

None

Mike’s Project Vanguard Campaign

Inspired by The New Mutants comic from Marvel, the assembly of a team of teenaged trainees seemed a sensible one to the players, and so a spin-off campaign was begun. The “class” ran through to their graduation exercises (one each). Some of the characters then joined the main team as NPCs, others retired (also as NPCs). There have been occasional guest appearances by these characters in the main campaign since.

• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns. Nebula is not mentioned by name, but was a central figure in many of the early exploits of the team.
• Several PCs from the predecesser-campaign to Zenith-3 get mentioned, and some of their in-game activities described, in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment.

Mike’s Project Vigilant Campaign

The Project: Vanguard campaign was such a success that about a year later, two more spinoffs were added, to run on alternate weeks of the fortnight to the two more established campaigns. This was to be the “Generation After,” inspired in part by the Marvel Comic Power Pack. i.e. pre-teen superheros. They were supposed to be sheltered from anything so dangerous as adventures, but it never seemed to work out that way. In theory, they were to become the new “Project Vanguard” when the old one graduated. but the players chose to end the campaign on a high and have the characters become NPCs; for many of them, they had exhausted their best plotlines already.

• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns. Nebula is not mentioned by name, but was a central figure in many of the early exploits of the team.
• Several PCs from the predecesser-campaign to Zenith-3 get mentioned, and some of their in-game activities described, in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment.

Mike’s Team Neon Phi Campaign (Agents Of UNTIL)

The second campaign was a james-bondish secret agent-style concept. The basic idea was that the superheros took care of the supervillains, the agents took care of the villain organizations. Along the way, they had profound impacts on the campaign overall. The campaign was full of shadowy conspiracies and villain organizations operating at cross-purposes.

No posts on CM explicitly referance this campaign. I’ll have to change that.

Mike’s TORG: The Improbability Invasion Campaign

My players spent a full game year (and almost a real-time one, to boot) adventuring in Aysle, the Fantasy Realm, in the days before the “Probability War” that serves as the foundation of the official game world even began. In fact, it was a result of the first machinations of those responsible within Aysle that brought about the PCs as an inevitable byproduct. After that, they diversified and began globetrotting, following a trail of seemingly-unrelated breadcrumbs that would eventually have all tied together in the overthrow and final defeat of the Gaunt Man and his allies. From memory, it was Nile Empire (Pulp Superhero), New York City (Dinosaur Swamp Dystopia), a Ship from the Horror Realm found drifting on the high seas, and back to the Nile Empire. One of the key aspects of the campaign was that none of the big bosses would leave any of the other realms alone, and that both created windows of opportunity for the PCs and machinations for them to fall afoul of.

• I first mention my TORG campaign in a reply to a comment on The Gold Standard: Mike’s Top Twenty 3.x Supplements (part 5).
• That mention inspired the compilation of The Acceptable Favoritism: 34 ‘Rules’ to make your players’ PCs their favorites, where at least one character from the campaign again get name-dropped.
• The campaign itself is mentioned (and described) a couple of times in the “Corporate Politics” section of Dice And Life: Bio of a gamemaster (A 5th Anniversary Special) Part 2 of 2.

Mike’s Zenith-3 / Earth Halo Campaign

The players in the original champions campaign got tired of the big buildup to Ragnerok and told me to go away, write it up, and reboot the campaign into a post-ragnerok world. That took most of five years to achieve. Only one of the original players returned, at least at first; others would drop in, stay for a while, and then go. Because this campaign was still very much active when Campaign Mastery started, there have been a number of articles that collectively provide a partial synopsis of events.

• I introduce the key members and associated NPCs of the now-current Zenith-3 campaign in Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow, and very briefly hint at some of the character-driven plot arcs planned for each as part of the campaign.
• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns.
• If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis contains a detailed writeup of another adventure that was never played, for reasons explained at the start of the article.
• In Writing The Game: Using RPGs to Create Fiction, synopses of three Zenith-3 adventures are used as one large example.
• The relationship between an important NPC in the first Zenith-3 campaign and one of the PCs is discussed in “Solution 6: The One-sided story”; and the character’s reaction to an NPC in distress is featured in “Prerequisite: A clear action”, both part of the “Persona Blocks” section of Breaking Through Writer’s Block Pt 3: Action and Personality Blocks.

Mike’s Fumanor: The Last Deity I & II Campaigns

I’ve discussed this campaign a number of times, firstly because it contained a lot of cool ideas and illustrated useful techniques, and second because D&D / Pathfinder remain the most popular game systems out there and a lot of the content is transferrable.

• One of the three central figures of the first and second Fumanor campaigns (both of which were entitled “The Last Deity” for different reasons), Auralla was a mage in a world that was vuiolently prejudiced against mages, blamed for the apocalyptic events from which that society was only slowly recovering. In The Ultimate Weapon: Spell Storage Solutions Pt 5, an article dedicated to exploring the concepts and limitations of relics and artifacts, I use an example from The Last Deity and synopsize the PCs discovery of and interaction with the example artifact. Two of the PCs involved get mentioned by name because they react to the presence of a spell from the Temple within the town housing the artifact, but all three were central to the plot.
• The outcome of the big finish to the “Last Deity” and a lot of the backstory is described in . The entry on Corallan mentions Auralla and Serenity by name in describing his manipulations of the latter’s life.
• There is more detail on the “Last Deity” campaign and how it led into the “Seeds Of Empire” and “One Faith” campaigns presented in the first few sections of Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2.
• In Seeds Of Empire adventure #19, “On A Larger Scale,” the Elvish Ambassador calls up images of the significant mutual threats to “stability and good order” faced by both the Elves and the Golden Empire. These include Two of the main characters from the older campaign. The incident is described in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5.
• The third of the central PCs from the first Fumanor campaign was a Druid named Ceriseth. He is described in the “Some Backstory” section of Flavours Of Neutral – Focussing On Alignment, Part 4 of 5 (fairly briefly, because most of the post is about investigating his death, and in looking at all the myriad overtones that can be implied by a “Neutral” alignment). He is also mentioned in relation to a number of factions, some of whom supported him, and some who opposed him for various reasons.

Mike’s Rings Of Time Campaign

The Rings Of Time campaign was supposed to be a one-off New Years adventure created on the spur of the moment (no prep!) using memories of some of the discarded ideas from my Fumanor campaign. The players had so much fun they insisted it continue. And it did, until they got to about 45th level, before I had to shut it down for lack of prep time and availability. One of the two passed away a year later, so it has never resumed. The themes of the campaign were “The converse of responsibility is authority” and “Morality is relative – but the Gods are absolute.”

• In The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene, I discuss the treatment of “deities” in my various campaigns – Fumanor, Zenith-3, The Rings Of Time, Shards of Divinity, and The Adventurer’s Club (and Pulp in general).

Mike’s Warcry Campaign

Warcry started as a member of Zenith-3 but was eventually spun off into his own space-opera/polical/superhero campaign.

• The campaign is summarized briefly in Clash of the Timetables, an article that I subtitled “((Too many GMs, not enough players!)” and discusses how I was scheduling my RPGs at the time, and more importantly, why it was necessary.
• Some of the darker elements of the in-game personal history of another character from the Zenith-3 campaign, Blackwing, were revealed in the “Keeping Secrets” section of What matters to your character: the value of the shameful secret, describing the discoveries and revelations from a guest appearance in the Warcry campaign.

Mike’s Shards Of Divinity Campaign

We had a new player join the original Fumanor campaign about 2/3 of the way through, but Shannon was a relative novice when it came to campaigns of the intricacy and complexity of the games I run. He found himself out his depth and dropped out after a little less than a year. Part of the problem, he felt, was that he had not been part of the campaign from the start, and was always trying breathlessly to catch up with the other players. So he asked me to come up with a new campaign for him to learn in. The result was the Shards Of Divinity campaign. The Campaign encountered more problems, and overcame them, than any campaign should ever have to face, from players dropping out without warning to players changing their class and fundamental ambitions mutliple times, to Shannon’s character getting killed three, or maybe four or five times. Since that character was the focal point of the whole campaign, each time, he had to be brought back. Ultimately, though, the death of one of the players was the deathblow; while the campaign continued for another year or so, too much of the “spark” had gone out of it. After sessions were repeatedly cancelled, the campaign was shut down.

• Blog Carnival: The Unexpected Reality – A submission to the RPG Blog Carnival (that CM was hosting at the time) opened a pandora’s box of a concept: deliberately leaving things out of player briefing materials so that they can be revealed as surprises in the course of play,” in other words, using Plot as a Rules Delivery System. This article uses my Shards Of Divinity campaign extensively, and especially the Illusion rules, as an example and as a tool to test the arguements along the way. I identify three specific dangers inherent to the proposal, but when examining solutions to those problems, find that there are indeed circumstances (including a variant on the sci-fi campaign rules/campaign that inspired the article in the first place) in which this can be an asset to, and positive virtue of, a campaign – if they are used properly. Mid-way through outlining the article, I realized that this sort of thing happens on a smaller scale all the time – every time you encounter a situation in which the established rules are inadequate and have to concoct a house rule to resolve the situation.

Mike & Blair’s The Adventurer’s Club Campaign

Blair Ramage started the campaign, but it was immediately beset by problems both real and imagined by some of the players. I was one of those players. I offered to lend a hand with the game mechanics and in no time at all, that turned into a co-GMing role. The campaign has never looked back (though it’s hit a few rough spots along the way). This pulp campaign has figured prominantly in a number of posts here at Campaign Mastery (and a few whole series, for that matter!)

• The campaign is synopsized adventure-by-adventure up to the then-current point in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1).
• One of the PCs is used extensively as an example in Casual Opportunities For Priests: Analysis and Commonalities. Several incidents from the character’s in-play life are described, as is a larger plot thread that we built up for resolution in the 10th anniversary adventure. Despite the catastrophic disaster described in another article (also listed below), that objective was achieved.
• The “Things Of Stone And Wood” adventures were a mini-series within the main campaign that was synopsized briefly in The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues.
• Part-way through the last adventure described in the adventure-by-adventure synopsis linked to above, Tommy’s player passed away. The completion of that adventure, without naming the character, is discussed in The Ultimate Disruption: The loss of a player.
• A later adventure is synopsized and discussed from the point of view of the props created to support it in the “Different Handouts for Different Purposes?” section of A Helping Handout. This summation then leads directly into the synopsis referred to in the links below.
• House Rules – For Pulp (and other RPGs) contains, in a boxed-off yellow section “The story behind the story”, a brief synopsis that bridges the gap between the ‘handouts’ article above and the ‘train-wreck’ article below. Most of the PCs aren’t named.
• Some later adventures are partially synopsized in An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session, which describes how a major adventure planned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the campaign almost destroyed the campaign, and 10 lessons that my co-GM and I took away from the train-wreck.
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.

Mike’s Fumanor: One Faith Campaign

When one of the players took a job in another city, what was intended to be one sequel campaign had to be split in two. That job didn’t last long, however, and in no time at all, he was a player in both, having taken over an NPC in the Seeds Of Empire campaign. The One Faith campaign was all about the consequences of the forced unification of the Pantheon perpetrated by the PCs in the previous campaign, and about the perpetual and ever-changing warfare between the Gods and the Chaos Powers.

• Gallas was a Drow thief-turned-cleric and the starring and central figure of the Fumanor: One Faith campaign, synopsized in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1). His footprints are allt through each and every adventure in that campaign, which was intended to be solo campaign for a player who had taken a job in another city and who would not be able to get back every week for the Seeds Of Empire campaign – so his plotlines were excerpted from that Campaign Plan and a new campaign constructed around them. As it happened, the position didn’t work out, and in about 6 weeks – having missed just one game session of the Seeds campaign – he returned to take up the reigns of both Gallas and Eubani.
• There is another synopsis of the One Faith campaign within Things Done and left Un-done that sheds further light on some of the material provided in the preceding link.
• In the second adventure of the One Faith campaign, a troublemaking Bard named Sebastian became the second PC (see Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1)). We were in the middle of adventure #11, “Goblin, Goblin” when Stephen, Sebastian’s player, passed away.
• The last PC to join the One Faith campaign was Arazal, hooking up with the campaign in Adventure #8, “The Brown Heart” (described in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1)). Originally intended to be an NPC, and the driving force behind adventures 9 and 10. Surplus to requirements thereafter, he was then to be written out – a plan that changed when he became a PC. This was a beneficial change in campaign terms, because it solved a plot problem that was looming: Gallas had things to do in the next phase of the campaign for which Sebastian was totally unsuited. So the plan was to bifurcate the campaign, with each player generating a secondary character – Sebastian, Arazal, and Gallas’ player’s secondary character would embark on one strand of adventures, while Gallas and the other two secondaries would go off together on the main campaign. And, eventually, it would all tie back in together.
• Gallas’ role as an agent of change made him instrumental in assembling the party for the Seeds Of Empire campaign. That in turn gets him a brief mention as part of Corallan’s description in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4.
• The role of, and limitations impiosed on, the Gods in the Fumanor campaigns is detailed in Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence.

Mike’s Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire Campaign

The Seeds Of Empire campaign was about politics and war and the threats facing the Three Kingdoms from outside – invasion by an empire of undead, the corruption within Elvish Kingdom, the assimilation of the Orcish Lands into the nascent Empire, and other problems caused by the war between Gods and Chaos Powers.

• Tajik is an Orcish Cleric and PC from the Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire campaign. Whenever you read a synopsis of that campaign that mentions an Orc, and any time when such mentions a Priest who isn’t Undead, it’s talking about Tajik. You can read a brief synopsis of Tajik’s adventures in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1); he was a pivotal member in each of the adventures, even if not singled out by name. He also appears by name only in Adventure #9 of the Fumanor: One Faith campaign to synchronize the timeline of the two campaigns.
• The PCs within the campaign were analyzed in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2.
• Campaign Update: Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire gives a more thorough synopsis of where the campaign was at in July of 2009, and inevitably gives a lot more information on the PCs and Not-quite-PCs: Tajik, Eubani, Chrin, Verde, Leif, Julia, Ziorbe, and Arron.
• There’s some more of the campaign backstory and early adventures in A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs, though none of them are mentioned by name.
• The campaign is further synopsis, leading on from the “Campaign Update” above, in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 (first half) and Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 (second half). The latter also contains a description of the personal quests of each of the party members (they all had one).
• The role of, and limitations impiosed on, the Gods in the Fumanor campaigns is detailed in Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 ranges a bit all over the place; part of it deals with the early campaign and fundamentals of several of the important races, some of it deals with recent in-campaign developments, in particular the mystery of Gruumsh, and part falls in between.

Mike’s Tree Of Life Campaign

The Tree Of Life campaign was devised to playtest “D&D Next”, which everyone now refers to by the unofficial name of “D&D 5e”. It was designed to test aspects and elements of the game that we thought most groups wouldn’t go into in a thorough and systematic way by “accelerating” a proper campaign with characters coming and going, gaining levels, etc.

I’m not sure the campaign was ever explicitly described here at Campaign Mastery.

Mike’s Zenith-3 / Earth Regency Campaign

When, a year or two before the Earth Halo campaign was ready to wrap up, I began planning the sequel, it became clear that there had been a miscommunication of some sort between players and GM. They expected one thing to happen, and I another. The campaign we’re currently playing is about 1/3 of my original plans and 2/3 new content written to incorporate what the players wanted, with a net result that I consider stronger than what would otherwise have been, even if it is 50%-100% longer than originally intended. The original campaign ran for 13 years and about 1/3 of that was unplanned; this was supposed to run for ten, but now looks more likely to take 15. Which means that we’re about half-way through it, and major plot developments are starting to make their presence felt.

• I introduce the key members and associated NPCs of the now-current Zenith-3 campaign in Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow, and very briefly hint at some of the character-driven plot arcs planned for each as part of the campaign. Vala has found that her presence on the campaign world has had far more profound and complicated consequences than she ever expected, and theological extremists have already produced super-“villains” to confront the team because of her presence.
• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns.
• Pieces of Creation: Mortus is an extremely radical reinvention of the Marvel Villain, Thanos, one whose backstory and personality conflict with what he does so strongly that it poses fundamental questions of morality and ethics of the PCs who encounter him. In the course of this write-up, I briefly relate a couple of stories of Behemoth, because Mortus originally thought that he was a Behemoth-clone. In dealing with Mortus, the PCs of my campaign went WAY beyond what was expected of them, but I had enough notes about the “Big Picture” prepared to go with the flow – a lesson that justifies including this article in the relevant campaign and adventure plot sequencing sections. Mortus should be adaptable to any campaign in which the PCs are “the good guys”; his impact might be diminished in campaigns where that’s not the case.
• Énorme Force has about as convoluted a character creation story as you can find. He started out as a generic brick, but quickly proved too bland to be the focus of anything. So I threw all sorts of ideas at the character, hit the ‘blend’ button, and strained the mess to extract a truly tortured soul. The character was described extensively – well, as extensively as is known to the players in my campaign – in Pieces of Creation: Énorme Force. In the process of describing the character, I also give a thumbnail version of the origins of Blackwing (one of the PCs from that campaign), explain (very briefly) some of the game physics including the basis of magic and psionics and the equivalent of clerical powers within the campaign.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.
• A villain from the Zenith-3 campaign who would readily translate into sci-fi and cyberpunk. Translating him into D&D / Pathfinder would be more work but yields a more fascinating (and unexpected in most campaigns) outcome. The character is described in Pieces of Creation: Mictlan-tecuhtli together with a locked-room mystery that reveals his “style”. The character was inspired by two characters from Larry Nivel stories relating to Gil “The Arm” Hamilton, Loren and Anubis; the latter also inspired the villain’s name. The mystery and background also add to the background of Earth-Regency.
• , Unusually, a number of posts describe – in considerable detail – events that are planned to take place but have not yet occurred in-game. The first of these describes – with key facts redacted to avoid spilling the beans to my players – a location, described in Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower.
• Following on from that example is a second, Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra.
• A third describes a major charater arc, developed in conjunction with the character’s current player, in “A Big Example” of foreshadowing, included as part of The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure.

Mike’s Dr Who: Lovecraft’s Legacies Campaign

After publishing Dr Who and the secrets of complex characterization, the discussion of the article and some of its insights with one of the players from the Adventurer’s Club and Zenith-3 campaigns inspired me to devise this campaign. He was eager to sign on. The campaign was designed to be, and remains, purely a solo-play situation. It is roughly half-complete at this point, and only gets played on 5th Weekends (and on the subsequent 2nd weekend of the month, as of 2019) – so we’ve been averaging only three or four game sessions a year.

• I give a general summary of the campaign in the “- variety of threats – ” and “- Variable Difficulty -” sub-sections within the “Opponants” section of Me, Myself, and Him: Combat and Characters in one-player games, part of the “One Player Is Enough” series. Later in the same article, in a boxed sidebar within the “Characterization Focus” section, “In play” sub-section, “- Fewer opportunities for variety in relationships -” sub-subsection, the companion is further described and the opening adventure briefly synopsized. A later adventure is then briefly synopsized in the “- Melodramatic Collapse and the Descent into Soap Opera -” sub-subsection that immediately follows that boxed sidebar. subsequent sub-subsections “- A British approach -” and “- A unique manifestation of relationship -” add further information about the campaign.
• The campaign is further discussed in part 3 of that series, The Solitary Thread, Frayed: Plots in one-player games.
• And is again referenced in the fourth part of the series, The Crochet Masterpiece: One-player games as Campaigns. This is probably not all that surprising when you realize that the Dr Who campaign in question was the primary inspiration for, and instigator of, the entire series of articles.

Mike’s Zener Gate Campaign

A campaign that was developed in public here at Campaign Mastery, rules system and all! Well, once the rules were finished, I sat down and (literally) spent 5 minutes coming up with plotlines. We’re between 1/3 and 1/2-way through that list at the moment. This is designed to be a so-low-it’s-almost-zero-prep campaign.

Posts To Be Listed

Divine Power, Religion, & Theology

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity – I consider the implications of Divine Beings manifesting as objective reality in RPGs and the complicated question of Deus Ex Machinas when that is the case, the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative, and how a big-picture perspective on divine beings can make or break plausibility in a fantasy campaign. I offer possible answers to the question, “Where Do Clerics get their spells from?” along the way. There’s a fascinating discussion of the issues raised by the article in the comments.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.
• Too Much Life for The Living: March 2011 Blog Carnival – My second contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival asks is Healing is too easy in D&D, which leads to proposing an alternative combat system for 3.x / Pathfinder Based on concepts within the TORG game system. It was quite well received. There are additional suggestions and clarifications in the comments. If you want to make your combats more life-and-death dramatic, this might be worth your time. See also the “All Wounds Are Not Alike” series in the “Actual House Rules” section of the Rules & Mechanics page.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• Life & Death in RPG Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – We wrap up our hosting of the March 2011 Blog Carnival with the usual compendium of synopses of the articles submitted. If you find either Life or Death to be important in your games (or want to make it so), these are worth reading.
• Theologies at 30 paces: The Hell of Evil in D&D – I consider the theological implications of the cosmology of D&D (and to some extent, Pathfinder), especially the implications of having demons, devils, and dark gods, how to resolve the contradictions implicit in this cacophony of ill-digested theological influences, and how the consequences would manifest in the everyday lives, motivations, etc, of the inhabitants of the world. More suggestions and ideas in the comments.
• The Ascended Conflict in my Riddleport Campaign – Following the advice I offered on asking yourself the big questions when planning an RPG (A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs), Johnn outlines his plans for the (Near-)ultimate powers within his then-forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article focuses on the mythic and background elements of a campaign.
• Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence – I follow up the issues raised in Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity (such as the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative) by examining the ‘big picture’ answers employed by some of my campaigns in future articles, of which this is the first.
• Part Eight of Johnn’s series on City Government Power Bases covers Religion.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Orcish Mythology – In the course of the Orc & Elves series, I found that I needed to construct and outline a pantheon for the Orcs, and a mythology to go with that pantheon.
• Ask The GMs: The Momentum Of The Inevitable – In the discussion following a previous Ask The GMs, we were asked, ‘should there ever be something that is too big or has too much momentum for the PCs to be able to stop it?’ The discussion that follows the article adds to the content so well that it feels like part of the original article; if you’re interested in the question, don’t miss them.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.
• Pile On This: Undead are Taking Over. What happens? – Johnn’s campaign came off the rails and he asked for help working out what would happen next. Lots of interesting suggestions to pilfer ideas from in the comments.
• The Undead Are Coming!! A reply to Johnn – My answer was too big to reasonably put in a comment (and needed some organization to be clear), so I put it in an extra blog post. Don’t miss the comments for extra clarification.
• 25 Cleric Character Hooks – Johnn concludes his character hooks series with this entry that offers 25 Cleric Character Hooks.
• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive – I discuss prophecies within RPGs, the benefits, the pitfalls, and how to avoid the problems. Don’t skip the comments, there are some additional techniques worth considering described there. And once again, we have feedback from someone who employed the techniques I offer and came up with a great result, so you know it works!
• “Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?”: A New idea for handling “wild luck” in D&D – I come up with a new idea for using luck in an RPG, especially in D&D.
• May the camels of 1,000 fleas – wait, that’s not right: Improving Curses in 3.x – I reinvent the rules for Curses in 3.x/Pathfinder to add to its roleplaying potential, then offer 60 Curses to fire the imagination.
• Undead Foe Generator – The last of Johnn’s Q-workshop dice articles is all about giving personality to the undead. The contest was over long ago, but the tables are still just as functional. This article was inspired by the Red and black Skull Dice set which appears to be no longer available (the link is to Q-Workshop’s home page).
• Encounters With Meaning Part Three of my series Creating ecology-based random encounters applies the processes developed in earlier parts of the series and analogous theory to create encounter tables for Urban Settings and Dungeon Settings, and then wraps the series with integrating random encounters with your plotlines to infuse them with meaning. Along the way, I explore some strange but related back alleys, like the ecology of Undeath, and Devils & Demons.
• The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene – Another behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Assassin’s Amulet, this post contains my recollection of the creative process that led to the rather unique Deity Of Death that is central to the content of the e-book. It also serves as a teaser for the next article, and places it into some sort of context.
• Cyrene Revealed: an excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet – Another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, a heavily-edited description of the Deity herself.
• The Remembrance Of The Disquiet Dead: A Spooky Spot and Campaign Premise – For the October 2013 Blog Carnival I offer a cemetery that follows the PCs wherever they go. Explaining the cause of the phenomena led to three or four different interpretations, each with their own resolution to the series of encounters, so this will fit into more than one type of campaign.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” Series takes my revised version of the draft scale from part 1 and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.
• Shadows In The Darkness – The nature of True Evil – My pulp co-GM and I debate and discuss the question of what is “Absolute Evil”? The goal was to define a functional answer that was universal in nature. Did we get there in the end? Well, kinda…
• Disease and Despair – the healing-resistant nightmare – I start this fantasy-oriented nightmare scenario by looking at the historical impact of disease, and then the ramifications of the existence of the low-level D&D Spell, “Cure Disease”. Those show that from this factor alone, the historical accuracy of fantasy games would be severely impacted, infusing social changes from the reformation and population dynamics closer to those of the 19th or early 20th centuries. With that, and a quick review of the Black Death and its impact, I briefly discuss an article I wrote for Roleplaying Tips, Putting The Fear Back Into Disease (still available, I just checked), all as foundation for what follows: What would happen if a Cure Disease-resistant disease arose? To call the results dystopian is like calling The Great Wall Of China a “backyard fence”. Ironically, I also explain that if the GM has adopted the “Putting The Fear Back” approach, the impact would be minimal! I then look at how to integrate this social disintegration – and the responsibility for fixing things – can integrate with an existing campaign, before showing that having the disease also be Heal-resistant is actually less disruptive than the alternative!
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• What Empowers A Curse and other dangerous questions – For the September 2015 Blog Carnival, I ask “What empowers a Curse” in D&D / Pathfinder and find that the answer has some profound implications, potentially touching on everything from Cosmology to why Gods need congregations. Although I talk down the value of a curse sub-system within the game mechanics, I’ve actually found it necessary to craft one for an as-yet-unpublished (Jan 2019) series of articles.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – I describe in detail the concepts and processes involved in one of my most useful creative tools. What makes this technique so powerful is a method of free association that is especially capable of direction and stepwise refinement. In effect, you shake ideas loose and then shape them into useful constructions. There are two primary uses for the tool: reinventing old content that has reached its use-by date, and inventing new game content. The list of subjects to which the tool has been applied also determined where in the blogdex this article should be listed: Characterization, PCs, NPCs, Villains, Races, Societies, Character Classes, Theologies, Organizations, Deities, Plots, Subplots, and Plot Threads. At the end of the article, I briefly review Fantasy Coins’ Kickstarter campaign for their Treasure Chests, which continued the trend of mostly backing winners.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• The Shape Of Strange is the third part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. This time I loosen the reader’s mental muscles by pointing out the impact on geology and agriculture of being able to erect a handy portal, again recapitulate the basics, and then tackle the next five Big Ideas, which all have the theme of “Reshaping Reality,” starting with #11, A Direct Connection To The Afterlife (there’s nothing in human society that I could think of that would be unaffected!); #12, Portal Transfiguration (in which travel through a portal is akin to the effects that befell Alice in Wonderland); #13, Socio-Ethical Morphology through Portal Networks (alternate worlds, everything from Discworld to Mirror, Mirror); #14, Portals Can Only Connect To Variant Planar Topologies (all Portals led to cosmologies that have only one thing in common – they are all Different to the one that the PCs live in – a world in which a coalition of Water and Air elementals led by General Ulysses S. Grant is fighting a terrible civil war with Fire Elementals over the enslavement of Earth Elementals? Or maybe they are trying to win their independence from the Fire Elementals and are being led by General George Washington?). Idea #15, Variable Difficulty Portals, then gets examined in depth, in fact about half the article is devoted to the subject, which asks, “why should all destinations be equally accessible by Portal or Gate? Why shouldn’t there be lines of least resistance, and to reach a more remote destination, the additional resistance must be forcibly overcome? Why shouldn’t travel to a more remote destination be akin to climbing a hill – with several hundred pounds of gear on your back?.” The problem is that the reshaping of the cosmos by several of these options is totally out-of-control; this mechanism restores that control to the GM. I give a detailed explanation of how to map out the lines of least resistance in a practical manner using a scrabble board or something similar (a chess board doesn’t have enough spaces).
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.
• As part of the writeup of Énorme Force, one of the villains from the campaign, I give a thumbnail version of the origins of Blackwing in Pieces of Creation: Énorme Force. This article also explains (very briefly) some of the game physics including the basis of magic and psionics and the equivalent of clerical powers within the campaign.
• This pair are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.

Magic, Sorcery, & The Arcane

This category includes magic items, especially in the theoretical or general. Specific magic items may not be included if they don’t have sufficient bearing on that defiition; such will be found in the “Rewards” section of the Adventures page.

• See Also the “Money & Wealth” section below.

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• All Is Three: A 3.x Fantasy Campaign Premise – I offer an original but unfinished campaign idea, fleshing it out in the course of the article as an example of how I go about designing a campaign.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• Part Seven of Johnn’s series about City Government Power Bases gets into Magic and Psionics as a source of authority.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.
• 63 Wizard Hooks, part of the Character Hooks series. But there are actually 81 plot hooks (as of this writing) by the time you count the ones in the comments.
• 54 Sorcerer Hooks, part of the Character Hooks series. Guest Contributor Bobby Catdragon offers 54 hooks for the Sorcerer character class. Readers take the tally to 59.
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Make It Sparkle Like Gold Dust – Johnn describes his approach to GMing spell interactions and turning them into plot elements within the game. This is part one of two. I still don’t think I’ve extracted all the good juices from this article for use in my own campaigns :)
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Polish Till It Gleams – Part two of Johnn’s article on turning spells into plot elements within a campaign.
• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive – I discuss prophecies within RPGs, the benefits, the pitfalls, and how to avoid the problems. Don’t skip the comments, there are some additional techniques worth considering described there. And once again, we have feedback from someone who employed the techniques I offer and came up with a great result, so you know it works!
• A Rational Intuition – The differences between instinct and intelligence, and how different game systems handle the former.
• Ask The GMs: When players make themselves immune, remember that “Resistance Is Futile” – How do you handle PCs that seem to be immune to magic?
• It’s Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Game Fraud and Counter-Fraud in RPGs – In a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world, how might people cheat at games of chance – and what would casinos have to do to stop them?
• Broadening Magical Horizons: Some Feats from Fumanor and Shards Of Divinity – 27 Original feats from my D&D campaigns are offered in four categories: Reducing Metamagics, Enchantment Metamagics, General Metamagics, and General Magic-related Feats. These of course are just the tip of the iceberg, one day I’ll pull out another bunch of them.
• “Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?”: A New idea for handling “wild luck” in D&D – I come up with a new idea for using luck in an RPG, especially in D&D.
• “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope – I examine the fundamental concepts that underpin skill checks and “difficulty targets” using D&D 3.x as an example and find multiple answers depending on your assumptions – and expose flaws in the 3.x mechanic along the way. Despite my making a mistake in the article (check the comments) I stand by the conclusions. This is something that is important for every GM to understand regardless of which game system they are using.
• Relatively Uncertain: Taking Control of Game Physics – I take a close look at game physics – why you need one, the assumptions that underpin them, downsides, and how to create a manageable one.
• With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality – I talk about ways to give objects personalities in RPGs – and why.
• 6 Ways to Enhance Magic Items – Johnn’s article offers exactly what it says on the label. There are some “fun” ideas and important thoughts in the comments.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 1 – As part of the blog carnival, I offer an excerpt from one of the free bonus eBooks that are part of the Assassin’s Amulet package. Legacy Items are a new form of magic item, and the bonus eBook aims to give players everything they need to know about how they work.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 2 – The second part of the two-part excerpt, which discusses the powers of Legacy Items – from a Player’s point of view. This should all have been one article, it was split for practical reasons, so I haven’t counted this second half toward the overall total.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic – I consider just what “loot” might be, and how it can be used as a plot mechanic. There’s a link to an interesting related article in the comments.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items – As a followup to an Ask-The-GMs question I was asked what I want to do when players want to sell magic items. The article starts by examining the economic foundations of fantasy societies, goes on to provide systems for determining how many people can afford what, and then looks into the population density of levelled characters (very D&D) before showing that the standard assumptions built into most Fantasy games simply don’t work. With all that as preamble, I then provide three basic answers to the original question.
• Why I Fell In Love with Staves Again After 10 Years (PFRPG) – Johnn returns to Campaign Mastery with this article on how Staves have changed in the Pathfinder game system – and why the changes are good for his campaign. This was part of the Blog Carnival.
• October Blog Carnival Wrap-up: A cavalcade of posts about goodies – The Blog carnival produced a huge number of great entries. I review them all. There are a couple of clarifications in the comments in response to what I had to say, and at least one more article worth reading on the subject.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 – In part four of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time I offer an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.
• The Fields Of Magic – “What is Magic?” is one of the Big Questions that I recommend every Fantasy GM spend at least some time contemplating, because there are two very practical questions that can only result from a definitive answer: “What can magic do?” and “What can be done to magic?”. After quantifying the need in greater detail, I show how to create an answer, then examine that answer for manifestations and consequences that need to be expressed in changes to the base D&D/Pathfinder rules.
• A Population Of Dinosaurs and the impact on RPG ecologies – I get curious about how many species of dinosaur there were, so I devise some calculations to answer the question. That might be interesting enough in its own right, but then I see how quickly genetic engineering could produce new (well-adapted) species. This is so interesting that it holds my attention until I realize that it has other ecological value to the GMs of D&D / Pathfinder – for example, the same process could be used to tell you how long Dragons have lived in a Fantasy environment just by factoring in their average lifespan and the number of different varieties. And if there isn’t enough time, that just means that there must have been “intervention” of some kind in the history of dragon-kind. Or elves. Or… you get the idea.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• As part of the writeup of Énorme Force, one of the villains from the campaign, I give a thumbnail version of the origins of Blackwing in Pieces of Creation: Énorme Force. This article also explains (very briefly) some of the game physics including the basis of magic and psionics and the equivalent of clerical powers within the campaign.

The “Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required” series

This is an Ask-The-GMs response that was too large for three parts to contain! The subject is to examine all sides of the Spell Components debate, find functional solutions that involve a rating for rarity / difficulty of obtaining, devise means of populating those strata of Components, and finally, to offer some items from the upper (more rarified) end of the scale.

• Pt 1: The Sales Pitch is all about my convincing myself that spell components were worth the trouble. Most GMs immediate response to the article briefing would be, “Why Bother”? In answer to that question, I provide five answers to the question, but don’t find any of them initially convincing, especially in light of the “Eschew Material Component” Metamagic Feat. An in-depth analysis of the mundane, non-magical item, “The Spell Component Pouch” unlocks the puzzle and leaves no doubt – every D&D / Pathfinder campaign either needs a house rule eliminating spell components as a factor of concern, or it needs a House Rule eliminating or revising this item. With it in its current form, it is impossible for Spell Components to be taken seriously. Since this analysis also finds conceptual issues with the item big enough to drive a Mystic Mountain through, I’m forced to advise the latter. So that’s what the article does. I look at mutliple ways of revising the concept, find multiple consequences of value to a campaign that result, some of which mandate the rating system for rarity, and that leaves me (and most readers who followed along) convinced of the answer to that initial question. Next, I revise and review the rarity scales and propose rules to implement them into a campaign and make them relevant (which also unleashes all those side-benefits discussed earlier). Finally, I offer three solutions to the bookkeeping tedium that makes most GMs ask “Who Cares” in the first place – then postcript that with some extra tantalizing applications.
  
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts takes my revised version of the draft scale and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.
  
• Pt 3: Tab A into Slot B provides a template for creating exotic spell components and then dives into some examples: Perfect Octarine (carries Cosmological implications), Etherial Alloy (carries more Cosmological implications), Firesphere (logically consistent with the preceding two, same implications), Ghostwood (carries Cosmological implications, Life & Death implications, and plot implications; mandates sentient trees; consistent with Positive and Negative Planes being two poles of a single structure), Heavenly Airs (profound implications for Death & The Afterlife, profound plot implications). After detailing those 5, I was completely out of time…
  
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.

The “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series

This series holds the unique distinction of being pivotal to not one but two Blog Carnivals in close succession. It was my major entry in the November 2015 Carnival (which I was also hosting) on the subject of “The Unexpected”, and then used as inspiration for the January 2016 Blog Carnival on “Gates and Portals”. The series takes the fundamental concepts of Gates and Portals and their impact on a game environment, and gives them a thorough shake to see what falls out of their pockets, then reconstructs them conceptually from the ground up to discover a whole heap of unexpected twists and turns that can be applied to make them Very different to expectations, capable of reshaping a Cosmology, literally, politically, socially, economically, militarily, and figuratively – which should come as no surprise, “Celestial Morphology” literally means “The Shape Of The Heavens,” after all. Each part examines five mind-bending ideas for the GM to consider. I was also determined to throw a “little extra advice” into each part as a bonus. Written principally for D&D / Pathfinder, but full of ideas that can be employed in other game systems.

• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”
• Destination Incognita is the second part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. After loosening the reader’s mental muscles up with the thought that the presence of a Portal or Gate turns every terrestrial defense into a Maginot Line, I briefly recap the six parameters described in Part 1 of the series, before tackling the next 5 big ideas. The common theme to these ideas is “Travel into the Unknown”: #6, The concept of a Grand Celestial Nexus to multiple planes (What if the PC’s world was the only one? And does the title “Prime Material Plane” imply that there are secondary material planes out there somewhere? And what if the Grand Celestial Nexus was actually Hades, or somewhere else?); #7, Destinationally-Unstable Portals and some further ways to use them (What if Portals – when established – always connect with the nearest Portal already in existence by default, causing the entire network to reshuffle? And, What is it about travelers that makes everything else immune to being sucked through an entrance and out the other end?); #8, For Every Portal, there is an Equal and Opposite Portal opened (this poses fundamental, radical and immediately critical cosmological questions!); #9, For Every Portal, There Is Another That Connects Two Random Planes At Random Points (Cosmology as Molecular Models! Chain Reactions! Polymers and Cataclysts! And More!); #10, The Wound In Reality, treats portals as analogous to physical wounds to a human (which brings the following analogous phenomena into play: 1. Shape/Nature of Wound, including Bruises, 2. Depth Of Wound, 3. Healing of Wounds, 4. Surgical Intervention, 5. Scarring of wounds, 6. Growth of skin, 7. Infection of Wounds, 8. Immunity and Resistance Processes, 9. Pharmaceutical Assistance, and 10. Other forms of skin harm, especially Skin Cancer and Burns). Along the way, many campaign and plot premises are tossed out for consideration, and I display the “Analogy Technique” for creating strange and distinctive phenomena.
• The Shape Of Strange is the third part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. This time I loosen the reader’s mental muscles by pointing out the impact on geology and agriculture of being able to erect a handy portal, again recapitulate the basics, and then tackle the next five Big Ideas, which all have the theme of “Reshaping Reality,” starting with #11, A Direct Connection To The Afterlife (there’s nothing in human society that I could think of that would be unaffected!); #12, Portal Transfiguration (in which travel through a portal is akin to the effects that befell Alice in Wonderland); #13, Socio-Ethical Morphology through Portal Networks (alternate worlds, everything from Discworld to Mirror, Mirror); #14, Portals Can Only Connect To Variant Planar Topologies (all Portals led to cosmologies that have only one thing in common – they are all Different to the one that the PCs live in – a world in which a coalition of Water and Air elementals led by General Ulysses S. Grant is fighting a terrible civil war with Fire Elementals over the enslavement of Earth Elementals? Or maybe they are trying to win their independence from the Fire Elementals and are being led by General George Washington?). Idea #15, Variable Difficulty Portals, then gets examined in depth, in fact about half the article is devoted to the subject, which asks, “why should all destinations be equally accessible by Portal or Gate? Why shouldn’t there be lines of least resistance, and to reach a more remote destination, the additional resistance must be forcibly overcome? Why shouldn’t travel to a more remote destination be akin to climbing a hill – with several hundred pounds of gear on your back?.” The problem is that the reshaping of the cosmos by several of these options is totally out-of-control; this mechanism restores that control to the GM. I give a detailed explanation of how to map out the lines of least resistance in a practical manner using a scrabble board or something similar (a chess board doesn’t have enough spaces).
• Feel The Burn is the final part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. In my introduction to this part, I start with Mutually-Assured Destruction by Portal and go to a means of sucking dry any magic items that the PCs shouldn’t have at this level before once again recapitulating the basic parameters. The theme of this final quintet is “Energy Flow In Transit” – as though you were entering a portal at one altitude and exiting at another, gaining potential energy in the process, or vice-versa: #16, Gaining Energy In Transit, has two subtypes, “Balanced” and “Unbalanced” (and be warned, some of these hit game physics with a two-by-four, and in the course of discussing the various “energy forms” that could be gained, I offer up some house rules for making Negative Energy Levels Scary,, which they aren’t in standard D&D / Pathfinder); #17 flips the coin to consider Losing Energy In Transit; #18 considers Portals as Planar Batteries (a possibility that I’ve actually used in one of my campaigns, and attached to a couple of really interesting external links – both still valid, I just checked 5/1/19); and finally, #19 and #20, which look at the momentum of events as a kind of energy (a concept players in my Zenith-3 campaign will be familiar with) that can be gained, lost, or inverted during transit.

Money & Wealth

Includes Economics & Valuables, and contains general information about practices and ethics that might be applicable to businesses and employers within a game.

• How Much Is That Warhorse In The Window? – Pricing Of Goods in D&D – After recommending “…And A 10-foot Pole” in a previous article, I look at the problems of converting its prices to the D&D scale and expose unexpected problems and complications. Then I share my system for converting the prices given, and a couple of alternatives (including to standard 3.x/Pathfinder).
• Coinage in Fumanor: Windows into a campaign background – I expand on some material that I left out of How Much Is That Warhorse In The Window? – Pricing Of Goods in D&D because it’s a good example of how to take a section of the rules and turn them into a roleplaying element. This is a warts-and-all analysis – what choices were made and why, what worked, and what didn’t.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items – As a followup to an Ask-The-GMs question I was asked what I want to do when players want to sell magic items. The article starts by examining the economic foundations of fantasy societies, goes on to provide systems for determining how many people can afford what, and then looks into the population density of levelled characters (very D&D) before showing that the standard assumptions built into most Fantasy games simply don’t work. With all that as preamble, I then provide three basic answers to the original question.
• Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign – I break down the general concept of “Science Fiction” into 21 specific subgenres and look at each from a gaming perspective. As examples, I offer 11 specific sci-fi campaign premises. Along the way, I give readers a copy of “Buy Low, Sell High”, a set of quick game rules I wrote for handling Trade in Traveller, which can be easily adapted to other campaign genres.
• Ethics For Sale? – The Role of Native Advertising – Inspired by a mini-documentary on the subject, I look at Native Advertising, it’s implications for society, media, publishing, and RPGs. This is an especially fascinating article to re-read in light of the whole “Fake News” obsession certain quarters have.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Signs and Signatures: An essay on uniqueness of style – After discussing signatures, and the many ways the term can be used to mean vaguely the same thing, and the relevance to craftsmen in RPGs, I postulate that each GM develops his own “signature” GMing style – that can contain flaws and unwanted elements that should be excised. This is more of a ‘think’ piece, not offering any real advice on how to do so, largely because it was a last-minute fill-in. As such, it constitutes a more literal interpretation of “advice” than is usually the case. Hungry, at Ravenous Roleplaying, links my musings to GM Feedback. Readers may find his thoughts relevant.
• Pt 1: The Sales Pitch of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” series is all about my convincing myself that spell components were worth the trouble. Most GMs immediate response to the article briefing would be, “Why Bother”? In answer to that question, I provide five answers to the question, but don’t find any of them initially convincing, especially in light of the “Eschew Material Component” Metamagic Feat. An in-depth analysis of the mundane, non-magical item, “The Spell Component Pouch” unlocks the puzzle and leaves no doubt – every D&D / Pathfinder campaign either needs a house rule eliminating spell components as a factor of concern, or it needs a House Rule eliminating or revising this item. With it in its current form, it is impossible for Spell Components to be taken seriously. Since this analysis also finds conceptual issues with the item big enough to drive a Mystic Mountain through, I’m forced to advise the latter. So that’s what the article does. I look at mutliple ways of revising the concept, find multiple consequences of value to a campaign that result, some of which mandate the rating system for rarity, and that leaves me (and most readers who followed along) convinced of the answer to that initial question. Next, I revise and review the rarity scales and propose rules to implement them into a campaign and make them relevant (which also unleashes all those side-benefits discussed earlier). Finally, I offer three solutions to the bookkeeping tedium that makes most GMs ask “Who Cares” in the first place – then postcript that with some extra tantalizing applications.
• Pt 3: Tab A into Slot B provides a template for creating exotic spell components and then dives into some examples: Perfect Octarine (carries Cosmological implications), Etherial Alloy (carries more Cosmological implications), Firesphere (logically consistent with the preceding two, same implications), Ghostwood (carries Cosmological implications, Life & Death implications, and plot implications; mandates sentient trees; consistent with Positive and Negative Planes being two poles of a single structure), Heavenly Airs (profound implications for Death & The Afterlife, profound plot implications). Many of these substances are extremely valuable. After detailing those 5, I was completely out of time…
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”
• Sequential Bus Theory and why it matters to GMs – I start by looking at the logic (some might say, ‘Illogic’) of bus timetables and why any given bus is almost always early or late. I then use the phenomenon of passangers getting on or off the bus to create a means of getting rid of monty haulism once and for all, and the distribution of game rewards like wealth and treasure, and (finally) consider a hypothetical way of letting PCs benefit from good character design without coming to totally dominate combat. That last is more of a thought experiment, not yet ready to be seriously advocated.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.

Cities & Architecture

Includes Geography & Environment. Note that a lot of the advice contained within these articles will scale – to nations in one direction, and villages in the other.

• Pillars Of Architecture: Some Thoughts On The Construction Of Cities – I reflect on simulating the way cities grow and how to incorporate this process into the mapping of the city. I still intend to follow this up with an example at some point.
• Architecture of Riddleport Inspires Plots – Johnn describes how he is using the architecture within the city of Riddleport to enhance his game, and (by example), how you can do the same for yours.
• Brick By Brick: Base Rules Made Easy – I had spent years trying to formulate a simple and flexible set of base construction rules, seeing idea after idea crumble into inefficient ruin. Then this idea seemed to come out of nowhere; I now recognize that it was inspired by the way I design and write blog articles. Designed for the Hero System, but with a section on converting it to other systems, and flexible enough to be a success in any of them. I’m particularly proud of these rules.
• Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over 5,000,000 – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10.
• Ergonomics and the Non-human – As the title suggests, this shows simple techniques for applying the principles of ergonomics to non-human physiologies, showing how everything from furniture to staircases is affected. Elves are studied as an example.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – After foolishly mentioning the possibility in “Ergonomics and the Non-human” (above), I got lots of requests for giving Dwarves the same treatment. One reason I was readily persuadable was that while many races (including Elves) had been featured in the Orcs And Elves series (see the subsection below), Dwarves weren’t one of them. One day there will be a part three, applying the principles to sentient octopi, squid, and the like.
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping.
• Thatch and Confusion – creating a village – “for a fantasy RPG” is what’s missing from this article title. Don’t miss the articles at the bottom of the page, which show that I got a little carried away in the writing – because I wanted to be able to set an adventure in my example village, I built it accordingly, but failed to note where you should stop if you don’t want to do that. There are also some great reader contributions there, including a reader-supplied list of 100 points of conflict around which to build your village. I’m including this article in this section because it discusses larger population centers briefly, and the process (modified as described in the article) scales up.
• Memorials To History – an ‘a good name’ extra – I expand the “A good name is hard to find” series by pointing out that inn and town names can be conduits to the campaign background. I then descuss integrating that conduit, and the history that flows through it, into an adventure. A very short post by Campaign Mastery standards.
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Stride The Earth in 7-league boots: Travel (and Maps) in FRPG Pt 2 – I look at the concept of a league, and what 7-league boots are therefore capable of. I then discuss map scales, making the radical suggestion that travel time instead of distance be the scale. I then use those maps to put the whole concept of 7-league boots into perspective. I then turn my attention to the map-making techniques that would be used in-game, and the resulting error rates in positioning of locations, and then feed that back into the 7-league boot concept, before applying the error rates to the standard scales that I recommended earlier in the article.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• Ask The GMs: On Big Dungeons – Johnn and I both offer advice on handling a big dungeon, then my fellow GMs rip that advice to shreds, forcing me to discover and solve the real issue with Big Dungeons (and other larger settings like Cities). Big is not necessarily better, but it can be – if approached in the right way by the author and the GM.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”
• Destination Incognita is the second part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. After loosening the reader’s mental muscles up with the thought that the presence of a Portal or Gate turns every terrestrial defense into a Maginot Line, I briefly recap the six parameters described in Part 1 of the series, before tackling the next 5 big ideas. The common theme to these ideas is “Travel into the Unknown”: #6, The concept of a Grand Celestial Nexus to multiple planes (What if the PC’s world was the only one? And does the title “Prime Material Plane” imply that there are secondary material planes out there somewhere? And what if the Grand Celestial Nexus was actually Hades, or somewhere else?); #7, Destinationally-Unstable Portals and some further ways to use them (What if Portals – when established – always connect with the nearest Portal already in existence by default, causing the entire network to reshuffle? And, What is it about travelers that makes everything else immune to being sucked through an entrance and out the other end?); #8, For Every Portal, there is an Equal and Opposite Portal opened (this poses fundamental, radical and immediately critical cosmological questions!); #9, For Every Portal, There Is Another That Connects Two Random Planes At Random Points (Cosmology as Molecular Models! Chain Reactions! Polymers and Cataclysts! And More!); #10, The Wound In Reality, treats portals as analogous to physical wounds to a human (which brings the following analogous phenomena into play: 1. Shape/Nature of Wound, including Bruises, 2. Depth Of Wound, 3. Healing of Wounds, 4. Surgical Intervention, 5. Scarring of wounds, 6. Growth of skin, 7. Infection of Wounds, 8. Immunity and Resistance Processes, 9. Pharmaceutical Assistance, and 10. Other forms of skin harm, especially Skin Cancer and Burns). Along the way, many campaign and plot premises are tossed out for consideration, and I display the “Analogy Technique” for creating strange and distinctive phenomena.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

The “Mike’s Fantasy Tavern Generator” series

In the course of the “Basics For Beginners” Series, I promised a Tavern generator unlike everything else out there. This is what I was talking about – I can’t tell you how many combinations are possible, only that it’s less than 695,335,579,885,000,000,000,000,000 – a wholly preposterous number. It should be noted that while the results are extremely detailed, the intention is for anything that isn’t necessary to get discarded. The last part published is entitled “All Over Bar The Shouting”; it was supposed to be followed by three more articles, “The Shouting at the Palomino And Fox”, “The Shouting at the Spotted Parrot”, and “The Shouting at the Robber’s End”, which would complete the examples, but time and health never permitted these to be more than half-completed. It would probably take several weeks just to catch up with where I was up to, at this point. But, one day…

• The Palomino and Fox (and other establishments) – Part 1 of the series deals with the physical construction of the Tavern or Inn using 6 rolls: Overall Size, Common Room Size, Common Room Table Size, Kitchen Size, Meals (nature, quality & price), and Walls. There’s a discussion of terminology, and another regarding meal quality and what it means. I then start three examples – The Palomino and Fox, The Spotted Parrot, and The Robber’s End.
• The Spotted Parrot (and other establishments) – Part 2 deals with the internal ambience of the establishment being generated, again using 6 tables. The first deals with wall decorations, the second with decorations behind/above the bar, the third determines the nature and quality of the beverage(s) on sale (which begins to hint at the clientele), the fourth covers the accommodations available in detail (which hints at which part of town the tavern is located in), there are notes on the appropriate “quality” interpretation, the skill of the barman, and finally, the barman’s personality. The article concludes by continuing the three examples from the first part, and for which the first three articles were named.
• The Robber’s End (and other establishments) – The third part of the series deals with the family of the barman/innkeeper. We start with Children In Residence, which builds in all sorts of demographics. There are then 3 sub-tables dealing with the families of co-owners, the presence of parents and parents-in-law, and the third deals with relatives other than parents and children. After determining the workforce that the barman/innkeeper can call upon for free, because they are dependant on him and the income that the business generates, Table 14 determines the total staff requirements and deducts the earlier results to determine how many employees the tavern/inn requires (and can be generally assumed to have). Table 15 then uses the Tavern Size to determine what entertainments (if any) the tavern or inn offers. The example taverns then continue, including a mechanism for simulating the rolling of the deck on the Spotted Parrot.
• Going Down To The Pub – Part 4 of the series introduces the final tables and worksheets that are intended to complete the design and then provides Worksheet 16, which calculates the ground floor spaces and some basics about the layout. The three examples then continue.
• Draw Another Pint – Part 5 of the series uses a lot of small tables and worksheets to determine the second level of the inn or tavern, which is usually where the owners reside, and where there will be guest accommodations if the tavern is also an inn. That is then interrupted to determine the demand for the meals (i.e. how crowded is the place at mealtimes), factoring in location relative to passing traffic, and a number of other important factors. This becomes important because if the kitchens are busy feeding paying customers, they aren’t providing for guests; and that permits a determination to be made of the usual guest numbers experienced, and eventually, the footprint of the accommodation level. Unlike the previous parts, there simply wasn’t room to continue the examples in this part.
• All Over Bar The Shouting – the title has a double-meaning because in Australian slang, to buy a round of drinks for the group with whom you are drinking is a “shout”. This part of the series completes the worksheets and processes involved in generating a complete tavern, calculating everything from the peak density of patrons in the common area, the total patronage, the popularity of the bar or inn, when the peak demands will be, and so on. I then offer advice on determining the profitability of the business overall (in case PCs ever come into posession of such). Once again, there wasn’t room to complete the examples.

Politics

• See also some of the entries in the Socities & Nations section, below.

• Pulling That Lever: The Selection Of Leaders In RPG Societies – How are leaders in an RPG society selected – and what does that say about who they are? I had a lot of fun speculating on suggestions and alternatives raised by other contributors in the comments! Anyone interested in this subject should also check out Johnn’s subsequent series City Government Power Bases considering what might give a city government and its leading citizens their power and authority, detailed in the preceding Blogdex section.
• Ask The GMs: How to survive political games with paranoia and intrigue – The question might concern a Vampire The Masquerade campaign, but Johnn and I look beyond that to offer advice on how to handle games filled with in-game politics. With a postscript piece of advice in the comments.
• Seven Circles Of Hell – Creating Politics for an RPG – Looks at the basics of political relations between similarly-scaled entities, using Nations and Kingdoms, but the results scale both up and down. Each “Circle” is actually a phase in the overall process aimed at complicating whatever you might already have created in earlier “Circles”, often making difficult decisions with inadequate foundations. That’s where “Hell” fits into the picture.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”

The “City Government Power Bases” series

Over the course of this 9-part series, Johnn looks at what might give a city government and its leading citizens their power and authority, which dovetails very nicely with my earlier article on the ways in which leaders are selected; the latter was more about nations than cities, but scales perfectly well. I’ve always meant to write more parts to this series, and Johnn has given his blessing to that endeavor. One of these days I’ll get around to it.

• In Part one of the series he lays out the general principles he will be using, this article is essential reading for the rest of the series.
• Part Two examines the power bases of The Law and affiliations;
• Part Three covers Character and Social Classes;
• Part Four deals with Popularity and Leadership;
• Part Five concerns Social Leverage, Marriage, and Wealth;
• Part Six covers Wars and Military Authority;
• Part Seven gets into Magic and Psionics as a source of authority;
• Part Eight covers Religion; and finally,
• Part Nine covers Land.

Societies & Nations

Note that much of the advice in this section will scale to cities and smaller settlements.

• Distilled Cultural Essence – My first major series at Campaign Mastery offers a simple technique for the generation of unique and original cultures for use within a game (in part 1) and ways to display that uniqueness to the players in parts 2, 3, and 4. Originally a pair of articles, so that’s how it’s counted here, not as four parts.
• Lore Enforcement: The Legal System in an RPG – Thinking about the legal systems that need to be present in an RPG environment and some of the many variations that are possible – and important – in how they work.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Thinking about nations in RPGs – I supplement the Distilled Cultural Essence series with this article examining how a nation’s reputation on the sporting field both derives from and reflects the national reputation and ‘personality’ in other areas. Along the way I display plenty of parochial pride in my own nation’s achievements (with a lot of respect for the achievements of others). Then in the comments, I show how to reverse-engineer the process of creating an interesting character to generate an interesting nation for your RPGs.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the series points out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign (and lists them) – something that the players themselves would only peripherally have been aware of. There’s also a demonstration of how a common cultural foundation can unify the look-and-feel of a place during the introduction to and adventures within, The Golden Empire.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Two: Communities and Politics – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at the social and human/demi-human landscape of a game world.
• The poetry of meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity – I argue that the literal translations of specific words can offer insight into national and cultural identities – then reverse the relationship to turn the concept into a tool for developing cultures and nations.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items – As a followup to an Ask-The-GMs question I was asked what I want to do when players want to sell magic items. The article starts by examining the economic foundations of fantasy societies, goes on to provide systems for determining how many people can afford what, and then looks into the population density of levelled characters (very D&D) before showing that the standard assumptions built into most Fantasy games simply don’t work. With all that as preamble, I then provide three basic answers to the original question. These answers have very strong implications for the fantasy society and it’s economy.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.
• Taming The Wild Frontiers – This article starts out as a think-piece inspired by the oft-cited comparison between the early internet and the American Wild West and marches headlong into the subtle but profound impact on RPGs of Political Correctness and then the socio-political models on which most Sci-fi games (and novels!) are traditionally based – and showing that there have been opportunities missed on all sides, and that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, in particular serious examination of the issues surrounding colonialism, equality, and exploitation. This article struck a chord with a lot of readers; one even told me that using it, he finally understood what he had been missing in modern games that turned him back towards “old-school” gaming.
• Ergonomics and the Non-human – As the title suggests, this shows simple techniques for applying the principles of ergonomics to non-human physiologies, showing how everything from furniture to staircases is affected. Elves are studied as an example.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – After foolishly mentioning the possibility in “Ergonomics and the Non-human” (above), I got lots of requests for giving Dwarves the same treatment. One reason I was readily persuadable was that while many races (including Elves) had been featured in the Orcs And Elves series (see the subsection below), Dwarves weren’t one of them. One day there will be a part three, applying the principles to sentient octopi, squid, and the like.
• Who Are You? – An original character naming approach – Naming patterns are generally ubiquitous within and unique to a society – until the modern era, anyway. Some misheard commentary on TV and this fact inspired a new naming pattern – one that comes close to encapsulating an entire biography into the name. This idea can only reasonably be used in Fantasy and Sci-Fi campaigns. The article is included here because of the implications for the society that sees this as a reasonable approach to names.
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles.
• The Thinking Man’s Guide to Intelligence for Players and GMs – I presage this article with a drop-in editorial concerning what has become known as the Lindt Cafe Seige. I suspect that the huge number of likes this article got on social media at the time had more to do with that editorial than with the content. That content: Practical advice on how to roleplay characters of different Intelligence levels, both PCs and NPCs. The categories discussed are Low Intelligence, Very Low Intelligence, and Very High Intelligence. It is assumed that characters with “Normal” Intelligence require no modification in playing style to represent that intelligence. Readers who find this interesting and/or useful should also check out the two-part article on Charisma linked to in the opening paragraphs, which also (in part 2) demonstrates how to build general perceptions of a race or class into a social structure through house rules.
• Phase 4: Development from the “New Beginnings” series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” Series takes my revised version of the draft scale from part 1 and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• Disease and Despair – the healing-resistant nightmare – I start this fantasy-oriented nightmare scenario by looking at the historical impact of disease, and then the ramifications of the existence of the low-level D&D Spell, “Cure Disease”. Those show that from this factor alone, the historical accuracy of fantasy games would be severely impacted, infusing social changes from the reformation and population dynamics closer to those of the 19th or early 20th centuries. With that, and a quick review of the Black Death and its impact, I briefly discuss an article I wrote for Roleplaying Tips, Putting The Fear Back Into Disease (still available, I just checked), all as foundation for what follows: What would happen if a Cure Disease-resistant disease arose? To call the results dystopian is like calling The Great Wall Of China a “backyard fence”. Ironically, I also explain that if the GM has adopted the “Putting The Fear Back” approach, the impact would be minimal! I then look at how to integrate this social disintegration – and the responsibility for fixing things – can integrate with an existing campaign, before showing that having the disease also be Heal-resistant is actually less disruptive than the alternative!
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – I describe in detail the concepts and processes involved in one of my most useful creative tools. What makes this technique so powerful is a method of free association that is especially capable of direction and stepwise refinement. In effect, you shake ideas loose and then shape them into useful constructions. There are two primary uses for the tool: reinventing old content that has reached its use-by date, and inventing new game content. The list of subjects to which the tool has been applied also determined where in the blogdex this article should be listed: Characterization, PCs, NPCs, Villains, Races, Societies, Character Classes, Theologies, Organizations, Deities, Plots, Subplots, and Plot Threads. At the end of the article, I briefly review Fantasy Coins’ Kickstarter campaign for their Treasure Chests, which continued the trend of mostly backing winners.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

Races

• Races Should make a Difference – Johnn suggests ways in which a race’s presence or absence should affect your game world.
• The Age Of An Elf: Demographics of the long-lived – I look at the population dynamics of longer-lived species and aging in RPGs, and find problems with the standard D&D model. The process permits an assessment of the social impact that the longer lifespans and resulting demographics have, and offer ways of interpreting or modifying the results and the base assumptions to achieve the society that you want in your game. The contributions and discussion in the comments are a total greater length than the article itself, and not to be missed if this subject is relevant to your campaign.
• Digging into Difference: A review of The Unconventional Dwarf – The Unconventional Dwarf offers eight unique and detailed original variations on the Dwarven race. But I spend most of the review replying to the introductory note by the author, Tof Eklund, in the process examining the cultural standards of RPG gaming and popular media as they were in 2013, and forecasting how those standards would evolve over the next decade or so. Anyone interested in such social questions will find the discussion worth their time. Be warned, the topics are definitely PG-13.
• Taming The Wild Frontiers – This article starts out as a think-piece inspired by the oft-cited comparison between the early internet and the American Wild West and marches headlong into the subtle but profound impact on RPGs of Political Correctness and then the socio-political models on which most Sci-fi games (and novels!) are traditionally based – and showing that there have been opportunities missed on all sides, and that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, in particular serious examination of the issues surrounding colonialism, equality, and exploitation. This article struck a chord with a lot of readers; one even told me that using it, he finally understood what he had been missing in modern games that turned him back towards “old-school” gaming.
• Ergonomics and the Non-human – As the title suggests, this shows simple techniques for applying the principles of ergonomics to non-human physiologies, showing how everything from furniture to staircases is affected. Elves are studied as an example.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – After foolishly mentioning the possibility in “Ergonomics and the Non-human” (above), I got lots of requests for giving Dwarves the same treatment. One reason I was readily persuadable was that while many races (including Elves) had been featured in the Orcs And Elves series (see the subsection below), Dwarves weren’t one of them. One day there will be a part three, applying the principles to Octopoidal creatures, and maybe even a part four looking at Kobolds.
• A Population Of Dinosaurs and the impact on RPG ecologies – I get curious about how many species of dinosaur there were, so I devise some calculations to answer the question. That might be interesting enough in its own right, but then I see how quickly genetic engineering could produce new (well-adapted) species. This is so interesting that it holds my attention until I realize that it has other ecological value to the GMs of D&D / Pathfinder – for example, the same process could be used to tell you how long Dragons have lived in a Fantasy environment just by factoring in their average lifespan and the number of different varieties. And if there isn’t enough time, that just means that there must have been “intervention” of some kind in the history of dragon-kind. Or elves. Or… you get the idea.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive) – a reader asks why I go to so much effort to distinguish Elves from Drow when the latter are an offshoot of the former. I spend most of the article looking at the advantages that derive from making the races of a campaign distinctive, not only from each other within the campaign, but from other campaigns, before providing some resources and sources of inspiration on the subject.
• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – the first of two articles for the November 2014 Blog Carnival, this one asks “How do you create an original alien species?” then immediately points out the Fantasy RPG applicability before providing three answers, with multiple examples, including an entire alien environment and ecology. More examples and discussion in the comments.
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles.
• Phase 0: Introduction from the “New Beginnings” series – Almost half the article is taken up with the table of contents for the whole series. The remainder takes a fresh look at some general principles of campaign design – practical elements like “How much campaign do I need to design” – offers a new method of creating a campaign called the “The Modular Story-based approach”, and briefly describes an example sci-fi campaign idea, “Reality, But Not As We Know It”, which is a kind of space-opera version of Star Trek. Some issues of races within a campaign get discussed.
• Phase 2: Baggage Dump from the “New Beginnings” series – This is not so much about clearing your head more than temporarily, it deals with what you want to keep from previous campaigns and what to throw away. Significant areas of attention are GMing (stress & exhaustion & recovery), Races, PCs, NPCs, and Players.
• Phase 4: Development from the “New Beginnings” series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Phase 8: Enfleshing from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure to form the additional ’tissue’ referred to by the title.
• Phase 9: Completion from the “New Beginnings” series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• Part 12 of the Basics For Beginners series, Relations, deals with NPC characterization, building on the content in Part 5. I start by describing a tool that delivers only cliche characters for unimportant NPCs (but that have sufficient depth to be believable, nevertheless); the article then shows how to layer two or three such profiles to create a “complex” character. I then move on to two approaches to using the principles from an earlier article to generate alien/non-human characters that are more than “humans in rubber masks”. The first approach works well for individual exemplars, the second is better when creating a race of aliens who are to exhibit individual variations. However, these characterization techniques only really work when the character is being built around a defined and chosen character profile or niche. That generally means that the characters are needed for a specific purpose within the plot, and that this should be the starting point that leads to a characterization and not an afterthought. Going from need to characterization is the real purpose of the article. I have two solutions – a general one, that is described in detail, and a specific one that can only by highlighted, which I dispose of quickly. After spelling out the criteria that I required the general solution to fulfill, I describe it – 12 questions (two of them optional) that a GM, regardless of experience, should be able to answer in seconds. The results should produce a fit-for-purpose and ready-to-play personality in about 40 seconds.
• The Secret Arsenal Of Accents – Three techniques, two standards, and two general principles, are all that you need to go from “I can’t do accents” to being able to fake it well enough to fool players at the game table – provided they don’t speak the language you’re faking, of course.
• What Empowers A Curse and other dangerous questions – For the September 2015 Blog Carnival, I ask “What empowers a Curse” in D&D / Pathfinder and find that the answer has some profound implications, potentially touching on everything from Cosmology to why Gods need congregations. Although I talk down the value of a curse sub-system within the game mechanics, I’ve actually found it necessary to craft one for an as-yet-unpublished (Jan 2019) series of articles.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – I describe in detail the concepts and processes involved in one of my most useful creative tools. What makes this technique so powerful is a method of free association that is especially capable of direction and stepwise refinement. In effect, you shake ideas loose and then shape them into useful constructions. There are two primary uses for the tool: reinventing old content that has reached its use-by date, and inventing new game content. The list of subjects to which the tool has been applied also determined where in the blogdex this article should be listed: Characterization, PCs, NPCs, Villains, Races, Societies, Character Classes, Theologies, Organizations, Deities, Plots, Subplots, and Plot Threads. At the end of the article, I briefly review Fantasy Coins’ Kickstarter campaign for their Treasure Chests, which continued the trend of mostly backing winners.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

Races in Mike’s Fumanor Campaigns

From the start of my Fumanor Campaign, there have been secrets concerning the history of Elves, Drow, and Orcs in the game world. Now the characters have reached the point where the truth has to be told, in The Orcs & Elves Series. This long series completely reinvents (from the players point of view) the campaign background of the world so far as those particular races is concerned. It is presented here as a very long fantasy novel. I’m not even going to list the contents, here – it’s just too massive a series.

With each part, I build up a Glossary of Elvish language used within the story. So far, it’s up to Chapter 85 of 116 originally planned – but I’ve hit all the essentials in terms of its campaign needs, so whether or not I continue on all the way is still to be determined. I could more or less wrap up the series at this point by having the PCs awaken from their dream state and being told, “The rest you know…” On the other hand, the completist in me wants to tell the rest of the story, so we’ll see. It’s a heck of a lot of work.

The series consists of two broad components: the story itself, and the backstory / campaign background / context that shapes that story. While these are all presented as one big series at Campaign Mastery, these background-element articles have a broader utility. Originally intended to be three parts, it grew into five.

• Part 1 addresses the question of why reinvent races in different fantasy campaigns at all? and then synopsizes very briefly the events of the previous campaigns in the game setting.
• Part 2 continues sketching in the background to the Orcs and Elves plotline. This begins describing the key characters, along the way giving the backgrounds and histories of their races within the campaign, covering Elves, Drow, Ogres, Dwarves, and Halflings. I give away lots of freebies from the campaign in the process.
• Part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin).
• In Part 4 of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.
• Part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the puzzle completes the synopsis of the campaign so far (including some parts of the story that the players didn’t know). A sidebar considers the economics of Undeath. As a giveaway with this post I offer a high-res map of the part of the Game World where the campaign has (mostly) taken place – but bereft of labels and captions so other GMs can use it as they see fit, and another with captions detailing the PCs travels. I point out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign (and list them) – something that the players would only peripherally have been aware of. Finally, I discuss just how the Orcs & Elves series was being written, in other words, the plan of attack for the series.

In addition, a few other posts have also shed light on the subject:

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Orcish Mythology – Did I suggest that I was ready to set aside the background and get on with the series itself? Well, I thought I was, but a funny thing happened around the Chapter 51 mark – I found that I needed to construct and outline a pantheon for the Orcs, and a mythology to go with that pantheon. By the time I had finished this background work, there wasn’t enough time to actually write another article in the series – so I presented my handiwork, instead. Surprisingly, it turned out to be even more central to the storyline than I had originally expected, so it was all serendipitous.
  
• Who Is “The Hidden Dragon”? – Behind the curtain of the Orcs and Elves Series – This is all about decision-making when designing plotlines and adventures. Once again I had to interrupt the ongoing main narrative of The Orcs & Elves plotline, which had reached the point where decisions had to be made concerning the question asked in the title; I spell out the thought process that went into determining the solution used in that story.

Races in Mike’s Shards Of Divinity Campaign

The “Shards” campaign was conceived as a place where one of the younger players could mature to the point of being able to join into any of the other RPGs being run without being unduly handicapped by a lack of experience. It fulfilled that brief before being shut down, still a long way short of its planned epic finish. From time to time, that central player makes noises about resurrecting it, so I guess it did something right.

• Pieces Of Creation: The Hidden Truth Of Doppelgangers – Goodman Games published an excellent sourcebook, The Complete Guide To Doppelgangers. The only problem was that at least one of my players had read it. So I wrote a sequel that completely inverts the rationale of the species so that the Goodman Games product is what the Doppelgangers want the rest of the world to think. The article discusses the how and why I did that in detail, and includes my follow-up text as a free PDF, with the kind permission of Goodman Games.

Languages

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2 – Part two continues sketching in the background to the Orcs and Elves plotline. This begins describing the key characters, along the way giving the backgrounds and histories of their races within the campaign, covering Elves, Drow, Ogres, Dwarves, and Halflings. I give away lots of freebies from the campaign in the process. There’s also some material about these racial languages, including some key terms and their meanings.
• Ask The GMs: Rubbing Two Dry Words Together – Why have different languages in an RPG, how can you use them to enhance a story, and what’s wrong with universal translators. anyway? Some of our readers thought this was our best article so far (in July 2010).
• Sugar, Spice, and a touch of Rhubarb: That’s what little names are made of – Article three in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series discusses simple name structures and how to create a name using a name seed, and as a bonus, shows how to generate a monosyllabic language.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.

Languages in Mike’s Shards Of Divinity Campaign

The “Shards” campaign was conceived as a place where one of the younger players could mature to the point of being able to join into any of the other RPGs being run without being unduly handicapped by a lack of experience. It fulfilled that brief before being shut down, still a long way short of its planned epic finish. From time to time, that central player makes noises about resurrecting it, so I guess it did something right.

The On Alien Languages series is probably the most structurally complex series of articles at Campaign Mastery. Before I could complete my series on Names, I needed to address the subject of Alien Languages. The easiest way of doing that comprehensively was to excerpt the material on the subject that I had crafted as the foundation of my Shards Of Divinity campaign; but in order for that to make sense, and be placed in proper context, I had to describe in detail some of the Realms from that campaign, and for those to make sense, I had to present the foundations of the campaign. Like one domino knocking down another, the compounding of complexity accumulated. This series has never been finished because of the amount of time the articles took to write (they average about 11,000 words each, 75% of them new material), because I had covered most of the material on languages that was the original justification for the series, and because the Orcs & Elves series took priority and dominated 2013.

• The first article in the series, The Non-human Languages Generator, describes the ideal process of creating a non-human language.
  
• The second, The Shared Kingdoms: A Premise from the Shards Of Divinity Campaign, interweaves the origin myth of the game world and discussions of the Origins and Concepts of the campaign. It also summarizes the cultures and politics of the game world and details the capital, before getting into the common language in detail, and the format of human names in the campaign.
  
• The third article, Bher Yuralvus, The Home Of The Endless Library, details an independent city-state which treasures knowledge over everything else (including discussion of why this kingdom is in the campaign at all). The article’s second part provides a new feat, “Linguist”, and gives the general language rules for the Shards Of Divinity Campaign.
  
• Four in the series, Causa Domasura, The Home Of Reason, offers details of a Mage-dominated Human Republican Meritocracy (including how and why I came up with it), then begins to put the principles on languages into context by detailing the Common Languages from the campaign. Along the way, I offer a set of “Cheat processes” for simulating non-human languages.
  
• Fifth on the list is Therassus Amora, The Centre Of Attraction, which details in the now-established pattern a Human Feudal Kingdom – this campaign’s take on the “common standard” of political structures – with a couple of twists. The second part discusses the unusual languages from the campaign in detail, has a unique Gnomish Name generator, and then begins detailing the technique for creating your own non-human language simulator.
  
• The Sixth article in the series, The Ineoddolus Imperascora (The Traders And Commerce Empire), provides a detailed description of the ultimate human Plutocracy, where everything is for sale – at the right price. The second part of the article details the rare languages from the campaign, and the third part continues the instructions in making your own non-human language simulator.
  
• The Seventh, and last, article in the series (so far) is The Longex Dextora (The Hinterlands) which describes a frontier realm for Byzantine human politics – technically, a Republic of Independent City-States against a background of dominance games between Orcs, Giants, Gnolls, & Goblins. Ironically, it evolved during construction so that it is no longer (technically) a “Hinterlands” at all. Part Two of the article details the Obscure Languages, and Part Three shows how to create the rules that turn a foreign language into a non-human language.
  
• The Eighth post (which was promised at the end of the 7th and never delivered promises discussion of a Gnomish Monarchy, The Parumveneaora, also known as The Vale Of Dreams, something that’s already been created called The Language Map, and a discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of this approach to languages. After that, I still had Six more principle Realms from the campaign to write up. One of these days, when time permits, I’ll finish this series. Then I’ll restructure it into an e-book with some pretty maps and art. Right now, it’s low priority because the campaign closed down.

Character Classes & Archetypes

• See also the “Character Hooks” series in the Plot Ideas section of the Campaign Plotting page. Although it’s mainly about plot ideas, a lot can be inferred about the archetype from the plots.

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin).. Includes a little content on Orcish Names.
• Casual Opportunities: Mini-encounters for… Barbarians – The Casual Opportunities series was (and is) about presenting opportunities for archetypes to put their character on show. It did so by breaking the archetype down into a comprehensive set of variations, identifying the key features in common to most of these variations, then providing encounter ideas that emphasized one of the key features or stressed the uniqueness of one particular variation. The first part in the series focused on Barbarians.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Phase 8: Enfleshing from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure to form the additional ’tissue’ referred to by the title.
• Phase 9: Completion from the “New Beginnings” series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line of the Some Arcane Assembly Required series contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – I describe in detail the concepts and processes involved in one of my most useful creative tools. What makes this technique so powerful is a method of free association that is especially capable of direction and stepwise refinement. In effect, you shake ideas loose and then shape them into useful constructions. There are two primary uses for the tool: reinventing old content that has reached its use-by date, and inventing new game content. The list of subjects to which the tool has been applied also determined where in the blogdex this article should be listed: Characterization, PCs, NPCs, Villains, Races, Societies, Character Classes, Theologies, Organizations, Deities, Plots, Subplots, and Plot Threads. At the end of the article, I briefly review Fantasy Coins’ Kickstarter campaign for their Treasure Chests, which continued the trend of mostly backing winners.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.

The “Casual Opportunities For Priests” series

The Casual Opportunities series was (and is) about presenting opportunities for archetypes to put their character on show. It did so by breaking the archetype down into a comprehensive set of variations, identifying the key features in common to most of these variations, then providing encounter ideas that emphasized one of the key features or stressed the uniqueness of one particular variation. “Casual Opportunities for Priests” was the second (and so far, last) entry in the collection of articles on the subject. That’s because it quickly grew to be a monster; I had anticipated the need to split future parts of the series into two parts, I did not expect to need to split both of those parts into two more. NOTE that the subject is NOT D&D/Pathfinder Clerics, but that there is some overlap with those classes.

• Part one, Priests: Analysis and Commonalities, identifies a number of variable factors, within which any given priest occupies one specific alternative, analyses the patterns that result from the interplay of those variable factors to derive seven traits/applications that were universally common to the variations, and considers how to employ casual encounters to enhance and reveal the character’s basic role in a campaign. There are lots of examples of the utility of these theoretical foundations from the Adventurer’s Club campaign (Pulp). In general, this article is about what Priests have in common.
  
• In the second part, Priests: Divergences and Differences, I examine the potential and value of mini-encounters that will highlight an individual priest’s position on each of the variable factors identified in Part 1. There are LOTS of suggestions for encounters that result. In general, this article is about what distinguishes one Priest from another. This article might seem relatively short but needed lots of work behind the scenes that doesn’t necessarily show – or perhaps my memory is tainted because I was suffering through post-operative recovery at the time..
  
• The third part of the series, Priests: The Common Encounters, generates 44 encounters and minor plotlines from different aspects of the the Seven common traits. This includes one epic with 11+ connected subplots.
  
• The final part of the article quartet, Priests: The Differential Encounters, takes the results of Part 2 and turns the ten points of differentiation into another 28 encounters and minor plotlines. This is where all that “behind the scenes” work that I mentioned in relation to Part 2 really shows up.

Organizations

• Guilds, Organizations, and other Bad Company – Some quick on-the-fly rules for PC memberships in organizations within an RPG.
• Mage Guild Mastermind Survives Pirate Haven – Johnn takes readers through his thought process when creating a faction for his Riddleport campaign.
• Shades of Sky Blue: Variations on U.N.T.I.L. – Perhaps the most seminal creation of the Hero Games universe is U.N.T.I.L, but (while the acronym is excellent) the name still gives me acute pain, it’s so at odds with what the organization actually does. In this article I describe how I reinvented the organization for my game and the implications in terms of the policies, principles, and Charter of the United Nations.
• The Veil of Secrecy: A truth about organizations in games – Every real-world organization has secrets and reasons to keep those secrets. Good ones. Necessary ones. Bad ones. This article is all about institutional secrecy by organizations in your RPG and how likely it is that an organization will have such a secret – and how useful it can be from a plot and characterization perspective to have that secret on tap.
• The Flunkie Equation – quick and easy Hors d’Combat – An organization is comprised of the people who work for it (amongst other things), but you rarely need to treat these even by NPC standards. “The Flunkie Equation” is a system by which the essential information demanded by the Partial NPC doctrine (explained in Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep) can be generated more quickly and easily, making an already-fast process even more efficient. This article also explcitly builds on techniques described in The Ubercharacter Wimp. You should read both those articles before this one.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line of the Some Arcane Assembly Required series contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.
• Principle, Cause, and Course – Complexities In Motivation – Reveals one of my secret techniques for getting into character quickly while consuming a minimum of my attention, freeing up my attention for other things, whether I am a player or a GM. It is based around four questions that define a personality. I go into detail using my personal ethos as an example. Principles define which Causes a character supports and how actively; they stipulate how a character will react upon finding that an organization he is a part of has adopted a more radical position than he’s expecting, or has sold out; they define the character’s sense of responsibility. Answering these four questions defines a character’s Alignment, his Morality, the circumstances that could produce a moral shift, what the character will do to improve himself and his abilities (when combined with a sense of the opportunities that are open to the character), define his biases and prejudices, explain his past decisions (in combination with the character’s capacity for percieving the options open to him), his current status, what he thinks of that status, and what he’s done and is doing to prepare for the future. The only thing they won’t tell you is how indecisive the character will be. They also enable snap decisions to be made in character. In a sidebar, I discuss an online product that I still wish for whenever I contemplate a modern form of D&D.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – I describe in detail the concepts and processes involved in one of my most useful creative tools. What makes this technique so powerful is a method of free association that is especially capable of direction and stepwise refinement. In effect, you shake ideas loose and then shape them into useful constructions. There are two primary uses for the tool: reinventing old content that has reached its use-by date, and inventing new game content. The list of subjects to which the tool has been applied also determined where in the blogdex this article should be listed: Characterization, PCs, NPCs, Villains, Races, Societies, Character Classes, Theologies, Organizations, Deities, Plots, Subplots, and Plot Threads. At the end of the article, I briefly review Fantasy Coins’ Kickstarter campaign for their Treasure Chests, which continued the trend of mostly backing winners.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.

• 7 Steampunk Resources – As part of the Blog Carnival for June 2009, Johnn lists seven resources for those interested in the Steampunk Genre.

Pulp

• Reinventing Pulp for Role-playing – An eight-part series co-written by the man with whom I co-GM my Pulp Campaign. All told, the series attracted a total of 39 comments containing the normal mix of links to related articles, kudos, suggestions, and clarifications – which makes them worth reading. Oh and one more note: the series is designed to enlighten players as to the conventions of a Pulp universe as much as it is to help GMs out there. Don’t be afraid to point your players in its direction.
  
  The first part (Blat! Zoit! Pow! The Rules Of Genre In RPGs) wasn’t even originally intended to be part of the series, but the need to lay some foundations demanded its presence. A standalone article applicable to any genre, it examines the way in which that Genre should affect an RPG, and the need to modify the genre to accommodate a modern audience.
  
  Part Two (Bam! Zap! Crunch! World Conventions In Pulp) look at the impact of the Pulp Genre on the setting in which adventures will take place.
  
  Parts Three (Pow! Wham! Bang! Story Conventions In Pulp) and Four (Pow! Bam! Crunch! Story Conventions in Pulp (continued)) examine the impact of the genre on the adventures themselves, and on expectations of behavior.
  
  Parts Five (Wham! Clang! Kapow! Character Conventions In Pulp), Six (Zot! Zap! Crash! Character Conventions In Pulp (continued)) and Seven (Bang! Blat! Whoomph! Character Conventions In Pulp (continued)) study the impact of the genre on the personalities and roles of the participants, be they PCs or NPCs.
  
  Finally, Part Eight (Clang! Crash! Pow! Game Mastering The Pulp Genre) ties the whole thing together with some general advice, some of which can be applied to any genre-specific campaign.

Sci-Fi

• Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign – I break down the general concept of “Science Fiction” into 21 specific subgenres and look at each from a gaming perspective. As examples, I offer 11 specific sci-fi campaign premises. Along the way, I give readers a copy of “Buy Low, Sell High”, a set of quick game rules I wrote for handling Trade in Traveller, which can be easily adapted to other campaign genres.
• Putting The SF into SciFi – Scientific speculation can be huge fun, but a lot of people don’t think they can do it without a deep understanding of science. Sci-Fi games often have limited and unoriginal future-tech as a result; this series sets itself the lofty objective of making it possible for the average GM to run a Sci-Fi campaign that’s rife with plausible future-tech.
  
  In Creating The World Of Tomorrow, Part 1, I look at the problems, show why any solution other than some original creativity is going to be second-best at best, and then offer practical solutions that make it possible for the average GM to create that original content by extrapolating from the world of today.
  
  Creating The World Of Tomorrow, Part 2 considers some core technologies that everyone creating Sci-Fi needs to make unique: FTL, AI/Computers/The Net/VR, Entertainment Tech, Medical Tech, Communications, Local Transport &/or Teleporters, Food Distribution Tech, and Convenience Tech. You don’t need to be a Physics Geek or a Maths Guru to do this stuff! Sure it can help – but it can also hinder. That requirement is bypassed by once again making the focus about how the characters (both PC and NPC) will interact with these technologies, and how the tech will interact with the stories and the gameplay.
  
  As originally planned, Creating The World Of Tomorrow, Part 3 would wrap up the series by considering how the technologies developed in the previous parts would shape the world around the characters – regardless of the medium in which the tale is being told. Along the way, I codify three principles of technological advance: The Bootstrap Effect, Tech Serendipity, and Tech Cascade. There’s a lengthy discussion about the potential for extracting hydrocarbons from Jupiter’s Atmosphere in the comments.
  
  And finally, in The Design Ethos Of Tomorrow (a postscript article tacked onto the series a week or two after the fact), I look at how to create the look and feel of the world of tomorrow in everything from starships to coffeepots.

Historical Inaccuracy In FRP

• Wood and Silver or Iron and Gold? – Historical Inaccuracy in FRP, Part 1 – Phil McGregor examines the historical military reality on which most FRP Games are based. There’s a lot of supplementary discussion in the comments.
• Wood and Silver or Iron and Gold? – Historical Inaccuracy in FRP, Part 2 – Part two of Phil’s article considers the historical economic reality and contrasts it with the D&D Economic system. Again, lots of supplement in the comments.

 Campaign Creation

 
Once you have a genre, the next most fundamental question is the campaign. It involves defining the fundamental concepts and metaphysical architecture of the game world, the history that has resulted in the characters, the role (if any) of Divine Power, how magic will work in the game (if at all), money & wealth, the geography, politics, nations and sociology of the game world, the races that inhabit it, the languages they use, the occupations (in game terms) that are available, the organizations that exist, and the iconic locations and wonders that make this game environment special. Unsurprisingly, a lot of content here at Campaign Mastery has focused on this critical subject.

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• How much Campaign do you Plan before the Start? – Finding the sweet spot between over-planning campaigns (My vice) and under-planning. There are some great tips on campaign development in the comments.
• FreeMind Tips for Game Masters – Johnn explains how he uses FreeMind to mindmap his campaign plans.
• Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul – How is it that my campaigns can last for decades? What are the implications and consequences, and how do I deal with them?
• Mine Fiction For Campaign Qualities – Johnn starts with a review of FantasyCraft and extrapolates one of the ideas within to find a way of customizing RPG worlds and drawing on fiction for inspiration.
• Legendary Achievements: Coloring Your Campaign with Anecdote and Legend – Which is better: ‘The Target is too far away for bowshot,’ or ‘Not even the legendary Halwein, holder of the record for longest bowshot at 2,192 yards, would dare attempt such a shot’? Rhetorical question, right? This article is all about using the limits of achievement to add color to your game world.
• Ask The GMs: PC Choices and Consequences – How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world? A simple question but like an iceberg, nine-tenths don’t show. In order to properly answer this question, Johnn & I had to answer five even more complicated questions: How can the players impact the game world? How are the consequences of PC actions determined? How do the PCs become aware of these consequences? How can the GM ensure that the Players recognize the connection between action and consequences? And how can the administration of these changes be kept practical? All those answers, and more, are in this article.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Things Done and left Un-done – I maintain a list of undeveloped ideas for Campaign Mastery articles, and got to thinking about why there had been so little movement of ideas off that list. That leads to an analogy between the list and the reasons my campaigns tend to last such a long time, something I had discussed in Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul, so this article becomes a sequel to that discussion in how to produce longevity for your campaigns. I use a synopsis of my “Fumanor: One Faith” campaign as an example.
• A Twist in Time: Alternate Histories in RPGs – I offer the general principles that I use to construct a viable, believable, alternate history or parallel world.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part One: Geography and Landmarks – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things for which you will need tools and techniques, to successfully run a campaign. This article starts the world building by considering the physical features of the in-game environment.
• Grokking The Message – The fifth article in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series looks at naming places and campaigns, and I explain how I chose the names for some of the campaigns that I have run.
• In Someone else’s Sandbox: Adventuring in an established setting – For the September Blog Carnival, I wrote this article considering the pros and cons of adventuring in an established third-party setting instead of creating your own, what some of the difficulties are that you might face, and how to solve them.
• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity – I consider the implications of Divine Beings manifesting as objective reality in RPGs and the complicated question of Deus Ex Machinas when that is the case, the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative, and how a big-picture perspective on divine beings can make or break plausibility in a fantasy campaign. I offer possible answers to the question, “Where Do Clerics get their spells from?” along the way. There’s a fascinating discussion of the issues raised by the article in the comments.

Campaign Concepts & Development

• Big Changes For The Little Guy: How to go from Premise to Campaign – I demonstrate how I take the seed of an idea and build a campaign from it – coming up with a whole new campaign, “Arignoza”, to use for the example, which gets given away to the readership in the course of the article.
• How to Design a Cool Holiday for Your Game – 3 Templates – Johnn excerpts one of his books to tell our readers how to create a seasonal holiday for their game world.
• The Frozen Lands: A Science-Fiction Campaign Premise – I offer a complete, ready-to-develop science-fiction campaign premise for anyone to use, with enough work left to do that every use will be just a little different. Even if you don’t want to use the idea yourself, you can get some tips on how I develop a campaign premise by reading the article.
• The occasional ‘Lessons From The West Wing’ series kicked off with one article that was so big that it’s a 5-part series in it’s own right.
  
  The first part of this series-within-a-series, The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 1 of 5: Don’t Compromise With Mediocrity discussed the execution and delivery of uniqueness in a RPG campaign and evolved an achievable definition of perfection for doing so. I then identified four elements that were required in order to achieve this, and dedicated a separate article to each of them.
  
  Element number one is about creating the potential for uniqueness through the initial vision of the campaign and is dealt with in A Perfect Vision Through A Glass, Darkly.
  
  The second necessity is to convert that initial vision into a common platform for both players and GMs to build apon, and is dealt with in Laying A Campaign Foundation.
  
  Part Four, Evolving The Campaign, deals with the third element, the extension and development of the initial concept in the course of the campaign.
  
  Finally, in Part 5, Character Evolution, I deal with how the uniqueness of the campaign should impact on the player characters that participate in the world. It was a big article, and a big series, but several people have told me it was worth it!
• Life & Death in RPG Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – We wrap up our hosting of the March 2011 Blog Carnival with the usual compendium of synopses of the articles submitted. If you find either Life or Death to be important in your games (or want to make it so), these are worth reading.
• All Is Three: A 3.x Fantasy Campaign Premise – I offer an original but unfinished campaign idea, fleshing it out in the course of the article as an example of how I go about designing a campaign.
• The Foundation Of Averages: Psychohistory and RPG Rules – I look at the process of extrapolating from rules systems to the larger worlds and nations that they describe using elementary statistical analysis.
• Theologies at 30 paces: The Hell of Evil in D&D – I consider the theological implications of the cosmology of D&D (and to some extent, Pathfinder), especially the implications of having demons, devils, and dark gods, how to resolve the contradictions implicit in this cacophony of ill-digested theological influences, and how the consequences would manifest in the everyday lives, motivations, etc, of the inhabitants of the world. More suggestions and ideas in the comments.
• Round Pegs In A Square Wheel: Reinventing Roulette for RPGs – Human nature doesn’t change. I examine human vices and foibles and how to use them to reinforce the genre of a game, then consider how to reinvent gambling, taking roulette as an example, for different genres.
• Been There, Done That, Doing It Again – The Sequel Campaign Part One of Two: Campaign Seeds – The first half of a two-part discussion of how to create a new campaign that is a sequel of one you have already run. In this part: the foundations of the campaign, a list of ideas, and initial ideas for possible plotlines.
• Been There, Done That, Doing It Again – The Sequel Campaign Part Two of Two: Sprouts and Saplings – Organizing the seeds of the campaign, making decisions about the interval between the campaigns, the consequences to campaign structure, managing player expectations, and more on sequel campaigns in general.
• Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign – I break down the general concept of “Science Fiction” into 21 specific subgenres and look at each from a gaming perspective. As examples, I offer 11 specific sci-fi campaign premises. Along the way, I give readers a copy of “Buy Low, Sell High”, a set of quick game rules I wrote for handling Trade in Traveller, which can be easily adapted to other campaign genres.

• Mage Guild Mastermind Survives Pirate Haven – Johnn takes readers through his thought process when creating a faction for his Riddleport campaign.
• The Ascended Conflict in my Riddleport Campaign – Following the advice I offered on asking yourself the big questions when planning an RPG (A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs), Johnn outlines his plans for the (Near-)ultimate powers within his then-forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• Revealing the Exotic – Johnn considers the implications of restricting the availability of exotic equipment as part of the campaign development for his (then-) forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• The Cypher Gate – Johnn shows how he has integrated the suggestions & feedback in response to his earlier articles concerning his (then-) forthcoming Riddleport campaign. By comparing the content of the sources with this article, readers can gain insights into how to merge their own ideas to form a complete concept.
• Architecture of Riddleport Inspires Plots – Johnn describes how he is using the architecture within the city of Riddleport to enhance his game, and (by example), how you can do the same for yours.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.

Campaign Backgrounds

• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article focuses on the mythic and background elements of a campaign.

• Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence – I follow up the issues raised in Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity (such as the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative) by examining the ‘big picture’ answers employed by some of my campaigns in future articles, of which this is the first.
• The Orcs & Elves Series – From the start of my Fumanor Campaign, there have been secrets concerning the history of Elves, Drow, and Orcs in the game world. Now the characters have reached the point where the truth has to be told. This completely reinvents (from the players point of view) the campaign background of the world so far as those particular races is concerned. It is presented here as a very long fantasy novel. I’m not even going to list the contents, here – it’s just too massive a series. With each part, I build up a Glossary of Elvish language used within the story. So far, it’s up to Chapter 85 of 116 originally planned – but I’ve hit all the essentials in terms of its campaign needs, so whether or not I continue on all the way is still to be determined. I could more or less wrap up the series at this point by having the PCs awaken from their dream state and being told, “The rest you know…” On the other hand, the completist in me wants to tell the rest of the story, so we’ll see. It’s a heck of a lot of work.

• The Imperial History Of Earth-Regency – This series (still unfinished because the parts take a long time to write and research) details the historical background of the (parallel) world in which my superhero campaign currently takes place. Part 1: 1189-1220; Part 2: 1220-1782; Part 3: 1782-1910; Part 4: 1910-1945; Part 5: 1945-1959; Part 6: 1960-1972; Part 7: 1973-1975; Part 8: 1978-1979; Part 9: 1980-1997; Part 10: 1980-1997 (continued); Part 11: 1998-2015 (overview); Part 12: 1998. One of these days I’ll get back to this series but it won’t be anytime soon, despite having three more chapters half-done and a bunch more outlined.

Campaign Synopses

• Grow The Hobby With Great Game Mastering – The July 2010 Blog Carnival was about how to grow the hobby, RPG Gaming. Johnn approaches the question from the perspective of being able to tell compelling stories about your campaigns – and that requires you to become a great game master. I add my 20-cents-worth in the comments.

• Carnus Session #13 – Bearded in Orcus’s Lair – Johnn synopsizes and reflects on one of his (then-) recent game sessions, and in the process, shows how it’s done.

• Campaign Update: Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire – After publishing “The Flói Af Loft & The Ryk Bolti” I received a number of requests for more information about my Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire campaign (that’s right, the same one from which the Orcs & Elves series derives). So I wrote up this campaign update to satisfy the curiosity of our readership. Includes (in the comments) 6 tips for running two interacting campaigns simultaneously in the same game world.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 – In part four of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time I offer an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the puzzle completes the synopsis of the campaign so far (including some parts of the story that the players didn’t know). A sidebar considers the economics of Undeath. As a giveaway with this post I offer a high-res map of the part of the Game World where the campaign has (mostly) taken place – but bereft of labels and captions so other GMs can use it as they see fit, and another with captions detailing the PCs travels. I point out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign(and list them) – something that the players would only peripherally have been aware of. Finally, I discuss just how the Orcs & Elves series was being written, in other words, the plan of attack for the series.

Divine Power

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity – I consider the implications of Divine Beings manifesting as objective reality in RPGs and the complicated question of Deus Ex Machinas when that is the case, the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative, and how a big-picture perspective on divine beings can make or break plausibility in a fantasy campaign. I offer possible answers to the question, “Where Do Clerics get their spells from?” along the way. There’s a fascinating discussion of the issues raised by the article in the comments.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.
• Too Much Life for The Living: March 2011 Blog Carnival – My second contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival asks is Healing is too easy in D&D, which leads to proposing an alternative combat system for 3.x / Pathfinder Based on concepts within the TORG game system. It was quite well received. There are additional suggestions and clarifications in the comments. If you want to make your combats more life-and-death dramatic, this might be worth your time.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• Life & Death in RPG Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – We wrap up our hosting of the March 2011 Blog Carnival with the usual compendium of synopses of the articles submitted. If you find either Life or Death to be important in your games (or want to make it so), these are worth reading.
• Theologies at 30 paces: The Hell of Evil in D&D – I consider the theological implications of the cosmology of D&D (and to some extent, Pathfinder), especially the implications of having demons, devils, and dark gods, how to resolve the contradictions implicit in this cacophony of ill-digested theological influences, and how the consequences would manifest in the everyday lives, motivations, etc, of the inhabitants of the world. More suggestions and ideas in the comments.
• The Ascended Conflict in my Riddleport Campaign – Following the advice I offered on asking yourself the big questions when planning an RPG (A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs), Johnn outlines his plans for the (Near-)ultimate powers within his then-forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article focuses on the mythic and background elements of a campaign.
• Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence – I follow up the issues raised in Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity (such as the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative) by examining the ‘big picture’ answers employed by some of my campaigns in future articles, of which this is the first.
• Part Eight of Johnn’s series on City Government Power Bases covers Religion.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Orcish Mythology – In the course of the Orc & Elves series, I found that I needed to construct and outline a pantheon for the Orcs, and a mythology to go with that pantheon.
• Ask The GMs: The Momentum Of The Inevitable – In the discussion following a previous Ask The GMs, we were asked, ‘should there ever be something that is too big or has too much momentum for the PCs to be able to stop it?’ The discussion that follows the article adds to the content so well that it feels like part of the original article; if you’re interested in the question, don’t miss them.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.
• Pile On This: Undead are Taking Over. What happens? – Johnn’s campaign came off the rails and he asked for help working out what would happen next. Lots of interesting suggestions to pilfer ideas from in the comments.
• The Undead Are Coming!! A reply to Johnn – My answer was too big to reasonably put in a comment (and needed some organization to be clear), so I put it in an extra blog post. Don’t miss the comments for extra clarification.
• 25 Cleric Character Hooks – Johnn concludes his character hooks series with this entry that offers 25 Cleric Character Hooks.
• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive – I discuss prophecies within RPGs, the benefits, the pitfalls, and how to avoid the problems. Don’t skip the comments, there are some additional techniques worth considering described there. And once again, we have feedback from someone who employed the techniques I offer and came up with a great result, so you know it works!
• “Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?”: A New idea for handling “wild luck” in D&D – I come up with a new idea for using luck in an RPG, especially in D&D.
• May the camels of 1,000 fleas – wait, that’s not right: Improving Curses in 3.x – I reinvent the rules for Curses in 3.x/Pathfinder to add to its roleplaying potential, then offer 60 Curses to fire the imagination.
• Undead Foe Generator – The last of Johnn’s Q-workshop dice articles is all about giving personality to the undead. The contest was over long ago, but the tables are still just as functional. This article was inspired by the Red and black Skull Dice set which appears to be no longer available (the link is to Q-Workshop’s home page).
• Encounters With Meaning Part Three of my series Creating ecology-based random encounters applies the processes developed in earlier parts of the series and analogous theory to create encounter tables for Urban Settings and Dungeon Settings, and then wraps the series with integrating random encounters with your plotlines to infuse them with meaning. Along the way, I explore some strange but related back alleys, like the ecology of Undeath, and Devils & Demons.
• The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene – Another behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Assassin’s Amulet, this post contains my recollection of the creative process that led to the rather unique Deity Of Death that is central to the content of the e-book. It also serves as a teaser for the next article, and places it into some sort of context.
• Cyrene Revealed: an excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet – Another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, a heavily-edited description of the Deity herself.
• The Remembrance Of The Disquiet Dead: A Spooky Spot and Campaign Premise – For the October 2013 Blog Carnival I offer a cemetery that follows the PCs wherever they go. Explaining the cause of the phenomena led to three or four different interpretations, each with their own resolution to the series of encounters, so this will fit into more than one type of campaign.

Magic, Sorcery, & The Arcane

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• All Is Three: A 3.x Fantasy Campaign Premise – I offer an original but unfinished campaign idea, fleshing it out in the course of the article as an example of how I go about designing a campaign.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• Part Seven of Johnn’s series about City Government Power Bases gets into Magic and Psionics as a source of authority.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.
• 63 Wizard Hooks, part of the Character Hooks series. But there are actually 81 plot hooks (as of this writing) by the time you count the ones in the comments.
• 54 Sorcerer Hooks, part of the Character Hooks series. Guest Contributor Bobby Catdragon offers 54 hooks for the Sorcerer character class. Readers take the tally to 59.
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Make It Sparkle Like Gold Dust – Johnn describes his approach to GMing spell interactions and turning them into plot elements within the game. This is part one of two. I still don’t think I’ve extracted all the good juices from this article for use in my own campaigns :)
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Polish Till It Gleams – Part two of Johnn’s article on turning spells into plot elements within a campaign.
• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive – I discuss prophecies within RPGs, the benefits, the pitfalls, and how to avoid the problems. Don’t skip the comments, there are some additional techniques worth considering described there. And once again, we have feedback from someone who employed the techniques I offer and came up with a great result, so you know it works!
• A Rational Intuition – The differences between instinct and intelligence, and how different game systems handle the former.
• Ask The GMs: When players make themselves immune, remember that “Resistance Is Futile” – How do you handle PCs that seem to be immune to magic?
• It’s Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Game Fraud and Counter-Fraud in RPGs – In a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world, how might people cheat at games of chance – and what would casinos have to do to stop them?
• Broadening Magical Horizons: Some Feats from Fumanor and Shards Of Divinity – 27 Original feats from my D&D campaigns are offered in four categories: Reducing Metamagics, Enchantment Metamagics, General Metamagics, and General Magic-related Feats. These of course are just the tip of the iceberg, one day I’ll pull out another bunch of them.
• “Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?”: A New idea for handling “wild luck” in D&D – I come up with a new idea for using luck in an RPG, especially in D&D.
• “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope – I examine the fundamental concepts that underpin skill checks and “difficulty targets” using D&D 3.x as an example and find multiple answers depending on your assumptions – and expose flaws in the 3.x mechanic along the way. Despite my making a mistake in the article (check the comments) I stand by the conclusions. This is something that is important for every GM to understand regardless of which game system they are using.
• Relatively Uncertain: Taking Control of Game Physics – I take a close look at game physics – why you need one, the assumptions that underpin them, downsides, and how to create a manageable one.
• With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality – I talk about ways to give objects personalities in RPGs – and why.
• 6 Ways to Enhance Magic Items – Johnn’s article offers exactly what it says on the label. There are some “fun” ideas and important thoughts in the comments.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 1 – As part of the blog carnival, I offer an excerpt from one of the free bonus eBooks that are part of the Assassin’s Amulet package. Legacy Items are a new form of magic item, and the bonus eBook aims to give players everything they need to know about how they work.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 2 – The second part of the two-part excerpt, which discusses the powers of Legacy Items – from a Player’s point of view. This should all have been one article, it was split for practical reasons, so I haven’t counted this second half toward the overall total.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic – I consider just what “loot” might be, and how it can be used as a plot mechanic. There’s a link to an interesting related article in the comments.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• Why I Fell In Love with Staves Again After 10 Years (PFRPG) – Johnn returns to Campaign Mastery with this article on how Staves have changed in the Pathfinder game system – and why the changes are good for his campaign. This was part of the Blog Carnival.
• October Blog Carnival Wrap-up: A cavalcade of posts about goodies – The Blog carnival produced a huge number of great entries. I review them all. There are a couple of clarifications in the comments in response to what I had to say, and at least one more article worth reading on the subject.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 – In part four of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time I offer an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.

Money & Wealth

• How Much Is That Warhorse In The Window? – Pricing Of Goods in D&D – After recommending “…And A 10-foot Pole” in a previous article, I look at the problems of converting its prices to the D&D scale and expose unexpected problems and complications. Then I share my system for converting the prices given, and a couple of alternatives (including to standard 3.x/Pathfinder).
• Coinage in Fumanor: Windows into a campaign background – I expand on some material that I left out of How Much Is That Warhorse In The Window? – Pricing Of Goods in D&D because it’s a good example of how to take a section of the rules and turn them into a roleplaying element. This is a warts-and-all analysis – what choices were made and why, what worked, and what didn’t.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign – I break down the general concept of “Science Fiction” into 21 specific subgenres and look at each from a gaming perspective. As examples, I offer 11 specific sci-fi campaign premises. Along the way, I give readers a copy of “Buy Low, Sell High”, a set of quick game rules I wrote for handling Trade in Traveller, which can be easily adapted to other campaign genres.

Cities & Architecture

Note that a lot of the advice contained within these articles will scale – to nations in one direction, and villages in the other.
• Pillars Of Architecture: Some Thoughts On The Construction Of Cities – I reflect on simulating the way cities grow and how to incorporate this process into the mapping of the city. I still intend to follow this up with an example at some point.
• Architecture of Riddleport Inspires Plots – Johnn describes how he is using the architecture within the city of Riddleport to enhance his game, and (by example), how you can do the same for yours.
• City Government Power Bases – In this 9-part series, Johnn looks at what might give a city government and its leading citizens their power and authority, which dovetails very nicely with my earlier article on the ways in which leaders are selected; the latter was more about nations than cities, but scales perfectly well.
  
  In Part one of the series he lays out the general principles he will be using, this article is essential reading for the rest of the series.
  
  Part Two examines the power bases of The Law and affiliations;
  
  Part Three covers Character and Social Classes;
  
  Part Four deals with Popularity and Leadership;
  
  Part Five concerns Social Leverage, Marriage, and Wealth;
  
  Part Six covers Wars and Military Authority;
  
  Part Seven gets into Magic and Psionics as a source of authority;
  
  and Part Eight covers Religion; and finally,
  
  Part 9 covers Land. (NB: I’ve always meant to write more parts to this series, and Johnn has given his blessing to that endeavor. One of these days I’ll get around to it.)

Politics

See also some of the entries on Societies & Nations, below.

• Pulling That Lever: The Selection Of Leaders In RPG Societies – How are leaders in an RPG society selected – and what does that say about who they are? I had a lot of fun speculating on suggestions and alternatives raised by other contributors in the comments! Anyone interested in this subject should also check out Johnn’s subsequent series City Government Power Bases considering what might give a city government and its leading citizens their power and authority, detailed in the preceding Blogdex section.
• Ask The GMs: How to survive political games with paranoia and intrigue – The question might concern a Vampire The Masquerade campaign, but Johnn and I look beyond that to offer advice on how to handle games filled with in-game politics. With a postscript piece of advice in the comments.

Societies & Nations

Note that a lot of this advice will scale to cities and smaller settlements.

• Distilled Cultural Essence – My first major series at Campaign Mastery offers a simple technique for the generation of unique and original cultures for use within a game (in part 1) and ways to display that uniqueness to the players in parts 2, 3, and 4. Originally a pair of articles, so that’s how it’s counted here, not as four parts.
• Lore Enforcement: The Legal System in an RPG – Thinking about the legal systems that need to be present in an RPG environment and some of the many variations that are possible – and important – in how they work.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Thinking about nations in RPGs – I supplement the Distilled Cultural Essence series with this article examining how a nation’s reputation on the sporting field both derives from and reflects the national reputation and ‘personality’ in other areas. Along the way I display plenty of parochial pride in my own nation’s achievements (with a lot of respect for the achievements of others). Then in the comments, I show how to reverse-engineer the process of creating an interesting character to generate an interesting nation for your RPGs.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Two: Communities and Politics – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at the social and human/demi-human landscape of a game world.
• The poetry of meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity – I argue that the literal translations of specific words can offer insight into national and cultural identities – then reverse the relationship to turn the concept into a tool for developing cultures and nations.

• On Alien Languages – This is probably the most structurally complex series of articles at Campaign Mastery. Before I could complete my series on Names, I needed to address the subject of Alien Languages. The easiest way of doing that comprehensively was to excerpt the material on the subject that I had crafted as the foundation of my Shards Of Divinity campaign; but in order for that to make sense, and be placed in proper context, I had to describe in detail some of the Realms from that campaign, and for those to make sense, I had to present the foundations of the campaign. Like one domino knocking down another, the compounding of complexity accumulated. This series has never been finished because of the amount of time the articles took to write (they average about 11,000 words each, 75% of them new material), because I had covered most of the material on languages that was the original justification for the series, and because the Orcs & Elves series took priority and dominated 2013.
  
  The first article in the series, The Non-human Languages Generator, describes the ideal process of creating a non-human language.
  
  The second, The Shared Kingdoms: A Premise from the Shards Of Divinity Campaign, interweaves the origin myth of the game world and discussions of the Origins and Concepts of the campaign. It also summarizes the cultures and politics of the game world and details the capital, before getting into the common language in detail, and the format of human names in the campaign.
  
  The third article, Bher Yuralvus, The Home Of The Endless Library, details an independent city-state which treasures knowledge over everything else (including discussion of why this kingdom is in the campaign at all). The article’s second part provides a new feat, “Linguist”, and gives the general language rules for the Shards Of Divinity Campaign.
  
  Four in the series, Causa Domasura, The Home Of Reason, offers details of a Mage-dominated Human Republican Meritocracy (including how and why I came up with it), then begins to put the principles on languages into context by detailing the Common Languages from the campaign. Along the way, I offer a set of “Cheat processes” for simulating non-human languages.
  
  Fifth on the list is Therassus Amora, The Centre Of Attraction, which details in the now-established pattern a Human Feudal Kingdom – this campaign’s take on the “common standard” of political structures – with a couple of twists. The second part discusses the unusual languages from the campaign in detail, has a unique Gnomish Name generator, and then begins detailing the technique for creating your own non-human language simulator.
  
  The Sixth article in the series, The Ineoddolus Imperascora (The Traders And Commerce Empire), provides a detailed description of the ultimate human Plutocracy, where everything is for sale – at the right price. The second part of the article details the rare languages from the campaign, and the third part continues the instructions in making your own non-human language simulator.
  
  The Seventh, and last, article in the series (so far) is The Longex Dextora (The Hinterlands) which describes a frontier realm for Byzantine human politics – technically, a Republic of Independent City-States against a background of dominance games between Orcs, Giants, Gnolls, & Goblins. Ironically, it evolved during construction so that it is no longer (technically) a “Hinterlands” at all. Part Two of the article details the Obscure Languages, and Part Three shows how to create the rules that turn a foreign language into a non-human language.
  
  The Eighth post (which was promised at the end of the 7th and never delivered promises discussion of a Gnomish Monarchy, The Parumveneaora, also known as The Vale Of Dreams, something that’s already been created called The Language Map, and a discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of this approach to languages. After that, I still had Six more principle Realms from the campaign to write up. One of these days, when time permits, I’ll finish this series. Then I’ll restructure it into an e-book with some pretty maps and art :)

Races

• Races Should make a Difference – Johnn suggests ways in which a race’s presence or absence should affect your game world.
• The Age Of An Elf: Demographics of the long-lived – I look at the population dynamics of longer-lived species and aging in RPGs, and find problems with the standard D&D model. The process permits an assessment of the social impact that the longer lifespans and resulting demographics have, and offer ways of interpreting or modifying the results and the base assumptions to achieve the society that you want in your game. The contributions and discussion in the comments are a total greater length than the article itself, and not to be missed if this subject is relevant to your campaign.

• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 1 – The Orcs And Elves series consists of two broad components: the story itself, and the backstory / campaign background / context that shapes that story. While these are all presented as one big series at Campaign Mastery, these background-element articles have a broader utility. Originally intended to be three parts, it grew into five. This first part addresses the question of why reinvent races in different fantasy campaigns at all? and then synopsizes very briefly the events of the previous campaigns in the game setting.
  
  Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2 – Part two continues sketching in the background to the Orcs and Elves plotline. This begins describing the key characters, along the way giving the backgrounds and histories of their races within the campaign, covering Elves, Drow, Ogres, Dwarves, and Halflings. I give away lots of freebies from the campaign in the process.
  
  Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin).
  
  Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 – In part four of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time I offer an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.
  
  Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the puzzle completes the synopsis of the campaign so far (including some parts of the story that the players didn’t know). A sidebar considers the economics of Undeath. As a giveaway with this post I offer a high-res map of the part of the Game World where the campaign has (mostly) taken place – but bereft of labels and captions so other GMs can use it as they see fit, and another with captions detailing the PCs travels. I point out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign(and list them) – something that the players would only peripherally have been aware of. Finally, I discuss just how the Orcs & Elves series was being written, in other words, the plan of attack for the series.
  
  Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Orcish Mythology – Did I suggest that I was ready to set aside the background and get on with the series itself? Well, I thought I was, but a funny thing happened around the Chapter 51 mark – I found that I needed to construct and outline a pantheon for the Orcs, and a mythology to go with that pantheon. By the time I had finished this background work, there wasn’t enough time to actually write another article in the series – so I presented my handiwork, instead. Surprisingly, it turned out to be even more central to the storyline than I had originally expected, so it was all serendipitous.
• Who Is “The Hidden Dragon”? – Behind the curtain of the Orcs and Elves Series – This is all about decision-making when designing plotlines and adventures. Once again I had to interrupt the ongoing main narrative of The Orcs & Elves plotline, which had reached the point where decisions had to be made concerning the question asked in the title; I spell out the thought process that went into determining the solution used in that story.
• The Orcs & Elves Series – From the start of my Fumanor Campaign, there have been secrets concerning the history of Elves, Drow, and Orcs in the game world. Now the characters have reached the point where the truth has to be told. This completely reinvents (from the players point of view) the campaign background of the world so far as those particular races is concerned. It is presented here as a very long fantasy novel. I’m not even going to list the contents, here – it’s just too massive a series. With each part, I build up a Glossary of Elvish language used within the story. So far, it’s up to Chapter 85 of 116 originally planned – but I’ve hit all the essentials in terms of its campaign needs, so whether or not I continue on all the way is still to be determined. I could more or less wrap up the series at this point by having the PCs awaken from their dream state and being told, “The rest you know…” On the other hand, the completist in me wants to tell the rest of the story, so we’ll see. It’s a heck of a lot of work.

• Pieces Of Creation: The Hidden Truth Of Doppelgangers – Goodman Games published an excellent sourcebook, The Complete Guide To Doppelgangers. The only problem was that at least one of my players had read it. So I wrote a sequel that completely inverts the rationale of the species so that the Goodman Games product is what the Doppelgangers want the rest of the world to think. The article discusses the how and why I did that in detail, and includes my follow-up text as a free PDF, with the kind permission of Goodman Games.

Languages

• Ask The GMs: Rubbing Two Dry Words Together – Why have different languages in an RPG, how can you use them to enhance a story, and what’s wrong with universal translators. anyway? Some of our readers thought this was our best article so far (in July 2010).
• Sugar, Spice, and a touch of Rhubarb: That’s what little names are made of – Article three in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series discusses simple name structures and how to create a name using a name seed, and as a bonus, shows how to generate a monosyllabic language.
• On Alien Languages – This is probably the most structurally complex series of articles at Campaign Mastery. Before I could complete my series on Names, I needed to address the subject of Alien Languages. The easiest way of doing that comprehensively was to excerpt the material on the subject that I had crafted as the foundation of my Shards Of Divinity campaign; but in order for that to make sense, and be placed in proper context, I had to describe in detail some of the Realms from that campaign, and for those to make sense, I had to present the foundations of the campaign. Like one domino knocking down another, the compounding of complexity accumulated. This series has never been finished because of the amount of time the articles took to write (they average about 11,000 words each, 75% of them new material), because I had covered most of the material on languages that was the original justification for the series, and because the Orcs & Elves series took priority and dominated 2013.
  
  The first article in the series, The Non-human Languages Generator, describes the ideal process of creating a non-human language.
  
  The second, The Shared Kingdoms: A Premise from the Shards Of Divinity Campaign, interweaves the origin myth of the game world and discussions of the Origins and Concepts of the campaign. It also summarizes the cultures and politics of the game world and details the capital, before getting into the common language in detail, and the format of human names in the campaign.
  
  The third article, Bher Yuralvus, The Home Of The Endless Library, details an independent city-state which treasures knowledge over everything else (including discussion of why this kingdom is in the campaign at all). The article’s second part provides a new feat, “Linguist”, and gives the general language rules for the Shards Of Divinity Campaign.
  
  Four in the series, Causa Domasura, The Home Of Reason, offers details of a Mage-dominated Human Republican Meritocracy (including how and why I came up with it), then begins to put the principles on languages into context by detailing the Common Languages from the campaign. Along the way, I offer a set of “Cheat processes” for simulating non-human languages.
  
  Fifth on the list is Therassus Amora, The Centre Of Attraction, which details in the now-established pattern a Human Feudal Kingdom – this campaign’s take on the “common standard” of political structures – with a couple of twists. The second part discusses the unusual languages from the campaign in detail, has a unique Gnomish Name generator, and then begins detailing the technique for creating your own non-human language simulator.
  
  The Sixth article in the series, The Ineoddolus Imperascora (The Traders And Commerce Empire), provides a detailed description of the ultimate human Plutocracy, where everything is for sale – at the right price. The second part of the article details the rare languages from the campaign, and the third part continues the instructions in making your own non-human language simulator.
  
  The Seventh, and last, article in the series (so far) is The Longex Dextora (The Hinterlands) which describes a frontier realm for Byzantine human politics – technically, a Republic of Independent City-States against a background of dominance games between Orcs, Giants, Gnolls, & Goblins. Ironically, it evolved during construction so that it is no longer (technically) a “Hinterlands” at all. Part Two of the article details the Obscure Languages, and Part Three shows how to create the rules that turn a foreign language into a non-human language.
  
  The Eighth post (which was promised at the end of the 7th and never delivered promises discussion of a Gnomish Monarchy, The Parumveneaora, also known as The Vale Of Dreams, something that’s already been created called The Language Map, and a discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of this approach to languages. After that, I still had Six more principle Realms from the campaign to write up. One of these days, when time permits, I’ll finish this series. Then I’ll restructure it into an e-book with some pretty maps and art :)

Character Classes

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin).

Organizations

• Guilds, Organizations, and other Bad Company – Some quick on-the-fly rules for PC memberships in organizations within an RPG.
• Mage Guild Mastermind Survives Pirate Haven – Johnn takes readers through his thought process when creating a faction for his Riddleport campaign.
• Shades of Sky Blue: Variations on U.N.T.I.L. – Perhaps the most seminal creation of the Hero Games universe is U.N.T.I.L, but (while the acronym is excellent) the name still gives me acute pain, it’s so at odds with what the organization actually does. In this article I describe how I reinvented the organization for my game and the implications in terms of the policies, principles, and Charter of the United Nations.
• The Veil of Secrecy: A truth about organizations in games – Every real-world organization has secrets and reasons to keep those secrets. Good ones. Necessary ones. Bad ones. This article is all about institutional secrecy by organizations in your RPG and how likely it is that an organization will have such a secret – and how useful it can be from a plot and characterization perspective to have that secret on tap.

Wonders

• Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder – For my sixth post in the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I raise the question of Wonders Of The Known World and the qualities they need to possess in order to live up to the label; four reasons they are hard to do well, ten reasons why they are worth doing, and 12 sources of wonders to help overcome those difficulties.
• Six Wonders: A selected assortment of Wondrous Locations for a fantasy RPG – When I sat down to list ideas for the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I only intended to do one article on Wonders. But when you get inspired… The offerings in this post are: The Broken Man, The Pool Of Reflection, The Palace Of Winter, The Citadel Of Secrets, The Spire Of Contention, and the Library Of Shelves.
• Five More Wonders: Another assortment of Locations for a fantasy RPG – My Ninth article for the September 2013 Blog Carnival continues where the last one left off, with five more Wonders Of The Known World (that I didn’t have time to complete for the previous article). This offers The Pyramid of Reason, The Caves Of Rockbeard, The Rainbow Of Eternity, The Desert Of Gold, and The Emerald Falls.
• Still More Wonders: Fifteen Amazing Locations for a Sci-Fi RPG – I snuck this one in because September 2013 wasn’t quite long enough to fit everything into the Blog Carnival (actually, it was delayed because I needed an extra half-week to deal with Fantasy Wonders and because I was having trouble gathering enough ideas. Thanks to the players in my superhero campaign, I got there in the end). This article offers The Orouberus Molecule, The Cascade Nebula, “Birth And Death” By Garl, The Dyson Superplant Of Epsilon Centauri, The Spiderweb Of Rukh-C, The Torus of Andraphones, The Confusion of Hydra, The Waltz Of Minos IV, The Diaphanous Assembly of Omicron Boötis, The Billboard Of Greeting, The Halo Rock, The Necrotis Plague Planet, The “Cosmic String” of 18 Delphini, The Arena Of Canopia, and The Fireworx Swarm.

 Campaign Plotting

 
Before you can start creating and running adventures in your game world, you have to decide how they are all going to fit together. Will there be an overarching plotline? Will each adventure be completely isolated from all the others? How will the campaign finish, and how will it get there? How will subplots be handled and structured? The GM is sure to encounter problems in these areas as the campaign proceeds – how can they be solved? And finally, how will in-game prophecies of these ultimate directions be handled?

• Spring Cleaning for your Campaign – How players and GMs can spruce up and refresh a campaign by cleaning up loose ends.
• Ask The GMs: Networks Of NPCs – The GM gave the PCs a bunch of contacts from which the Players expect to extract Intelligence, but the GM is out of his depth – how does he organize these NPCs and their info? How does he turn these NPCs into an Intelligence Network with drowning himself in paperwork & Prep? Includes 13 tips for handling informants and some links to related articles.
• The Nimble Mind: Making Skills Matter in RPGs – How to make skills important in an RPG. Too often, they don’t seem to be. ‘Nuff said.
• Ask The GMs: Giving Players The Power To Choose Their Own Adventures – How do you create a campaign that gives the players absolute freedom but still leaves the GM in control?
• Ask The GMs: The Momentum Of The Inevitable – In the discussion following a previous Ask The GMs, we were asked, ‘should there ever be something that is too big or has too much momentum for the PCs to be able to stop it?’ The discussion that follows the article adds to the content so well that it feels like part of the original article; if you’re interested in the question, don’t miss them.
• Jolting The Status Quo – I start by talking about a significant change in my personal life, and the anticipated impact on Campaign Mastery which leads me to write about upsetting the status quo for characters in a game, and how the game can benefit. I still love the illustrations that I put together for this article – the one showing an office type who is smugly proud of his achievement in stacking boxes on the ceiling, the other a befuddled type struggling to comprehend a scene in which a river flows across the sky and a tree grows downwards from its banks. You can almost here him saying “What’s going on here?”.
• Game Master Tool Illustrated: Plot Flowcharts – The Blog Carnival for September 2010 was on the subject of Preparation. Johnn provides Campaign Mastery’s entry by considering Plot Flowcharts. At the end of the article and in the comments, several software aids are listed for producing flowcharts to help.
• Plot flowchart example – Guest Author and Campaign Mastery reader Yong Kyosunim follows up Johnn’s article on using plot flowcharts with a real example.
• Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background – The third in this irregular series is actually the seventh post to be included because the first article was itself a five-part series-within-a-series. I discuss the concept that time continues moving even when the PCs aren’t present, and ways to make this practical.
• Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens – I examine the ways in which different Narrative Styles can combine with Episodic and Serialized campaigns to produce eight distinctly different combinations, and how those can be sandboxed. The goal is to help GMs choose the narrative style that best suits the campaigns and the adventure that they want to run – and to explain (if you’re using the wrong style) why the campaign keeps going off the rails.
• Starting In The Middle – The virtues of skipping the beginning and going straight to the middle. I offer three ways of getting straight into the action without railroading the players. There’s further discussion of the merits and drawbacks of railroading as well as some discussion of the ideas I’ve offered, in the comments.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic – I consider just what “loot” might be, and how it can be used as a plot mechanic. There’s a link to an interesting related article in the comments.
• GM’s Toolbox: Prep Tools Part One: Campaign and Adventure Planning – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article deals with the upper-level planning that goes into running a game.
• Turning Reaction into Proaction – plotting techniques to get your players moving – After a couple of ‘soft’, speculative articles, I turn my attention back to practical measures. In this article, I consider ways to make your players active participants in campaign plotting and plot development.
• Ensemble or Star Vehicle – Which is Your RPG Campaign? – Is your game an ensemble, in which everyone gets an equal share of the spotlight, or a star vehicle in which a few characters dominate play? What are the differences and the impacts? And how can you keep your players happy, either way – or fix it, if your campaign is the ‘wrong one’?
• The Seven Strata Of Story – Any narrative – including RPG adventures – consists of multiple layers working together to tell the overall story. Giving PCs their independence from the central author (the GM) simply adds another layer, or perhaps a sub-layer. This article breaks down these layers of story, shows the relationships between them, and how they can be exploited or enhanced to improve the game – or the story, in any other medium – for everyone.
• Who Is “The Hidden Dragon”? – Behind the curtain of the Orcs and Elves Series – This is all about decision-making when designing plotlines and adventures. Once again I had to interrupt the ongoing main narrative of The Orcs & Elves plotline, which had reached the point where decisions had to be made concerning the question asked in the title; I spell out the thought process that went into determining the solution used in that story.
• There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks (Ideas), Specific-Scene Blocks (Scenes within an adventure), and Setting Blocks (Locations).
• People, Places, and Narratives: Matching Locations to plot needs – Your cast of characters isn’t limited to PCs and NPCs; this article shows you how to access and use the current location as another member of that cast.

Plot Sequencing

• My Campaign Planning Cycle – Johnn describes his campaign planning routine.
• When Good Ideas Linger Too Long: Compacting plotlines – Using scriptwriting techniques to compress a plotline that had lingered for too long.
• Ask The GMs: Pacing Your Campaign – How do you pace a campaign? How do you know if you’re giving too much or too little in experience and treasure? And how do you get the PCs to explore more than the local area? Also included is a complete outline for an original 3.x campaign.
• Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow – How to link adventures so that they flow naturally. There’s more to it than you might think. One of our readers offers an alternative system in the comments that might suit some GMs better.
• Plot Stat Block For The Organized Game Master – Johnn and I were so impressed with Eureka that we each wrote a review of the supplement and each got something different out of it. This is Johnn’s, about how he can better organize the plotlines that he has running at any given time in his campaigns.
• Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens – I examine the ways in which different Narrative Styles can combine with Episodic and Serialized campaigns to produce eight distinctly different combinations, and how those can be sandboxed. The goal is to help GMs choose the narrative style that best suits the campaigns and the adventure that they want to run – and to explain (if you’re using the wrong style) why the campaign keeps going off the rails.
• Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures – I examine the creation of an adventure and how the plot can be structured. This was very much written with Beginner GMs in mind.
• Back To Basics: Campaign Structures – This article continues the ‘For Beginners’ theme of the previous, exploring different ways of tying adventures together into a wider campaign structure, starting with the simplest and evolving through to an extremely complex one that is state-of-the-art (at least for me). I still get the occasional request for the campaign planning materials that I excerpted for the latter. I conclude the article by offering a process for the conversion of an existing campaign into the plotting structure that I offer.
• Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower – Part three of two in the articles about creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign offers an example of the process of adventure creation and connection from one of my actual campaigns. This article was carefully written and edited to conceal the actual ideas that I chose for the real adventure in the campaign.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.
• The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure – I follow up the adventure structures series with a postscript article on how to foreshadow future events in a campaign, and how to use campaign planning to make it easier to do so.
• Amazon Nazis On The Moon: Campaign Planning Revisited – For those who prefer a simpler campaign structure to the one I use in most of my campaigns, I describe the technique I devised for use in planning the Co-GM’d Pulp Campaign, giving readers an original adventure in the process.

• Ask The GMs: An Epic Confusion, or how to stage a blockbuster finish – A self-explanatory title, really. And there are related tips in the comments. Best of all, one reader commented that he used our advice and had a great finish to his campaign as a result – so you know it works!
• A Grand Conclusion: Thinking about a big finish – I follow up the previous article with some further thoughts on the subject.
• Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures – To celebrate the 300th post (and some other great stats) I look at ways of celebrating campaign milestones with special adventures.

Plot Ideas

• Pile On This: Undead are Taking Over. What happens? – Johnn’s campaign came off the rails and he asked for help working out what would happen next. Lots of interesting suggestions to pilfer ideas from in the comments.
• The Undead Are Coming!! A reply to Johnn – My answer was too big to reasonably put in a comment (and needed some organization to be clear), so I put it in an extra blog post. Don’t miss the comments for extra clarification.
• Character Hooks – A series in which Johnn and several guest contributors provide adventure/plot hook ideas for different character classes. Although mainly intended for 4e D&D, most can be imported into any D&D campaign and some suit an even wider range of games.
  
  50 Barbarian Hooks – Johnn’s initial article includes a brief review of the revised Barbarian character class in the D&D 4e version of Player’s Handbook 2, which inspired the series.
  
  63 Wizard Hooks – Umm, actually no. Readers (and my humble self) have added more to the list, taking it up 81 plot hooks for Wizard Characters as of this writing.
  
  50 Paladin Hooks – Guest contributor D. L. Campbell extends the series with these 50 Hooks for the Noblest of The Noble Warriors. Well, that’s what they would like to think about themselves…
  
  54 Sorcerer Hooks – Guest Contributor Bobby Catdragon offers 54 hooks for the Sorcerer character class. Readers take the tally to 59. This is a rarity, I think it’s the only article posted at Campaign Mastery without some sort of accompanying illustration.
  
  25 Cleric Character Hooks – Johnn concludes his character hooks series with this entry that offers 25 Cleric Character Hooks. This article is more-or-less tying with Building The Perfect Beast: A D&D 3.5 online monster generator as the most popular articles on the site, day in, day out.
• Mine Fiction For Campaign Qualities – Johnn starts with a review of FantasyCraft and extrapolates one of the ideas within to find a way of customizing RPG worlds and drawing on fiction for inspiration.
• Vocabulary Hijinx: Using random word pairings for inspiration – I offer up an idea-generation technique that I haven’t seen written up very often, but that can really spur creativity. There’s a link to some technology that you can use to streamline the technique in the comments.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Melodies & Rests: ‘Euphoria’ by Def Leppard – The first, and so far only, occurrence of this occasional recurring column in which I mine music or lyrics for plot ideas, in the process showing how its done. This prototype considers the Australian CD release of ‘Euphoria’ by Def Leppard.
• The Metaphor Engine: A surprising plot generator – Using a deck of cards and the rules of an established game like Poker to generate plots and campaign backgrounds.
• Splitting Hairs: Exploring nuance as a source of game ideas – It might seem like splitting hairs, but extremely minor differences between the meaning of words can be a great source of interesting ideas. There’s no such thing as a trivial difference, as this article shows.
• Patterns Of Unpredictability: Superheroics and the Stock Market – The impact of superheroes on the stock market and on economics in general.
• Trivial Pursuits: Sources of oddball ideas – I demonstrate the use of books of trivia for ideas, with a whole heap of examples interspersed throughout the article.

Subplots

• My Favorite PC Travel Game: Campfire Chats – The January 2010 Blog Carnival was about travel in games. Johnn wrote this article as Campaign Mastery’s contribution. I add what I think is a clever twist to the idea in the comments.
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Make It Sparkle Like Gold Dust – Johnn describes his approach to GMing spell interactions and turning them into plot elements within the game. This is part one of two. I still don’t think I’ve extracted all the good juices from this article for use in my own campaigns :)
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Polish Till It Gleams – Part two of Johnn’s article on turning spells into plot elements within a campaign.
• Who Got Poker In My RPG? – Poker is a card game that’s still growing in popularity, but which had a real boom a couple of years ago. Johnn offers some ideas on how to include the game within your campaigns.
• Living in an RPG: The Accumulation Of Mundane Events – I devise a system based around playing cards for introducing cumulative small changes into a PCs life, in collaboration with the owning player. Along the way, I reflect on the changes that have occurred in my life over the preceding decade.
• Round Pegs In A Square Wheel: Reinventing Roulette for RPGs – Human nature doesn’t change. I examine human vices and foibles and how to use them to reinforce the genre of a game, then consider how to reinvent gambling, taking roulette as an example, for different genres.

Writing

See also the content under “Fiction & Writing”.

• The Right Quip at The Right Time: Humor in RPGs – More than a “try to lighten the mood by telling the occasional joke” article, I analyze a whole bunch of different types of humor and how to use them (and not use them) in an RPG, discovering why Comedy RPGs are hard.
• Action Trumps Description – GMs and authors are told to “Show, don’t Tell”, but Johnn takes this advice a step further in this article.
• The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs – How to use descriptive language more effectively when conveying information about a location or event to the PCs. With a fictional D&D city invented just to serve as an example.

Problem-Solving

• A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies – There are times when everything seems to go wrong for the GM, and he needs help. When you’re in an emergency and the ship is sinking, you need a lifeboat. Here are eight to choose from.
• Boxed In: A problem-solving frame of reference for players & GMs alike – Using a box as a metaphor for problems you may encounter at the game table can reveal surprising solutions. This article shows you how to apply the concept as a problem-solving tool. I provide an original political D&D/Pathfinder adventure (and a variation) as one example. And discuss some possible relationships between the concepts of Life and Death.
• Refloating The Shipwreck: When Players Make A Mistake – For the April 2013 Blog Carnival, I look at how GMs can cope when the players make a major, potentially campaign-ending, mistake.

Prophecies

• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive – I discuss prophecies within RPGs, the benefits, the pitfalls, and how to avoid the problems. Don’t skip the comments, there are some additional techniques worth considering described there. And once again, we have feedback from someone who employed the techniques I offer and came up with a great result, so you know it works!

 Rules

 
The Rules are another vital element that will need to be settled before play can begin. It also usually helps if the GM has some understanding of those rules before he starts to adjudicate them – which can present a whole new problem of time-crunch with everything else he has to do to get a campaign off the ground. And the GM needs to be able to solve the rules problems that will inevitably arise.

• Google Groans: Misplacing the Rules – Google’s failure to serve as a game resource, the poor indexing of RPG rules & supplements, and using a desktop search as a solution.
• “This Means WAR!“ – A complete system for refereeing a War in an RPG – up close to the PCs. This is a four-part series that got split into six for practical reasons (but is only counted as four toward the 500).
  
  Parts One and Two deal with the fundamental concepts and prep work needed to make War a practical option within an RPG.
  
  Parts Three and Four describe how to use those fundamental concepts in play.
  
  Part 5 describes how to integrate PC-scale one-on-one combat with a war; and
  
  Part 6 concludes the series with miscellaneous notes on how to implement unusual abilities and exotic armaments within the system. Principally intended for D&D 3.x/Pathfinder, but adaptable to any game system. Part of the Blog Carnival for March 2009.
• The Foundation Of Averages: Psychohistory and RPG Rules – I look at the process of extrapolating from rules systems to the larger worlds and nations that they describe using elementary statistical analysis.
• A Game For All People: The Perfect DnD Recipe – I respond to the announcement of D&DNext by extending a previous article (Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe?) to outline how I would create a Universal D&D game system – in other words, what I would like to see in D&DNext when it came out.
• GM’s Toolbox: Running The Game Part Three: Rules and Combat – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article details a subject that many GMs and players seem to obsess about – the rules.
• Exceeding the Extraordinary: The Meaning Of Feats – D&D 3.0 introduced the concept of Feats. I look behind the curtain at the gears and cogs of the Feat concept and rules subsystem and how they affect the game. There are some additional perspectives in the comments.
• Who Got Poker In My RPG? – Poker is a card game that’s still growing in popularity, but which had a real boom a couple of years ago. Johnn offers some ideas on how to include the game within your campaigns.
• Round Pegs In A Square Wheel: Reinventing Roulette for RPGs – Human nature doesn’t change. I examine human vices and foibles and how to use them to reinforce the genre of a game, then consider how to reinvent gambling, taking roulette as an example, for different genres.
• A Rational Intuition – The differences between instinct and intelligence, and how different game systems handle the former.
• On The Edge: Implications of the D&DNext Advantage mechanic – I respond to an article by The Online DM by considering the consequences of the results that he generated. There’s lots of tables and mathematical analysis, and more than 15 implications identified. If you don’t want to know how to conduct such an analysis, you can skip down to the interpretation, but be warned: I have no idea of how relevant these results are to the still-in-development/playtest system. One of the few posts at Campaign Mastery that is topical more than evergreen in nature.

Learning Game Rules

• Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs – This five-part series looks at why it can be so hard for GMs to invest themselves in learning game rules, and my solutions to the problem.
  
  Part One, the Series Introduction, describes the problem in detail.
  
  Part Two, Getting Enthusiastic About Rules, points out a common mistake in the approach that most GMs take, to wit, reading the rule books cover-to-cover (or trying to).
  
  In Part Three, Student, Tutor Thyself, I explain a system that I use to teach myself the basic rules of a new game in about 18 one-hour sessions.
  
  Part Four, The Quality Of Rules, considers the question of “realism” within an RPG and derives a principle for reverse-engineering the existing rules of a game to discover the underlying principles and design philosophies, enabling flaws in the rules to be exposed and providing a consistent standard by which to assess house rules.
  
  And Part Five offers a new concept, Rules Touchstones, as key entranceways through which to learn a rules system, and discusses the first of these, the Combat System.
  
  There was supposed to be a part 6 to this series but I was so drained by the debate in the comments section that I never got around to writing it. I still have the notes, though, so one day…
• Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques – In Johnn’s review of the Chronology iPad app, he identified three major problems that he felt were responsible for the slow pace of combat resolution in his Riddleport campaign, but offered no solutions. In this response I offer the techniques that I use to solve the problems of 1)Not knowing the spells and supernatural abilities of the monsters in the encounter; 2)Being unfamiliar with the specialized combat subrules that applied to this particular battle; and 3) Being unable to identify which Mini went with which PC, which Mini went with which monster, and who was attacking who. There are some more great solutions in the comments, especially to the last of those three questions, and some great discussion of the first problem and my solutions.

Solving Rule Problems

• Ask The GMs: Going Beyond The Rules – How do you extrapolate from existing rules to cover new situations?
• Ask The GMs: When players make themselves immune, remember that “Resistance Is Futile” – How do you handle PCs that seem to be immune to magic?
• A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies – There are times when everything seems to go wrong for the GM, and he needs help. When you’re in an emergency and the ship is sinking, you need a lifeboat. Here are eight to choose from.
• Boxed In: A problem-solving frame of reference for players & GMs alike – Using a box as a metaphor for problems you may encounter at the game table can reveal surprising solutions. This article shows you how to apply the concept as a problem-solving tool. I provide an original political D&D/Pathfinder adventure (and a variation) as ane example. And discuss some possible relationships between the concepts of Life and Death.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics – There are always situations that the official rules don’t cover. This article offers a guideline that can help solve them – while adding color to the game world.

 Metagame

 
Metagaming describes any decision-making process or consideration which takes place outside the level of characters within the game. Metagaming can be good or bad, depending on the reasons something is done. Campaign Mastery uses the term in three contexts – general metagaming, like having an NPC do something not because it is the “right” thing for that NPC to do, but because it will make for a more interesting or entertaining story for the players; House Rules, which compromise or alter the standard rules for campaign-concept reasons or for practicality; and the implementation of a Game Physics which treats the rules as guidelines within a simulated reality that can be overridden if the Physics implies a different outcome from a situation. Again, several of these topics are favorites of mine, and have been the subject of several articles as a result. Finally, because they may need to contain or synopsize metagame rules decision, GM Screens have also been placed in this category.

• Ask The GMs: Weather, Not Climate – How do you give your campaign realistic weather without overloading the GM with admin tasks? Johnn & I offer a variety of simulation systems, but not everyone agrees with us. Which is fine by me.
• When Is A Good Time To Hand Out Experience Points? – Johnn & the commentators examine this issue and many alternative answers to the question.
• Learn From Your GMing Mistakes – Session Post-Mortem Tips – Johnn offers some tips on how to improve your game by learning from your mistakes with a session post-mortem.
• Increase game attendance with great session reminders – Johnn talks about ways to improve session reminders. The benefits extend far beyond increased game attendance.
• Ask The GMs: Systematic Systems Choice – How do you choose the right game system for a campaign?
• It’s Not Like Shooting Sushi In A Barrel: A Personalized Productivity Focus For Game Prep – I devise a theoretical method of making game prep more satisfactory using the principles of time-and-motion studies and applying the objective of making the game more fun. I still don’t know if this works for anyone else. I’m not even sure it works for me. But it still seems to make sense.
• Google Calendar As Awesome Campaign Calendar – Johnn started using Google Calendar as the in-game Calendar for his Riddleport Campaign as an experiment. It worked so well that it became a permanent addition to his campaign tools. This article explains what he does and how he does it.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.
• When Good Dice Turn Bad: A Lesson In The Improbable – The improbable can occasionally happen. This is a true story (I was at the table) of just such an improbable event. And then the GM explains how he coped. Don’t miss the comments.
• Have WordPress, will Game – I consider the advantages and benefits of using WordPress as a campaign wiki, and how to structure it to get the most bang for your buck. This includes a mini-review of a dice roller WordPress plugin from Awesome Dice.
• GM’s Toolbox: Running The Game Part One: Creating the Mood – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. In this article, the focus is on the atmosphere of the game.
• GM’s Toolbox: Beyond The Game Part Two: Roleplaying and Reality – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article deals with the connection – and, ideally, the disconnection – between character world and real world.
• GM’s Toolbox: Beyond The Game Part Three: Learning to become a Better GM – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. The final substantative article in the series considers the metaquestion of how to constantly improve as a GM.
• It’s Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Game Fraud and Counter-Fraud in RPGs – In a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world, how might people cheat at games of chance – and what would casinos have to do to stop them?
• Selected Ticks Of The Clock – Session Scheduling for RPGs – I reminisce about my roleplaying experiences and ponder how playing time and session duration impacted the campaigns, deriving six principles to enable GMs to tailor these real-world factors to the benefit of their games. The comments offer some other reader’s experiences while validating the analysis.
• Patterns Of Unpredictability: Superheroics and the Stock Market – The impact of superheroes on the stock market and on economics in general.
• The Arcane Implications of Seating at the Game Table – Few people have ever thought about why people sit where they do at the game table, and still fewer have thought about the consequences of getting people to sit in different places. I take an in-depth look at both aspects of the situation.
• Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation – There are three tricks that I use all the time – and this article gives you the keys to all three. Along the way (as an example) I use the techniques to develop a master plan for a Mastermind in a generic D&D/Pathfinder campaign.
• Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity – I consider professionalism when it comes to blogging, and the implications of inspiration when it conflicts with that value. I then apply the question to game prep and show how to employ top-down design principles to the problem, illustrating the process that I use to plan my game prep. Which is the same process that I use to plan my Holidays, writing, TV viewing, shopping… you name it. You might find it useful, too.
• The Gap In Reality: Immersion in an RPG Environment – Four years on, I update “Are Special Effects Killing Hollywood” and focus on the impact of changing expectations of immersion on RPGs, leading to suggestions for the use of multimedia in games.

GM Screens

• Top 9 Dungeon Master Screen Hacks – Johnn examines nine ways of customizing a GM screen. This remains a popular article at Campaign Mastery.
• 11 Homebrew Dungeon Master Screens – Johnn follows up his article about customizing DM Screens with another on constructing your own.
• Speed Up Combat By Building Your Own Combat GM Screen – There haven’t been many articles about GM Screens here at Campaign Mastery, but the few that have appeared have been amongst the most popular. This article by Johnn does exactly what it says in the headline. There are more suggestions on content and technique in the comments.

House Rules Theory

• The House Always Wins: Examining the Concept of House Rules – I look at the basics of House Rules – and in particular why campaigns have them. Along the way I introduce readers to some of the many controversies relating to the subject that have raged amongst gamers for as long as I’ve been involved in the hobby. I have some fun with some of my players in the comments.
• A Different Perspective: Changing the dynamic with a different metaphor – I look at the potential of using playing cards and existing card game rules instead of dice to resolve situations in an RPG.
• My House Rules for D&D – As part of the Blog Carnival for July 2009, Johnn got guest author Mike E. to pen this guest article detailing the way he integrates rules from earlier editions of D&D to augment his 4e campaign.
• The Critical Threshold: A brief debate on the Merits of Extreme Results – I consider extreme die roll results and the merits – and disadvantages – of systems of associating extreme results with extreme rolls. And the discussion in the comments was awesomely useful to anyone thinking about the subject.
• Ask The GMs: How to set up a fun fishing mini game – Johnn considers some environmental and procedural aspects of fishing in response to the specific question posed, dealing with the roleplaying aspects of the question. I put on my rules-creation hat and consider the bigger question of how to represent contests and competitions within an RPG on the way to developing a complete mini-game. The rules of that game are available as a PDF at the end of the article. And there are some fun left-of-field ideas in the comment at the end.
• Experience for the ordinary person – I cast an analytic eye over the question of how ordinary people (NPCs) gain experience and expertise in the course of a game. While primarily intended for D&D / Pathfinder, the results should be more broadly applicable, though YMMV when it comes to any specific game system. Don’t miss the extended (and extensive) discussion in the comments.
• Objective-Oriented Experience Points – I extend the line of thought offered in Experience for the ordinary person to completely revise the experience paradigm.
• Taking everyman skills to the next level: The Absence of an Alibi – I start with the concept of Everyman Skills and evolve a tool for the characterization of individuals that often yields surprising results.
• The Nuances of computer use in a simulated world – I examine the difficulties of simulating computers, and their use (and abuse) in RPGs and develop a “Virtual Reality” solution to those problems.

Actual House Rules

• Shadow Levels: A way to roleplay the acquisition of Prestige Classes in D&D 3.x – The title is self-explanatory. This should have been my first published credit, but it was mistakenly accredited to my then partner at Campaign Mastery, Johnn. But I’m still proud that it was considered worth publishing by an outside party, and I still employ this system in my games.
• Broadening Magical Horizons: Some Feats from Fumanor and Shards Of Divinity – 27 Original feats from my D&D campaigns are offered in four categories: Reducing Metamagics, Enchantment Metamagics, General Metamagics, and General Magic-related Feats. These of course are just the tip of the iceberg, one day I’ll pull out another bunch of them.
• “Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?”: A New idea for handling “wild luck” in D&D – I come up with a new idea for using luck in an RPG, especially in D&D.
• A Slippery Slope: Level Adjustments Under The Microscope – One of the most contentious articles I’ve ever written looks at Level Adjustments in D&D 3.x. I offer my way of doing them, which is definitely NOT canonical – because the canon is firing confetti, in my opinion. You may not agree with my interpretations and the way I house rule the treatment of level adjustments. Or they might be exactly what you need to make sense of a confusing part of the rules. I’m fine with both.
• Let’s Have A Good Clean Fight… – A discussion of the expanded EL-CR chart that I created and how I use it to ensure that opponent power levels match those of the PCs in my D&D encounters.
• Ask The GMs: How to set up a fun fishing mini game – Johnn considers some environmental and procedural aspects of fishing in response to the specific question posed, dealing with the roleplaying aspects of the question. I put on my rules-creation hat and consider the bigger question of how to represent contests and competitions within an RPG on the way to developing a complete mini-game. The rules of that game are available as a PDF at the end of the article. And there are some fun left-of-field ideas in the comment at the end.
• “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope – I examine the fundamental concepts that underpin skill checks and “difficulty targets” using D&D 3.x as an example and find multiple answers depending on your assumptions – and expose flaws in the 3.x mechanic along the way. Despite my making a mistake in the article (check the comments) I stand by the conclusions. This is something that is important for every GM to understand regardless of which game system they are using.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• On The Nature Of Flaws – I review Player Option: Flaws from 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, and find it inspirational but incomplete, then set about addressing the holes that I found. The subject: how do you integrate the concept of racial or character flaws into game systems that don’t have them?
• Experience for the ordinary person – I cast an analytic eye over the question of how ordinary people (NPCs) gain experience and expertise in the course of a game. While primarily intended for D&D / Pathfinder, the results should be more broadly applicable, though YMMV when it comes to any specific game system. Don’t miss the extended (and extensive) discussion in the comments.
• The Nth Level Of Abstraction – GMs abstract things to varying degrees all the time. This article attempts to put some systematic analysis into the how, when, and why of abstraction, and the consequences. In the comments, I discuss ways of expressing the different levels of abstraction within maps. This is one of those ‘deep’ articles that needs to be read two or three times to get the full benefit.
• Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons – I discuss the inadequacies of Dragons in 3.x when Epic Levels are involved and offer a custom redevelopment of the Monsters to beef them up. A lively discussion in the comments leads to an unrelated article about House Rules.
• May the camels of 1,000 fleas – wait, that’s not right: Improving Curses in 3.x – I reinvent the rules for Curses in 3.x/Pathfinder to add to its roleplaying potential, then offer 60 Curses to fire the imagination.
• Superhero combat on steroids – pt 1 of 2: Taking the initiative with the Hero System – I look at some variant rules to speed up Combat in the Hero System by incorporating something similar to the 3.x Initiative mechanic and discover numerous secondary benefits to doing so.
• Superhero combat on steroids – pt 2 of 2: Moving with a purpose – In part 2 of my article on speeding up combat in the Hero System, I consider some of the knock-on effects on other rules to the changes mooted in part 1.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics – There are always situations that the official rules don’t cover. This article offers a guideline that can help solve them – while adding color to the game world.
• I Got A Plot Device and I know how to use it: Bluffing in the Hero System – Bluffing is one of those things that the Hero System does exceedingly poorly. I set out to rectify that with some specific rules for the game system.

• Too Much Life for The Living: March 2011 Blog Carnival – My second contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival asks is Healing is too easy in D&D, which leads to proposing an alternative combat system for 3.x / Pathfinder Based on concepts within the TORG game system. It was quite well received. There are additional suggestions and clarifications in the comments. If you want to make your combats more life-and-death dramatic, this might be worth your time.
• All Wounds Are Not Alike – Part 1: Alternative Damage rules for 3.x – What are “Hit Points”? I have encountered many different definitions, and each – carried to its logical conclusion – is best exemplified by a different set of house/variant rules for Damage and Healing. Each part of the “All Wounds Are Not Alike” series examines one in detail, from game theory through to implementation and consequences for game play. I didn’t actually gather them as a series because I wanted them to stand alone – you don’t need this article to understand/use the next in the series. This first one defines Hit Points as “a numeric index of the gap between healthy and helpless”. The results are great for bringing a High-Fantasy game back to earth, grounding it in realism. Don’t skip the comments for some perspective on the possible pitfalls.
• All Wounds Are Not Alike Part 2: Bone-breaking damage for 3.x – The second definition that I consider for the concept of “Hit Points” is “An index of soft-tissue damage” which requires a rules extension to deal with broken bones. The results are interesting, to say the least, and offer lots of potential for new magic items, for differentiating between Paladin laying-on of hands and clerical magic, and for reinventing selected monsters with a slightly tweaked flavor. This option strikes a balance between high- and low-fantasy.
• All wounds are not alike, part 3a: The Healing Imperative (Now Updated!) – An unmistakably high-fantasy approach, and the first variant offered that I actually use in one of my campaigns. Instead of making the differential between different wound types a function of the character’s total hit point capacity, it distinguishes types of injury by the amount of damage inflicted in a single blow, with thresholds based on the efficacy of Healing Spells. More variants and some really interesting discussion in the comments, which were unusually voluminous for this post – but read them in conjunction with the second half of the article, which was simply too big to finish in time.
• All wounds are not alike, part 3b: The Healing Imperative (cont) – I finish the unfinished variation – with five sub-variants for users to contemplate. There’s some clarification in the comments.

Game Physics

• Relatively Uncertain: Taking Control of Game Physics – I take a close look at game physics – why you need one, the assumptions that underpin them, downsides, and how to create a manageable one.
• Time Travel in RPGs – This series started as part of another article, Blog Carnival June 2010: A Medley Of Inspiring Media but very quickly outgrew it.
  
  The first part, When Inspiration Is Not Enough, looks at using the existing media as a foundation, but ends up concluding that the best examples aren’t good enough, that what’s needed is a game metaphysics to give some operating principles to time travel.
  
  In part 2, A Journey Of 1,000 years, I describe the Time-Travel physics that I employ in my superhero campaign. Even though this is more than 20 years old now, it still holds up in the face of modern physics discoveries.
  
  Finally, the third part, Like Sand through the Klein Bottle, looks at the in-game consequences and implications of using that game physics – the fun stuff, in other words.
• Examining Psionics – This 5-part series examines Psionics in gaming, especially Telepathy.
  
  In Part 1, The Mind’s Eye, I provide extracts from the game rules for my superhero campaign including notes on roleplaying telepathy. This is probably the least-valuable part of the series to the general reader, I have to admit, though there’s discussion of the metagame impact of Psionics and telepathy in particular that no-one in a campaign with Psionics should skip; it provides a framework for the rest of the series.
  
  Part two, Neurons & Lobes, offers a pseudo-scientific ‘explanation’ for the biology of Psionics. Both these first two articles are actually preamble for the article that originally intended to write, which appears as the rest of the series.
  
  Part 3, The Value Of Information, points out the inadequacy of existing metaphors and analogies for the telepathic experience, most of which date from the first half of the twentieth century or earlier, and then suggests using the Internet as a metaphor for the telepathic experience. I had identified 21 aspects of the Internet that were applicable, and use each to generate telepathy-related adventure ideas or to illuminate the concepts involved, or both. In Part 3 of the series I consider Privacy, Law, Law-Enforcement, Telepathy for Voyeurism and Pornography, the value of information, Data Piracy, and Search Engines.
  
  Part 4, All This And Psionic Spam, continues by examining the World Wide Web, Misinformation, Spoofs, Spam, Instant News services, Viral Marketing, and File Sharing.
  
  The final part of the series, The Dark Side Of The Mind, considers Tracking Cookies, Fisching, Viruses, Social Networking, Twitter, Website Hacking, and Spyware/Hijacking exploits. I close by reviewing the value of the Internet as a metaphor for Telepathy and then considering the whole series as a representation of the value of Analogy.
• It’s Reality, Jim, but not As We Know It: St Barbara – I discuss the Paranormal Physics and Paranormal Biology skills from my superhero campaign, and use the discussion as a springboard into an illustration of my contention that rules-based disadvantages and roleplaying-acting don’t have to be mutually exclusive by exploring the pseudo-science behind the powers of one of the PCs in the campaign – an explanation that gets both a reality check and an extension in the comments.
• Fascinating Topological Limits: FTL in Gaming – I examine Faster-Than-Light travel, and point out the flaws in the assumptions that lead people to assume it isn’t possible. Then I examine the different types of approach used in RPGs. The conversation in the comments was one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever had at Campaign Mastery and is not to be missed by any devotee of science fiction or future-world-oriented games.
• A Twist in Time: Alternate Histories in RPGs – I offer the general principles that I use to construct a viable, believable, alternate history or parallel world.
• The Physics Of Uncertainty – An anomalous article for Campaign Mastery that is only indirectly game-related. I reflect on some of the stranger implications of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty, use the results to prove that anything that can be measured contains an uncertainty, and consider some of the consequences that would manifest in a sci-fi/superhero campaign or novel. Speculative physics can be so much fun :) I just wish I could have gotten some real-world physicists to comment.
• A Hint Of Tomorrow: The Future Evolution Of Homo Sapiens – I consider the evolutionary pressures on modern humans in an effort to understand what the humanity of the future might be like – something relevant to just about every sci-fi and cyberpunk campaign.

 Players

 
Once you have the campaign and the rules sorted, you need players before you have a game. But this involves interacting with other people, with all their human foibles and failures, opinions and attitudes, philosophies and beliefs, ideas and inspirations – some or all of which can differ from those held by the GM and expressed in his campaign. Dealing with these complications makes Players deserving of their own category within the Blogdex.

• Moral Qualms on the Richter scale – the need for cooperative subject limits – How questions of morality can impact your game when a player’s personal beliefs come into conflict with the campaign.
• Ask The GMs: The right to be heard – How do you ensure that every player gets a fair share of the attention when one of them has a dominant personality?
• Ask The GMs: PC Choices and Consequences – How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world? A simple question but like an iceberg, nine-tenths don’t show. In order to properly answer this question, Johnn & I had to answer five even more complicated questions: How can the players impact the game world? How are the consequences of PC actions determined? How do the PCs become aware of these consequences? How can the GM ensure that the Players recognize the connection between action and consequences? And how can the administration of these changes be kept practical? All those answers, and more, are in this article.
• Increase game attendance with great session reminders – Johnn talks about ways to improve session reminders. The benefits extend far beyond increased game attendance.
• Bringing on the next generation, Part One: Player Peers – How I was taught to be a good player and how you can teach someone else to be one – not to mention being a better player yourself.
• Interviewing Potential Players – “Filling the empty chair” was written by Johnn during the time when he was working on Campaign Mastery, and I contributed to it. In response to a question raised by a review of the book, Johnn added this extension to the book on how to use an interview to screen prospective players for a good gaming ‘fit’ and potential problems.
• This Survey For New Players Ensures A Good Fit – Roleplaying Tips reader Zerfinity sent Johnn the player recruitment survey that he used to build his new group. Johnn offers the survey in this article because it answered the question of a reviewer of “Filling the empty chair” (paraphrased): How do you select a new player if you get multiple responses to your ‘gamer wanted’ ads?
• Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence – How do you maintain a campaign when several players are unable to attend regularly?
• Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear – As part of the Teach You Kids To Game Week, I write about my experiences serving as a relative novice GM to my teenaged older brother and my much younger brother in the very early 80s, and how their different ages and abilities shaped my role behind the screen.
• The Ultimate Disruption: The loss of a player – I consider what a GM has to consider when he loses a player. Is the campaign still viable? What can be done about it? And, what should be done about it? I go on to review my campaigns in light of the then-recent passing of my friend and player, Steven.
• Refloating The Shipwreck: When Players Make A Mistake – For the April 2013 Blog Carnival, I look at how GMs can cope when the players make a major, potentially campaign-ending, mistake.
• Lessons From The West Wing IV: Victory At Any Price – Players, and Characters, in RPGs sometimes grow so fixated on winning that they will pay any price to achieve it. This article considers the subject in detail, with an extensive example from the Adventurer’s Club Campaign.

 Names

 
Names are important. The give characters, places, geographic features, adventures and entire campaigns a point of identity – so I have chosen to give Names their own category in the Blogdex.

• 40 Great Name Resources, Lists and Generators – Johnn offers a compendium of resources on the subject of Names. Some may be gone to the Great Internet Node In The Sky since, but most should still be around. This was so good a list that I ended up cutting my planned delivery of a similar resource out of my later series on Names!
• A Good Name Is Hard To Find – A series about names for which continues to be popular.
  
  The first article in the series, A Good Name Is Hard To Find, discusses why good character names are important and offers a bucketload of advice on what to do and what not to do when choosing one.
  
  The second, The Wellspring of Euonyms, introduces the concept of Name Seeds, a symbolic distillation of a character that can form the foundations of a name, and shows how to generate a name seed.
  
  Article three, Sugar, Spice, and a touch of Rhubarb: That’s what little names are made of, discusses simple name structures and how to create a name using a name seed, and as a bonus, shows how to generate a monosyllabic language.
  
  Article four, With The Right Seasoning: Beyond Simple Names, extends this approach to cover complicated name structures, and explores byways such as non-human languages, and Superhero & Villain naming.
  
  With the fifth article, Grokking The Message, we leave character names behind and move on to naming places and campaigns, and I explain how I chose the names for some of the campaigns that I have run.
  
  The next two articles,Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames (Part 1) and (Part 2), discuss adventure names, with hundreds of examples (with explanations) and general principles based on style & genre of campaign.
  
  Part 8, still untitled, which will deal with Alien Names and Name Tools, is still unfinished but is expected to appear sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.

 Characters

 
Once you have players, those players are going to need characters, and you are going to need antagonists and supporting cast. And once those are created, you are going to need to know how to express the personalities that you have invented for them in-play.

• Sophisticated Links: Degrees Of Separation in RPGs – We’ve all heard of the “Six Degrees Of Separation” game. I apply the concept to RPG Characters and come up with ways to take advantage of it within the game. This article only scratches the surface of what can be done with this tool.
• High Elf Generator – Johnn follows up his review of Q-workshop’s Curse of the Crimson Throne dice set with this review of their Pathfinder Elven dice set and offers a random generator for High Elves – Names, Quirks, Motives, Appearances, Secrets, and Power Base. He then offers our readers the chance to win a set (sorry, the contest has closed) in response for additional add-ons for the generator – so don’t skip the comments on this one!
• Evil GM Tricks For Over-Resting PCs – Do your players stop to rest as soon as they run low on power for the game-day – even if that’s just five minutes after their adventuring day starts? Johnn excerpts some material from his Faster Combat course to offer some solutions to the problem. I offer a refinement in the comments.
• Go Hard Or Go Home: Graceful Character Aging – How I now simulate Aging in my campaigns, some of the approaches I’ve used to handle character aging in the past, and why those weren’t successful.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2 – Part two continues sketching in the background to the Orcs and Elves plotline. This begins describing the key characters, along the way giving the backgrounds and histories of their races within the campaign, covering Elves, Drow, Ogres, Dwarves, and Halflings. I give away lots of freebies from the campaign in the process.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin).
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the series points out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign (and lists them) – something that the players themselves would only peripherally have been aware of.

Characterization

• Focusing On Alignment – This series starts with An Unnecessary Evil?, a guest article by Gary Stahl, in which he explains his dislike for the concept of alignment.
  
  In part 2, A Necessary Evil?, I discuss the justification for alignment being part of the rules, and why some people have problems with it.
  
  In part 3, An Unnecessary Evil?, I offer counterpoints to my own arguements, re-examine the question of whether or not alignment should be part of the rules, and offer some alternative Mechanics for alignment that satisfy both sides of the question.
  
  In part 4, Flavors Of Neutral, I look at the complex subject of neutrality and show how all colors of neutral don’t have to be alike.
  
  In the concluding part, Dark Shadows, I talk about the interpretations and definitions of alignment in Shards Of Divinity (an ‘evil’ campaign).
• The Hidden Key: Resolutions as a window to personality – I ponder the question “Why do people make the same New Year’s Resolutions year after year?” and discover a new tool for exploring a character’s personality.
• The Characterization Puzzle – A five-part series in which I look at different techniques for generating the right personality for your NPCs. These approaches also work for players generating PCs.
  
  In the first part, When personalities are hard to find, I examine the problem.
  
  In part 2, I describe ‘ The Thumbnail Method‘.
  
  In part 3 I demonstrate ‘ The Inversion Principle‘, with a real-life example from one of my campaigns. Both techniques had been go-to solutions of mine for years.
  
  Part 4 offers ‘ The Window Shopping Technique‘, which was a new one that I developed in early 2010.
  
  Finally, the last part, The First Decision, discusses how to choose between the three techniques. The comments to the last part also contain some extra uses and considerations concerning the Inversion Principle.
• Creating Alien Characters: Expanding the ‘Create A Character Clinic’ To Non-Humans – I extend Holly Lisle’s e-book course in character creation, the Create A Character Clinic, to cover the creation of Alien Races, twisting the central concepts of Dwarves in entirely new directions as an example. And touch on some others.
• We All Have Our Roles To Play – This (still incomplete) series examines the relationships between PCs in terms of their social and character roles with a team and the interactions between them. Unfortunately, right now, these articles take too long to craft, so this series is on hold for the time being. But I will get back to it eventually, even if I have to run it one archetype at a time. So far, eleven archetypes have been discussed out of a total of 31 identified roles (some added after the series started).
  
  Part 1 introduced the series, then looks at The Heart Of The Team, The Tactician, The Moral Guardian, and the Rock.
  
  Part 2 looks at The Mother Hen and The Intellectual.
  
  In Part 3, I discuss The Faithful, The Air-head, and The Flashing Genius.
  
  Part 4 is the final part published to date with The Maverick and The Strange Uncle.
• Taking everyman skills to the next level: The Absence of an Alibi – I start with the concept of Everyman Skills and evolve a tool for the characterization of individuals that often yields surprising results.
• A Good Name Is Hard To Find – The first article in the series of the same name discusses why good character names are important and offers a bucketload of advice on what to do and what not to do when choosing one.
• The Wellspring of Euonyms – The second part of the series A Good Name Is Hard To Find introduces the concept of Name Seeds, a symbolic distillation of a character that can form the foundations of a name, and shows how to generate a name seed.
• Sugar, Spice, and a touch of Rhubarb: That’s what little names are made of – Article three in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series discusses simple name structures and how to create a name using a name seed, and as a bonus, shows how to generate a monosyllabic language.
• With The Right Seasoning: Beyond Simple Names – The fourth article in the series A Good Name Is Hard To Find extends the approach detailed in part three to cover complicated name structures, and explores byways such as non-human languages, and Superhero & Villain naming.
• What matters to your character: the value of the shameful secret – I consider the value of deciding your character’s secrets as characterization aid – what we regret can be a signpost to the morals and values of the individual, profiling the character in several key respects.
• Part Three then addresses two more of the remaining primary types of writer’s block: Action (Combat) and Personality Blocks (Characterization).

PCs

• Ask the GMs: Characters not trusting the other PCs – What should the GM do when one character’s mistrust of the other PCs when it starts getting in the way of the game? Johnn & I Advise, others chime in within the comments.
• Paint On A Canvas: A Personality Metaphor – Tony Scott and Beverly Hills Cop II combine to give me a new perspective on how to choose characters who will have chemistry together.
• The Pursuit Of Perfection: Character Evolution Part 5 of the series-within-a-series of the first of my Lessons From The West Wing deals with how the uniqueness of the campaign should impact on the player characters that participate in the world.
• Ask The GMs: An Inconsistency of Play – A GM grew so frustrated at the inconsistency of personality given by a player to their character that he started cancelling sessions. One of his other players asks Johnn & I for help. There’s a link at the end of the comments that is worth reading on the subject as well – thanks, Robert.
• Ask the GMs: What we have here is A Failure To Cooperate – Character-driven PCs tend to be rugged individualists. Diverse backgrounds make this even more pronounced. So how can you get such diverse individuals to bond? How can you generate some party unity? There’s also some useful advice in the comments.
• Character Hooks – A series in which Johnn and several guest contributors provide adventure/plot hook ideas for different character classes. Although mainly intended for 4e D&D, most can be imported into any D&D campaign and some suit an even wider range of games.
  
  50 Barbarian Hooks – Johnn’s initial article includes a brief review of the revised Barbarian character class in the D&D 4e version of Player’s Handbook 2, which inspired the series.
  
  63 Wizard Hooks – Umm, actually no. Readers (and my humble self) have added more to the list, taking it up 81 plot hooks for Wizard Characters as of this writing.
  
  50 Paladin Hooks – Guest contributor D. L. Campbell extends the series with these 50 Hooks for the Noblest of The Noble Warriors. Well, that’s what they would like to think about themselves…
  
  54 Sorcerer Hooks – Guest Contributor Bobby Catdragon offers 54 hooks for the Sorcerer character class. Readers take the tally to 59. This is a rarity, I think it’s the only article posted at Campaign Mastery without some sort of accompanying illustration.
  
  25 Cleric Character Hooks – Johnn concludes his character hooks series with this entry that offers 25 Cleric Character Hooks. This article is more-or-less tying with Building The Perfect Beast: A D&D 3.5 online monster generator as the most popular articles on the site, day in, day out.
• 50 Assassin Hooks – This excerpt offers a representational fifty of the more than 125 Assassin Hooks contained within Assassin’s Amulet.
• Forging Unexpected Connections: Putting PC Dossiers To Work – I look beyond the concept of a character sheet and invent a character dossier – then show how to put them to work as a way of improving a game. A comment adds another way to use the concept. This article got great peer reviews, so it’s worth your time.
• The Power Of Synergy: Maximizing Character Efficiency – I look at a simple technique that players can use to make their characters more efficient, and the benefits to the GM of doing so.
• An Empty Death, An Empty Life: Making PC Death Matter – All PC Deaths should matter. Heroes should either die a Heroic Death or should achieve victory. That puts the GM in a difficult position when it comes to that staple of D&D, the wandering monster. This article shows how to add meaning commensurate with the risk by making sure random encounters are always plot-significant.
• The Acceptable Favoritism: 34 ‘Rules’ to make your players’ PCs their favorites – My friends and I list the 34 things that GMs should and shouldn’t do to turn your players characters into their favorites.

Villains

• The Anatomy Of Evil: What Makes a Good Villain? – It seems a simple question, but those are often the most difficult. Some great discussion in the comments expands on the subject.
• Making a Great Villain Part 1 of 3 – The Mastermind – A hero is only as good as the villains they fight – but what makes a villain great? This mini-series of articles offers a different answer for each of three different types of villains.
• Making a Great Villain Part 2 of 3 – The Combat Monster – The second article in this trilogy considers how to make this most obvious type of villain, interesting.
• Making a Great Villain Part 3 of 3 – the Character Villain – The third in this article trilogy focuses on villains who oppose the heroes ideologically or for personality reasons.

Other NPCs

• Former PCs as NPCs – Johnn takes a reader’s suggestion, submitted to Roleplaying Tips and builds on it with details of how to put it into practice. The article ends with links to sites where GMs can submit NPCs for use by the greater gaming community.
• Book of Dead Characters to Celebrate Your Gaming – Johnn expands on his thoughts in Former PCs as NPCs by connecting the idea to his Book of Dead Characters. This should very much be read as a supplement to the earlier article.
• The Ubercharacter Wimp: Plotting within your PCs limitations – TUW, or ‘The Ubercharacter Wimp’, is a tool that I devised for the generation of quick and easy NPCs. This was a really hastily-written article to cover my obligations to the Blog while I was moving house.
• GM’s Toolbox: Prep Tools Part Three: NPCs – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for, in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at the creation & management of the NPCs needed for a game session or adventure.
• Look beyond the box: a looser concept for NPCs – I develop a simple (and universal) system for defining complex aspects of NPCs. Try it, it works!
• By the seat of your pants: the 3 minute (or less) NPC – I break an NPC into smaller pieces: three general framing decisions, the eight most important details, a list of secondary items that aren’t needed for every character, and a pair of optional extras that may be needed for some campaigns – and show how to employ the structure to generate an NPC in less time than it takes to hard-boil an egg. Even experienced GMs get something out of this article, I’ve been told. It’s a perennial favorite amongst our readers. I’d completely forgotten that I intended to develop a worksheet for it – but I mentioned it in replying to a pingback. So that’s back on my radar, for anyone who’s been waiting!

Playing

• Ask The GMs: How to survive political games with paranoia and intrigue – The question might concern a Vampire The Masquerade campaign, but Johnn and I look beyond that to offer advice on how to handle games filled with in-game politics. With a postscript piece of advice in the comments.
• Roleplaying Assassins: An excerpt from Assassins Amulet – An excerpt from our then-forthcoming sourcebook, Assassin’s Amulet offers advice on how to roleplay an Assassin. And there’s a link to part two of a great review of AA in the comments, and a link to the site where you can buy a copy.
• In Part Four, I wrap up the Primary types of writer’s block with solutions to Dialogue Block and Narrative Block.

 Adventures

 
Only once you have all the game elements discussed already are you ready to create and play adventures – which brings a whole new set of headaches and requirements. But no-one has any fun without them.

• The Plot Thickens – Hooking Players Into Adventures – Johnn offers advice about connecting existing players to a new (published) adventure.
• Ask The GMs: “Let’s Split Up.” – “Good Idea, we can do more damage that way!” – What are the best ways to handle splitting the party up – especially over the long term?
• Downsize Your Disasters: GMing catastrophes in your RPG – How not to use disasters in your RPGs.
• Ask The GMs: How do you GM Player Characters as Spectators? – Something I mentioned in the last part of my series on alignment sparked the question, “How do you handle scenes where the PCs are spectators?” from one of our readers. Johnn and I offer our advice in reply.
• Dungeonaday.com Sponsors Campaign Mastery – An article with much more than a sponsorship announcement, this contains an interview with the famous Monte Cook with Monte’s advice on dungeon and encounter design, and more!
• I’ve Been Framed – Johnn reviews a set of Pathfinder Curse Of The Crimson Throne dice and offers a random generator for a political plot that follows the pattern, “In the [Type of State] of [State Name of Your Choice] ruled by a [Type of Government], a character must undergo a [Type of Trial]. He has been framed by [Power Behind the Throne], and if found guilty of [Type of Serious Crime], his punishment will be [Spell-Based Punishment].”
• Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures – I examine the creation of an adventure and how the plot can be structured. This was very much written with Beginner GMs in mind.
• GM’s Toolbox: Prep Tools Part One: Campaign and Adventure Planning – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article deals with the upper-level planning that goes into running a game.
• GM’s Toolbox: Running The Game Part Two: Notes and Organization – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. Campaigns sprout pieces of paper like mushrooms; this article deals with the organization of all that paper so that you can find what you need when you need it.
• GM’s Toolbox: Beyond The Game Part One: Handouts and Props – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at enhancing a game with extras.
• It’s Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Game Fraud and Counter-Fraud in RPGs – In a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world, how might people cheat at games of chance – and what would casinos have to do to stop them?
• The final two articles in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series – Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames (Part 1) and (Part 2) – discuss adventure names, with hundreds of examples (with explanations) and general principles based on style & genre of campaign.
• Turning Reaction into Proaction – plotting techniques to get your players moving – After a couple of ‘soft’, speculative articles, I turn my attention back to practical measures. In this article, I consider ways to make your players active participants in campaign plotting and plot development.
• An Adventure Into Writing: The Co-GMing Difference – It’s unusual, but I regularly Co-GM a Pulp Campaign. This article describes the impact on how adventures get written for the campaign and along the way discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls of Co-GMing.
• Adventure Structure: My Standard Formatting – I describe the standard format and nonclemanture that I have evolved for writing the adventures that I run. In the comments I describe how much game prep I do and how long it takes me to write an adventure.
• Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation – There are three tricks that I use all the time – and this article gives you the keys to all three. Along the way (as an example) I use the techniques to develop a master plan for a Mastermind in a generic D&D/Pathfinder campaign.
• The Gap In Reality: Immersion in an RPG Environment – Four years on, I update “Are Special Effects Killing Hollywood” and focus on the impact of changing expectations of immersion on RPGs, leading to suggestions for the use of multimedia in games.
• There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two of my series on Writer’s Block offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks (Ideas), Specific-Scene Blocks (Scenes within an adventure), and Setting Blocks (Locations).
• In Part Four of the series on Writer’s Block offers solutions to Dialogue Block and Narrative Block.

Locations

• Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower – Part three of two in the articles about creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign offers an example of the process of adventure creation and connection from one of my actual campaigns, describing a rather unique location in the process. This article was carefully written and edited to conceal the actual ideas that I chose for the real adventure in the campaign.
• Grokking The Message – The fifth article in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series looks at naming places and campaigns, and I explain how I chose the names for some of the campaigns that I have run.
• The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs – How to use descriptive language more effectively when conveying information about a location or event to the PCs. With a fictional D&D city invented just to serve as an example.
• There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks (Ideas), Specific-Scene Blocks (Scenes within an adventure), and Setting Blocks (Locations).
• Location, Location, Location – How Do You Choose A Location? – I examine the various considerations that should weigh into the decision of where something is to happen. There’s also some useful advice on the subject in Parts 2 And 5 of the Breaking Through Writer’s Block series – look for the sections on “Setting”. This was to be the lead-off article in the September 2013 Blog Carnival and I wanted to make it a strong one.
• Adjectivizing Descriptions: Hitting the target – I offer a seventh entry into the Blog Carnival with practical advice on How to describe locations, especially Wonders.
• People, Places, and Narratives: Matching Locations to plot needs – Your cast of characters isn’t limited to PCs and NPCs; this article shows you how to access and use the current location as another member of that cast.
• Location, Location, Location: Nyngan – I describe my home town (and get a number of people into a nostalgic frame of mind in the process) – then adapt it to a number of different genres (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Pulp, Horror, Westerns, Cyberpunk, and Superhero games).
• Places to go and people to meet: The One Spot series from Moebius Adventures – I review a series of new products from that collectively offer a trio of ready-to-use locations to drop into your fantasy RPG: Hand’s Goods, The Painted Man, and Angar’s Magic Shoppe.
• Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder – For my sixth post in the Blog Carnival, I raise the question of Wonders Of The Known World and the qualities they need to possess in order to live up to the label; four reasons they are hard to do well, ten reasons why they are worth doing, and 12 sources of wonders to help overcome those difficulties.
• Six Wonders: A selected assortment of Wondrous Locations for a fantasy RPG – When I sat down to list ideas for the September 2013 Blog Carnival, I only intended to do one article on Wonders. But when you get inspired… The offerings in this post are: The Broken Man, The Pool Of Reflection, The Palace Of Winter, The Citadel Of Secrets, The Spire Of Contention, and the Library Of Shelves.
• Five More Wonders: Another assortment of Locations for a fantasy RPG – My Ninth article for the September 2013 Blog Carnival continues where the last one left off, with five more Wonders Of The Known World (that I didn’t have time to complete for the previous article). This offers The Pyramid of Reason, The Caves Of Rockbeard, The Rainbow Of Eternity, The Desert Of Gold, and The Emerald Falls.
• Still More Wonders: Fifteen Amazing Locations for a Sci-Fi RPG – I snuck this one in because September 2013 wasn’t quite long enough to fit everything into the Blog Carnival (actually, it was delayed because I needed an extra half-week to deal with Fantasy Wonders and because I was having trouble gathering enough ideas. Thanks to the players in my superhero campaign, I got there in the end). This article offers The Orouberus Molecule, The Cascade Nebula, “Birth And Death” By Garl, The Dyson Superplant Of Epsilon Centauri, The Spiderweb Of Rukh-C, The Torus of Andraphones, The Confusion of Hydra, The Waltz Of Minos IV, The Diaphanous Assembly of Omicron Boötis, The Billboard Of Greeting, The Halo Rock, The Necrotis Plague Planet, The “Cosmic String” of 18 Delphini, The Arena Of Canopia, and The Fireworx Swarm.
• Location, Location, Location! – the Roundup and Wrap-up (for now) – The September 2013 Blog Carnival brought in 27 entries, including 10 from Campaign Mastery. This article synopsizes all 27 entries plus one extra that I thought belonged there.
• The Remembrance Of The Disquiet Dead: A Spooky Spot and Campaign Premise – For the October 2013 Blog Carnival I offer a cemetery that follows the PCs wherever they go. Explaining the cause of the phenomena led to three or four different interpretations, each with their own resolution to the series of encounters, so this will fit into more than one type of campaign.

Maps & Dungeon Tiles

• Maps Have Three Parts – Johnn started the very first series here at Campaign Mastery way back in December 2008 – before the site went public. He suggests that maps have three constituents: Lines, Spaces, and Negative Spaces – and examines each in detail.
• Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps – The second article in my occasional series of “Lessons From The West Wing” considers how maps both influence and reflect the way we see the world – and hence, that they should be very different if deriving from another society.
• Hexographer – RPG Mapping Dream – Hexographer is a piece of software that’s been on my personal wish-list ever since I read this review by Johnn. Note that the link given in the article is out of date; while there is a redirect in place, it might not be there forever. So use this link instead: < a href="http://www.hexographer.com/" target="_blank">http://www.hexographer.com/.
• 8 Easy Ways to Organize Your Dungeon Tiles – When Johnn wrote this article (with contributions from other GMs), I had no dungeon tiles. That is no longer the case, since one of my players has been collecting them for use in the games I run, and has left them in my care, and I have supplemented those with some extras that I’ve acquired. So I really need to pay closer attention to this article. More tips in the comments, especially the last one.
• The Nth Level Of Abstraction – GMs abstract things to varying degrees all the time. This article attempts to put some systematic analysis into the how, when, and why of abstraction, and the consequences. In the comments, I discuss ways of expressing the different levels of abstraction within maps. This is one of those ‘deep’ articles that needs to be read two or three times to get the full benefit.
• Out Of Sight does not mean Out of Mind: Maps I Could Not Find – I list a number of game maps that didn’t seem to be on the market – anywhere – in hopes of inspiring some cartographers to plug the gaps, with some success.
• Straightening a bent line: Measuring complex distances on a map – I offer a practical solution to measure complicated distances, like the by-road distance between journey start and destination – then toss in some neat tricks that you can incorporate into the process.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – As a giveaway with this post I offer a high-res map of the part of the Game World where the campaign has (mostly) taken place – but bereft of labels and captions so other GMs can use it as they see fit, and another with captions detailing the PCs travels.
• 52+ Miniature Miracles: Taking Battlemaps the extra mile – My 3rd entry in this month’s blog carnival looked at ways of extending the functionality of battlemaps by adding Found and Made objects. The general response to this article has been “now why didn’t I think of that?” which was very gratifying.

Miniatures

• DM Tool: Scrabble Tiles for your Minis & Battlemats – Using Scrabble tiles as miniatures and map symbols on a battlemat. This article went mini-viral in August.
• Elevate Your Game – Tracking Airborne Minis – John examines solutions to the vexing problems of integrating the third dimension into a two-dimensional battlemap.
• D&D Minis Giveaway Contest – Another out-of-continuity contest. Note that the contest is long-over, it does no good to enter now – though you may want to read the tips and advice on Battlemats in the comments and on the entry page. All told there are about 80 of them – more than enough reason to actually count this post as one of the 500.
• Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques – In Johnn’s review of the Chronology iPad app, he identified three major problems that he felt were responsible for the slow pace of combat resolution in his Riddleport campaign, but offered no solutions. In this response I offer the techniques that I use to solve the problems of 1)Not knowing the spells and supernatural abilities of the monsters in the encounter; 2)Being unfamiliar with the specialized combat subrules that applied to this particular battle; and 3) Being unable to identify which Mini went with which PC, which Mini went with which monster, and who was attacking who. There are some more great solutions in the comments, especially to the last of those three questions, and some great discussion of the first problem and my solutions.

Encounters

• Break Down The Door – 5 Encounter Seeds – Johnn expands on a point he made in his two-part article on How To Be A Confident GM by describing the concept of adventure seeds – with some great examples and links to many more.
• New Generator: Roleplaying A Black Dragon – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Black and Yellow Dragon Dice and constructs a generator using them to create personalities for a Black Dragon.
• The Perfect Monster Manual – A Wishlist – Johnn asks what would be in the Perfect Monster Manual. In the comments, I explain the technical details of how to meet Johnn’s requirements, and point out the similarities to my (theoretical) proposal in Google Groans: Misplacing the Rules.
• Drow Generator & Dice Giveaway – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Second Darkness dice set and constructs a generator for fleshing out Drow NPCs using them. Unfortunately, this dice set doesn’t seem to be available any more; the link is to the Q-Workshop home page.
• Undead Foe Generator – The last of Johnn’s Q-workshop dice articles is all about giving personality to the undead. The contest was over long ago, but the tables are still just as functional. This article was inspired by the Red and black Skull Dice set which appears to be no longer available (the link is to Q-Workshop’s home page).
• Perfect Skin: Some Musing On The Design Of Monsters – Inspired by a free review copy of
• Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons – I discuss the inadequacies of Dragons in 3.x when Epic Levels are involved and offer a custom redevelopment of the Monsters to beef them up. A lively discussion in the comments leads to an unrelated article about House Rules.
• GM’s Toolbox: Prep Tools Part Two: Encounter and Scene Planning – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at the detailed planning within an adventure or game session.
• Creating ecology-based random encounters – ‘Wilderness Encounters’ in D&D are as old a subject as D&D itself. This 3-part series attempts to put some rationality into those encounters. Even experienced GMs have told me that they’ve gotten something new out of it.
  
  Part One, The Philosophy of meanderings, examines the philosophical underpinnings and game-play purposes of the unplanned wilderness encounter, why they seem to be declining in favor, and why they should still matter.
  
  Part Two, This Eats That, looks at ways to create better, smarter, encounter tables, by creating a simplified, summarized, ecology and then converting it into an encounter table. Be warned, it’s very long even by my standards, but it defied being further subdivided.
  
  Part Three, Encounters With Meaning, applies the same processes and analogous theory to create encounter tables for Urban Settings and Dungeon Settings, and then wraps the series with integrating random encounters with your plotlines to infuse them with meaning. I also explore some strange but related back alleys along the way – like the ecology of Undeath, and Devils & Demons…

Combat & In-Game Environment

• Hazards Of Combat – Johnn defines a combat hazard as an “element other than the PCs and their foes that brings danger, risk, or difficulty to the fight” – and then begins a series dedicated to examining possible combat hazards in detail.
  
  Part one, What is a combat hazard?, asks what – beyond terrain – might actually be a combat hazard, and offers many ideas in answer to the question.

Part two, Craft a spirited name for your hazards, considers an essential element of combat environment psychology.

In part three, Terrain, looks at the terrain as a critical combat element.

The fourth entry in the series, Environment, looks beyond ‘terrain’ to a more comprehensive appraisal of the conditions under which combat takes place, and how these can be enhanced to further enliven combat.

The final part, Traps, focuses on what has always been a staple element of fantasy RPGs (and Pulp/Superhero RPGs!) in isolation, and how integrating their presence into the combat can dress up an otherwise routine encounter.

• My Group’s Time Thief Revealed – Chronology iPad App Review – Combat takes a long time to resolve in most tabletop RPGs. Johnn uses the Chronology iPad to work out why that’s the case in his Riddleport campaign and comes to a surprising conclusion, reviewing the product in the course of reporting his findings.
• Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques – In Johnn’s review of the Chronology iPad app, he identified three major problems that he felt were responsible for the slow pace of combat resolution in his Riddleport campaign, but offered no solutions. In this response I offer the techniques that I use to solve the problems of 1)Not knowing the spells and supernatural abilities of the monsters in the encounter; 2)Being unfamiliar with the specialized combat subrules that applied to this particular battle; and 3) Being unable to identify which Mini went with which PC, which Mini went with which monster, and who was attacking who. There are some more great solutions in the comments, especially to the last of those three questions, and some great discussion of the first problem and my solutions.
• Fastest Pathfinder Combat Ever – How We Did It – Johnn tries out some suggestions for improving the speed of combat. They seemed to work for him at the time, but as my comment shows, I thought he might comparing apples and oranges. Or not. If your combats are dragging, there are worse ideas than trying Johnn’s solutions.
• Five (Plus One!) Effective Combat Tactics for Assassins – Another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, this time offering techniques on how to make them more effective in combat.
• GM’s Toolbox: Running The Game Part Three: Rules and Combat – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article details a subject that many GMs and players seem to obsess about – the rules.
• 11 Table Rules For Speed – Johnn offers an expanded excerpt from the Faster Combat course he and Tony Medeiros co-authored, in which he discusses 11 rules of table etiquette designed to speed up combat.
• The Tactical Masterclass – Preparing a player to lead on the battlefield – How to prepare a player who’s character has to lead the other PCs into battle.
• Part Three then addresses two more of the remaining primary types of writer’s block: Action (Combat) and Personality Blocks (Characterization).

Rewards

• A Different Experience: A variation on the D&D 3.x Experience Points System – In which I describe the alternative 3.x Experience system that I use in my campaigns.
• Breaking The Bank: controlling treasure in D&D – I run through a few measures that GMs can use to control the amount of hard currency in the PCs hands.
• With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality – I talk about ways to give objects personalities in RPGs – and why.
• 6 Ways to Enhance Magic Items – Johnn’s article offers exactly what it says on the label. There are some “fun” ideas and important thoughts in the comments.
• Treasure Detail Generator & Dice Giveaway – Another Generator based around Q-workshop’s dice sets, this time their Green-and-Black dragon dice set. This generator is all about adding color by using one or more of the tables to make treasure more interesting.
• Objective-Oriented Experience Points – I extend the line of thought offered in Experience for the ordinary person to completely revise the experience paradigm.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 1 – As part of the blog carnival, I offer an excerpt from one of the free bonus eBooks that are part of the Assassin’s Amulet package. Legacy Items are a new form of magic item, and the bonus eBook aims to give players everything they need to know about how they work.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 2 – The second part of the two-part excerpt, which discusses the powers of Legacy Items – from a Player’s point of view. This should all have been one article, it was split for practical reasons, so I haven’t counted this second half toward the overall total.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic – I consider just what “loot” might be, and how it can be used as a plot mechanic. There’s a link to an interesting related article in the comments.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• Why I Fell In Love with Staves Again After 10 Years (PFRPG) – Johnn returns to Campaign Mastery with this article on how Staves have changed in the Pathfinder game system – and why the changes are good for his campaign. This was part of the Blog Carnival.
• October Blog Carnival Wrap-up: A cavalcade of posts about goodies – The Blog carnival produced a huge number of great entries. I review them all. There are a couple of clarifications in the comments in response to what I had to say, and at least one more article worth reading on the subject.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 – In part four of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time I offer an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.

Seasonal Adventures

• Holiday Hell: Re-creating real holidays for RPGs – How to transform a real seasonal Holiday into a festive occasion within an RPG
• ‘Tis The Season: A Christmas Scenario – To celebrate Christmas 2010, I pass on the outline of a quick-and-easy Christmas Scenario that I ran a couple of years earlier. And, for good measure, half-a-dozen variant ideas.
• The Season Of Optimism – As a celebration of Christmas, I examine the concept of celebrations taking place within RPGs, generally. Using Christmas and its many variations in other cultures as a template, I derive a framework for integrating original celebrations into a campaign.
• Parable and Play: Fables and Morality Plays as the basis for adventures – Every year, the Christmas season brings variations on the same old stories. There’s a reason for this – there are certain plots that just work better that time of year due to the Holiday Season. This article discusses the process of deriving adventures and new plots from traditional sources.

Complete Adventures

• The Flói Af Loft & The Ryk Bolti – A complete adventure from my Seeds Of Empire campaign, published here in three simultaneous parts for practical reasons only, modified to stand alone from the campaign. Complete with three-D-layer map. This was part of the Blog Carnival for February 2009.
• Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower – Part three of two in the articles about creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign offers an example of the process of adventure creation and connection from one of my actual campaigns. This article was carefully written and edited to conceal the actual ideas that I chose for the real adventure in the campaign.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.

Mysteries & Puzzles

• Ask The GMs: Penetrating the veil of mystery – Campaign Mastery was asked ‘Where can you find mysteries that can be fitted into a campaign?’ We try to answer that but find that the best answer is to make them yourself – so we focus on why that’s so hard to do, and how to remove some of that difficulty. There’s some great material on the subject in the comments, as well. This is such a difficult subject that it’s one I return to in a couple of other articles.
• Ask The GMs: Puzzles In Your Games – How to find and use puzzles (that aren’t riddles) in your games. More suggestions can be found in the comments.
• The Butler Did It: Mystery Plotlines in RPGs – I consider a fresh angle on the anatomy of a mystery, and how to structure mystery plotlines in RPGs. There’s some additional discussion of techniques in the comments. In response to a request in those comments, I later wrote a sequel article offering some examples of the plotting techniques. This one got a lot of interest on Twitter.
• The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch: Two Mystery Examples – I follow up, by reader request, The Butler Did It: Mystery Plotlines in RPGs with two example mysteries that illustrate the plotting process.
• Ghosts Of Blogs Past: An Air Of Mystery – Using an RPG to write mystery fiction – I resurrect an article from my 2006 personal blog to reverse the usual process (adapting fiction to an RPG) to argue why mystery writers should use RPGs to develop their plots.

Ad-hoc Adventures & GM Improv

• A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies – There are times when everything seems to go wrong for the GM, and he needs help. When you’re in an emergency and the ship is sinking, you need a lifeboat. Here are eight to choose from.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On the Fly – I share my secrets for generating adventures on the fly, and doing it so well that most of the time your players won’t notice. This article focuses on the process.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure – I follow up the previous article by expanding on the sources of instant adventure ideas.
• By the seat of your pants: the 3 minute (or less) NPC – I break an NPC into smaller pieces: three general framing decisions, the eight most important details, a list of secondary items that aren’t needed for every character, and a pair of optional extras that may be needed for some campaigns – and show how to employ the structure to generate an NPC in less time than it takes to hard-boil an egg. Even experienced GMs get something out of this article, I’ve been told. It’s a perennial favorite amongst our readers. I’d completely forgotten that I intended to develop a worksheet for it – but I mentioned it in replying to a pingback. So that’s back on my radar, for anyone who’s been waiting!
• Boxed In: A problem-solving frame of reference for players & GMs alike – Using a box as a metaphor for problems you may encounter at the game table can reveal surprising solutions. This article shows you how to apply the concept as a problem-solving tool. I provide an original political D&D/Pathfinder adventure (and a variation) as one example. And discuss some possible relationships between the concepts of Life and Death.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics – There are always situations that the official rules don’t cover. This article offers a guideline that can help solve them – while adding color to the game world.
• Refloating The Shipwreck: When Players Make A Mistake – For the April 2013 Blog Carnival, I look at how GMs can cope when the players make a major, potentially campaign-ending, mistake.
• Part Five of the series on Writer’s Block discusses translation blocks, also known as transition blocks, and shows that the solutions already provided work just fine – if you have plenty of time to implement them. But, when you need a solution in a hurry, this article will come to your rescue with emergency solutions to five subtype types.
• Which leaves five more to be covered in Part Six, plus a solution to another type of problem, “Crowding Blocks”, and some final advice on the subject.

 Game Mastering

 
Everything that a GM does can be considered “Game Mastering”. But Campaign Mastery uses the term in a more restricted sense, to describe the actual process of supervising and adjudicating play. Even so, as befits such a subject so fundamental to the site’s purpose, there have been a LOT of relevant articles amongst the five hundred…

• Say Yes, but Get There Quick – A simple principle of good GMing, articulated by Johnn.
• Engaging Your Players: A Lesson from Crime Fiction – Means, Motive, and Opportunity as things to be provided to the players by the GM if the “crime” is to be a great campaign. Some good general advice and a fresh way at looking at things, in other words.
• The Literary GM: Expanding your resources for a better game – I describe my reference library, the other sources of information I use, and why they help my GMing. Its the latter content that stops this being a fluff piece.
• Bringing on the next generation, Part Two: Gamemaster Mentors – My introduction into the world of GMing and the fundamental lessons learned that made me good at it – and can do so for you, too.
• Melodramatic License: Drama in RPGs – Drama vs Melodrama and their roles in an RPG.
• Ask The GMs: Essential Game Master Skills – Loz Newman – one of our regular commentators at Campaign Mastery – asks a ‘deceptively simple question’ – What are the essential skills of a game master? Check the comments for some additional suggestions and discussion.
• 3 Ways Game Masters Show, Don’t Tell – Johnn offers some great advice for making sure that the players are interacting with the game world instead of just watching it pass them by. As someone who sometimes has trouble with this, I really should pay closer attention to this article; I suspect that I’m not alone.
• Ask The GMs: How to GM solo PCs (especially in combat) – 31 pieces of advice (more if you count the extras in the comments) on how to handle this tricky situation.
• How To Be A Confident GM, Part 1 – First of a two-part article by Johnn, GMing is 80% confidence, as he writes in the article’s introductory paragraphs; this article aims to give you as much of that 80% as possible.
• How To Be A Confident GM, Part 2 – If you’ve read the description of the preceding article, then you’ll know what to expect from this one!
• Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background – The third in this irregular series is actually the seventh post to be included because the first article was itself a five-part series-within-a-series. I discuss the concept that time continues moving even when the PCs aren’t present, and ways to make this practical.
• The failure of …urmmmm… Memory – I offer my more modular equivalents of a Campaign Binder, and why it is not just useful but necessary. More suggestions in the comments.
• Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe? – I apply the principles of good software design to work out how the perfect game mechanics for a tabletop RPG should be constructed. There’s interesting discussion in the comments.
• Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence – How do you maintain a campaign when several players are unable to attend regularly?
• Ask The GMs: How to Deal with Players Who Disagree with Game Calls – A GM is having trouble with a player who constantly disputes the rulings at the table, and it has reached the point of impacting the enjoyment of the other players. Johnn offers a range of solutions so complete that I have nothing to add. It sparks a great discussion on the role of the GM, and a couple of commentators add some novel and interesting approaches to the problem.
• Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear – As part of the Teach You Kids To Game Week, I write about my experiences serving as a relative novice GM to my teenaged older brother and my much younger brother in the very early 80s, and how their different ages and abilities shaped my role behind the screen.
• GM’s Toolbox – A megaseries written by Michael Beck with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. This series started with Michael offering a single-article version to Johnn for Roleplaying Tips. Johnn couldn’t make up his mind what to do with it (the fact that English is Michael’s second language may not have helped) and was on the verge of turning it down when he asked for my opinion. I responded that there were some really cool insights buried within that I thought he had missed, probably because he (presumably) had only skimmed the proposed article, but that it would need a lot of editing and expansion, and that RPT might not be the right venue for the resulting series of articles. As a result, Johnn took a second look, and as he replied, “found the goodness”. The result was this 14-part detailed review and discussion of the basic tools and techniques that go into being a GM. This is not primarily a series on how to do various things; it’s more about identifying the need for techniques for doing these specific things, though there are suggestions along the way for what might fit those empty slots. One of the things I would love to find time to do is read this from start to finish in one single session, as I suspect that there is even more juice to extract from the series that way. But I don’t think it will ever happen, there are too many demands on my time and too many plates to keep juggling.
  
  Following the Series Introduction, there are:
  
  …three articles on tools for game prep (One: Campaign and Adventure Planning, Two: Encounter and Scene Planning, Three: NPCs);
  
  …three articles on world-building (One: Geography and Landmarks, Two: Communities and Politics, Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons);
  
  …three articles on running a game (One: Creating the Mood, Two: Notes and Organization, Three: Rules and Combat);
  
  …and three articles on add-ons to provide additional sophistication (One: Handouts and Props, Two: Roleplaying and Reality, and Three: Learning to become a Better GM).
  
  The whole thing then wraps up with a Concluding article.
• Cause And Inflect: Marketing your way to a better game – Product marketing is as much about understanding the people you’re talking to as it is manipulating desire. The latter is relevant to a GM trying to “sell” his adventure and game world to his players, while the former helps make NPCs believable and realistic in behavior. Sure, it’s not what it was intended for – but who cares about that? The comments debate the thoughts that sparked the article, but don’t say much about the actual point that I was making.
• An Adventure Into Writing: The Co-GMing Difference – It’s unusual, but I regularly Co-GM a Pulp Campaign. This article describes the impact on how adventures get written for the campaign and along the way discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls of Co-GMing.
• Five Games That Will Wreck Your Life (and what we can learn from them) – Some videogames are so compelling that they can become an obsession. What characteristics does an RPG campaign have to have to be equally compelling? This article is a collaboration between myself and Jason Falls.

Feedback

• Ghosts Of Blogs Past: All The World’s A Suggestion Box – The first of an irregular series that resurrects and updates relevant blog posts from my long-defunct personal blog. This one deals with the way that suggestions we make improve the world often without our even being aware of the impact that we are having. It then connects this notion with gameplay and game feedback and examines the consequences on the economics and reality of Gaming and Game Publishing.

At Conventions

• Game Mastering at Conventions Tips – As our contribution to the Aug 2009 Blog Carnival, Johnn serves up links to a number of articles on GMing at conventions that had appeared in Campaign Mastery. I have never GM’d at a convention myself, but if I was ever intending to do so, this would be one of the places I would start.

Mistakes, Problems, & Emergencies

There’s a lot of overlap between this category and “Ad-hoc Adventures & GM Improv” under Adventures, above. Check the articles listed there for more problem-solving techniques.
• My Biggest Mistakes – Campaign Mastery hosted the September 2009 Blog Carnival about GM mistakes and how to fix them. We collected all the articles we published on the subject into this series. Johnn kicks us off by talking about the mistake of not gaming, and I offer up five biggies of my own. The first part also contains links to all the other articles on the subject posted by other websites.
• Retcon Rightly – Johnn offers his advice on how to undo major events in a campaign without destroying it. Don’t miss the additional techniques in the comments.
• A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies – There are times when everything seems to go wrong for the GM, and he needs help. When you’re in an emergency and the ship is sinking, you need a lifeboat. Here are eight to choose from.
• When Good Dice Turn Bad: A Lesson In The Improbable – The improbable can occasionally happen. This is a true story (I was at the table) of just such an improbable event. And then the GM explains how he coped. Don’t miss the comments.
• Evil GM Tricks For Over-Resting PCs – Do your players stop to rest as soon as they run low on power for the game-day – even if that’s just five minutes after their adventuring day starts? Johnn excerpts some material from his Faster Combat course to offer some solutions to the problem. I offer a refinement in the comments.
• Boxed In: A problem-solving frame of reference for players & GMs alike – Using a box as a metaphor for problems you may encounter at the game table can reveal surprising solutions. This article shows you how to apply the concept as a problem-solving tool. I provide an original political D&D/Pathfinder adventure (and a variation) as one example. And discuss some possible relationships between the concepts of Life and Death.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics – There are always situations that the official rules don’t cover. This article offers a guideline that can help solve them – while adding color to the game world.
• Refloating The Shipwreck: When Players Make A Mistake – For the April 2013 Blog Carnival, I look at how GMs can cope when the players make a major, potentially campaign-ending, mistake.
• Part Five of the series on Writer’s Block discusses translation blocks, also known as transition blocks, and shows that the solutions already provided work just fine – if you have plenty of time to implement them. But, when you need a solution in a hurry, this article will come to your rescue with emergency solutions to five subtype types.
• Which leaves five more to be covered in Part Six, plus a solution to another type of problem, “Crowding Blocks”, and some final advice on the subject.

GM Improv

Refer to the entry for Ad-hoc Adventures & GM Improv in the section on Adventures, above – the content list is virtually identical.

 Fiction & Writing

 
There are some GMing activities and problems that are common to other forms of literary activity. This section deals with those commonalities.

• Melodramatic License: Drama in RPGs – Drama vs Melodrama and their roles in an RPG.
• Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe? – I apply the principles of good software design to work out how the perfect game mechanics for a tabletop RPG should be constructed. There’s interesting discussion in the comments.
• One word at a time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post – This article describes the process I usually use to write. I had been asked a number of times how I manage to write as much as I do, and how I keep it all organized – here are the answers, so that you can do it, too. I use variations on the same process for writing everything from Novels to RPG Adventures.
• Good Storytelling Technique Or Bad? – Chekhov’s Gun and RPGs – I consider the application of the literary principle commonly known as “Chekhov’s Gun” to RPGs and conclude that it doesn’t necessarily apply in practice (though it does in spirit) due to the unique nature of the genre. Along the way, I offer a listing (and analysis) of what I consider to be ‘Good Writing’ for an RPG. The eight items I list may not be exhaustive, but they’re a good start. This article should be useful for anyone who adapts RPG adventures into another literary form (short story, game report, etc) and anyone attempting to adapt a traditional work into an RPG adventure. Again, there’s some interesting discussion of the issues in the comments.
• Adventure Structure: My Standard Formatting – I describe the standard format and nonclemanture that I have evolved for writing the adventures that I run. In the comments I describe how much game prep I do and how long it takes me to write an adventure.
• Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity – I consider professionalism when it comes to blogging, and the implications of inspiration when it conflicts with that value. I then apply the question to game prep and show how to employ top-down design principles to the problem, illustrating the process that I use to plan my game prep. Which is the same process that I use to plan my Holidays, writing, TV viewing, shopping… you name it. You might find it useful, too.
• The Seven Strata Of Story – Any narrative – including RPG adventures – consists of multiple layers working together to tell the overall story. Giving PCs their independence from the central author (the GM) simply adds another layer, or perhaps a sub-layer. This article breaks down these layers of story, shows the relationships between them, and how they can be exploited or enhanced to improve the game – or the story, in any other medium – for everyone.
• Ghosts Of Blogs Past: An Air Of Mystery – Using an RPG to write mystery fiction – I resurrect an article from my 2006 personal blog to reverse the usual process (adapting fiction to an RPG) to argue why mystery writers should use RPGs to develop their plots.
• The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs – How to use descriptive language more effectively when conveying information about a location or event to the PCs. With a fictional D&D city invented just to serve as an example.
• Adjectivizing Descriptions: Hitting the target – I offer a seventh entry into the Blog Carnival with practical advice on How to describe locations, especially Wonders.

Writer’s Block

• Cure DM Writer’s Block with a Map – Johnn offers a solution to writer’s block.
• ‘There Is A Hole In Your Mind…’: Solving Mental Block – I describe a basic technique for solving mental block. This is NOT one of the solutions I offered in my series “Breaking Through Writer’s Block” (because I had already described it here).
• Breaking Through Writer’s Block – This 6-part series takes the premise that different kinds of content actually resulted in different kinds of writers block – and that by getting more specific about the problem, a multitude of solutions to the problem can be developed. Even people who thought they never suffered from Writer’s Block had discovered otherwise by the end of the series, much to their surprise. Many of these solutions are tried-and-true techniques that I have used for years. Plus I give away a heap of ideas in the form of examples.
  Part One identified 19 types of writer’s block in a number of broad categories, and offered solutions to the phenomenon most commonly associated with the term – what I call “Blank Page Syndrome”.
  
  There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks, Specific-Scene Blocks, and Setting Blocks.
  
  Part Three then addresses two more of the remaining primary types of writer’s block: Action and Personality Blocks.
  
  In Part Four, I wrap up the Primary types of writer’s block with solutions to Dialogue Block and Narrative Block.
  
  Part Five Discusses translation blocks, also known as transition blocks, and shows that the solutions already provided work just fine – if you have plenty of time to implement them. But, when you need a solution in a hurry, this article will come to your rescue with emergency solutions to five subtype types.
  
  Which leaves five more to be covered in Part Six, plus a solution to another type of problem, “Crowding Blocks”, and some final advice on the subject.

Burnout

• Lassitude is not Burnout – Sometimes we all feel flat and uninspired. Here’s my cure.

 Publishing & Products

 
Not everything that you use within a campaign is going to be your own original work. This section includes reviews of products that can enhance or form the foundations of your game, and (by extension) questions of publishing your own work.

• The Ethical Reviewer – I enunciate and review what Campaign Mastery considers ethical behavior when it comes to reviews. These policies formed organically over time, but have remained unchanged since I described them here.
• The Perfect Monster Manual – A Wishlist – Johnn asks what would be in the Perfect Monster Manual. In the comments, I explain the technical details of how to meet Johnn’s requirements, and point out the similarities to my (theoretical) proposal in Google Groans: Misplacing the Rules.
• Perfect Skin: Some Musing On The Design Of Monsters – Inspired by a free review copy of
• Dark Shadows In The Night: Lessons from the writing of Assassin’s Amulet – This article steps behind the scenes to offer 18 lessons that we learned in the course of writing Assassin’s Amulet. These not only offer insight to our readership on why the content of the E-book is what it is, but a lot of them apply in general to campaign creation and administration.
• A Game For All People: The Perfect DnD Recipe – I respond to the announcement of D&DNext by extending a previous article (Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe?) to outline how I would create a Universal D&D game system – in other words, what I would like to see in D&DNext when it came out.
• On The Edge: Implications of the D&DNext Advantage mechanic – I respond to an article by The Online DM by considering the consequences of the results that he generated. There’s lots of tables and mathematical analysis, and more than 15 implications identified. If you don’t want to know how to conduct such an analysis, you can skip down to the interpretation, but be warned: I have no idea of how relevant these results are to the still-in-development/playtest system. One of the few posts at Campaign Mastery that is topical more than evergreen in nature.
• Listing to one side: The problems of List Products – Making a list is a quick and easy way of creating a low-cost RPG product, if your mind inclines in that direction. Johnn’s does, mine doesn’t – not naturally, anyway. But the format has limitations. This article examines those limitations and ways to overcome them. Astonishingly, this has had an impact on the RPG industry in a small way in less than a week :)

Pricing

• Ghosts Of Blogs Past: All The World’s A Suggestion Box – The first of an irregular series that resurrects and updates relevant blog posts from my long-defunct personal blog. This one deals with the way that suggestions we make improve the world often without our even being aware of the impact that we are having. It then connects this notion with gameplay and game feedback and examines the consequences on the economics and reality of Gaming and Game Publishing.
• Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 1 of 2 – I got a lot of kudos for this two-part article, which was really gratifying – even gaming pros told me they got valuable insight from it, or found that it encapsulated a number of things they wished they had known years earlier. It examines the perceived value-for-money of RPG rules, supplements, modules, etc, and how that relates to the price, and what all that means for the pricing of eBooks. Along the way I do a breakdown of production costs using ‘traditional’ methods relative to eBook publishing. Note that all opinions are derived from Australian pricing perceptions, which are somewhat different to those in continental North America, and may yield different conclusions.
• Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 2 of 2 – The analysis conducted in part one suggested that e-books would only be economic if they were sold for roughly half what a product would cost in physical form. In this part I examine the question of why and how e-books can be sold for less than this – and quantify how and why perceived value-for-money can make or break a product.

Product & Tool Reviews & Previews

• Ultimate Toolbox of Ideas – Johnn reviews Ultimate Toolbox by AEG, a product that’s still on my wishlist.
• Nobis: Going Renaissance and loving it – I review Nobis and find an awful lot to like!
• The Gold Standard – The twenty must-have RPG supplements in my collection reviewed (9 in part 1 and 11 in parts 2,3,& 4 (All in one post)) plus why I consider them indispensible. These two are only counted as one article toward the 500. Part 5 lists 28 honorable mentions that almost made the list – and why they didn’t quite get into the top twenty. Some of these may be getting harder to find, others may be available as cheap PDFs – that’s what happens after a couple of years. I sincerely hope that all of them are still available in one format or another, it would be a shame if they had vanished.
• Mine Fiction For Campaign Qualities – Johnn starts with a review of FantasyCraft and extrapolates one of the ideas within to find a way of customizing RPG worlds and drawing on fiction for inspiration.
• Plot Stat Block For The Organized Game Master – Johnn and I were so impressed with Eureka that we each wrote a review of the supplement and each got something different out of it. This is Johnn’s, about how he can better organize the plotlines that he has running at any given time in his campaigns.
• Eureka! – Some inspiring notions – I dig into the operating principles under the hood at Eureka and extend the concepts and usefulness even further than the book’s authors – by their own admission! (And if you don’t think I’m proud of being able to impress pro game supplement writers like that, you’ve got rocks in your head!)
• On The Nature Of Flaws – I review Player Option: Flaws from 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, and find it inspirational but incomplete, then set about addressing the holes that I found. The subject: how do you integrate the concept of racial or character flaws into game systems that don’t have them?
• 50 Barbarian Hooks – Johnn’s initial article in the series Character Hooks includes a brief review of the revised Barbarian character class in the D&D 4e version of Player’s Handbook 2, which inspired the series.
• Creating Alien Characters: Expanding the ‘Create A Character Clinic’ To Non-Humans – I extend Holly Lisle’s e-book course in character creation, the Create A Character Clinic, to cover the creation of Alien Races, twisting the central concepts of Dwarves in entirely new directions as an example. And touch on some others.
• My Game Master Bucket List – D&D Modules – Johnn assembles a bucket list of the modules he wants to run – or to run again.
• Pieces Of Creation: The Hidden Truth Of Doppelgangers – Goodman Games published an excellent sourcebook, The Complete Guide To Doppelgangers. The only problem was that at least one of my players had read it. So I wrote a sequel that completely inverts the rationale of the species so that the Goodman Games product is what the Doppelgangers want the rest of the world to think. The article discusses the how and why I did that in detail, and includes my follow-up text as a free PDF, with the kind permission of Goodman Games.
• The Color Of Pulp – I review Arcana Agency – The Thief Of Memories and its value as a game aid for a Pulp Campaign.
• The Dark Secrets of Hacking Interface Zero 2.0 – Dave Viars, one of the developers, penned this guest article previewing a cyberpunk RPG being funded through Kickstarter, at my suggestion. I contributed the artwork used to illustrate the article, the full-sized version of which has become the most-downloaded free extra from the site.
• Places to go and people to meet: The One Spot series from Moebius Adventures – I review a series of new products from that collectively offer a trio of ready-to-use locations to drop into your fantasy RPG: Hand’s Goods, The Painted Man, and Angar’s Magic Shoppe.

Dice Sets & Props Reviews

• 7 Gamefull Uses for Campaign Coins – Johnn reviews Campaign Coins and offers seven ways he thinks he can use them in his games.
• Alea Tools Magnetic Markers Mark The Spot – After his article on how to handle airborne minis, Johnn was sent a set of Magnetic Markers by Alea Tools. This is his review of the product – which I think is now a permanent part of his GMing kit.
• I’ve Been Framed – Johnn reviews a set of Pathfinder Curse Of The Crimson Throne dice and offers a random generator for a political plot that follows the pattern, “In the [Type of State] of [State Name of Your Choice] ruled by a [Type of Government], a character must undergo a [Type of Trial]. He has been framed by [Power Behind the Throne], and if found guilty of [Type of Serious Crime], his punishment will be [Spell-Based Punishment].”
• High Elf Generator – Johnn follows up his review of Q-workshop’s Curse of the Crimson Throne dice set with this review of their Pathfinder Elven dice set and offers a random generator for High Elves – Names, Quirks, Motives, Appearances, Secrets, and Power Base. He then offers our readers the chance to win a set (sorry, the contest has closed) in response for additional add-ons for the generator – so don’t skip the comments on this one!
• New Generator: Roleplaying A Black Dragon – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Black and Yellow Dragon Dice and constructs a generator using them to create personalities for a Black Dragon.
• D&D Minis Giveaway Contest – Another out-of-continuity contest. Note that the contest is long-over, it does no good to enter now – though you may want to read the tips and advice on Battlemats in the comments and on the entry page. All told there are about 80 of them – more than enough reason to actually count this post as one of the 500.
• Treasure Detail Generator & Dice Giveaway – Another Generator based around Q-workshop’s dice sets, this time their Green-and-Black dragon dice set. This generator is all about adding color by using one or more of the tables to make treasure more interesting.
• Drow Generator & Dice Giveaway – Johnn does another review of Q-Workshop dice, in this case the Second Darkness dice set and constructs a generator for fleshing out Drow NPCs using them. Unfortunately, this dice set doesn’t seem to be available any more; the link I’ve given here is to the Q-Workshop home page.
• Undead Foe Generator – The last of Johnn’s Q-workshop dice articles is all about giving personality to the undead. The contest was over long ago, but the tables are still just as functional. This article was inspired by the Red and black Skull Dice set which appears to be no longer available (the link is to Q-Workshop’s home page).

Online Tools & Software Reviews

• Building The Perfect Beast: A D&D 3.5 online monster generator – I review and experiment with an online monster/NPC generator. Still one of our most popular articles, it continues to generate traffic for both sites to this day.
• Hexographer – RPG Mapping Dream – Hexographer is a piece of software that’s been on my personal wish-list ever since I read this review by Johnn. Note that the link given in the article is out of date; while there is a redirect in place, it might not be there forever. So use this link instead: < a href="http://www.hexographer.com/" target="_blank">http://www.hexographer.com/.
• Game Master Tool Illustrated: Plot Flowcharts – The Blog Carnival for September 2010 was on the subject of Preparation. Johnn provides Campaign Mastery’s entry by considering Plot Flowcharts. At the end of the article and in the comments, several software aids are listed for producing flowcharts to help.
• Plot flowchart example – Guest Author and Campaign Mastery reader Yong Kyosunim follows up Johnn’s article on using plot flowcharts with a real example.
• Hero Lab for Pathfinder: 7 out of 10, but oh so close! – Guest author Ian Gray reviews the then-new Pathfinder option for the Hero Lab software. While he rated it 7 out of 10, it could very easily have been 9 out of 10. It was especially gratifying to get a response from one of the developers in the comments, and from what he wrote, at least two of the major issues will have been partially or completely resolved by now, so I can quite happily recommend Hero Lab to anyone considering it.
• Have WordPress, will Game – I consider the advantages and benefits of using WordPress as a campaign wiki, and how to structure it to get the most bang for your buck. This includes a mini-review of a dice roller WordPress plugin from Awesome Dice.

App Reviews

• iPad App Review: RPG Cartographer – Johnn reviews an iPad App that I would definitely add to my system if I had the requisite technology. Our readers suggest more apps that you might want to check out in the comments.
• iPad RPG App Review – iAnnotate PDF – Johnn reviews another iPad App which was fast becoming one of his most heavily used in-game resources. This is one of the Apps suggested in the comments concerning Johnn’s earlier iPad App review (above).
• iPad RPG App review – Dungeon Master Toolkit – Dungeon Master Toolkit sounds like a really cool App, but it’s not available any more. Once again there are some more App recommendations in the comments.
• My Group’s Time Thief Revealed – Chronology iPad App Review – Combat takes a long time to resolve in most tabletop RPGs. Johnn uses the Chronology iPad to work out why that’s the case in his Riddleport campaign and comes to a surprising conclusion, reviewing the product in the course of reporting his findings. Johnn didn’t offer any solutions in this article, so I wrote Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques to solve two of the specific difficulties he encountered. Not specifically part of the review, but mentioned here for the sake of completeness. In a later article, Fastest Pathfinder Combat Ever – How We Did It, Johnn reports on how well some of the advice worked.
• How To Fall In Love With GMing Again + iPad App Review of Daily Notes – Johnn starts with the oft-repeated advice to “write it down” and leads into a review of Daily Notes, an iPad App to let you do just that.
• Top Apps in 2012 for DMs: a guest article by Melanie Gray – Melanie reviews 6 of the best apps for GMs at the time of writing. There are more suggestions in the comments. This continues to be a very popular article, receiving regular visitors. I really should think about getting someone to do an update sometime. As a result of this article, I went to Dropbox for file sharing (even though I don’t have a Smartphone or iPad) and have never regretted it.

 Assassin’s Amulet

 
By rights, this should be a subsection of the “Publishing” category, but it was so important to Johnn and I, and consumed so much of our attention for so long, and I am so proud of the resulting product and its add-ons and bonuses, that I simply had to list it independantly.

• Help Me Take Your GMing To The Next Level – Johnn asks our readers for input on what his next eBook should be. There are some great ideas for me for blog posts here. This post also contained the first hint that Assassin’s Amulet was coming.
• Dark Shadows In The Night: Lessons from the writing of Assassin’s Amulet – This article steps behind the scenes to offer 18 lessons that we learned in the course of writing Assassin’s Amulet. These not only offer insight to our readership on why the content of the E-book is what it is, but a lot of them apply in general to campaign creation and administration.
• The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene – Another behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Assassin’s Amulet, this post contains my recollection of the creative process that led to the rather unique Deity Of Death that is central to the content of the e-book. It also serves as a teaser for the next article, and places it into some sort of context.

Announcements & Cover

• Announcing Assassin’s Amulet …and a contest! – This post describes the content of our then-forthcoming Assassin’s Amulet and runs a contest to choose the cover. I was extremely proud of the number of entries that it attracted. But there’s nothing here to benefit our readers (other than by persuading them to buy a copy of the book), so I haven’t counted it amongst the 500.
• We have a winner! – The Assassin’s Amulet Cover Contest – An out-of-continuity post to announce the winner of the contest to choose the cover for Assassin’s Amulet. Also uncounted.

Excerpts

• Roleplaying Assassins: An excerpt from Assassins Amulet – An excerpt from our then-forthcoming sourcebook, Assassin’s Amulet offers advice on how to roleplay an Assassin. And there’s a link to part two of a great review of AA in the comments, and a link to the site where you can buy a copy.
• 50 Assassin Hooks – This excerpt offers a representational fifty of the more than 125 Assassin Hooks contained within Assassin’s Amulet.
• Five (Plus One!) Effective Combat Tactics for Assassins – Another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, this time offering techniques on how to make them more effective in combat.
• Cyrene Revealed: an excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet – Another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, a heavily-edited description of the Deity herself.

Legacy Items

• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 1 – As part of the blog carnival, I offer an excerpt from one of the free bonus eBooks that are part of the Assassin’s Amulet package. Legacy Items are a new form of magic item, and the bonus eBook aims to give players everything they need to know about how they work.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 2 – The second part of the two-part excerpt, which discusses the powers of Legacy Items – from a Player’s point of view. This should all have been one article, it was split for practical reasons, so I haven’t counted this second half toward the overall total.

 Miscellanea

 
There’s always something left over. This category contains everything that didn’t quite or completely fit the other 13 content types. And there’s a fair bit of it…

• The meaning of 400 – I pull out (almost) all the stops in this celebration of 400 posts at Campaign Mastery (by strict count). Along the way I recount the history of Campaign Mastery and how it has evolved through the 400 posts.
• Clash of the Timetables – Inter-GM politics and the scheduling of games when there are too many GMs and not enough players. Includes brief synopses of the base concepts of a number of actual campaigns. Highlights the need for GMs to be able to compromise. Oh, and it showcases some fancy banners I did for the different campaigns being scheduled.
• Stop Procrastinating and Get Those RPG Campaign Projects Done – A post on beating procrastination at another Blog compels Johnn to build on the advice offered there with some tips of his own on the subject.
• GTD for RPG – Johnn describes how he uses the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) system to organize and manage his campaign.
• Ask The GMs: How to set up a fun fishing mini game – Johnn considers some environmental and procedural aspects of fishing in response to the specific question posed, dealing with the roleplaying aspects of the question. I put on my rules-creation hat and consider the bigger question of how to represent contests and competitions within an RPG on the way to developing a complete mini-game. The rules of that game are available as a PDF at the end of the article. And there are some fun left-of-field ideas in the comment at the end.
• Things Done and left Un-done – I maintain a list of undeveloped ideas for Campaign Mastery articles, and got to thinking about why there had been so little movement of ideas off that list. That leads to an analogy between the list and the reasons my campaigns tend to last such a long time, something I had discussed in Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul, so this article becomes a sequel to that discussion in how to produce longevity for your campaigns. I use a synopsis of my “Fumanor: One Faith” campaign as an example.
• Who Remembers AutoREALM? Call for Alpha Testers/Contributors – Unfortunately, the developer who was working on updating this software has struck difficulties and while he thought it was ready for alpha testing, it now seems that this is no longer the case. It’s been a while since there was an update, so it’s possible that the whole project has run out of steam; but AutoREALM has been pronounced dead before, and pulled a Lazarus act.
• Remembering Stephen Tunnicliff – This is more an explanation for why there was no article at the start of the month, and a memorial to my friend and player. While it touched a chord in many people, it wasn’t an article that would improve anyone’s campaign, and hence doesn’t fit the ‘mission parameters’ of Campaign Mastery. So I havn’t counted it amongst the 500, no matter how much it might mean to me, personally.
• A Zocolo Premise: AetherCon is coming! – I get excited about the implications of a virtual convention, prompted by the announcement of the then-forthcoming AetherCon (16-18 Nov 2012). And Trivia/history buffs should check out the final comments.
• What do you give the Gamer who has everything? – I run through some out-of-the-ordinary gift ideas for gamers. This article came out a little too late – people had already done their Christmas shopping – but lots of people have asked for reminders about it in mid-November this year :)
• The Arcane Implications of Seating at the Game Table – Few people have ever thought about why people sit where they do at the game table, and still fewer have thought about the consequences of getting people to sit in different places. I take an in-depth look at both aspects of the situation.
• Two Emails and a ‘summon collective wisdom’ request – A would-be GM having trouble getting a game started asks for advice, which I do my best to provide, which leads into publicizing International Tabletop Day.

Sources Of Inspiration

• What inspires your games? – June 2010 meant that it was time for Campaign Mastery to host the blog carnival once again, and this time around, our subject was “what non-game media has most inspired your games?” Johnn kicks us off with his celebration of Saturday Morning Cartoons. There are some great sources cited by non-participants in the Blog Carnival in the comments, too.
• Blog Carnival June 2010: A Medley Of Inspiring Media – I follow up Johnn’s article, What inspires your games? by discussing some of the Media that have been most inspiring to me over the years. I strongly recommend all of them to everyone out there.
• Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – What Inspires Your Games? – We wrapped up the blog carnival with this collected list of articles on the subject.
• Help Me Take Your GMing To The Next Level – Johnn asks our readers for input on what his next eBook should be. There are some great ideas for me for blog posts here. This post also contained the first hint that Assassin’s Amulet was coming.
• October 2011 Blog Carnival: Making The Loot Part Of The Plot – As hosts of the October 2011 Blog Carnival, I list a number of topics that might be appropriate to the subject, “Making The Loot Part Of The Plot”. The turnout was remarkable. Since this doesn’t contain any content per se beyond this listing of what might be in the subsequent roundup, this post hasn’t been counted toward the 500.
• September 2013 Blog Carnival: Location, Location, Location! – Once again, Campaign Mastery hosts the Blog Carnival. This article has no content other than suggestions for what might be in the final roundup, so it isn’t counted toward the 500.
• Trivial Pursuits: Sources of oddball ideas – I demonstrate the use of books of trivia for ideas, with a whole heap of examples interspersed throughout the article.

Artwork & Illustration

• A Picture Should Be Worth 1,000 Words – I talk about illustrating your campaign – when and how to do it, and when and how not to do it. With some examples from my own campaigns, and past campaigns that I have played in.
• Creating the Orcs And Elves Series Titles – I reveal the construction process from start to finish, with tips and techniques that can be applied to other art projects. Written as much to document the process for my own use because I knew I would have to make more of the titles before the series was complete. Every RPG book ever published has a title, and GMs (should) be making props for their games all the time – so while this article may be a small niche, it’s also a relevant one.

Philosophy & Opinion

• Happy New Year! – Lessons from yesterday – Food for thought. I lament the absence of the “sense of wonder” of the 21st century, and comparing it with the premature ending of a campaign.
• Are Special Effects Killing Hollywood? – The impact of special effects on the ability of players and GMs to suspend disbelief, and why I can still hope that it is a temporary phenomenon.
• The Gap In Reality: Immersion in an RPG Environment – Four years on, I update “Are Special Effects Killing Hollywood” and focus on the impact of changing expectations of immersion on RPGs, leading to suggestions for the use of multimedia in games.
• “The more things change…”: An essay on the future of RPGs – As part of the May ’09 Blog Carnival, I wrote this analysis of the future of the RPG Hobby & Industry. It’s interesting to look back now and see which forecasts were right, which are happening now, and which missed the boat (not as many as people thought at the time). Some great discussion in the comments, too.
• The Moral Of The Story: The Morality and Ethics of playing an RPG – For the October 2009 Blog Carnival, I discuss the moral responsibilities that players and GMs have to themselves, their fellow players, and to the game they are playing.
• Create the Perfect Turn and Results Will Take Care of Themselves – Johnn takes a lesson learned from his boardgaming days about hyper-competitiveness & enjoyment of the game and applies it to RPGs.
• Two ways to play: Roleplaying and Rollplaying – I discuss the differences between the two, and how to bring them together.
• Grow The Hobby With Great Game Mastering – The July 2010 Blog Carnival was about how to grow the hobby, RPG Gaming. Johnn approaches the question from the perspective of being able to tell compelling stories about your campaigns – and that requires you to become a great game master. I add my 20-cents-worth in the comments.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Jolting The Status Quo – I start by talking about a significant change in my personal life, and the anticipated impact on Campaign Mastery which leads me to write about upsetting the status quo for characters in a game, and how the game can benefit. I still love the illustrations that I put together for this article – the one showing an office type who is smugly proud of his achievement in stacking boxes on the ceiling, the other a befuddled type struggling to comprehend a scene in which a river flows across the sky and a tree grows downwards from its banks. You can almost here him saying “What’s going on here?”.
• The Nth Level Of Abstraction – GMs abstract things to varying degrees all the time. This article attempts to put some systematic analysis into the how, when, and why of abstraction, and the consequences. In the comments, I discuss ways of expressing the different levels of abstraction within maps. This is one of those ‘deep’ articles that needs to be read two or three times to get the full benefit.
• Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe? – I apply the principles of good software design to work out how the perfect game mechanics for a tabletop RPG should be constructed. There’s interesting discussion in the comments.
• Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons – I discuss the inadequacies of Dragons in 3.x when Epic Levels are involved and offer a custom redevelopment of the Monsters to beef them up. A lively discussion in the comments leads to an unrelated article about House Rules.
• The Future Is Bright: The coming boom in RPGs – I take a look at current social and economic trends, inspired by an article at enworld by Ryan Dancey, and reach the conclusion that RPGs are set to boom in coming decade or two.
• What does “Old-School Gaming” really mean, anyway? – I grew irritated by the hardline nay-sayers complaining about WOTC/Hasbro’s announced goal of uniting the best of both “old” and “new” games and rebuke the advocates of both schools while summarizing the benefits of each approach. What follows in the comments is a reasoned, respectful discussion – and as a result, this is one of the most widely-circulated articles at Campaign Mastery, attracting 19 tweets, 11 google+1’s and 11 facebook likes. The goal was to inject some clarity and perspective into the debate before it degenerated into an edition war before the game system was even published, and all indications are that it succeeded, at least at the time.
• Stop me if you’ve heard this one: An RPG, A Videogame, and a Bingo Game sit down in a bar… – I consider the parallels in the evolutions of RPGs, Video Games, and online Bingo (you heard me right) through the years, then step forward to consider potential future developments. There’s some great discussion in the comments.
• Fireflies in the Lamplight of the Law: Protections in Crisis – I cast a slightly-cynical eye over developments in the field of intellectual property and attempt to speculate on where it all seems to be leading. I don’t like the destination, and forecast trouble…
• Social Media, SEO, and the dying of comments – I ruminate on some observed trends in internet usage patterns (especially related to social media) and the impact they are having on sites like Campaign Mastery. Ironically, having identified a reduction in blog comments as one of the consequences, this article attracted 26 comments forming a substantial dialogue on the issues raised and the possible solutions to avoiding the negative impact.

Online Gaming

• Digital Roles: Two Calls For Help – I’m not an expert on online gaming and neither is Johnn. So when we received a couple of questions on the subject, all we could pretty much do was throw them open to our audience. One question requests a source for maps and images for an online game, while the other asks which tabletop RPG game system best translates to an online environment. Oh, and if anyone has more up-to-date answers than those which appeared at the time (2009), feel free to mention them in a comment – the post still gets the occasional hit.

Site Milestones & Announcements

• Reconstructing the Campaign Mastery Blog – A complete reorganization of categories and tags along more functional (and hopefully useful) lines. Not counted amongst the 500.
• 100 posts and we’re just getting started! – Johnn & I celebrate the 100th post at Campaign Mastery, and reminisce about our first year.
• Celebrating 100,000 Hits! – One of our earliest milestones is celebrated in this extra out-of-continuity post.
• Oops… – An out-of-continuity post apologizing for a breakdown in our RSS systems, not counted toward the 500.
• 150K! – Celebrating our 150,000th hit! Not counted amongst the 500.
• Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures – To celebrate the 300th post (and some other great stats) I look at ways of celebrating campaign milestones with special adventures.
• I wrote the news today, Oh Boy – I announce changes to the content structure of Campaign Mastery (short, quick articles on Mondays and fuller articles on Thursdays) as Johnn began to disengage (amicably) from the site – a plan that has been honored more often in the breach than in the observance, especially lately. It remains the theoretical blueprint for the site, though.
• 300, 550, 37, 40, 3300, 387 – Thank You! – Campaign Mastery celebrates some major milestones, and Johnn’s withdrawal from participation is made official.
• OMG, We’re Nominated! – 2012 ENnies (Updated) – One of Campaign Mastery’s crowning glories was being nominated for an Ennie in 2012 (sadly, I didn’t get the paperwork in for eligibility in 2013 in time due to a deadline error on my part). This out-of-continuity post announces the nomination with pride, but hasn’t been counted towards the 500.
• Voting for the ENnies has opened! – Another out-of-continuity post announcing the opening of Voting in the 2012 Ennies. Not counted amongst the 500.

Contests & Special Offers

• Win a copy of Underdark – Unfortunately, the contest has long ago ended, leaving little value in this post. This was an extra post, not part of our regular publishing schedule. And not one of the posts that I’ve counted in the 500.
• Win a copy of Martial Power 2 – Unfortunately, the contest has long ago ended, leaving little value in this post. This was an extra post, not part of our regular publishing schedule. And not one of the posts that I’ve counted in the 500.
• Win Players Handbook 3 – Unfortunately, the contest has long ago ended, leaving little value in this post. This was an extra post, not part of our regular publishing schedule. And not one of the posts that I’ve counted in the 500.
• New Contest to Celebrate 500 Issues – Johnn sets up a contest to celebrate the then-forthcoming 500th issue of Roleplaying Tips in this our-of-continuity extra post.
• For A Limited Time Only, “The Empty Chair” on special – An out-of continuity post announcing a limited-time discount on “Filling the empty chair” as part of the GM’s day sale at RPGNow. Not counted as one of the 500.

General Seasonal Articles

• Johnn’s 2009 RPG Goals – Johnn sets some gaming goals for the next year.
• How many 2009 resolutions did Johnn achieve? – Johnn reviews his 2009 resolutions, those he achieved and those he didn’t – and why, and what he can learn from the experiences.
• How to Design a Cool Holiday for Your Game – 3 Templates – Johnn excerpts one of his books to tell our readers how to create a seasonal holiday for their game world.
• The Hidden Key: Resolutions as a window to personality – I ponder the question “Why do people make the same New Year’s Resolutions year after year?” and discover a new tool for exploring a character’s personality.
• Johnn’s 2010 Year in Review – Johnn goes over the goals that he set at the end of 2009 to see how well he did. More hints that Assassin’s Amulet was coming, but it still wasn’t announced by name.
• 2011 Goals and Content Announcements – Johnn reveals his goals for 2011.
• 2011 In Review For Johnn – John looks over his goals for 2011 and how well he succeeded in achieving them, and explains more fully the circumstances that led him to reduce his involvement in Campaign Mastery.
• What’s In Store For Johnn In 2012? – John looks ahead to his goals for 2012. I gatecrash the end of the article to talk about my ambitions for 2012.
• A year in retrospect, Another in prospect – I review 2012 and look ahead to what I expected to occur at Campaign Mastery in 2013.