About
Campaign Mastery
Campaign Mastery is dedicated to offering GMs (and occasionally, players) expert insights and techniques to improve their tabletop RPG campaigns. It was started more than five years ago and has gone from strength to strength ever since. As part of the fourth anniversary celebrations, Mike told the story of how Campaign Mastery came to be, and how it has evolved, in The meaning of 400. For the 500th-post milestone, he produced the Blogdex, which categorizes, indexes, and synopsizes every one of the articles that had been published up to that point in time. Use it to discover an article that interests you!
Mike Bourke
I started gaming in 1981, and have since run dozens of campaigns. Only dozens, because they tend to run for year after year after year! I’ve had up to seven campaigns running simultaneously in genres from pulp to space opera to fantasy. These days I’m down to five regular campaigns and one occasional one, at least in theory, including my Superheros campaign that started way back in 1982! I’ve never read a game supplement that didn’t have me reaching for my word processor. I’ve written numerous well-received articles for Roleplaying Tips and other gaming publications, authored gaming supplements and entire rules systems, and I’m also an award-winning composer. One of my proudest achievements was co-authoring the game supplement, Assassin’s Amulet.
In the real world, I’ve been a [long list deleted by author!] and until co-founding CM, was webmaster for a small non-profit organisation. I’s also Australian, but you shouldn’t hold that against me – even if I do sometimes spell strangely or use unlikely aussie slang!
For the fifth anniversary of Campaign Mastery, I wrote and published an extensive Bio, showing how my real life and gaming life have intertwined through the years to make something like CM seem inevitable in hindsight; here are links to Part One and the somewhat longer Part Two.
These days, I’m the principle author, editor, and everything else, of almost everything you read here at Campaign Mastery, and working on the sequel to Assassin’s Amulet or any of several other RPG supplements I have underway – when I find the time.
Johnn Four, co-founder
Johnn is an RPG author and publisher. His Roleplaying Tips e-zine has amassed over 5000 DM tips and tricks since 1999. He also authored Dragon Magazine column DM’s Toolbox for two years, and has written (at least) three DM advice books and numerous articles for various books, publications, and websites. Johnn co-founded Campaign Mastery with Mike back in the day, and while he has moved on to other projects, many of the articles at Campaign Mastery were authored or co-authored by him. He asks every DM to have more fun at every game, and that’s what this blog is all about.
Other Contributors
There have been a number of other authors who have contributed to Campaign Mastery over the years, and there will hopefully be more guest authors in the future. Unless it’s a personal buddy of Mike’s, and sometimes even then, the contributions of these authors will usually contain a capsule biography.
You, The Reader
Some of the greatest insights have come not from the authors given the headline prominence, but those readers who have contributed their thoughts by comments. Everyone involved in Campaign Mastery, past or present, has nothing but the utmost respect and gratitude for those contributions and for the continued support of you, our readers.
