Campaign Mastery

You learn something new every day, and today’s example was a small factoid: IQs are increasing so rapidly that the average person today would have scored an IQ of 130 a century ago, qualifying as “gifted”. Projecting Forwards Since the average back then was defined as a score of 100, that’s a rise of 3 […]

I get all sorts of articles offered to me here at Campaign Mastery. Some are completely irrelevant to the purpose of the site, others so poorly written as to be unpublishable. On rare occasions, one hits the ball out of the park. Some, however, are like this guest article: very well written, articulate in making […]

Who among you watches “Who Do You Think You Are?” It might be that not everyone gets the opportunity, but for anyone who does, it is an excellent series that is well worth your time. By connecting actual people (celebrities, but actual people nevertheless) with history, it helps to bring history to life. In the […]

Since day one of the first part being published, this series has consistently had an entry amongst the top ten here at Campaign Mastery. Whether that magic continues or is subject-dependent remains to be seen, but – for now – I have to consider the serial blog format a success! Part 1 of this series […]

This weekend’s session of the Zenith-3 campaign was a great success, and one of the big reasons for that was the real sense that the PCs were fully integrated elements within the game world. This article is going to look at some of the major reasons for that so that you can do it in […]

Fear Itself Fear is an enemy every GM will have to deal with on occasion; that’s simple reality. But fear comes in many different shapes and sizes, and many different intensities. The level of Fear that few of us ever have to deal with (phobias excepted) is the sort of fear that paralyzes, that washes […]

This idea came to me while watching the fifth and final Ashes test on the television. At first, I didn’t quite know exactly what I had, which is why this post has landed in the “short but profound” category! Let’s try something radical (trust me)! Pick your favorite low-to-mid-level D&D monster. Now, halve it’s AC […]

I’ll be honest about this. I originally put Winter first on my agenda for this series because I thought that it would resonate with the majority of my readers, who live in the Northern Hemisphere. That was before the incredibly brutal conditions descended upon them, however. When that happened, I contemplated starting with Summer, instead, […]

If you need to save time or mental bandwidth, consider using dice roll averages for rolls of more than 4 dice. Disclaimer: nothing in this article should be considered prescriptive. You know your game system, your players, and yourself best. Use what seems useful and put the rest in your back pocket for when you […]

Part 1: Introduction This is the first Campaign Mastery post for 2018, and that’s rather significant. New Years are always a strange synthesis of two things: beginnings and retrospectives. The first is fairly obvious, but the significance of the second often gets overlooked as everyone gets wrapped up in newness and new beginnings. But for […]

I was reflecting on the process that I use to design NPCs for my campaigns, the other day, and I don’t think that I’ve ever described it here at Campaign Mastery, let alone explained it. That simply won’t do. There are a number of considerations that go into the design of an NPC, and I […]

Although I am writing this article in advance, it will be published on what is a fairly significant date in Australia: Boxing Day. It wasn’t until I saw a particular episode of M*A*S*H that I realized that many parts of the Western World don’t celebrate this particular holiday, December 26th – it’s a British Commonwealth […]