Campaign Mastery

I was almost finished today’s article when I clicked the wrong button and wiped out six hours worth of work. If not for a backup, I would have lost even more. There is no chance of replacing the lost work in time to publish, and no time to write something else – not with the […]

Every now and then I try to squeeze in reviews of Kickstarters and other new products that have caught my eye. I don’t have the time to do as many of these as I would like, but every now and then the stars collide in just the right way. Today I have six products and […]

This is (still) the fifth of these Ask-The-GMs that I’m tackling without recourse to my usual allies and fellow-GMs. Traps and puzzles are always a tricky problem for the GM. All too often they focus attention on one particular character and leave the rest sitting around doing nothing, possibly for what feels like an extraordinary […]

This is the (almost-) final part of a very intermittent series that examines alternatives and possible implications to the standard spell storage solutions built into D&D, Pathfinder, and, in fact, most fantasy games. Today, We look at Relics and Artifacts. Artifacts are some of the most misused magic items, amongst the most controversial, and most […]

Music can provide an iconic trigger that instantly transports the listener into an associated memory. Soundtracks and scores for Film and TV have long recognized this effect and played on it. You might not know it, but every major character in a movie or TV show has their own “theme”, a handful of notes, usually […]

I was watching an episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” (a show that has inspired other articles here at Campaign Mastery) in which a number of photographs featuring the grandmother of the central focus* of the episode were presented, with the observation that his grandfather appeared in none of them (* I watched […]

I’ve been aware of the CCG, “Yu-Gi-Oh”, for some time. Collectible-card games are a staple of the games store to which the NSW Wargamers migrated when circumstances made the nearby venue we had been using for over a decade unavailable to us (shout-out to Good Games in Burwood – thanks for giving us a home […]

This is the fourth part of a very intermittent series that is examining alternatives and possible implications to the standard spell storage solutions built into D&D, Pathfinder, and, in fact, most fantasy games. Today, We look at Permanent Magic Items. Permanent magic items are like the energizer bunny, they just keep going. That makes them […]

Magic features in a lot of different RPGs, but very few of them answer this simple, fundamental question – what is it, and how can it be used to achieve the many and various effects that are attributed to it within whatever game you happen to be playing? Work on the ATGMs question on spell […]

Although this article is written from a D&D / Pathfinder perspective, since they are the two biggest games in terms of global popularity, the contents should be appliccable to any game system with a little tweaking as necessary. RPG sourcebooks these days can easily cost $80-$100 or more Australian – $40-60 US. In a conversation […]

A guest article by Boris R. If you think that slot machines and RPG games are complete opposites, you’re wrong. You can enhance your game world by taking a lesson from slots and increasing the unpredictability of your game. Pure Luck Let’s talk about Slot machines, also known as fruit machines and poker machines. These […]

This 15-part series is an attempt to answer the question, “what advice do you have for a beginning GM?”, three articles at a time – while throwing in tips and reminders of the basics for more experienced GMs. This is the last article of the current trilogy. Rewards: Tabula Rasa To most beginning GMs, and […]