Author Archive

Melodies & Rests: ‘Euphoria’ by Def Leppard

Melodies & Rests is intended to be an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike plucks a CD at random from his collection and sees how much creative inspiration for gaming he can squeeze out of it. You don’t have to agree with his musical tastes – but play close attention to the […]

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Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures

A short time ago, we received an ATGMs question that made me stop and think for a minute. The question was straightforward; Angeline wrote, “I need some help, I’m a starting DM and I just have so much trouble coming up with Campaigns or good plot lines. Please help!!” Every now and then in this […]

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Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear

Today I’m going on a journey a long way down memory lane, in support of the Kids In Gaming initiative at RPGNow. Specifically, I am trying to remember what it was like GMing for my brothers Paul and David. It must have been around 1981, which means that David would have been about 15, and […]

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October Blog Carnival Wrap-up: A cavalcade of posts about goodies

Well, it’s that time of the month when, following a Blog Carnival, the hosting site compiles a list of the blogs posted on their chosen subject and officially passes the baton on to the next host. Hold on a minute – this month the person that has to do that is me! I guess I […]

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Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic

How much is a magic item worth? Well, there’s the book value, which can be obtained by cracking open the sourcebook to the relevant page. But that just gives its price – I want to talk about how much it is worth. What is it’s value to its owner? What’s it worth from a character […]

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Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot

Today, I wanted to once again cast a glance over the subject of this month’s Blog Carnival and try to give a general view of the many number of ways that Loot can be made part of the plot, without getting too deeply into specifics. This article is intended to be a companion piece to […]

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An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 2

Assassin’s Amulet is now on sale! For more information on how and where to purchase it, just check the link at the bottom of this article! But first:                 Legacy Items are one of the conceptual planks that form the infrastructure of the Legacies series. “A player’s Guide to Legacy Items” excerpts 15 pages from […]

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I wrote the news today, Oh Boy

Something of a filler post today, with Assassin’s Amulet still occupying most of our time and attention. Sorry… The news The astute and regular reader here at Campaign Mastery will have noticed that – with the exception of one Ask-The-GMs that we had ‘in the can’, and co-authored excerpts from Assassin’s Amulet – it has […]

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An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 1

We continue to inch closer to the release of Assassin’s Amulet. From months, the time scale has compressed to weeks, and now is being measured in mere Days (how many of them is still being decided). It’s so close, we can taste it! One of the ambitions that we have for AA is to break […]

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Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic

From everything I’ve read – starting with early issues of The Dungeon, continuing with “Through Dungeons Deep”, and running all the way through to numerous blog posts – a lot of GMs have trouble connecting the desire to “make the loot part of the plot” with techniques for actually achieving this goal. It’s my impression […]

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Cyrene Revealed: an excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet

Last week, I gave you the backstory behind the creation of Cyrene, a deity of Life who figures prominantly in our forthcoming game supplement, Assassin’s Amulet. This time around, it’s time to followup that post with an edited excerpt from AA describing the lady herself… Cyrene (Greater Deity) Titles/Incarnations: Giver of Mercy, Weaver of Nets, […]

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October 2011 Blog Carnival: Making The Loot Part Of The Plot

Some backstory: This month’s Blog Carnival – hosted here at Campaign Mastery – is on the subject of “Making The Loot Part Of The Plot”. There’s a reason for that – Johnn & I were debating what makes the best subjects for carnivals shortly after we last hosted one. His contention was (in essence) that […]

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