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.