Campaign Mastery

• 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.

Campaign Concepts

• See also the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series, below.
• One of the defining concepts of any campaign is the Game Physics. See the “Plunging Into Game Physics” series on the Metagaming page for an essential primer to this key element.

• Phase 1: Inspiration from the “New Beginnings” series – I list and analyze 23 sources of inspiration, and discuss what to do with the ideas that they generate. Along the way, House Rules Theory and Campaign Ideas get discussed.
• Phase X: Beginning from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with the transition from the design & construction stage of the campaign to designing and constructing adventures on an ongoing basis, and especially the (arguably) most important adventure, the first. The subjects are Campaign Prep, Adventure Prep (and why the two are different), Fixing Campaign Plot Holes, and Writing Adventures.
• Shadows In The Darkness – The nature of True Evil – My pulp co-GM and I debate and discuss the question of what is “Absolute Evil”? The goal was to define a functional answer that was universal in nature. Did we get there in the end? Well, kinda…
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• 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 5 of the Basics For Beginners series, Characters is actually about generating NPCs. It starts by examining the five general sources of character ideas, and finds them all inadequate in the same basic way. I then explain a process of organizing, filtering, and combining the ideas that work (as opposed to those that don’t) – there are 10 steps, but most of them are brutally simple. I then list (and link to) allt the articles at campaign mastery to date that are about generating ideas and NPCs, most of which was a direct cut from the original blogdex, and so is now out of date. I conclude the article by creating an NPC for a D&D / Pathfinder campaign, expanding on the concepts of the game world in the process, and conclude by deriving two adventure seeds and several additional encounters revolving around or involving the NPC.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• 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.

Campaign Creation & Development

• See Also the “Touchstones Of Unification” series on the Genre Overviews page.
• See also the “One Player Is Enough” series on the Game Mastering page.

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• How much Campaign do you Plan before the Start? – Finding the sweet spot between over-planning campaigns (My vice) and under-planning. There are some great tips on campaign development in the comments.
• FreeMind Tips for Game Masters – Johnn explains how he uses FreeMind to mindmap his campaign plans.
• Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul – How is it that my campaigns can last for decades? What are the implications and consequences, and how do I deal with them?
• 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.
• Legendary Achievements: Coloring Your Campaign with Anecdote and Legend – Which is better: ‘The Target is too far away for bowshot,’ or ‘Not even the legendary Halwein, holder of the record for longest bowshot at 2,192 yards, would dare attempt such a shot’? Rhetorical question, right? This article is all about using the limits of achievement to add color to your game world.
• Ask The GMs: PC Choices and Consequences – How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world? A simple question but like an iceberg, nine-tenths don’t show. In order to properly answer this question, Johnn & I had to answer five even more complicated questions: How can the players impact the game world? How are the consequences of PC actions determined? How do the PCs become aware of these consequences? How can the GM ensure that the Players recognize the connection between action and consequences? And how can the administration of these changes be kept practical? All those answers, and more, are in this article.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Things Done and left Un-done – I maintain a list of undeveloped ideas for Campaign Mastery articles, and got to thinking about why there had been so little movement of ideas off that list. That leads to an analogy between the list and the reasons my campaigns tend to last such a long time, something I had discussed in Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul, so this article becomes a sequel to that discussion in how to produce longevity for your campaigns. I use a synopsis of my “Fumanor: One Faith” campaign as an example.
• A Twist in Time: Alternate Histories in RPGs – I offer the general principles that I use to construct a viable, believable, alternate history or parallel world.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part One: Geography and Landmarks – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things for which you will need tools and techniques, to successfully run a campaign. This article starts the world building by considering the physical features of the in-game environment.
• Grokking The Message – The fifth article in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series looks at naming places and campaigns, and I explain how I chose the names for some of the campaigns that I have run.
• In Someone else’s Sandbox: Adventuring in an established setting – For the September Blog Carnival, I wrote this article considering the pros and cons of adventuring in an established third-party setting instead of creating your own, what some of the difficulties are that you might face, and how to solve them.
• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity – I consider the implications of Divine Beings manifesting as objective reality in RPGs and the complicated question of Deus Ex Machinas when that is the case, the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative, and how a big-picture perspective on divine beings can make or break plausibility in a fantasy campaign. I offer possible answers to the question, “Where Do Clerics get their spells from?” along the way. There’s a fascinating discussion of the issues raised by the article in the comments.
• Big Changes For The Little Guy: How to go from Premise to Campaign – I demonstrate how I take the seed of an idea and build a campaign from it – coming up with a whole new campaign, “Arignoza”, to use for the example, which gets given away to the readership in the course of the article.
• How to Design a Cool Holiday for Your Game – 3 Templates – Johnn excerpts one of his books to tell our readers how to create a seasonal holiday for their game world.
• The Frozen Lands: A Science-Fiction Campaign Premise – I offer a complete, ready-to-develop science-fiction campaign premise for anyone to use, with enough work left to do that every use will be just a little different. Even if you don’t want to use the idea yourself, you can get some tips on how I develop a campaign premise by reading the article.
• Life & Death in RPG Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – We wrap up our hosting of the March 2011 Blog Carnival with the usual compendium of synopses of the articles submitted. If you find either Life or Death to be important in your games (or want to make it so), these are worth reading.
• All Is Three: A 3.x Fantasy Campaign Premise – I offer an original but unfinished campaign idea, fleshing it out in the course of the article as an example of how I go about designing a campaign.
• The Foundation Of Averages: Psychohistory and RPG Rules – I look at the process of extrapolating from rules systems to the larger worlds and nations that they describe using elementary statistical analysis.
• Theologies at 30 paces: The Hell of Evil in D&D – I consider the theological implications of the cosmology of D&D (and to some extent, Pathfinder), especially the implications of having demons, devils, and dark gods, how to resolve the contradictions implicit in this cacophony of ill-digested theological influences, and how the consequences would manifest in the everyday lives, motivations, etc, of the inhabitants of the world. More suggestions and ideas in the comments.
• Round Pegs In A Square Wheel: Reinventing Roulette for RPGs – Human nature doesn’t change. I examine human vices and foibles and how to use them to reinforce the genre of a game, then consider how to reinvent gambling, taking roulette as an example, for different genres.
• Been There, Done That, Doing It Again – The Sequel Campaign Part One of Two: Campaign Seeds – The first half of a two-part discussion of how to create a new campaign that is a sequel of one you have already run. In this part: the foundations of the campaign, a list of ideas, and initial ideas for possible plotlines.
• Been There, Done That, Doing It Again – The Sequel Campaign Part Two of Two: Sprouts and Saplings – Organizing the seeds of the campaign, making decisions about the interval between the campaigns, the consequences to campaign structure, managing player expectations, and more on sequel campaigns in general.
• Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign – I break down the general concept of “Science Fiction” into 21 specific subgenres and look at each from a gaming perspective. As examples, I offer 11 specific sci-fi campaign premises. Along the way, I give readers a copy of “Buy Low, Sell High”, a set of quick game rules I wrote for handling Trade in Traveller, which can be easily adapted to other campaign genres.
• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs – after exploring what Negative Space is in art & layout design, mounting brief excursions into Optical Illusions and Eyewitness Testimony along the way, I examine the benefits and pitfalls of leaving things out in eight areas of RPGs: Narrative, Descriptions, Characterization, Maps, Adventures, NPCs, Rules, and Campaign Planning.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.
• The Personal Computer analogy and some Truths about House Rules – I realized that constructing a campaign was analogous to constructing a Personal Computer, that the analogy revealed some valuable insights into the relaionships between different bodies of rules, and that there were some especially notable points to be made in this context about House Rules and importing rules from other game systems.
• Taming The Wild Frontiers – This article starts out as a think-piece inspired by the oft-cited comparison between the early internet and the American Wild West and marches headlong into the subtle but profound impact on RPGs of Political Correctness and then the socio-political models on which most Sci-fi games (and novels!) are traditionally based – and showing that there have been opportunities missed on all sides, and that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, in particular serious examination of the issues surrounding colonialism, equality, and exploitation. This article struck a chord with a lot of readers; one even told me that using it, he finally understood what he had been missing in modern games that turned him back towards “old-school” gaming.
• Strangers sharing ideas: RPG writings in a Collaborative World – A guest article by G.F. Pace with Additional contributions & Editing by me that looks at using idea crowdsourcing to collaborate on campaign design specifically and RPG problems in general.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.
• The Premise Of Falsehoods – Luck Vs Skill in RPGs – I start with a question that’s been around forever – “Is it better to be lucky or skilled” – and proceed to analyze just what luck is and what skill is. In the process, an understanding of RPG concepts from different perspectives emerges that verges on the revelatory. Several side topics of relevance are explored, including the role of players in how Campaigns evolve, and by the end, even the concept of what a campaign is has been redefined. While it contains nothing of practical value, this is practically certain to give you a changed awareness of the world, and of the hobby of RPGs – which is either worthless or infinitely valuable to you.
• If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis – You may be wondering what a synopsis from my superhero campaign’s archives is doing in this section. In a nutshell, this takes what is essentially a fantasy idea, wraps it in a classic sci-fi trope, adds a new perspective on life if you could shrink to a quantum scale, and makes the whole thing palatable in a sci-fi or superhero context. The quantum stuff alone makes it worth including, never mind the implied example of how to “retool” ideas from one genre to another.
• Domino Theory: The Perils and Practicalities – I can’t do better than quote the article itself: How to create the most spectacular domino-theory chain-reactions of events within a campaign, what can go wrong, how to use them to create adventure seeds, and – ultimately – how to ride the whirlwind as the dominoes start to tumble.
• 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.
• A Population Of Dinosaurs and the impact on RPG ecologies – I get curious about how many species of dinosaur there were, so I devise some calculations to answer the question. That might be interesting enough in its own right, but then I see how quickly genetic engineering could produce new (well-adapted) species. This is so interesting that it holds my attention until I realize that it has other ecological value to the GMs of D&D / Pathfinder – for example, the same process could be used to tell you how long Dragons have lived in a Fantasy environment just by factoring in their average lifespan and the number of different varieties.
• Race To The Moon – a lesson in story structure – a number of superficially-unrelated thoughts come together to offer a new explanation for why America lost interest in the space race after Apollo 11, regained it during Apollo 13 and then lost it again, and why some campaigns seem incapable of holding onto more than a minimum number of players, and ultimately provide a subtle but profound insight into good campaign design.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• 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.
• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – the first of two articles for the November 2014 Blog Carnival, this one asks “How do you create an original alien species?” then immediately points out the Fantasy RPG applicability before providing three answers, with multiple examples, including an entire alien environment and ecology. More examples and discussion in the comments.
• Ask The GMs: Buzz and Background – This article is split into three parts: Ways to deliver campaign background to players, with their respective pros and cons; Ways to generate buzz and enthusiasm about a new campaign; and, finally, What common ground can be found between these two mutually-antagonistic objectives.
• Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail? – Some articles are easily summarized for the Blogdex. This isn’t one of them. I noticed some patterns to the reasons some clearly skilled chefs lost in a series of cooking contests, and then realized that they provided insights into why one game fairs better than another – even if the GM running the second is superior to the first in some key attributes of the GMing craft. I then looked at what the “loser” could do to correct his situation, discovered a link through to good adventure and campaign design. This is one of the more profound articles at Campaign Mastery. It would be too easy to synopsize those results and oversimplify the findings, missing half the message. So I won’t try.
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• Part 2 of the Basics For Beginners series, Creation, could be more accurately entitled ‘creativity’. It starts by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
• 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.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 2 – Second part of the two-part guest article, with rather more content from myself than the first. This part is all about what GMs should do with vehicles once the PCs have one. Lots of adventure seeds, and serious questions about campaign planning and locations and adventure design for the GM to answer. Once again, if the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• 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”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• Lessons from the Literary Process – takes quotes from a half-hour TV show about writing and the Literary Process and examines the RPG applicability and relevance, and how the RPG writing process differs from the literary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it all comes down to confidence, so I then examine that in some detail, listing for substantial reasons for even a beginning GM to feel confident, and a way out if none of the four helps in your current situation. Note: the source TV show had 13 parts (but the channel went belly-up half-way through showing it), the article is a standalone item, not the start of a series.
• Blog Carnival: The Unexpected Reality – A submission to the RPG Blog Carnival (that CM was hosting at the time) opened a pandora’s box of a concept: deliberately leaving things out of player briefing materials so that they can be revealed as surprises in the course of play,” in other words, using Plot as a Rules Delivery System. This article uses my Shards Of Divinity campaign extensively, and especially the Illusion rules, as an example and as a tool to test the arguements along the way. I identify three specific dangers inherent to the proposal, but when examining solutions to those problems, find that there are indeed circumstances (including a variant on the sci-fi campaign rules/campaign that inspired the article in the first place) in which this can be an asset to, and positive virtue of, a campaign – if they are used properly. Mid-way through outlining the article, I realized that this sort of thing happens on a smaller scale all the time – every time you encounter a situation in which the established rules are inadequate and have to concoct a house rule to resolve the situation.
• The Shape Of Strange is the third part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. This time I loosen the reader’s mental muscles by pointing out the impact on geology and agriculture of being able to erect a handy portal, again recapitulate the basics, and then tackle the next five Big Ideas, which all have the theme of “Reshaping Reality,” starting with #11, A Direct Connection To The Afterlife (there’s nothing in human society that I could think of that would be unaffected!); #12, Portal Transfiguration (in which travel through a portal is akin to the effects that befell Alice in Wonderland); #13, Socio-Ethical Morphology through Portal Networks (alternate worlds, everything from Discworld to Mirror, Mirror); #14, Portals Can Only Connect To Variant Planar Topologies (all Portals led to cosmologies that have only one thing in common – they are all Different to the one that the PCs live in – a world in which a coalition of Water and Air elementals led by General Ulysses S. Grant is fighting a terrible civil war with Fire Elementals over the enslavement of Earth Elementals? Or maybe they are trying to win their independence from the Fire Elementals and are being led by General George Washington?). Idea #15, Variable Difficulty Portals, then gets examined in depth, in fact about half the article is devoted to the subject, which asks, “why should all destinations be equally accessible by Portal or Gate? Why shouldn’t there be lines of least resistance, and to reach a more remote destination, the additional resistance must be forcibly overcome? Why shouldn’t travel to a more remote destination be akin to climbing a hill – with several hundred pounds of gear on your back?.” The problem is that the reshaping of the cosmos by several of these options is totally out-of-control; this mechanism restores that control to the GM. I give a detailed explanation of how to map out the lines of least resistance in a practical manner using a scrabble board or something similar (a chess board doesn’t have enough spaces).
• Feel The Burn is the final part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. In my introduction to this part, I start with Mutually-Assured Destruction by Portal and go to a means of sucking dry any magic items that the PCs shouldn’t have at this level before once again recapitulating the basic parameters. The theme of this final quintet is “Energy Flow In Transit” – as though you were entering a portal at one altitude and exiting at another, gaining potential energy in the process, or vice-versa: #16, Gaining Energy In Transit, has two subtypes, “Balanced” and “Unbalanced” (and be warned, some of these hit game physics with a two-by-four, and in the course of discussing the various “energy forms” that could be gained, I offer up some house rules for making Negative Energy Levels Scary,, which they aren’t in standard D&D / Pathfinder); #17 flips the coin to consider Losing Energy In Transit; #18 considers Portals as Planar Batteries (a possibility that I’ve actually used in one of my campaigns, and attached to a couple of really interesting external links – both still valid, I just checked 5/1/19); and finally, #19 and #20, which look at the momentum of events as a kind of energy (a concept players in my Zenith-3 campaign will be familiar with) that can be gained, lost, or inverted during transit.
• 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.

The “Basics For Beginners” series (ongoing)

This still-incomplete series was written to answer just one question: What advice would I have for a GM starting their first campaign? As it took shape, though, I realized that even experienced GMs sometimes need to be reminded of the fundamentals, and it then transpired that there were a few who had missed some of them entirely. Be sure to check the comments section of each post, too; there was a desire to make each part a hub, with links to other posts on the subject that were aimed at beginners.

• Pt I: Beginnings details what you really need before you start, with exercises to help you develop it if you don’t have it. Re-reading it, I was struck by how down-to-earth the advice was. Roleplaying NPCs (it’s harder than roleplaying a PC), System Knowledge, Material requirements, How often you play, how long a game session will be, game complexity & continuity, explaining the fantastic in-game, making room for research and self-improvement, resources and how to accumulate them, and giving yourself permission to fail, all get covered in this first post. One example needs to be excerpted and echoed: Don’t try to make your dream campaign your first campaign.
  
• Pt 2: Creation – or, more accurately, creativity. I start by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
  
• Pt 3: Preparations – there are lots of articles about Game Prep here at Campaign Mastery, and no shortage of them elsewhere on the net, to boot. This is not like them, spending most of its time attempting to persuade the new GM that most prep is not only unnecessary, but potentially deliterious to a campaign. This is not the case for experienced GMs; this is advice aimed directly at the beginner and those of intermediate experience. I discuss using the expertise of more experienced players and GMs, the dangers posed by over-committing (which all GMs do, sometimes), the essential prep that has to be done (a very short list), and how to deal with the players going off-script (it will happen). That’s followed by advice on using and creating iconic moments, on letting prep take care of itself, and how a developing GMing style should start to alter this advice.
  
• After three parts written in mid-2015, the series resumed in early 2016, with Pt 4: 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).
  
• Pt 5: Characters is actually about generating NPCs. It starts by examining the five general sources of character ideas, and finds them all inadequate in the same basic way. I then explain a process of organizing, filtering, and combining the ideas that work (as opposed to those that don’t) – there are 10 steps, but most of them are brutally simple. I then list (and link to) allt the articles at campaign mastery to date that are about generating ideas and NPCs, most of which was a direct cut from the original blogdex, and so is now out of date. I conclude the article by creating an NPC for a D&D / Pathfinder campaign, expanding on the concepts of the game world in the process, and conclude by deriving two adventure seeds and several additional encounters revolving around or involving the NPC.
  
• Pt 6: Challenges is really about how hard to make challenges to overcome, and building safety nets into your plots in case you get this decision wrong. It starts by describing a challenge I was facing in real life, which seems both ironic and appropriate in retrospect. I then discuss the question, and point out the number of results produced by Google searches at the time for the term “Encounter Balance” (123 million results), “Encounter Level” (another 123 million results) and “Challenge Rating” (145 million results). This shows, I argue, that a lot of people find the subject difficult, and that there’s no shortage of people who consider it important, or even critical. I then look at the reasons why it’s so hard to do, why it’s so important, whether or not it’s actually essential, and whether or not it’s realistic to aim to ptovide balanced challenges every time. The next two sections detail the very abstract process that I employ in written adventures to get a quick and satisfactory answer, and then describe an alternative based on narrative that I employ when improvizing. I discuss plotting within character limitations (the first of two tools that I employ), how it permits the narrative solution to present multiple possible pathways to an overall success or failure, and how to use a skill-check to thus direct the narrative rather than determine the outcome. There’s a very large paragraph containing an example – make sure to read this because subsequent sections keep referring back to it. The second tool is a beginner’s checklist that I use osmotically to set the difficulty numbers of any challenge (regardless of game system). I discuss each item of the checklist seperately, some deeply, others very briefly, look at when such assessments should occur, and illustrate the whole process with a metaphor. I wrap up the article by examining a list of 5 DO’s and 5 DON’Ts (considering a couple of side-issues and the resulting advice along the way), discuss the problems of linking challenges with xp, and recommending that the two experience a permanent divorce. I wrap up with some final advice and a progress report on that real-life challenge.
  
• Pt 7: Adventures – At the time of writing, there had been 140 articles at Campaign Mastery tagged “Adventure Creation”. That’s now up to 228. Most of this article selectively recapitulates, and sometimes expands upon, advice contained in this or that past article. After describing the usual growth path of GMing expertise, I look at how a GM can take shortcuts – and the limited value of those shortcuts. Next, I address the question of GMing confidence, both over- and under-confidence, before providing a simplified process for beginners to employ in creating a campaign, with an example. In the process of describing how to GM that campaign, I discuss the role of the GM and give further advice on how to avoid plot trains, before discussing sandboxing, prep schedules. and prep as an investment. In the conclusion, I provide a long list of topics that merit following up by the reader before announcing our 2016 Ennie nomination!
  
• Pt 8: Depth In Plotting – Like “Adventure Creation”, there have been a number of articles that deal with expanding a GM’s plans from isolated adventures into campaigns. Like Part 7, this focuses on the plot of adventures, but instead of focusing inward at the adventure content, it looks outward to the context within the campaign in which that adventure takes place. Once again, I start by spelling out the ‘natural’ progression most GMs experience. I then clarify the purpose of Back To Basics: Campaign Structures, a relevant article when it is read and used properly, before offering a shortcut through the rather lengthy GM-development path enunciated earlier. I then present two simplified methods of constructing complex plotlines: Russian Babushka Dolls and Spiderweb Plots. I go into the first of these in some depth, with a substantial example; the second is explained by the ‘Back To Basics’ article linked to earlier. I then point out that many of the more complex techniques actually used, such as the one described in the New Beginnings series, are actually combinations of these two simplified approaches. Next, I classify all adventures as being one of just two types – plot-driven adventures, or adventure-driven plots. These discussions use the earlier example campaign to explain various aspects of the differences. I then propose just two rules that every GM (Beginner or expert) needs to remember – “Make the adventures fun” and “The Forest Mandate,” i.e. don’t get so wrapped up in making the trees look pretty that you lose track of making the shape of the Forest look attractive, too. I then point readers at the campaign ideas that I’ve given away here at Campaign Mastery, discussing each in terms of the two simplified methods of Deep Plotting described earlier, before wrapping up the article with some concluding advice on choosing the plot structure that is right for you, at your current level of expertise.
  
• Pt 9: Rewards With Intent – This is one of the longer and more complex articles in the series. In fact, I would find it difficult to defend against an allegation of forgetting who it was supposed to be aimed at. Fortunately, if that was the case (I don’t recall), I discovered the problem before it was too late to do something about it. I start by making the bold statement that thinking of rewards as having no meaning beyond powering up PCs and being either dreaded or reveled in when they threaten the campaign has probably destroyed just as many campaigns as giving away too much in rewards. After justifying that assertion, I move on to listing four purposes for rewards; later in the article, I will argue that the fourth is by far the most important. I then break rewards into 15 categories, and how to value each of them; along the way, I offer the occasional bit of specific advice. The categories of Secrets, Reputations, and Enemies get special attention. There are lots of adventure plot hooks offered. After the fifteen, I describe an unresolved debate over the entitlement of PCs to rewards. I then discuss an expanded version of the rewards system described in Objective-Oriented Experience Points, which was itself an expansion of principles spelt out in another article. After describing the basic premises of the system, I offer two variations on the approach, and then propose an entirely new system that is simpler and hence better-suited to use by Beginners. I then walk back through the two basic mistakes that GMs make, time and again – too much and too little reward – and describe a third situation, the Dirty Snowball, just as deadly to campaigns, before offering a method of breaking that cycle by changing what magic items can do, within limits. I also point out that the presence of identify as written in the standard rules will completely destroy this solution, and recommend that readers adopt one of the solutions to the problems posed by this spell in Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot as a House Rule if they are going to employ this approach. I then sum up the article into eight bullet points that I want to be the takeaways from the article.
  
• Part 10: Rhythms – “All of the prep and improv practice and knowledge of rules and experience in the world can’t really assist GMs in nailing down pacing and rhythms and flows of the game,” wrote J.T.Evans at Ravenous Roleplaying when reviewing this article. Nevertheless, however disconcerted it might be, all games have a rhythm, and that’s the subject of this article. It might seem esoteric, especially in an article for beginners, but I contend that awareness of the rhythm of the game you are running can be a vital, neglected, and useful diagnostic tool, and one that’s more easily accessed by beginners. What’s more, attuning your inner ‘ear’ to that rhythm is the first step in tweaking it to make it more engaging and satisfying. The article first dives into the phenomenon – when it’s most observable (during combat) and noticeable (when it’s interrupted, eg by someone not being ready to take their turn). I then describe how I handle that particular problem, and offer two alternatives – one disastrous and one that works. After that brief practical interruption, I continue exploring the principles, including ways of manipulating the rhythm, before turning to ways of applying them. After an exercise that enables GMs to find their own natural rhythm, the first practical application (after combat, already noted) is in improved dialogue, both improvised and prepared (with examples), then GM-Player interaction in general. I specifically call out the relevance to another pair of related series (“Emotional Pacing,” “The Yu-Gi-Oh Lesson,” and “Further Thoughts On Pacing”, all collected in a single subsection of the Campaign Plotting page). This is one of the shortest articles in the series.
  
• Part 11: Campaigns – With the broader 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.
  
• Part 12: Relations deals with NPC characterization, building on the content in Part 5. I start by describing a tool that delivers only cliche characters for unimportant NPCs (but that have sufficient depth to be believable, nevertheless); the article then shows how to layer two or three such profiles to create a “complex” character. I then move on to two approaches to using the principles from an earlier article to generate alien/non-human characters that are more than “humans in rubber masks”. The first approach works well for individual exemplars, the second is better when creating a race of aliens who are to exhibit individual variations. However, these characterization techniques only really work when the character is being built around a defined and chosen character profile or niche. That generally means that the characters are needed for a specific purpose within the plot, and that this should be the starting point that leads to a characterization and not an afterthought. Going from need to characterization is the real purpose of the article. I have two solutions – a general one, that is described in detail, and a specific one that can only by highlighted, which I dispose of quickly. After spelling out the criteria that I required the general solution to fulfill, I describe it – 12 questions (two of them optional) that a GM, regardless of experience, should be able to answer in seconds. The results should produce a fit-for-purpose and ready-to-play personality in about 40 seconds.
  
• 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. While not technically part of the Basics For Beginners series, I’m including a reference to it in this subsection because of that recommendation.

The “Lessons From The West Wing” series, Article 1 (Posts 1-5)

The occasional ‘Lessons From The West Wing’ series kicked off with one article that was so big that it’s a 5-part series in it’s own right. The subject is uniqueness and excellence in RPGs.

• The first part of this series-within-a-series, The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 1 of 5: Don’t Compromise With Mediocrity discussed the execution and delivery of uniqueness in a RPG campaign and evolved an achievable definition of perfection for doing so. I then identified four elements that were required in order to achieve this, and dedicated a separate article to each of them.
  
• Element number one is about creating the potential for uniqueness through the initial vision of the campaign and is dealt with in A Perfect Vision Through A Glass, Darkly.
  
• The second necessity is to convert that initial vision into a common platform for both players and GMs to build apon, and is dealt with in Laying A Campaign Foundation.
  
• Part Four, Evolving The Campaign, deals with the third element, the extension and development of the initial concept in the course of the campaign.
  
• Finally, in Part 5, Character Evolution, I deal with how the uniqueness of the campaign should impact on the player characters that participate in the world. It was a big article, and a big series, but several people have told me it was worth it!

The “New Beginnings” Series

An epic ten-part series that examines the process of creating a new campaign, breaking it down into nine phases, each of which is the subject of it’s own (usually large) feature article. It can take around 1000 hours to fullly develop a campaign using these procedures, but those campaigns are sufficient for and designed to allow, more than 2 years of continuous weekly play, so you get a fair return on your time.

I don’t expect every GM to employ every one of the design and prep steps that I outline – in fact, I would expect it of less than 1% – but I present the process in it’s entirity, I leaving it to the individual to pick and choose what they think will work for them and what is worth trying. Includes a lot of practical advice as well as theory; ultimately, this is the process that I use.

• Phase 0 is the Introduction. Almost half the article is taken up with the table of contents for the whole series. The remainder takes a fresh look at some general principles of campaign design – practical elements like “How much campaign do I need to design” – offers a new method of creating a campaign called the “The Modular Story-based approach”, and briefly describes an example sci-fi campaign idea, “Reality, But Not As We Know It”, which is a kind of space-opera version of Star Trek. Some issues of races within a campaign get discussed.
  
• Phase 1 is the Inspiration phase. I list and analyze 23 sources of inspiration, and discuss what to do with the ideas that they generate. Along the way, House Rules Theory and Campaign Ideas get discussed.
  
• Phase 2 is the Baggage Dump phase. This is not so much about clearing your head more than temporarily, it deals with what you want to keep from previous campaigns and what to throw away. Significant areas of attention are GMing (stress & exhaustion & recovery), Races, PCs, NPCs, and Players.
  
• Phase 3 is when the real recovery from past exertions takes place, in the Rejuvenation phase. Other subjects that get considered include Campaign Tone and Adventure structure. A special shoutout to Hungry over at Ravenous Roleplaying whose review of the article adds an extra “Rewind & Rejuvenate” technique – just follow the link offered a moment ago.
  
• Phase 4 establishes the framework of the new campaign in what is known as the Development Phase. Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
  
• Phase 5 builds on the results of previous parts to construct the “mid-sized bones” of the campaign skeleton, with a focus on the Surroundings & Environment of the new campaign. Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
  
• It’s arguably the smallest bones, the ones in the feet and hands and ribs and spine, that are the most important skeletal structures. Phase 6, Mindset & Underpinnings completes the structural elements of the campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with special attention to an example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
  
• Once you have the bare bones, it’s time to assemble the skeleton that will give the campaign its shape and hold it together, in phase 7, entitled (naturally enough) Skeleton. Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone are the constituents, in most cases, building and refining work already done and linking elements together.
  
• Phase 8, Enfleshing, is about putting meat on those bones, starting with a little cartelage for additional linkages. Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure form the additional tissue that binds the form together.
  
• Phase 9, Completion, is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily. Well, they can’t be put off any longer. Final decisions are needed in the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign.
  
• Phase X, Beginning, deals with the transition from the design & construction stage of the campaign to designing and constructing adventures on an ongoing basis, and especially the (arguably) most important adventure, the first. The subjects are Campaign Prep, Adventure Prep (and why the two are different), Fixing Campaign Plot Holes, and Writing Adventures. This also wraps up both the series and the campaign-creation project, after 81,318 words.

Johnn’s Riddleport Campaign Development

When Campaign Mastery was about a year old, Johnn started developing a new campaign based on Paizo’s Riddleport, with the intention of migrating his players to Pathfinder (very much with their consent). While much of the campaign development was under wraps, a selection of snapshots dealing with specific campaign elements emerged through this string of articles.

• Mage Guild Mastermind Survives Pirate Haven – Johnn takes readers through his thought process when creating a faction for his Riddleport campaign.
• The Ascended Conflict in my Riddleport Campaign – Following the advice I offered on asking yourself the big questions when planning an RPG (A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs), Johnn outlines his plans for the (Near-)ultimate powers within his then-forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• Revealing the Exotic – Johnn considers the implications of restricting the availability of exotic equipment as part of the campaign development for his (then-) forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• The Cypher Gate – Johnn shows how he has integrated the suggestions & feedback in response to his earlier articles concerning his (then-) forthcoming Riddleport campaign. By comparing the content of the sources with this article, readers can gain insights into how to merge their own ideas to form a complete concept.
• Architecture of Riddleport Inspires Plots – Johnn describes how he is using the architecture within the city of Riddleport to enhance his game, and (by example), how you can do the same for yours.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.

Mike’s Zener Gate Campaign Development

My currently-ongoing Zener Gate campaign is an anomaly with respect to my usual style. Most of the campaign development was creating an original set of rules because none of the alternatives open to me quite fitted the bill. I made more time for doing so by doing the development in full view of both the public and the players through Campaign Mastery.

***** Content To Go Here *****

Campaign Philosophy

• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Jolting The Status Quo – I start by talking about a significant change in my personal life, and the anticipated impact on Campaign Mastery which leads me to write about upsetting the status quo for characters in a game, and how the game can benefit. I still love the illustrations that I put together for this article – the one showing an office type who is smugly proud of his achievement in stacking boxes on the ceiling, the other a befuddled type struggling to comprehend a scene in which a river flows across the sky and a tree grows downwards from its banks. You can almost here him saying “What’s going on here?”.
• The Nth Level Of Abstraction – GMs abstract things to varying degrees all the time. This article attempts to put some systematic analysis into the how, when, and why of abstraction, and the consequences. In the comments, I discuss ways of expressing the different levels of abstraction within maps. This is one of those ‘deep’ articles that needs to be read two or three times to get the full benefit.
• Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe? – I apply the principles of good software design to work out how the perfect game mechanics for a tabletop RPG should be constructed. There’s interesting discussion in the comments.
• Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons – I discuss the inadequacies of Dragons in 3.x when Epic Levels are involved and offer a custom redevelopment of the Monsters to beef them up. A lively discussion in the comments leads to an unrelated article about House Rules.
• What does “Old-School Gaming” really mean, anyway? – I grew irritated by the hardline nay-sayers complaining about WOTC/Hasbro’s announced goal of uniting the best of both “old” and “new” games and rebuke the advocates of both schools while summarizing the benefits of each approach. What follows in the comments is a reasoned, respectful discussion – and as a result, this is one of the most widely-circulated articles at Campaign Mastery, attracting 19 tweets, 11 google+1’s and 11 facebook likes. The goal was to inject some clarity and perspective into the debate before it degenerated into an edition war before the game system was even published, and all indications are that it succeeded, at least at the time.
• Prodigious Performances Provided In Due Course – There are thousands of feats in print and on the net. Some of these will stack improperly, others will have broken mechanics, still others will simply not fit the campaign. This article describes the approval process that I developed and insisted on implementing within my Fumanor campaign to weed out the intolerable and flag the unsatisfactory for revision if and when there was time. Actually, in most cases, the changes that needed to be made (if any) were so obvious that I could make them at the same time as rejecting the original and accepting the modified version.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• 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.
• Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail? – Some articles are easily summarized for the Blogdex. This isn’t one of them. I noticed some patterns to the reasons some clearly skilled chefs lost in a series of cooking contests, and then realized that they provided insights into why one game fairs better than another – even if the GM running the second is superior to the first in some key attributes of the GMing craft. I then looked at what the “loser” could do to correct his situation, discovered a link through to good adventure and campaign design. This is one of the more profound articles at Campaign Mastery. It would be too easy to synopsize those results and oversimplify the findings, missing half the message. So I won’t try.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Overprotective Tendencies: Handling Player Risk Aversion – the longer a player lives with a particular character in his pocket, the more attached to that character he becomes, and that can lead to overprotective tendencies and over-planning by players. In this (brief) article, I look at six solutions to the problem, several of which I don’t personally recommend. This post seemed to connect with a lot of readers at the time.
• One of the key campaign philosophies to be decided is the type of Game Physics that will be used within the campaign. Refer Plunging Into Game Physics Pt 4: Better Campaigns Through Physics for the options available and their consequences. Then consult the second part for techniques to actually develop your game physics.
• Feel The Burn is the final part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. In my introduction to this part, I start with Mutually-Assured Destruction by Portal and go to a means of sucking dry any magic items that the PCs shouldn’t have at this level before once again recapitulating the basic parameters. The theme of this final quintet is “Energy Flow In Transit” – as though you were entering a portal at one altitude and exiting at another, gaining potential energy in the process, or vice-versa: #16, Gaining Energy In Transit, has two subtypes, “Balanced” and “Unbalanced” (and be warned, some of these hit game physics with a two-by-four, and in the course of discussing the various “energy forms” that could be gained, I offer up some house rules for making Negative Energy Levels Scary,, which they aren’t in standard D&D / Pathfinder); #17 flips the coin to consider Losing Energy In Transit; #18 considers Portals as Planar Batteries (a possibility that I’ve actually used in one of my campaigns, and attached to a couple of really interesting external links – both still valid, I just checked 5/1/19); and finally, #19 and #20, which look at the momentum of events as a kind of energy (a concept players in my Zenith-3 campaign will be familiar with) that can be gained, lost, or inverted during transit.

Campaign Themes

• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• 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.

Campaign Tone

• See also the “One Player Is Enough” series on the Game Mastering page.
• See also the “Campaign Pacing” subsection in the Plot Sequencing section of the Campaign Plotting page for information on changing from one tone to another within an adventure or between adventures..

• The Loss Of Innocence: Some unexpected insightsAn examination of the social progress depicted within television series leads to an insight into the Edition Wars and some general observations about the social impact of TV Hyper-Realism, which are relevant to choices of campaign Tone. Not everyone agrees with my position on the subject, and the examples were marred somewhat by a few inaccuracies as pointed out in the comments.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 1 – Eight Tips for Cliffhanger Finishes – I love ending game sessions on a cliffhanger, especially if I can get the players talking about how it’s all going to work out. This two-part article takes a good hard look at Cliffhangers, starting with these eight tips for employing them. In particular, I offer three methods that I reserve for improvising a cliffhanger when planning has gone awry.
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 2 – Fourteen Types of Cliffhanger Finishes – Wikipedia asserts that there are 2 kinds of cliffhanger, and neither of them are defined in such a way to be useful in an RPG. Other people also told me that they doubted there were 14 types of cliffhanger (prior to the pubication of this article, at least). For each of the 14, I describe it, describe how to implement it at the end of a session, describe the best way to restart play in the following session, and – in some cases – provide further discussion and deliberately over-the-top examples from various genres.
• 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.
• Phase 3: Rejuvenation from the “New Beginnings” series – In addition to a proven method of recharging all your batteries before you drain your reserves to the point of mental damage and risk of breakdown (see Phase 2 for the theory), other subjects that get considered include Campaign Tone and Adventure structure.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• The End Of The Adventure – Although it deals with tone on an adventure-by-adventure scale and applies an even smaller granularity, looking at how the tonal quality of an ending influences the start of the beginning that follows, this is just a close-in zoom of what happens throughout the campaign – it’s one domino after another, with limited option for taking control. It’s therefore important to seize those opportunities when they arise. To that end, this article provides a somewaht-dubious list of 31 possible tones for ending adventures, and analyzes them before considering the plot structures that enable them to be controlled by the GM.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not. What I didn’t realize at the time is that this has an impact on the campaign Tone, raising the excitement level as levels increase.
• Rat On A Stick – In remembrance of Terry Pratchett – I discuss the work of Pratchett in general terms, contrasting it with that of Robert Asprin and Douglas Adams and Monty Python; discuss the problems that the “Clacks Code” suggestion of memorializing Terry will (in some cases, did!) entail, and conclude by drawing a fundamental connection to RPGs.
• Overprotective Tendencies: Handling Player Risk Aversion – the longer a player lives with a particular character in his pocket, the more attached to that character he becomes, and that can lead to overprotective tendencies and over-planning by players. In this (brief) article, I look at six solutions to the problem, several of which I don’t personally recommend. This post seemed to connect with a lot of readers at the time.
• 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.

Campaign Backgrounds

• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article focuses on the mythic and background elements of a campaign.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.
• Memorials To History – an ‘a good name’ extra – I expand the “A good name is hard to find” series by pointing out that inn and town names can be conduits to the campaign background. I then descuss integrating that conduit, and the history that flows through it, into an adventure. A very short post by Campaign Mastery standards.
• Ask The GMs: Buzz and Background – This article is split into three parts: Ways to deliver campaign background to players, with their respective pros and cons; Ways to generate buzz and enthusiasm about a new campaign; and, finally, What common ground can be found between these two mutually-antagonistic objectives.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 9: Completion from the “New Beginnings” series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.

Mike’s Fumanor Campaigns

For almost 20 years, I was stockpiling ideas for a new D&D campaign but unable to find players. Finally, I got the opportunity with the original Fumanor campaign. It proved so popular that I was roped into running first another (created-on-the-spot) campaign based on the ideas Fumanor rejected (The Rings Of Time Campaign) simultanious with sequels to the original Fumanor. As such a central focus in my gaming for the first 5 years or so of Campaign Mastery, the campaigns form the foundation of a number of articles, some of which are very much about Campaign Development.

• Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence – I follow up the issues raised in Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity (such as the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative) by examining the ‘big picture’ answers employed by some of my campaigns in future articles, of which this is the first.
• The Orcs & Elves Series – From the start of my Fumanor Campaign, there have been secrets concerning the history of Elves, Drow, and Orcs in the game world. Now the characters have reached the point where the truth has to be told. This completely reinvents (from the players point of view) the campaign background of the world so far as those particular races is concerned. It is presented here as a very long fantasy novel. I’m not even going to list the contents, here – it’s just too massive a series. With each part, I build up a Glossary of Elvish language used within the story. So far, it’s up to Chapter 85 of 116 originally planned – but I’ve hit all the essentials in terms of its campaign needs, so whether or not I continue on all the way is still to be determined. I could more or less wrap up the series at this point by having the PCs awaken from their dream state and being told, “The rest you know…” On the other hand, the completist in me wants to tell the rest of the story, so we’ll see. It’s a heck of a lot of work.
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” Series takes my revised version of the draft scale from part 1 and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.

Mike’s Zenith-3/Earth Regency Campaign

The Ongoing Zenith-3/Earth Regency Campaign is a sequel to my Zenith-3 campaign, which itself was a sequel to my original superhero campaign that I started back in 1982. Much of it was developed simultanious to the last couple of years of play in the Zenith-3/Earth Halo campaign. Again, as one of the central focuses of my gaming, this campaign and its ongoing development have been the underpinning of a number of articles here at Campaign Mastery.

• The Imperial History Of Earth-Regency – This series (still unfinished because the parts take a long time to write and research) details the historical background of the (parallel) world in which my superhero campaign currently takes place.
  • Part 1: 1189-1220;
  • Part 2: 1220-1782;
  • Part 3: 1782-1910;
  • Part 4: 1910-1945;
  • Part 5: 1945-1959;
  • Part 6: 1960-1972;
  • Part 7: 1973-1975;
  • Part 8: 1978-1979;
  • Part 9: 1980-1997;
  • Part 10: 1980-1997 (continued);
  • Part 11: 1998-2015 (overview);
  • Part 12: 1998.

  One of these days I’ll get back to this series but it won’t be anytime soon, despite having three more chapters half-done and a bunch more outlined.

• Mictlan-tecuhtli is a villain from the Zenith-3 campaign who would readily translate into sci-fi and cyberpunk. Translating him into D&D / Pathfinder would be more work but yields a more fascinating (and unexpected in most campaigns) outcome. The character is described in Pieces of Creation: Mictlan-tecuhtli together with a locked-room mystery that reveals his “style”. The character was inspired by two characters from Larry Nivel stories relating to Gil “The Arm” Hamilton, Loren and Anubis; the latter also inspired the villain’s name. The mystery and character background also add to the background of Earth-Regency.

Campaign Synopses

• Grow The Hobby With Great Game Mastering – The July 2010 Blog Carnival was about how to grow the hobby, RPG Gaming. Johnn approaches the question from the perspective of being able to tell compelling stories about your campaigns – and that requires you to become a great game master. I add my 20-cents-worth in the comments.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.

Johnn’s Carnus Campaign

• D&D 4e

Before his Riddleport Campaign, Johnn was running something he called the Carnus Campaign. This was winding down / building up explosively just as Campaign Mastery was beginning.

• Carnus Session #13 – Bearded in Orcus’s Lair – Johnn synopsizes and reflects on one of his (then-) recent game sessions, and in the process, shows how it’s done.

Mike’s Family AD&D Campaign

• AD&D
• 1981-1982

A short-lived campaign run for my two brothers, and totally ignoring the age recommendations in the rules. The core of the campaign was built around module S1, The Tomb Of Horrors.

• Briefly described in Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear. Paul had a human fighter/cleric, David an elven fighter/rogue/mage – as I recall. Despite entering the campaign at 1st level, ignoring the module recommendations, they beat it, through native caution and excellent game-play.

Mike’s Original AD&D Campaign

• AD&D, Heavily modified
• 1981-1984

My real original D&D campaign was essentially a mega-dungeon, long before the term was invented. 26 levels, about 200′ x 250′ each.

It’s been mentioned a time or two but I couldn’t track those references down. The biggest thing to note was that the campaign introduced “primitive” characters to higher technology without ever explaining exactly how it worked because the characters couldn’t understand the theory. Instead it was treated pragmatically, as tools. The final level was PCs vs the computer that had been genetically-engineering monsters from local animal populations and releasing them to protect itself from the PCs and the “strange energy fields” they maniplated using magic, which the computer couldn’t understand, either. Every five levels or so, the PCs explored more of the game world..

Mike’s Champions Campaign

The original Champions rules changed my gaming life. I started by running a solo campaign for a week, 24/7, to teach myself the rules. That was because I had a hard deadline the following Sunday to run a campaign for others. The “Ultras Campaign” ran infrequently for about 18 months and used my solo campaign as its background. Two weeks after it began, I started the real Champions campaign.

• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns. Nebula is not mentioned by name, but was a central figure in many of the early exploits of the team.
• Several PCs from the predecesser-campaign to Zenith-3 get mentioned, and some of their in-game activities described, in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment.
• Pieces of Creation: Mortus is an extremely radical reinvention of the Marvel Villain, Thanos, one whose backstory and personality conflict with what he does so strongly that it poses fundamental questions of morality and ethics of the PCs who encounter him. In the course of this write-up, I briefly relate a couple of stories from the early days of the Champions campaign.

Mike’s Nebula Campaign

Nebula was a founding member of the team at the heart of the main campaign but dropped out after about 9 months. A year or so later, we reconvened for an irregular series of solo adventures that persisted for about 6 years. The character then faded from public view, becoming an NPC. Attempts were made to restart the solo campaign at one point but they came to nought after only one or two sessions.

None

Mike’s Project Vanguard Campaign

Inspired by The New Mutants comic from Marvel, the assembly of a team of teenaged trainees seemed a sensible one to the players, and so a spin-off campaign was begun. The “class” ran through to their graduation exercises (one each). Some of the characters then joined the main team as NPCs, others retired (also as NPCs). There have been occasional guest appearances by these characters in the main campaign since.

• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns. Nebula is not mentioned by name, but was a central figure in many of the early exploits of the team.
• Several PCs from the predecesser-campaign to Zenith-3 get mentioned, and some of their in-game activities described, in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment.

Mike’s Project Vigilant Campaign

The Project: Vanguard campaign was such a success that about a year later, two more spinoffs were added, to run on alternate weeks of the fortnight to the two more established campaigns. This was to be the “Generation After,” inspired in part by the Marvel Comic Power Pack. i.e. pre-teen superheros. They were supposed to be sheltered from anything so dangerous as adventures, but it never seemed to work out that way. In theory, they were to become the new “Project Vanguard” when the old one graduated. but the players chose to end the campaign on a high and have the characters become NPCs; for many of them, they had exhausted their best plotlines already.

• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns. Nebula is not mentioned by name, but was a central figure in many of the early exploits of the team.
• Several PCs from the predecesser-campaign to Zenith-3 get mentioned, and some of their in-game activities described, in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment.

Mike’s Team Neon Phi Campaign (Agents Of UNTIL)

The second campaign was a james-bondish secret agent-style concept. The basic idea was that the superheros took care of the supervillains, the agents took care of the villain organizations. Along the way, they had profound impacts on the campaign overall. The campaign was full of shadowy conspiracies and villain organizations operating at cross-purposes.

No posts on CM explicitly referance this campaign. I’ll have to change that.

Mike’s TORG: The Improbability Invasion Campaign

My players spent a full game year (and almost a real-time one, to boot) adventuring in Aysle, the Fantasy Realm, in the days before the “Probability War” that serves as the foundation of the official game world even began. In fact, it was a result of the first machinations of those responsible within Aysle that brought about the PCs as an inevitable byproduct. After that, they diversified and began globetrotting, following a trail of seemingly-unrelated breadcrumbs that would eventually have all tied together in the overthrow and final defeat of the Gaunt Man and his allies. From memory, it was Nile Empire (Pulp Superhero), New York City (Dinosaur Swamp Dystopia), a Ship from the Horror Realm found drifting on the high seas, and back to the Nile Empire. One of the key aspects of the campaign was that none of the big bosses would leave any of the other realms alone, and that both created windows of opportunity for the PCs and machinations for them to fall afoul of.

• I first mention my TORG campaign in a reply to a comment on The Gold Standard: Mike’s Top Twenty 3.x Supplements (part 5).
• That mention inspired the compilation of The Acceptable Favoritism: 34 ‘Rules’ to make your players’ PCs their favorites, where at least one character from the campaign again get name-dropped.
• The campaign itself is mentioned (and described) a couple of times in the “Corporate Politics” section of Dice And Life: Bio of a gamemaster (A 5th Anniversary Special) Part 2 of 2.

Mike’s Zenith-3 / Earth Halo Campaign

The players in the original champions campaign got tired of the big buildup to Ragnerok and told me to go away, write it up, and reboot the campaign into a post-ragnerok world. That took most of five years to achieve. Only one of the original players returned, at least at first; others would drop in, stay for a while, and then go. Because this campaign was still very much active when Campaign Mastery started, there have been a number of articles that collectively provide a partial synopsis of events.

• I introduce the key members and associated NPCs of the now-current Zenith-3 campaign in Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow, and very briefly hint at some of the character-driven plot arcs planned for each as part of the campaign.
• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns.
• If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis contains a detailed writeup of another adventure that was never played, for reasons explained at the start of the article.
• In Writing The Game: Using RPGs to Create Fiction, synopses of three Zenith-3 adventures are used as one large example.
• The relationship between an important NPC in the first Zenith-3 campaign and one of the PCs is discussed in “Solution 6: The One-sided story”; and the character’s reaction to an NPC in distress is featured in “Prerequisite: A clear action”, both part of the “Persona Blocks” section of Breaking Through Writer’s Block Pt 3: Action and Personality Blocks.

Mike’s Fumanor: The Last Deity I & II Campaigns

I’ve discussed this campaign a number of times, firstly because it contained a lot of cool ideas and illustrated useful techniques, and second because D&D / Pathfinder remain the most popular game systems out there and a lot of the content is transferrable.

• One of the three central figures of the first and second Fumanor campaigns (both of which were entitled “The Last Deity” for different reasons), Auralla was a mage in a world that was vuiolently prejudiced against mages, blamed for the apocalyptic events from which that society was only slowly recovering. In The Ultimate Weapon: Spell Storage Solutions Pt 5, an article dedicated to exploring the concepts and limitations of relics and artifacts, I use an example from The Last Deity and synopsize the PCs discovery of and interaction with the example artifact. Two of the PCs involved get mentioned by name because they react to the presence of a spell from the Temple within the town housing the artifact, but all three were central to the plot.
• The outcome of the big finish to the “Last Deity” and a lot of the backstory is described in . The entry on Corallan mentions Auralla and Serenity by name in describing his manipulations of the latter’s life.
• There is more detail on the “Last Deity” campaign and how it led into the “Seeds Of Empire” and “One Faith” campaigns presented in the first few sections of Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2.
• In Seeds Of Empire adventure #19, “On A Larger Scale,” the Elvish Ambassador calls up images of the significant mutual threats to “stability and good order” faced by both the Elves and the Golden Empire. These include Two of the main characters from the older campaign. The incident is described in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5.
• The third of the central PCs from the first Fumanor campaign was a Druid named Ceriseth. He is described in the “Some Backstory” section of Flavours Of Neutral – Focussing On Alignment, Part 4 of 5 (fairly briefly, because most of the post is about investigating his death, and in looking at all the myriad overtones that can be implied by a “Neutral” alignment). He is also mentioned in relation to a number of factions, some of whom supported him, and some who opposed him for various reasons.

Mike’s Rings Of Time Campaign

The Rings Of Time campaign was supposed to be a one-off New Years adventure created on the spur of the moment (no prep!) using memories of some of the discarded ideas from my Fumanor campaign. The players had so much fun they insisted it continue. And it did, until they got to about 45th level, before I had to shut it down for lack of prep time and availability. One of the two passed away a year later, so it has never resumed. The themes of the campaign were “The converse of responsibility is authority” and “Morality is relative – but the Gods are absolute.”

• In The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene, I discuss the treatment of “deities” in my various campaigns – Fumanor, Zenith-3, The Rings Of Time, Shards of Divinity, and The Adventurer’s Club (and Pulp in general).

Mike’s Warcry Campaign

Warcry started as a member of Zenith-3 but was eventually spun off into his own space-opera/polical/superhero campaign.

• The campaign is summarized briefly in Clash of the Timetables, an article that I subtitled “((Too many GMs, not enough players!)” and discusses how I was scheduling my RPGs at the time, and more importantly, why it was necessary.
• Some of the darker elements of the in-game personal history of another character from the Zenith-3 campaign, Blackwing, were revealed in the “Keeping Secrets” section of What matters to your character: the value of the shameful secret, describing the discoveries and revelations from a guest appearance in the Warcry campaign.

Mike’s Shards Of Divinity Campaign

We had a new player join the original Fumanor campaign about 2/3 of the way through, but Shannon was a relative novice when it came to campaigns of the intricacy and complexity of the games I run. He found himself out his depth and dropped out after a little less than a year. Part of the problem, he felt, was that he had not been part of the campaign from the start, and was always trying breathlessly to catch up with the other players. So he asked me to come up with a new campaign for him to learn in. The result was the Shards Of Divinity campaign. The Campaign encountered more problems, and overcame them, than any campaign should ever have to face, from players dropping out without warning to players changing their class and fundamental ambitions mutliple times, to Shannon’s character getting killed three, or maybe four or five times. Since that character was the focal point of the whole campaign, each time, he had to be brought back. Ultimately, though, the death of one of the players was the deathblow; while the campaign continued for another year or so, too much of the “spark” had gone out of it. After sessions were repeatedly cancelled, the campaign was shut down.

• Blog Carnival: The Unexpected Reality – A submission to the RPG Blog Carnival (that CM was hosting at the time) opened a pandora’s box of a concept: deliberately leaving things out of player briefing materials so that they can be revealed as surprises in the course of play,” in other words, using Plot as a Rules Delivery System. This article uses my Shards Of Divinity campaign extensively, and especially the Illusion rules, as an example and as a tool to test the arguements along the way. I identify three specific dangers inherent to the proposal, but when examining solutions to those problems, find that there are indeed circumstances (including a variant on the sci-fi campaign rules/campaign that inspired the article in the first place) in which this can be an asset to, and positive virtue of, a campaign – if they are used properly. Mid-way through outlining the article, I realized that this sort of thing happens on a smaller scale all the time – every time you encounter a situation in which the established rules are inadequate and have to concoct a house rule to resolve the situation.

Mike & Blair’s The Adventurer’s Club Campaign

Blair Ramage started the campaign, but it was immediately beset by problems both real and imagined by some of the players. I was one of those players. I offered to lend a hand with the game mechanics and in no time at all, that turned into a co-GMing role. The campaign has never looked back (though it’s hit a few rough spots along the way). This pulp campaign has figured prominantly in a number of posts here at Campaign Mastery (and a few whole series, for that matter!)

• The campaign is synopsized adventure-by-adventure up to the then-current point in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1).
• One of the PCs is used extensively as an example in Casual Opportunities For Priests: Analysis and Commonalities. Several incidents from the character’s in-play life are described, as is a larger plot thread that we built up for resolution in the 10th anniversary adventure. Despite the catastrophic disaster described in another article (also listed below), that objective was achieved.
• The “Things Of Stone And Wood” adventures were a mini-series within the main campaign that was synopsized briefly in The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues.
• Part-way through the last adventure described in the adventure-by-adventure synopsis linked to above, Tommy’s player passed away. The completion of that adventure, without naming the character, is discussed in The Ultimate Disruption: The loss of a player.
• A later adventure is synopsized and discussed from the point of view of the props created to support it in the “Different Handouts for Different Purposes?” section of A Helping Handout. This summation then leads directly into the synopsis referred to in the links below.
• House Rules – For Pulp (and other RPGs) contains, in a boxed-off yellow section “The story behind the story”, a brief synopsis that bridges the gap between the ‘handouts’ article above and the ‘train-wreck’ article below. Most of the PCs aren’t named.
• Some later adventures are partially synopsized in An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session, which describes how a major adventure planned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the campaign almost destroyed the campaign, and 10 lessons that my co-GM and I took away from the train-wreck.
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.

Mike’s Fumanor: One Faith Campaign

When one of the players took a job in another city, what was intended to be one sequel campaign had to be split in two. That job didn’t last long, however, and in no time at all, he was a player in both, having taken over an NPC in the Seeds Of Empire campaign. The One Faith campaign was all about the consequences of the forced unification of the Pantheon perpetrated by the PCs in the previous campaign, and about the perpetual and ever-changing warfare between the Gods and the Chaos Powers.

• Gallas was a Drow thief-turned-cleric and the starring and central figure of the Fumanor: One Faith campaign, synopsized in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1). His footprints are allt through each and every adventure in that campaign, which was intended to be solo campaign for a player who had taken a job in another city and who would not be able to get back every week for the Seeds Of Empire campaign – so his plotlines were excerpted from that Campaign Plan and a new campaign constructed around them. As it happened, the position didn’t work out, and in about 6 weeks – having missed just one game session of the Seeds campaign – he returned to take up the reigns of both Gallas and Eubani.
• There is another synopsis of the One Faith campaign within Things Done and left Un-done that sheds further light on some of the material provided in the preceding link.
• In the second adventure of the One Faith campaign, a troublemaking Bard named Sebastian became the second PC (see Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1)). We were in the middle of adventure #11, “Goblin, Goblin” when Stephen, Sebastian’s player, passed away.
• The last PC to join the One Faith campaign was Arazal, hooking up with the campaign in Adventure #8, “The Brown Heart” (described in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1)). Originally intended to be an NPC, and the driving force behind adventures 9 and 10. Surplus to requirements thereafter, he was then to be written out – a plan that changed when he became a PC. This was a beneficial change in campaign terms, because it solved a plot problem that was looming: Gallas had things to do in the next phase of the campaign for which Sebastian was totally unsuited. So the plan was to bifurcate the campaign, with each player generating a secondary character – Sebastian, Arazal, and Gallas’ player’s secondary character would embark on one strand of adventures, while Gallas and the other two secondaries would go off together on the main campaign. And, eventually, it would all tie back in together.
• Gallas’ role as an agent of change made him instrumental in assembling the party for the Seeds Of Empire campaign. That in turn gets him a brief mention as part of Corallan’s description in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4.
• The role of, and limitations impiosed on, the Gods in the Fumanor campaigns is detailed in Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence.

Mike’s Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire Campaign

The Seeds Of Empire campaign was about politics and war and the threats facing the Three Kingdoms from outside – invasion by an empire of undead, the corruption within Elvish Kingdom, the assimilation of the Orcish Lands into the nascent Empire, and other problems caused by the war between Gods and Chaos Powers.

• Tajik is an Orcish Cleric and PC from the Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire campaign. Whenever you read a synopsis of that campaign that mentions an Orc, and any time when such mentions a Priest who isn’t Undead, it’s talking about Tajik. You can read a brief synopsis of Tajik’s adventures in Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1); he was a pivotal member in each of the adventures, even if not singled out by name. He also appears by name only in Adventure #9 of the Fumanor: One Faith campaign to synchronize the timeline of the two campaigns.
• The PCs within the campaign were analyzed in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2.
• Campaign Update: Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire gives a more thorough synopsis of where the campaign was at in July of 2009, and inevitably gives a lot more information on the PCs and Not-quite-PCs: Tajik, Eubani, Chrin, Verde, Leif, Julia, Ziorbe, and Arron.
• There’s some more of the campaign backstory and early adventures in A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs, though none of them are mentioned by name.
• The campaign is further synopsis, leading on from the “Campaign Update” above, in Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 (first half) and Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 (second half). The latter also contains a description of the personal quests of each of the party members (they all had one).
• The role of, and limitations impiosed on, the Gods in the Fumanor campaigns is detailed in Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 ranges a bit all over the place; part of it deals with the early campaign and fundamentals of several of the important races, some of it deals with recent in-campaign developments, in particular the mystery of Gruumsh, and part falls in between.

Mike’s Tree Of Life Campaign

The Tree Of Life campaign was devised to playtest “D&D Next”, which everyone now refers to by the unofficial name of “D&D 5e”. It was designed to test aspects and elements of the game that we thought most groups wouldn’t go into in a thorough and systematic way by “accelerating” a proper campaign with characters coming and going, gaining levels, etc.

I’m not sure the campaign was ever explicitly described here at Campaign Mastery.

Mike’s Zenith-3 / Earth Regency Campaign

When, a year or two before the Earth Halo campaign was ready to wrap up, I began planning the sequel, it became clear that there had been a miscommunication of some sort between players and GM. They expected one thing to happen, and I another. The campaign we’re currently playing is about 1/3 of my original plans and 2/3 new content written to incorporate what the players wanted, with a net result that I consider stronger than what would otherwise have been, even if it is 50%-100% longer than originally intended. The original campaign ran for 13 years and about 1/3 of that was unplanned; this was supposed to run for ten, but now looks more likely to take 15. Which means that we’re about half-way through it, and major plot developments are starting to make their presence felt.

• I introduce the key members and associated NPCs of the now-current Zenith-3 campaign in Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow, and very briefly hint at some of the character-driven plot arcs planned for each as part of the campaign. Vala has found that her presence on the campaign world has had far more profound and complicated consequences than she ever expected, and theological extremists have already produced super-“villains” to confront the team because of her presence.
• Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2) contains a brief synopsis of the first and second Zenith-3 campaigns and the preceding Champions, Project:Vanguard, Project:Vigilant, and Team Neon Phi campaigns.
• Pieces of Creation: Mortus is an extremely radical reinvention of the Marvel Villain, Thanos, one whose backstory and personality conflict with what he does so strongly that it poses fundamental questions of morality and ethics of the PCs who encounter him. In the course of this write-up, I briefly relate a couple of stories of Behemoth, because Mortus originally thought that he was a Behemoth-clone. In dealing with Mortus, the PCs of my campaign went WAY beyond what was expected of them, but I had enough notes about the “Big Picture” prepared to go with the flow – a lesson that justifies including this article in the relevant campaign and adventure plot sequencing sections. Mortus should be adaptable to any campaign in which the PCs are “the good guys”; his impact might be diminished in campaigns where that’s not the case.
• Énorme Force has about as convoluted a character creation story as you can find. He started out as a generic brick, but quickly proved too bland to be the focus of anything. So I threw all sorts of ideas at the character, hit the ‘blend’ button, and strained the mess to extract a truly tortured soul. The character was described extensively – well, as extensively as is known to the players in my campaign – in Pieces of Creation: Énorme Force. In the process of describing the character, I also give a thumbnail version of the origins of Blackwing (one of the PCs from that campaign), explain (very briefly) some of the game physics including the basis of magic and psionics and the equivalent of clerical powers within the campaign.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.
• A villain from the Zenith-3 campaign who would readily translate into sci-fi and cyberpunk. Translating him into D&D / Pathfinder would be more work but yields a more fascinating (and unexpected in most campaigns) outcome. The character is described in Pieces of Creation: Mictlan-tecuhtli together with a locked-room mystery that reveals his “style”. The character was inspired by two characters from Larry Nivel stories relating to Gil “The Arm” Hamilton, Loren and Anubis; the latter also inspired the villain’s name. The mystery and background also add to the background of Earth-Regency.
• , Unusually, a number of posts describe – in considerable detail – events that are planned to take place but have not yet occurred in-game. The first of these describes – with key facts redacted to avoid spilling the beans to my players – a location, described in Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower.
• Following on from that example is a second, Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra.
• A third describes a major charater arc, developed in conjunction with the character’s current player, in “A Big Example” of foreshadowing, included as part of The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure.

Mike’s Dr Who: Lovecraft’s Legacies Campaign

After publishing Dr Who and the secrets of complex characterization, the discussion of the article and some of its insights with one of the players from the Adventurer’s Club and Zenith-3 campaigns inspired me to devise this campaign. He was eager to sign on. The campaign was designed to be, and remains, purely a solo-play situation. It is roughly half-complete at this point, and only gets played on 5th Weekends (and on the subsequent 2nd weekend of the month, as of 2019) – so we’ve been averaging only three or four game sessions a year.

• I give a general summary of the campaign in the “- variety of threats – ” and “- Variable Difficulty -” sub-sections within the “Opponants” section of Me, Myself, and Him: Combat and Characters in one-player games, part of the “One Player Is Enough” series. Later in the same article, in a boxed sidebar within the “Characterization Focus” section, “In play” sub-section, “- Fewer opportunities for variety in relationships -” sub-subsection, the companion is further described and the opening adventure briefly synopsized. A later adventure is then briefly synopsized in the “- Melodramatic Collapse and the Descent into Soap Opera -” sub-subsection that immediately follows that boxed sidebar. subsequent sub-subsections “- A British approach -” and “- A unique manifestation of relationship -” add further information about the campaign.
• The campaign is further discussed in part 3 of that series, The Solitary Thread, Frayed: Plots in one-player games.
• And is again referenced in the fourth part of the series, The Crochet Masterpiece: One-player games as Campaigns. This is probably not all that surprising when you realize that the Dr Who campaign in question was the primary inspiration for, and instigator of, the entire series of articles.

Mike’s Zener Gate Campaign

A campaign that was developed in public here at Campaign Mastery, rules system and all! Well, once the rules were finished, I sat down and (literally) spent 5 minutes coming up with plotlines. We’re between 1/3 and 1/2-way through that list at the moment. This is designed to be a so-low-it’s-almost-zero-prep campaign.

Posts To Be Listed

Divine Power, Religion, & Theology

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power – I argue against the use of a Deus-Ex-Machina in RPGs, and why that means you should give limits to the Gods. Along the way I show how you can have up-close-and-personal encounters with The Gods in unusual Genres for such occurrences – Wild West, Superspies, and Hard SF/Cyberpunk. There’s some great discussion in the comments. Unfortunately, Da’Vane’s website is gone, and so is the article she wrote in response to this, and attempts to find it using the Wayback Machine failed. Fortunately, Da’Vane summarizes her points in the comments.
• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity – I consider the implications of Divine Beings manifesting as objective reality in RPGs and the complicated question of Deus Ex Machinas when that is the case, the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative, and how a big-picture perspective on divine beings can make or break plausibility in a fantasy campaign. I offer possible answers to the question, “Where Do Clerics get their spells from?” along the way. There’s a fascinating discussion of the issues raised by the article in the comments.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.
• Too Much Life for The Living: March 2011 Blog Carnival – My second contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival asks is Healing is too easy in D&D, which leads to proposing an alternative combat system for 3.x / Pathfinder Based on concepts within the TORG game system. It was quite well received. There are additional suggestions and clarifications in the comments. If you want to make your combats more life-and-death dramatic, this might be worth your time. See also the “All Wounds Are Not Alike” series in the “Actual House Rules” section of the Rules & Mechanics page.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• Life & Death in RPG Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – We wrap up our hosting of the March 2011 Blog Carnival with the usual compendium of synopses of the articles submitted. If you find either Life or Death to be important in your games (or want to make it so), these are worth reading.
• Theologies at 30 paces: The Hell of Evil in D&D – I consider the theological implications of the cosmology of D&D (and to some extent, Pathfinder), especially the implications of having demons, devils, and dark gods, how to resolve the contradictions implicit in this cacophony of ill-digested theological influences, and how the consequences would manifest in the everyday lives, motivations, etc, of the inhabitants of the world. More suggestions and ideas in the comments.
• The Ascended Conflict in my Riddleport Campaign – Following the advice I offered on asking yourself the big questions when planning an RPG (A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs), Johnn outlines his plans for the (Near-)ultimate powers within his then-forthcoming Riddleport campaign.
• Life and Death in RPG – March 2011 RPG Blog Carnival – In March 2011, Campaign Mastery again hosted the Blog Carnival, this time with the subject “Life and Death in RPGs”. This was the first of several articles we posted on the subject: Johnn looked at how death was a hidden theme in his Riddleport campaign as well as introducing the topic.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article focuses on the mythic and background elements of a campaign.
• Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence – I follow up the issues raised in Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity (such as the relationship between divine beings and the campaigns structure and narrative) by examining the ‘big picture’ answers employed by some of my campaigns in future articles, of which this is the first.
• Part Eight of Johnn’s series on City Government Power Bases covers Religion.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Orcish Mythology – In the course of the Orc & Elves series, I found that I needed to construct and outline a pantheon for the Orcs, and a mythology to go with that pantheon.
• Ask The GMs: The Momentum Of The Inevitable – In the discussion following a previous Ask The GMs, we were asked, ‘should there ever be something that is too big or has too much momentum for the PCs to be able to stop it?’ The discussion that follows the article adds to the content so well that it feels like part of the original article; if you’re interested in the question, don’t miss them.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.
• Pile On This: Undead are Taking Over. What happens? – Johnn’s campaign came off the rails and he asked for help working out what would happen next. Lots of interesting suggestions to pilfer ideas from in the comments.
• The Undead Are Coming!! A reply to Johnn – My answer was too big to reasonably put in a comment (and needed some organization to be clear), so I put it in an extra blog post. Don’t miss the comments for extra clarification.
• 25 Cleric Character Hooks – Johnn concludes his character hooks series with this entry that offers 25 Cleric Character Hooks.
• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive – I discuss prophecies within RPGs, the benefits, the pitfalls, and how to avoid the problems. Don’t skip the comments, there are some additional techniques worth considering described there. And once again, we have feedback from someone who employed the techniques I offer and came up with a great result, so you know it works!
• “Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?”: A New idea for handling “wild luck” in D&D – I come up with a new idea for using luck in an RPG, especially in D&D.
• May the camels of 1,000 fleas – wait, that’s not right: Improving Curses in 3.x – I reinvent the rules for Curses in 3.x/Pathfinder to add to its roleplaying potential, then offer 60 Curses to fire the imagination.
• 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).
• Encounters With Meaning Part Three of my series Creating ecology-based random encounters applies the processes developed in earlier parts of the series and analogous theory to create encounter tables for Urban Settings and Dungeon Settings, and then wraps the series with integrating random encounters with your plotlines to infuse them with meaning. Along the way, I explore some strange but related back alleys, like the ecology of Undeath, and Devils & Demons.
• The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene – Another behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Assassin’s Amulet, this post contains my recollection of the creative process that led to the rather unique Deity Of Death that is central to the content of the e-book. It also serves as a teaser for the next article, and places it into some sort of context.
• Cyrene Revealed: an excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet – Another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, a heavily-edited description of the Deity herself.
• The Remembrance Of The Disquiet Dead: A Spooky Spot and Campaign Premise – For the October 2013 Blog Carnival I offer a cemetery that follows the PCs wherever they go. Explaining the cause of the phenomena led to three or four different interpretations, each with their own resolution to the series of encounters, so this will fit into more than one type of campaign.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” Series takes my revised version of the draft scale from part 1 and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.
• Shadows In The Darkness – The nature of True Evil – My pulp co-GM and I debate and discuss the question of what is “Absolute Evil”? The goal was to define a functional answer that was universal in nature. Did we get there in the end? Well, kinda…
• Disease and Despair – the healing-resistant nightmare – I start this fantasy-oriented nightmare scenario by looking at the historical impact of disease, and then the ramifications of the existence of the low-level D&D Spell, “Cure Disease”. Those show that from this factor alone, the historical accuracy of fantasy games would be severely impacted, infusing social changes from the reformation and population dynamics closer to those of the 19th or early 20th centuries. With that, and a quick review of the Black Death and its impact, I briefly discuss an article I wrote for Roleplaying Tips, Putting The Fear Back Into Disease (still available, I just checked), all as foundation for what follows: What would happen if a Cure Disease-resistant disease arose? To call the results dystopian is like calling The Great Wall Of China a “backyard fence”. Ironically, I also explain that if the GM has adopted the “Putting The Fear Back” approach, the impact would be minimal! I then look at how to integrate this social disintegration – and the responsibility for fixing things – can integrate with an existing campaign, before showing that having the disease also be Heal-resistant is actually less disruptive than the alternative!
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• What Empowers A Curse and other dangerous questions – For the September 2015 Blog Carnival, I ask “What empowers a Curse” in D&D / Pathfinder and find that the answer has some profound implications, potentially touching on everything from Cosmology to why Gods need congregations. Although I talk down the value of a curse sub-system within the game mechanics, I’ve actually found it necessary to craft one for an as-yet-unpublished (Jan 2019) series of articles.
• 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”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• The Shape Of Strange is the third part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. This time I loosen the reader’s mental muscles by pointing out the impact on geology and agriculture of being able to erect a handy portal, again recapitulate the basics, and then tackle the next five Big Ideas, which all have the theme of “Reshaping Reality,” starting with #11, A Direct Connection To The Afterlife (there’s nothing in human society that I could think of that would be unaffected!); #12, Portal Transfiguration (in which travel through a portal is akin to the effects that befell Alice in Wonderland); #13, Socio-Ethical Morphology through Portal Networks (alternate worlds, everything from Discworld to Mirror, Mirror); #14, Portals Can Only Connect To Variant Planar Topologies (all Portals led to cosmologies that have only one thing in common – they are all Different to the one that the PCs live in – a world in which a coalition of Water and Air elementals led by General Ulysses S. Grant is fighting a terrible civil war with Fire Elementals over the enslavement of Earth Elementals? Or maybe they are trying to win their independence from the Fire Elementals and are being led by General George Washington?). Idea #15, Variable Difficulty Portals, then gets examined in depth, in fact about half the article is devoted to the subject, which asks, “why should all destinations be equally accessible by Portal or Gate? Why shouldn’t there be lines of least resistance, and to reach a more remote destination, the additional resistance must be forcibly overcome? Why shouldn’t travel to a more remote destination be akin to climbing a hill – with several hundred pounds of gear on your back?.” The problem is that the reshaping of the cosmos by several of these options is totally out-of-control; this mechanism restores that control to the GM. I give a detailed explanation of how to map out the lines of least resistance in a practical manner using a scrabble board or something similar (a chess board doesn’t have enough spaces).
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.
• As part of the writeup of Énorme Force, one of the villains from the campaign, I give a thumbnail version of the origins of Blackwing in Pieces of Creation: Énorme Force. This article also explains (very briefly) some of the game physics including the basis of magic and psionics and the equivalent of clerical powers within the campaign.
• This pair are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.

Magic, Sorcery, & The Arcane

This category includes magic items, especially in the theoretical or general. Specific magic items may not be included if they don’t have sufficient bearing on that defiition; such will be found in the “Rewards” section of the Adventures page.

• See Also the “Money & Wealth” section below.

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs – Why asking yourself the Big Metaphysical Questions matters when designing a campaign.
• All Is Three: A 3.x Fantasy Campaign Premise – I offer an original but unfinished campaign idea, fleshing it out in the course of the article as an example of how I go about designing a campaign.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• Part Seven of Johnn’s series about City Government Power Bases gets into Magic and Psionics as a source of authority.
• Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra – Part four of the two-part article contains a larger and more complete example, illustrating all the steps in the process of creating an adventure, structuring it, and inserting it into a campaign plan. Along the way it expands both the game physics and game mythology and touches on or references no less than 20 other plotlines, showing how tightly integrated a plotline can be within a campaign.
• 63 Wizard Hooks, part of the Character Hooks series. But there are actually 81 plot hooks (as of this writing) by the time you count the ones in the comments.
• 54 Sorcerer Hooks, part of the Character Hooks series. Guest Contributor Bobby Catdragon offers 54 hooks for the Sorcerer character class. Readers take the tally to 59.
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Make It Sparkle Like Gold Dust – Johnn describes his approach to GMing spell interactions and turning them into plot elements within the game. This is part one of two. I still don’t think I’ve extracted all the good juices from this article for use in my own campaigns :)
• How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Polish Till It Gleams – Part two of Johnn’s article on turning spells into plot elements within a campaign.
• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive – I discuss prophecies within RPGs, the benefits, the pitfalls, and how to avoid the problems. Don’t skip the comments, there are some additional techniques worth considering described there. And once again, we have feedback from someone who employed the techniques I offer and came up with a great result, so you know it works!
• A Rational Intuition – The differences between instinct and intelligence, and how different game systems handle the former.
• Ask The GMs: When players make themselves immune, remember that “Resistance Is Futile” – How do you handle PCs that seem to be immune to magic?
• It’s Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Game Fraud and Counter-Fraud in RPGs – In a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world, how might people cheat at games of chance – and what would casinos have to do to stop them?
• Broadening Magical Horizons: Some Feats from Fumanor and Shards Of Divinity – 27 Original feats from my D&D campaigns are offered in four categories: Reducing Metamagics, Enchantment Metamagics, General Metamagics, and General Magic-related Feats. These of course are just the tip of the iceberg, one day I’ll pull out another bunch of them.
• “Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?”: A New idea for handling “wild luck” in D&D – I come up with a new idea for using luck in an RPG, especially in D&D.
• “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope – I examine the fundamental concepts that underpin skill checks and “difficulty targets” using D&D 3.x as an example and find multiple answers depending on your assumptions – and expose flaws in the 3.x mechanic along the way. Despite my making a mistake in the article (check the comments) I stand by the conclusions. This is something that is important for every GM to understand regardless of which game system they are using.
• Relatively Uncertain: Taking Control of Game Physics – I take a close look at game physics – why you need one, the assumptions that underpin them, downsides, and how to create a manageable one.
• With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality – I talk about ways to give objects personalities in RPGs – and why.
• 6 Ways to Enhance Magic Items – Johnn’s article offers exactly what it says on the label. There are some “fun” ideas and important thoughts in the comments.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 1 – As part of the blog carnival, I offer an excerpt from one of the free bonus eBooks that are part of the Assassin’s Amulet package. Legacy Items are a new form of magic item, and the bonus eBook aims to give players everything they need to know about how they work.
• An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’ – Part 2 – The second part of the two-part excerpt, which discusses the powers of Legacy Items – from a Player’s point of view. This should all have been one article, it was split for practical reasons, so I haven’t counted this second half toward the overall total.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic – I consider just what “loot” might be, and how it can be used as a plot mechanic. There’s a link to an interesting related article in the comments.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items – As a followup to an Ask-The-GMs question I was asked what I want to do when players want to sell magic items. The article starts by examining the economic foundations of fantasy societies, goes on to provide systems for determining how many people can afford what, and then looks into the population density of levelled characters (very D&D) before showing that the standard assumptions built into most Fantasy games simply don’t work. With all that as preamble, I then provide three basic answers to the original question.
• Why I Fell In Love with Staves Again After 10 Years (PFRPG) – Johnn returns to Campaign Mastery with this article on how Staves have changed in the Pathfinder game system – and why the changes are good for his campaign. This was part of the Blog Carnival.
• October Blog Carnival Wrap-up: A cavalcade of posts about goodies – The Blog carnival produced a huge number of great entries. I review them all. There are a couple of clarifications in the comments in response to what I had to say, and at least one more article worth reading on the subject.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4 – In part four of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time I offer an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.
• The Fields Of Magic – “What is Magic?” is one of the Big Questions that I recommend every Fantasy GM spend at least some time contemplating, because there are two very practical questions that can only result from a definitive answer: “What can magic do?” and “What can be done to magic?”. After quantifying the need in greater detail, I show how to create an answer, then examine that answer for manifestations and consequences that need to be expressed in changes to the base D&D/Pathfinder rules.
• A Population Of Dinosaurs and the impact on RPG ecologies – I get curious about how many species of dinosaur there were, so I devise some calculations to answer the question. That might be interesting enough in its own right, but then I see how quickly genetic engineering could produce new (well-adapted) species. This is so interesting that it holds my attention until I realize that it has other ecological value to the GMs of D&D / Pathfinder – for example, the same process could be used to tell you how long Dragons have lived in a Fantasy environment just by factoring in their average lifespan and the number of different varieties. And if there isn’t enough time, that just means that there must have been “intervention” of some kind in the history of dragon-kind. Or elves. Or… you get the idea.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• 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”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• As part of the writeup of Énorme Force, one of the villains from the campaign, I give a thumbnail version of the origins of Blackwing in Pieces of Creation: Énorme Force. This article also explains (very briefly) some of the game physics including the basis of magic and psionics and the equivalent of clerical powers within the campaign.

The “Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required” series

This is an Ask-The-GMs response that was too large for three parts to contain! The subject is to examine all sides of the Spell Components debate, find functional solutions that involve a rating for rarity / difficulty of obtaining, devise means of populating those strata of Components, and finally, to offer some items from the upper (more rarified) end of the scale.

• Pt 1: The Sales Pitch is all about my convincing myself that spell components were worth the trouble. Most GMs immediate response to the article briefing would be, “Why Bother”? In answer to that question, I provide five answers to the question, but don’t find any of them initially convincing, especially in light of the “Eschew Material Component” Metamagic Feat. An in-depth analysis of the mundane, non-magical item, “The Spell Component Pouch” unlocks the puzzle and leaves no doubt – every D&D / Pathfinder campaign either needs a house rule eliminating spell components as a factor of concern, or it needs a House Rule eliminating or revising this item. With it in its current form, it is impossible for Spell Components to be taken seriously. Since this analysis also finds conceptual issues with the item big enough to drive a Mystic Mountain through, I’m forced to advise the latter. So that’s what the article does. I look at mutliple ways of revising the concept, find multiple consequences of value to a campaign that result, some of which mandate the rating system for rarity, and that leaves me (and most readers who followed along) convinced of the answer to that initial question. Next, I revise and review the rarity scales and propose rules to implement them into a campaign and make them relevant (which also unleashes all those side-benefits discussed earlier). Finally, I offer three solutions to the bookkeeping tedium that makes most GMs ask “Who Cares” in the first place – then postcript that with some extra tantalizing applications.
  
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts takes my revised version of the draft scale and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.
  
• Pt 3: Tab A into Slot B provides a template for creating exotic spell components and then dives into some examples: Perfect Octarine (carries Cosmological implications), Etherial Alloy (carries more Cosmological implications), Firesphere (logically consistent with the preceding two, same implications), Ghostwood (carries Cosmological implications, Life & Death implications, and plot implications; mandates sentient trees; consistent with Positive and Negative Planes being two poles of a single structure), Heavenly Airs (profound implications for Death & The Afterlife, profound plot implications). After detailing those 5, I was completely out of time…
  
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.

The “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series

This series holds the unique distinction of being pivotal to not one but two Blog Carnivals in close succession. It was my major entry in the November 2015 Carnival (which I was also hosting) on the subject of “The Unexpected”, and then used as inspiration for the January 2016 Blog Carnival on “Gates and Portals”. The series takes the fundamental concepts of Gates and Portals and their impact on a game environment, and gives them a thorough shake to see what falls out of their pockets, then reconstructs them conceptually from the ground up to discover a whole heap of unexpected twists and turns that can be applied to make them Very different to expectations, capable of reshaping a Cosmology, literally, politically, socially, economically, militarily, and figuratively – which should come as no surprise, “Celestial Morphology” literally means “The Shape Of The Heavens,” after all. Each part examines five mind-bending ideas for the GM to consider. I was also determined to throw a “little extra advice” into each part as a bonus. Written principally for D&D / Pathfinder, but full of ideas that can be employed in other game systems.

• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”
• Destination Incognita is the second part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. After loosening the reader’s mental muscles up with the thought that the presence of a Portal or Gate turns every terrestrial defense into a Maginot Line, I briefly recap the six parameters described in Part 1 of the series, before tackling the next 5 big ideas. The common theme to these ideas is “Travel into the Unknown”: #6, The concept of a Grand Celestial Nexus to multiple planes (What if the PC’s world was the only one? And does the title “Prime Material Plane” imply that there are secondary material planes out there somewhere? And what if the Grand Celestial Nexus was actually Hades, or somewhere else?); #7, Destinationally-Unstable Portals and some further ways to use them (What if Portals – when established – always connect with the nearest Portal already in existence by default, causing the entire network to reshuffle? And, What is it about travelers that makes everything else immune to being sucked through an entrance and out the other end?); #8, For Every Portal, there is an Equal and Opposite Portal opened (this poses fundamental, radical and immediately critical cosmological questions!); #9, For Every Portal, There Is Another That Connects Two Random Planes At Random Points (Cosmology as Molecular Models! Chain Reactions! Polymers and Cataclysts! And More!); #10, The Wound In Reality, treats portals as analogous to physical wounds to a human (which brings the following analogous phenomena into play: 1. Shape/Nature of Wound, including Bruises, 2. Depth Of Wound, 3. Healing of Wounds, 4. Surgical Intervention, 5. Scarring of wounds, 6. Growth of skin, 7. Infection of Wounds, 8. Immunity and Resistance Processes, 9. Pharmaceutical Assistance, and 10. Other forms of skin harm, especially Skin Cancer and Burns). Along the way, many campaign and plot premises are tossed out for consideration, and I display the “Analogy Technique” for creating strange and distinctive phenomena.
• The Shape Of Strange is the third part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. This time I loosen the reader’s mental muscles by pointing out the impact on geology and agriculture of being able to erect a handy portal, again recapitulate the basics, and then tackle the next five Big Ideas, which all have the theme of “Reshaping Reality,” starting with #11, A Direct Connection To The Afterlife (there’s nothing in human society that I could think of that would be unaffected!); #12, Portal Transfiguration (in which travel through a portal is akin to the effects that befell Alice in Wonderland); #13, Socio-Ethical Morphology through Portal Networks (alternate worlds, everything from Discworld to Mirror, Mirror); #14, Portals Can Only Connect To Variant Planar Topologies (all Portals led to cosmologies that have only one thing in common – they are all Different to the one that the PCs live in – a world in which a coalition of Water and Air elementals led by General Ulysses S. Grant is fighting a terrible civil war with Fire Elementals over the enslavement of Earth Elementals? Or maybe they are trying to win their independence from the Fire Elementals and are being led by General George Washington?). Idea #15, Variable Difficulty Portals, then gets examined in depth, in fact about half the article is devoted to the subject, which asks, “why should all destinations be equally accessible by Portal or Gate? Why shouldn’t there be lines of least resistance, and to reach a more remote destination, the additional resistance must be forcibly overcome? Why shouldn’t travel to a more remote destination be akin to climbing a hill – with several hundred pounds of gear on your back?.” The problem is that the reshaping of the cosmos by several of these options is totally out-of-control; this mechanism restores that control to the GM. I give a detailed explanation of how to map out the lines of least resistance in a practical manner using a scrabble board or something similar (a chess board doesn’t have enough spaces).
• Feel The Burn is the final part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. In my introduction to this part, I start with Mutually-Assured Destruction by Portal and go to a means of sucking dry any magic items that the PCs shouldn’t have at this level before once again recapitulating the basic parameters. The theme of this final quintet is “Energy Flow In Transit” – as though you were entering a portal at one altitude and exiting at another, gaining potential energy in the process, or vice-versa: #16, Gaining Energy In Transit, has two subtypes, “Balanced” and “Unbalanced” (and be warned, some of these hit game physics with a two-by-four, and in the course of discussing the various “energy forms” that could be gained, I offer up some house rules for making Negative Energy Levels Scary,, which they aren’t in standard D&D / Pathfinder); #17 flips the coin to consider Losing Energy In Transit; #18 considers Portals as Planar Batteries (a possibility that I’ve actually used in one of my campaigns, and attached to a couple of really interesting external links – both still valid, I just checked 5/1/19); and finally, #19 and #20, which look at the momentum of events as a kind of energy (a concept players in my Zenith-3 campaign will be familiar with) that can be gained, lost, or inverted during transit.

Money & Wealth

Includes Economics & Valuables, and contains general information about practices and ethics that might be applicable to businesses and employers within a game.

• How Much Is That Warhorse In The Window? – Pricing Of Goods in D&D – After recommending “…And A 10-foot Pole” in a previous article, I look at the problems of converting its prices to the D&D scale and expose unexpected problems and complications. Then I share my system for converting the prices given, and a couple of alternatives (including to standard 3.x/Pathfinder).
• Coinage in Fumanor: Windows into a campaign background – I expand on some material that I left out of How Much Is That Warhorse In The Window? – Pricing Of Goods in D&D because it’s a good example of how to take a section of the rules and turn them into a roleplaying element. This is a warts-and-all analysis – what choices were made and why, what worked, and what didn’t.
• Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot – As part of the Blog Carnival, I consider the many different ways in which loot in general might be made part of a plot. Along the way I get to vent about the Identify Spell in D&D, how easily rare/valuable items can be converted to cash in most Fantasy Games, about Fantasy Economics in general, and about another D&D Spell, Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. There’s a discussion in the comments about the relationship between videogames and tabletop RPGs.
• Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic – As part of the Blog Carnival, I analyze the possible meaning of the term “value”, and evolve a classification system for GMs to use in deciding what magic items to place as loot in their campaigns.
• The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items – As a followup to an Ask-The-GMs question I was asked what I want to do when players want to sell magic items. The article starts by examining the economic foundations of fantasy societies, goes on to provide systems for determining how many people can afford what, and then looks into the population density of levelled characters (very D&D) before showing that the standard assumptions built into most Fantasy games simply don’t work. With all that as preamble, I then provide three basic answers to the original question.
• Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign – I break down the general concept of “Science Fiction” into 21 specific subgenres and look at each from a gaming perspective. As examples, I offer 11 specific sci-fi campaign premises. Along the way, I give readers a copy of “Buy Low, Sell High”, a set of quick game rules I wrote for handling Trade in Traveller, which can be easily adapted to other campaign genres.
• 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.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Signs and Signatures: An essay on uniqueness of style – After discussing signatures, and the many ways the term can be used to mean vaguely the same thing, and the relevance to craftsmen in RPGs, I postulate that each GM develops his own “signature” GMing style – that can contain flaws and unwanted elements that should be excised. This is more of a ‘think’ piece, not offering any real advice on how to do so, largely because it was a last-minute fill-in. As such, it constitutes a more literal interpretation of “advice” than is usually the case. Hungry, at Ravenous Roleplaying, links my musings to GM Feedback. Readers may find his thoughts relevant.
• Pt 1: The Sales Pitch of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” series is all about my convincing myself that spell components were worth the trouble. Most GMs immediate response to the article briefing would be, “Why Bother”? In answer to that question, I provide five answers to the question, but don’t find any of them initially convincing, especially in light of the “Eschew Material Component” Metamagic Feat. An in-depth analysis of the mundane, non-magical item, “The Spell Component Pouch” unlocks the puzzle and leaves no doubt – every D&D / Pathfinder campaign either needs a house rule eliminating spell components as a factor of concern, or it needs a House Rule eliminating or revising this item. With it in its current form, it is impossible for Spell Components to be taken seriously. Since this analysis also finds conceptual issues with the item big enough to drive a Mystic Mountain through, I’m forced to advise the latter. So that’s what the article does. I look at mutliple ways of revising the concept, find multiple consequences of value to a campaign that result, some of which mandate the rating system for rarity, and that leaves me (and most readers who followed along) convinced of the answer to that initial question. Next, I revise and review the rarity scales and propose rules to implement them into a campaign and make them relevant (which also unleashes all those side-benefits discussed earlier). Finally, I offer three solutions to the bookkeeping tedium that makes most GMs ask “Who Cares” in the first place – then postcript that with some extra tantalizing applications.
• Pt 3: Tab A into Slot B provides a template for creating exotic spell components and then dives into some examples: Perfect Octarine (carries Cosmological implications), Etherial Alloy (carries more Cosmological implications), Firesphere (logically consistent with the preceding two, same implications), Ghostwood (carries Cosmological implications, Life & Death implications, and plot implications; mandates sentient trees; consistent with Positive and Negative Planes being two poles of a single structure), Heavenly Airs (profound implications for Death & The Afterlife, profound plot implications). Many of these substances are extremely valuable. After detailing those 5, I was completely out of time…
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.
• The Care and Feeding Of Vehicles In RPGs 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this.
• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”
• Sequential Bus Theory and why it matters to GMs – I start by looking at the logic (some might say, ‘Illogic’) of bus timetables and why any given bus is almost always early or late. I then use the phenomenon of passangers getting on or off the bus to create a means of getting rid of monty haulism once and for all, and the distribution of game rewards like wealth and treasure, and (finally) consider a hypothetical way of letting PCs benefit from good character design without coming to totally dominate combat. That last is more of a thought experiment, not yet ready to be seriously advocated.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.

Cities & Architecture

Includes Geography & Environment. Note that a lot of the advice contained within these articles will scale – to nations in one direction, and villages in the other.

• Pillars Of Architecture: Some Thoughts On The Construction Of Cities – I reflect on simulating the way cities grow and how to incorporate this process into the mapping of the city. I still intend to follow this up with an example at some point.
• Architecture of Riddleport Inspires Plots – Johnn describes how he is using the architecture within the city of Riddleport to enhance his game, and (by example), how you can do the same for yours.
• Brick By Brick: Base Rules Made Easy – I had spent years trying to formulate a simple and flexible set of base construction rules, seeing idea after idea crumble into inefficient ruin. Then this idea seemed to come out of nowhere; I now recognize that it was inspired by the way I design and write blog articles. Designed for the Hero System, but with a section on converting it to other systems, and flexible enough to be a success in any of them. I’m particularly proud of these rules.
• Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over 5,000,000 – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10.
• Ergonomics and the Non-human – As the title suggests, this shows simple techniques for applying the principles of ergonomics to non-human physiologies, showing how everything from furniture to staircases is affected. Elves are studied as an example.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – After foolishly mentioning the possibility in “Ergonomics and the Non-human” (above), I got lots of requests for giving Dwarves the same treatment. One reason I was readily persuadable was that while many races (including Elves) had been featured in the Orcs And Elves series (see the subsection below), Dwarves weren’t one of them. One day there will be a part three, applying the principles to sentient octopi, squid, and the like.
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping.
• Thatch and Confusion – creating a village – “for a fantasy RPG” is what’s missing from this article title. Don’t miss the articles at the bottom of the page, which show that I got a little carried away in the writing – because I wanted to be able to set an adventure in my example village, I built it accordingly, but failed to note where you should stop if you don’t want to do that. There are also some great reader contributions there, including a reader-supplied list of 100 points of conflict around which to build your village. I’m including this article in this section because it discusses larger population centers briefly, and the process (modified as described in the article) scales up.
• Memorials To History – an ‘a good name’ extra – I expand the “A good name is hard to find” series by pointing out that inn and town names can be conduits to the campaign background. I then descuss integrating that conduit, and the history that flows through it, into an adventure. A very short post by Campaign Mastery standards.
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Stride The Earth in 7-league boots: Travel (and Maps) in FRPG Pt 2 – I look at the concept of a league, and what 7-league boots are therefore capable of. I then discuss map scales, making the radical suggestion that travel time instead of distance be the scale. I then use those maps to put the whole concept of 7-league boots into perspective. I then turn my attention to the map-making techniques that would be used in-game, and the resulting error rates in positioning of locations, and then feed that back into the 7-league boot concept, before applying the error rates to the standard scales that I recommended earlier in the article.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• Ask The GMs: On Big Dungeons – Johnn and I both offer advice on handling a big dungeon, then my fellow GMs rip that advice to shreds, forcing me to discover and solve the real issue with Big Dungeons (and other larger settings like Cities). Big is not necessarily better, but it can be – if approached in the right way by the author and the GM.
• 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”.
• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”
• Destination Incognita is the second part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. After loosening the reader’s mental muscles up with the thought that the presence of a Portal or Gate turns every terrestrial defense into a Maginot Line, I briefly recap the six parameters described in Part 1 of the series, before tackling the next 5 big ideas. The common theme to these ideas is “Travel into the Unknown”: #6, The concept of a Grand Celestial Nexus to multiple planes (What if the PC’s world was the only one? And does the title “Prime Material Plane” imply that there are secondary material planes out there somewhere? And what if the Grand Celestial Nexus was actually Hades, or somewhere else?); #7, Destinationally-Unstable Portals and some further ways to use them (What if Portals – when established – always connect with the nearest Portal already in existence by default, causing the entire network to reshuffle? And, What is it about travelers that makes everything else immune to being sucked through an entrance and out the other end?); #8, For Every Portal, there is an Equal and Opposite Portal opened (this poses fundamental, radical and immediately critical cosmological questions!); #9, For Every Portal, There Is Another That Connects Two Random Planes At Random Points (Cosmology as Molecular Models! Chain Reactions! Polymers and Cataclysts! And More!); #10, The Wound In Reality, treats portals as analogous to physical wounds to a human (which brings the following analogous phenomena into play: 1. Shape/Nature of Wound, including Bruises, 2. Depth Of Wound, 3. Healing of Wounds, 4. Surgical Intervention, 5. Scarring of wounds, 6. Growth of skin, 7. Infection of Wounds, 8. Immunity and Resistance Processes, 9. Pharmaceutical Assistance, and 10. Other forms of skin harm, especially Skin Cancer and Burns). Along the way, many campaign and plot premises are tossed out for consideration, and I display the “Analogy Technique” for creating strange and distinctive phenomena.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

The “Mike’s Fantasy Tavern Generator” series

In the course of the “Basics For Beginners” Series, I promised a Tavern generator unlike everything else out there. This is what I was talking about – I can’t tell you how many combinations are possible, only that it’s less than 695,335,579,885,000,000,000,000,000 – a wholly preposterous number. It should be noted that while the results are extremely detailed, the intention is for anything that isn’t necessary to get discarded. The last part published is entitled “All Over Bar The Shouting”; it was supposed to be followed by three more articles, “The Shouting at the Palomino And Fox”, “The Shouting at the Spotted Parrot”, and “The Shouting at the Robber’s End”, which would complete the examples, but time and health never permitted these to be more than half-completed. It would probably take several weeks just to catch up with where I was up to, at this point. But, one day…

• The Palomino and Fox (and other establishments) – Part 1 of the series deals with the physical construction of the Tavern or Inn using 6 rolls: Overall Size, Common Room Size, Common Room Table Size, Kitchen Size, Meals (nature, quality & price), and Walls. There’s a discussion of terminology, and another regarding meal quality and what it means. I then start three examples – The Palomino and Fox, The Spotted Parrot, and The Robber’s End.
• The Spotted Parrot (and other establishments) – Part 2 deals with the internal ambience of the establishment being generated, again using 6 tables. The first deals with wall decorations, the second with decorations behind/above the bar, the third determines the nature and quality of the beverage(s) on sale (which begins to hint at the clientele), the fourth covers the accommodations available in detail (which hints at which part of town the tavern is located in), there are notes on the appropriate “quality” interpretation, the skill of the barman, and finally, the barman’s personality. The article concludes by continuing the three examples from the first part, and for which the first three articles were named.
• The Robber’s End (and other establishments) – The third part of the series deals with the family of the barman/innkeeper. We start with Children In Residence, which builds in all sorts of demographics. There are then 3 sub-tables dealing with the families of co-owners, the presence of parents and parents-in-law, and the third deals with relatives other than parents and children. After determining the workforce that the barman/innkeeper can call upon for free, because they are dependant on him and the income that the business generates, Table 14 determines the total staff requirements and deducts the earlier results to determine how many employees the tavern/inn requires (and can be generally assumed to have). Table 15 then uses the Tavern Size to determine what entertainments (if any) the tavern or inn offers. The example taverns then continue, including a mechanism for simulating the rolling of the deck on the Spotted Parrot.
• Going Down To The Pub – Part 4 of the series introduces the final tables and worksheets that are intended to complete the design and then provides Worksheet 16, which calculates the ground floor spaces and some basics about the layout. The three examples then continue.
• Draw Another Pint – Part 5 of the series uses a lot of small tables and worksheets to determine the second level of the inn or tavern, which is usually where the owners reside, and where there will be guest accommodations if the tavern is also an inn. That is then interrupted to determine the demand for the meals (i.e. how crowded is the place at mealtimes), factoring in location relative to passing traffic, and a number of other important factors. This becomes important because if the kitchens are busy feeding paying customers, they aren’t providing for guests; and that permits a determination to be made of the usual guest numbers experienced, and eventually, the footprint of the accommodation level. Unlike the previous parts, there simply wasn’t room to continue the examples in this part.
• All Over Bar The Shouting – the title has a double-meaning because in Australian slang, to buy a round of drinks for the group with whom you are drinking is a “shout”. This part of the series completes the worksheets and processes involved in generating a complete tavern, calculating everything from the peak density of patrons in the common area, the total patronage, the popularity of the bar or inn, when the peak demands will be, and so on. I then offer advice on determining the profitability of the business overall (in case PCs ever come into posession of such). Once again, there wasn’t room to complete the examples.

Politics

• See also some of the entries in the Socities & Nations section, below.

• Pulling That Lever: The Selection Of Leaders In RPG Societies – How are leaders in an RPG society selected – and what does that say about who they are? I had a lot of fun speculating on suggestions and alternatives raised by other contributors in the comments! Anyone interested in this subject should also check out Johnn’s subsequent series City Government Power Bases considering what might give a city government and its leading citizens their power and authority, detailed in the preceding Blogdex section.
• Ask The GMs: How to survive political games with paranoia and intrigue – The question might concern a Vampire The Masquerade campaign, but Johnn and I look beyond that to offer advice on how to handle games filled with in-game politics. With a postscript piece of advice in the comments.
• Seven Circles Of Hell – Creating Politics for an RPG – Looks at the basics of political relations between similarly-scaled entities, using Nations and Kingdoms, but the results scale both up and down. Each “Circle” is actually a phase in the overall process aimed at complicating whatever you might already have created in earlier “Circles”, often making difficult decisions with inadequate foundations. That’s where “Hell” fits into the picture.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• 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”.
• The Unexpected Neighbor is the first part of the “Portals To Celestial Morphology” series. It starts by defining six parameters that singly or in combination can radically transform concepts of a portal – having 3, 5, 10, 7, 5×17, and 7 possible options each, or a total of 624,750 variations on the basic concept. This constitutes a “something extra” for this article, which then turns it’s attention to the five big ideas. The first four come under the general heading of “Temporally Unstable Portals” and are, respectively, Portals to the Future, Portals to the Past, Anarchic Time – Closed (i.e. restricted to a “window”), and Anarchic Time – Open (i.e. restricted to anywhen BUT sometime close to the end of the portal that the PCs are using). Idea #5 derives from something pointed out earlier in the article, and its proximate inspirational source – “The Neighbor Of My Neighbor Is Closer Than You Think”. Trade & Economics, Politics, Logistics, Resources – just a few of the things that can become all messed up by the creation of a permanent or semi-permanent portal. The common theme to all five of the main ideas in this post is “travel to a ‘neighbor’.”

The “City Government Power Bases” series

Over the course of this 9-part series, Johnn looks at what might give a city government and its leading citizens their power and authority, which dovetails very nicely with my earlier article on the ways in which leaders are selected; the latter was more about nations than cities, but scales perfectly well. I’ve always meant to write more parts to this series, and Johnn has given his blessing to that endeavor. One of these days I’ll get around to it.

• In Part one of the series he lays out the general principles he will be using, this article is essential reading for the rest of the series.
• Part Two examines the power bases of The Law and affiliations;
• Part Three covers Character and Social Classes;
• Part Four deals with Popularity and Leadership;
• Part Five concerns Social Leverage, Marriage, and Wealth;
• Part Six covers Wars and Military Authority;
• Part Seven gets into Magic and Psionics as a source of authority;
• Part Eight covers Religion; and finally,
• Part Nine covers Land.

Societies & Nations

Note that much of the advice in this section will scale to cities and smaller settlements.

• Distilled Cultural Essence – My first major series at Campaign Mastery offers a simple technique for the generation of unique and original cultures for use within a game (in part 1) and ways to display that uniqueness to the players in parts 2, 3, and 4. Originally a pair of articles, so that’s how it’s counted here, not as four parts.
• Lore Enforcement: The Legal System in an RPG – Thinking about the legal systems that need to be present in an RPG environment and some of the many variations that are possible – and important – in how they work.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Thinking about nations in RPGs – I supplement the Distilled Cultural Essence series with this article examining how a nation’s reputation on the sporting field both derives from and reflects the national reputation and ‘personality’ in other areas. Along the way I display plenty of parochial pride in my own nation’s achievements (with a lot of respect for the achievements of others). Then in the comments, I show how to reverse-engineer the process of creating an interesting character to generate an interesting nation for your RPGs.
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the series points out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign (and lists them) – something that the players themselves would only peripherally have been aware of. There’s also a demonstration of how a common cultural foundation can unify the look-and-feel of a place during the introduction to and adventures within, The Golden Empire.
• GM’s Toolbox: World Building Part Two: Communities and Politics – Part of the GM’s Toolbox series by Michael Beck with contributions by Da’Vane and the occasional comment drop-in from Johnn. The series is aimed at both beginners and more experienced GMs and strives to articulate all the things that you will need tools and techniques for in order to successfully run a campaign. This article looks at the social and human/demi-human landscape of a game world.
• The poetry of meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity – I argue that the literal translations of specific words can offer insight into national and cultural identities – then reverse the relationship to turn the concept into a tool for developing cultures and nations.
• Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival – My first contribution to the March 2011 Blog Carnival considers proposals to restore some legacy rules, and the question of whether or not Elves can be Resurrected, and extrapolates to consider the impact of changing rules systems mid-campaign, and then (unexpectedly) to considering the Resurrect spell as a plot point within a campaign and a campaign background.
• The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items – As a followup to an Ask-The-GMs question I was asked what I want to do when players want to sell magic items. The article starts by examining the economic foundations of fantasy societies, goes on to provide systems for determining how many people can afford what, and then looks into the population density of levelled characters (very D&D) before showing that the standard assumptions built into most Fantasy games simply don’t work. With all that as preamble, I then provide three basic answers to the original question. These answers have very strong implications for the fantasy society and it’s economy.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.
• Taming The Wild Frontiers – This article starts out as a think-piece inspired by the oft-cited comparison between the early internet and the American Wild West and marches headlong into the subtle but profound impact on RPGs of Political Correctness and then the socio-political models on which most Sci-fi games (and novels!) are traditionally based – and showing that there have been opportunities missed on all sides, and that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, in particular serious examination of the issues surrounding colonialism, equality, and exploitation. This article struck a chord with a lot of readers; one even told me that using it, he finally understood what he had been missing in modern games that turned him back towards “old-school” gaming.
• Ergonomics and the Non-human – As the title suggests, this shows simple techniques for applying the principles of ergonomics to non-human physiologies, showing how everything from furniture to staircases is affected. Elves are studied as an example.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – After foolishly mentioning the possibility in “Ergonomics and the Non-human” (above), I got lots of requests for giving Dwarves the same treatment. One reason I was readily persuadable was that while many races (including Elves) had been featured in the Orcs And Elves series (see the subsection below), Dwarves weren’t one of them. One day there will be a part three, applying the principles to sentient octopi, squid, and the like.
• Who Are You? – An original character naming approach – Naming patterns are generally ubiquitous within and unique to a society – until the modern era, anyway. Some misheard commentary on TV and this fact inspired a new naming pattern – one that comes close to encapsulating an entire biography into the name. This idea can only reasonably be used in Fantasy and Sci-Fi campaigns. The article is included here because of the implications for the society that sees this as a reasonable approach to names.
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles.
• The Thinking Man’s Guide to Intelligence for Players and GMs – I presage this article with a drop-in editorial concerning what has become known as the Lindt Cafe Seige. I suspect that the huge number of likes this article got on social media at the time had more to do with that editorial than with the content. That content: Practical advice on how to roleplay characters of different Intelligence levels, both PCs and NPCs. The categories discussed are Low Intelligence, Very Low Intelligence, and Very High Intelligence. It is assumed that characters with “Normal” Intelligence require no modification in playing style to represent that intelligence. Readers who find this interesting and/or useful should also check out the two-part article on Charisma linked to in the opening paragraphs, which also (in part 2) demonstrates how to build general perceptions of a race or class into a social structure through house rules.
• Phase 4: Development from the “New Beginnings” series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Pt 2: Sourcing Parts of the “Some Arcane Assembly Required” Series takes my revised version of the draft scale from part 1 and looks at populating it. Along the way, it asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”; so innocuous but it has the potential to tear a poorly-visualized campaign world apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. I then throw in some possible social consequences to making spell components important in the manner under discussion before returning to the question of populating the different categories, providing five ways in which any given item might be relevant to a spell. I then bring up another of those thorny implications raised by the principles under discussion – “Can You Make Your Own Ad-Hoc Divine Focus?” – in a sidebar, but make no serious attempt to resolve it. I look at frauds and huxters and how they would react to spell components being important (i.e. more plot ideas to derive from the concept), consider components that have to undergo some sort of process before they can be employed, consider innately magical components and magic institutions as components (more plot ideas), the impact of cosmology on the question of rarity, and other exotic qualities that rare spell components might possess. There are massive worldbuilding, social, economic, and cultural implications that derive from some of these ideas.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• Disease and Despair – the healing-resistant nightmare – I start this fantasy-oriented nightmare scenario by looking at the historical impact of disease, and then the ramifications of the existence of the low-level D&D Spell, “Cure Disease”. Those show that from this factor alone, the historical accuracy of fantasy games would be severely impacted, infusing social changes from the reformation and population dynamics closer to those of the 19th or early 20th centuries. With that, and a quick review of the Black Death and its impact, I briefly discuss an article I wrote for Roleplaying Tips, Putting The Fear Back Into Disease (still available, I just checked), all as foundation for what follows: What would happen if a Cure Disease-resistant disease arose? To call the results dystopian is like calling The Great Wall Of China a “backyard fence”. Ironically, I also explain that if the GM has adopted the “Putting The Fear Back” approach, the impact would be minimal! I then look at how to integrate this social disintegration – and the responsibility for fixing things – can integrate with an existing campaign, before showing that having the disease also be Heal-resistant is actually less disruptive than the alternative!
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• 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”.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

Races

• Races Should make a Difference – Johnn suggests ways in which a race’s presence or absence should affect your game world.
• The Age Of An Elf: Demographics of the long-lived – I look at the population dynamics of longer-lived species and aging in RPGs, and find problems with the standard D&D model. The process permits an assessment of the social impact that the longer lifespans and resulting demographics have, and offer ways of interpreting or modifying the results and the base assumptions to achieve the society that you want in your game. The contributions and discussion in the comments are a total greater length than the article itself, and not to be missed if this subject is relevant to your campaign.
• 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.
• Taming The Wild Frontiers – This article starts out as a think-piece inspired by the oft-cited comparison between the early internet and the American Wild West and marches headlong into the subtle but profound impact on RPGs of Political Correctness and then the socio-political models on which most Sci-fi games (and novels!) are traditionally based – and showing that there have been opportunities missed on all sides, and that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, in particular serious examination of the issues surrounding colonialism, equality, and exploitation. This article struck a chord with a lot of readers; one even told me that using it, he finally understood what he had been missing in modern games that turned him back towards “old-school” gaming.
• Ergonomics and the Non-human – As the title suggests, this shows simple techniques for applying the principles of ergonomics to non-human physiologies, showing how everything from furniture to staircases is affected. Elves are studied as an example.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – After foolishly mentioning the possibility in “Ergonomics and the Non-human” (above), I got lots of requests for giving Dwarves the same treatment. One reason I was readily persuadable was that while many races (including Elves) had been featured in the Orcs And Elves series (see the subsection below), Dwarves weren’t one of them. One day there will be a part three, applying the principles to Octopoidal creatures, and maybe even a part four looking at Kobolds.
• A Population Of Dinosaurs and the impact on RPG ecologies – I get curious about how many species of dinosaur there were, so I devise some calculations to answer the question. That might be interesting enough in its own right, but then I see how quickly genetic engineering could produce new (well-adapted) species. This is so interesting that it holds my attention until I realize that it has other ecological value to the GMs of D&D / Pathfinder – for example, the same process could be used to tell you how long Dragons have lived in a Fantasy environment just by factoring in their average lifespan and the number of different varieties. And if there isn’t enough time, that just means that there must have been “intervention” of some kind in the history of dragon-kind. Or elves. Or… you get the idea.
• There’s Something About Undead – Blog Carnival Oct 2014 – for the Blog Carnival of October 2014, I penned this article, looking at what makes Undead what they are – in other words, I try to give them some depth. It alls starts with one of those simple little questions: What Is Life? The process of examining the answers reveals a fundamental inadequacy within the standard D&D/Pathfinder Cosmology.
• 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.
• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – the first of two articles for the November 2014 Blog Carnival, this one asks “How do you create an original alien species?” then immediately points out the Fantasy RPG applicability before providing three answers, with multiple examples, including an entire alien environment and ecology. More examples and discussion in the comments.
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles.
• Phase 0: Introduction from the “New Beginnings” series – Almost half the article is taken up with the table of contents for the whole series. The remainder takes a fresh look at some general principles of campaign design – practical elements like “How much campaign do I need to design” – offers a new method of creating a campaign called the “The Modular Story-based approach”, and briefly describes an example sci-fi campaign idea, “Reality, But Not As We Know It”, which is a kind of space-opera version of Star Trek. Some issues of races within a campaign get discussed.
• Phase 2: Baggage Dump from the “New Beginnings” series – This is not so much about clearing your head more than temporarily, it deals with what you want to keep from previous campaigns and what to throw away. Significant areas of attention are GMing (stress & exhaustion & recovery), Races, PCs, NPCs, and Players.
• Phase 4: Development from the “New Beginnings” series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Phase 8: Enfleshing from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure to form the additional ’tissue’ referred to by the title.
• Phase 9: Completion from the “New Beginnings” series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – It’s funny how you can think an article is about one thing when you remember it, only to find that it’s about something slightly different when you re-read it. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve encountered the phenomenon often enough while working on both this one and the original Blogdex that I don’t trust memory to remind me of the content or classification of an article; I re-read it to be certain. In this particular case, I discuss the emergence of those national traits that would define the collective “aussie character” for generations thereafter, and the forging of those traits into a national identity during a time of conflict. I then point out the obvious – “Every sentient race should have at least one event per society that defines them as a culture” (within the campaign background). After discussing the point, and the consequences – statues, place-names, traditions, and the like – I segue into hints and tips for generating such formative incidents.
• A Vague Beginning – Originally written back in 2011, this was a fill-in post pulled out of my files at the last possible moment. It outlines the decisions to be made in creating a campaign, permitting their relative gravity to be assessed, and offers a practical overview of the process of creating a concept and designing a campaign to express it. It can be considered a “primer” to the New Beginnings series, below.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• Part 12 of the Basics For Beginners series, Relations, deals with NPC characterization, building on the content in Part 5. I start by describing a tool that delivers only cliche characters for unimportant NPCs (but that have sufficient depth to be believable, nevertheless); the article then shows how to layer two or three such profiles to create a “complex” character. I then move on to two approaches to using the principles from an earlier article to generate alien/non-human characters that are more than “humans in rubber masks”. The first approach works well for individual exemplars, the second is better when creating a race of aliens who are to exhibit individual variations. However, these characterization techniques only really work when the character is being built around a defined and chosen character profile or niche. That generally means that the characters are needed for a specific purpose within the plot, and that this should be the starting point that leads to a characterization and not an afterthought. Going from need to characterization is the real purpose of the article. I have two solutions – a general one, that is described in detail, and a specific one that can only by highlighted, which I dispose of quickly. After spelling out the criteria that I required the general solution to fulfill, I describe it – 12 questions (two of them optional) that a GM, regardless of experience, should be able to answer in seconds. The results should produce a fit-for-purpose and ready-to-play personality in about 40 seconds.
• The Secret Arsenal Of Accents – Three techniques, two standards, and two general principles, are all that you need to go from “I can’t do accents” to being able to fake it well enough to fool players at the game table – provided they don’t speak the language you’re faking, of course.
• What Empowers A Curse and other dangerous questions – For the September 2015 Blog Carnival, I ask “What empowers a Curse” in D&D / Pathfinder and find that the answer has some profound implications, potentially touching on everything from Cosmology to why Gods need congregations. Although I talk down the value of a curse sub-system within the game mechanics, I’ve actually found it necessary to craft one for an as-yet-unpublished (Jan 2019) series of articles.
• 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”.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

Races in Mike’s Fumanor Campaigns

From the start of my Fumanor Campaign, there have been secrets concerning the history of Elves, Drow, and Orcs in the game world. Now the characters have reached the point where the truth has to be told, in The Orcs & Elves Series. This long series completely reinvents (from the players point of view) the campaign background of the world so far as those particular races is concerned. It is presented here as a very long fantasy novel. I’m not even going to list the contents, here – it’s just too massive a series.

With each part, I build up a Glossary of Elvish language used within the story. So far, it’s up to Chapter 85 of 116 originally planned – but I’ve hit all the essentials in terms of its campaign needs, so whether or not I continue on all the way is still to be determined. I could more or less wrap up the series at this point by having the PCs awaken from their dream state and being told, “The rest you know…” On the other hand, the completist in me wants to tell the rest of the story, so we’ll see. It’s a heck of a lot of work.

The series consists of two broad components: the story itself, and the backstory / campaign background / context that shapes that story. While these are all presented as one big series at Campaign Mastery, these background-element articles have a broader utility. Originally intended to be three parts, it grew into five.

• Part 1 addresses the question of why reinvent races in different fantasy campaigns at all? and then synopsizes very briefly the events of the previous campaigns in the game setting.
• Part 2 continues sketching in the background to the Orcs and Elves plotline. This begins describing the key characters, along the way giving the backgrounds and histories of their races within the campaign, covering Elves, Drow, Ogres, Dwarves, and Halflings. I give away lots of freebies from the campaign in the process.
• Part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin).
• In Part 4 of the background to the Orcs and Elves story, I start to update the campaign history so-far, building on material I had already published. Don’t worry, there are links in the article telling you when to revisit that material. There are lots of editorial asides to offer glimpses behind the curtain and context. The Giveaways continue, this time an original magic item, The Spirit Blade of Clan Takamuchi.
• Part 5 – The final preparatory piece of the puzzle completes the synopsis of the campaign so far (including some parts of the story that the players didn’t know). A sidebar considers the economics of Undeath. As a giveaway with this post I offer a high-res map of the part of the Game World where the campaign has (mostly) taken place – but bereft of labels and captions so other GMs can use it as they see fit, and another with captions detailing the PCs travels. I point out that each of the PCs has a personal quest in the campaign (and list them) – something that the players would only peripherally have been aware of. Finally, I discuss just how the Orcs & Elves series was being written, in other words, the plan of attack for the series.

In addition, a few other posts have also shed light on the subject:

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Orcish Mythology – Did I suggest that I was ready to set aside the background and get on with the series itself? Well, I thought I was, but a funny thing happened around the Chapter 51 mark – I found that I needed to construct and outline a pantheon for the Orcs, and a mythology to go with that pantheon. By the time I had finished this background work, there wasn’t enough time to actually write another article in the series – so I presented my handiwork, instead. Surprisingly, it turned out to be even more central to the storyline than I had originally expected, so it was all serendipitous.
  
• Who Is “The Hidden Dragon”? – Behind the curtain of the Orcs and Elves Series – This is all about decision-making when designing plotlines and adventures. Once again I had to interrupt the ongoing main narrative of The Orcs & Elves plotline, which had reached the point where decisions had to be made concerning the question asked in the title; I spell out the thought process that went into determining the solution used in that story.

Races in Mike’s Shards Of Divinity Campaign

The “Shards” campaign was conceived as a place where one of the younger players could mature to the point of being able to join into any of the other RPGs being run without being unduly handicapped by a lack of experience. It fulfilled that brief before being shut down, still a long way short of its planned epic finish. From time to time, that central player makes noises about resurrecting it, so I guess it did something right.

• 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.

Languages

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2 – Part two continues sketching in the background to the Orcs and Elves plotline. This begins describing the key characters, along the way giving the backgrounds and histories of their races within the campaign, covering Elves, Drow, Ogres, Dwarves, and Halflings. I give away lots of freebies from the campaign in the process. There’s also some material about these racial languages, including some key terms and their meanings.
• Ask The GMs: Rubbing Two Dry Words Together – Why have different languages in an RPG, how can you use them to enhance a story, and what’s wrong with universal translators. anyway? Some of our readers thought this was our best article so far (in July 2010).
• Sugar, Spice, and a touch of Rhubarb: That’s what little names are made of – Article three in the A Good Name Is Hard To Find series discusses simple name structures and how to create a name using a name seed, and as a bonus, shows how to generate a monosyllabic language.
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time – How can you have substantial time take place in between adventures, with characters aging and eventually being replaced due to old age / death? I begin by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this type of campaign, then move into practical considerations of the difficulties that will be faced in creating and running a “Discontinuous Campaign”. Topics touched on include delivery of campaign backstory, technological advances, The evolution of Language, Development of Infrastructure, Social Advances, Attempted Player Rorting, Metagame issues, the Impact of the Campaign Concept on characters, and The need for rules to cover Aging, R&D and Manufacturing, and Investments. There are a lot of similarity between running a Discontinuous Campaign and running a Time Travel campaign – though this is certainly one of the more prosaic and yet unusual forms of ‘Time Travel’.

Languages in Mike’s Shards Of Divinity Campaign

The “Shards” campaign was conceived as a place where one of the younger players could mature to the point of being able to join into any of the other RPGs being run without being unduly handicapped by a lack of experience. It fulfilled that brief before being shut down, still a long way short of its planned epic finish. From time to time, that central player makes noises about resurrecting it, so I guess it did something right.

The On Alien Languages series is probably the most structurally complex series of articles at Campaign Mastery. Before I could complete my series on Names, I needed to address the subject of Alien Languages. The easiest way of doing that comprehensively was to excerpt the material on the subject that I had crafted as the foundation of my Shards Of Divinity campaign; but in order for that to make sense, and be placed in proper context, I had to describe in detail some of the Realms from that campaign, and for those to make sense, I had to present the foundations of the campaign. Like one domino knocking down another, the compounding of complexity accumulated. This series has never been finished because of the amount of time the articles took to write (they average about 11,000 words each, 75% of them new material), because I had covered most of the material on languages that was the original justification for the series, and because the Orcs & Elves series took priority and dominated 2013.

• The first article in the series, The Non-human Languages Generator, describes the ideal process of creating a non-human language.
  
• The second, The Shared Kingdoms: A Premise from the Shards Of Divinity Campaign, interweaves the origin myth of the game world and discussions of the Origins and Concepts of the campaign. It also summarizes the cultures and politics of the game world and details the capital, before getting into the common language in detail, and the format of human names in the campaign.
  
• The third article, Bher Yuralvus, The Home Of The Endless Library, details an independent city-state which treasures knowledge over everything else (including discussion of why this kingdom is in the campaign at all). The article’s second part provides a new feat, “Linguist”, and gives the general language rules for the Shards Of Divinity Campaign.
  
• Four in the series, Causa Domasura, The Home Of Reason, offers details of a Mage-dominated Human Republican Meritocracy (including how and why I came up with it), then begins to put the principles on languages into context by detailing the Common Languages from the campaign. Along the way, I offer a set of “Cheat processes” for simulating non-human languages.
  
• Fifth on the list is Therassus Amora, The Centre Of Attraction, which details in the now-established pattern a Human Feudal Kingdom – this campaign’s take on the “common standard” of political structures – with a couple of twists. The second part discusses the unusual languages from the campaign in detail, has a unique Gnomish Name generator, and then begins detailing the technique for creating your own non-human language simulator.
  
• The Sixth article in the series, The Ineoddolus Imperascora (The Traders And Commerce Empire), provides a detailed description of the ultimate human Plutocracy, where everything is for sale – at the right price. The second part of the article details the rare languages from the campaign, and the third part continues the instructions in making your own non-human language simulator.
  
• The Seventh, and last, article in the series (so far) is The Longex Dextora (The Hinterlands) which describes a frontier realm for Byzantine human politics – technically, a Republic of Independent City-States against a background of dominance games between Orcs, Giants, Gnolls, & Goblins. Ironically, it evolved during construction so that it is no longer (technically) a “Hinterlands” at all. Part Two of the article details the Obscure Languages, and Part Three shows how to create the rules that turn a foreign language into a non-human language.
  
• The Eighth post (which was promised at the end of the 7th and never delivered promises discussion of a Gnomish Monarchy, The Parumveneaora, also known as The Vale Of Dreams, something that’s already been created called The Language Map, and a discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of this approach to languages. After that, I still had Six more principle Realms from the campaign to write up. One of these days, when time permits, I’ll finish this series. Then I’ll restructure it into an e-book with some pretty maps and art. Right now, it’s low priority because the campaign closed down.

Character Classes & Archetypes

• See also the “Character Hooks” series in the Plot Ideas section of the Campaign Plotting page. Although it’s mainly about plot ideas, a lot can be inferred about the archetype from the plots.

• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3 – Taking up where the previous article left off, this article describes Orcs, a new race (Dwarvlings), a new character class (The Fated, a reinvention from the ground up of an idea from The Planar Handbook [D&D 3.0]), another new race (The Verdonne), Humans in Fumanor, and a new variant character class (The Paladins Of Thumâin).. Includes a little content on Orcish Names.
• Casual Opportunities: Mini-encounters for… Barbarians – The Casual Opportunities series was (and is) about presenting opportunities for archetypes to put their character on show. It did so by breaking the archetype down into a comprehensive set of variations, identifying the key features in common to most of these variations, then providing encounter ideas that emphasized one of the key features or stressed the uniqueness of one particular variation. The first part in the series focused on Barbarians.
• Phase 5: Surroundings & Environment from the “New Beginnings” series – Specific topics cover Adventure Location, Campaign Background, Villains, NPCs, Geography, Economics, Culture & Society, Politics, Races, and Character Classes / Avatars.
• Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the “New Beginnings” series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Phase 8: Enfleshing from the “New Beginnings” series – deals with Archetypes, Races, Villains, Other NPCs, Adventure Locations, Encounters, Plot Ideas, and Campaign Structure to form the additional ’tissue’ referred to by the title.
• Phase 9: Completion from the “New Beginnings” series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line of the Some Arcane Assembly Required series contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.
• A Helping Handout – Hungry from Ravenous Roleplaying complained that his players were glancing at his handouts and then setting them aside, and that consequently, his effort invested in creating them was being wasted. He then linked to an article at Gnome Stew by Phil Veccione which promised to alleviate the problem. Having seen the “three second glance” myself, I was sufficiently intrigued to check out Phil’s article, and while it was good, I thought it didn’t go far enough. Phil identified 4 ways handouts could be used to increase their utility; I added 9 to that list in this article, and a tenth if you include maps, including how-to information.
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• 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.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information.

The “Casual Opportunities For Priests” series

The Casual Opportunities series was (and is) about presenting opportunities for archetypes to put their character on show. It did so by breaking the archetype down into a comprehensive set of variations, identifying the key features in common to most of these variations, then providing encounter ideas that emphasized one of the key features or stressed the uniqueness of one particular variation. “Casual Opportunities for Priests” was the second (and so far, last) entry in the collection of articles on the subject. That’s because it quickly grew to be a monster; I had anticipated the need to split future parts of the series into two parts, I did not expect to need to split both of those parts into two more. NOTE that the subject is NOT D&D/Pathfinder Clerics, but that there is some overlap with those classes.

• Part one, Priests: Analysis and Commonalities, identifies a number of variable factors, within which any given priest occupies one specific alternative, analyses the patterns that result from the interplay of those variable factors to derive seven traits/applications that were universally common to the variations, and considers how to employ casual encounters to enhance and reveal the character’s basic role in a campaign. There are lots of examples of the utility of these theoretical foundations from the Adventurer’s Club campaign (Pulp). In general, this article is about what Priests have in common.
  
• In the second part, Priests: Divergences and Differences, I examine the potential and value of mini-encounters that will highlight an individual priest’s position on each of the variable factors identified in Part 1. There are LOTS of suggestions for encounters that result. In general, this article is about what distinguishes one Priest from another. This article might seem relatively short but needed lots of work behind the scenes that doesn’t necessarily show – or perhaps my memory is tainted because I was suffering through post-operative recovery at the time..
  
• The third part of the series, Priests: The Common Encounters, generates 44 encounters and minor plotlines from different aspects of the the Seven common traits. This includes one epic with 11+ connected subplots.
  
• The final part of the article quartet, Priests: The Differential Encounters, takes the results of Part 2 and turns the ten points of differentiation into another 28 encounters and minor plotlines. This is where all that “behind the scenes” work that I mentioned in relation to Part 2 really shows up.

Organizations

• Guilds, Organizations, and other Bad Company – Some quick on-the-fly rules for PC memberships in organizations within an RPG.
• Mage Guild Mastermind Survives Pirate Haven – Johnn takes readers through his thought process when creating a faction for his Riddleport campaign.
• Shades of Sky Blue: Variations on U.N.T.I.L. – Perhaps the most seminal creation of the Hero Games universe is U.N.T.I.L, but (while the acronym is excellent) the name still gives me acute pain, it’s so at odds with what the organization actually does. In this article I describe how I reinvented the organization for my game and the implications in terms of the policies, principles, and Charter of the United Nations.
• The Veil of Secrecy: A truth about organizations in games – Every real-world organization has secrets and reasons to keep those secrets. Good ones. Necessary ones. Bad ones. This article is all about institutional secrecy by organizations in your RPG and how likely it is that an organization will have such a secret – and how useful it can be from a plot and characterization perspective to have that secret on tap.
• The Flunkie Equation – quick and easy Hors d’Combat – An organization is comprised of the people who work for it (amongst other things), but you rarely need to treat these even by NPC standards. “The Flunkie Equation” is a system by which the essential information demanded by the Partial NPC doctrine (explained in Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep) can be generated more quickly and easily, making an already-fast process even more efficient. This article also explcitly builds on techniques described in The Ubercharacter Wimp. You should read both those articles before this one.
• Phase 7: Skeleton from the “New Beginnings” series – The skeleton of a new campaign brings together Archetypes, Races, politics, culture & society, theology, economy, organizations, campaign structure, plot sequencing, and campaign tone, linking elements together.
• Pt 4: Cut At The Dotted Line of the Some Arcane Assembly Required series contains the exotic components that I wasn’t able to complete in time for part 3. It starts with a far more compact version of the template, then looks at Permanice Frost (gives Water Elementals a new sense, carries the same implications as Perfect Octarine from Part 3), Nightmare Spinner (involves an original monster from the Negative Energy Plane known as a Dreameater, cosmological implications, planar travel implications, scary stuff!), Oil Of Cholic (implications for military and barbarians), Razorleaf (cosmological implications, unresolved cosmological questions, exotic organizations, adventuring location, Elvish society). I then offer an incomplete idea for a 10th exotic element.
• 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.
• 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”.
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade contains some thoughts on the pulp genre in general, and imputes more information on the adaption of 1920s-30s material for a modern audiance. No-one who knows the beliefs of ISIS could fail to note the parallels between them and those of Lon Than, for example, giving this game material a relevance not obvious to anyone else. The primary purpose of the article is to relay four pieces of content from the Adventurer’s Club campaign for others to use: Compiled information on “the mystic properties of jade”; Lon Than, a pulp villain (and his organization), who could easily be translated into a Fantasy or Superhero Genre (there’s some advice on doing so at the end of the article); and a ‘reinvention’ for game purposes of the Hindu Goddess, Kali, and a “twin sister”, Kalika, whose duality has an unmistakable resemblance to Cyrene, the Deity featured in Assassin’s Amulet. Trust me when I say that it would take an expert in the faith to find where we have twisted the lore, but the cumulative effect is to produce a figure that is far more sympathetic and relateable than most RPG representations (who don’t see beyonf the Thugee and get most of their information on that from the second Indiana Jones movie). The fourth item is a very brief summary of the way these items were used in-game, from dangling plot hooks through to adventure.
• The villainous pair named Maxima and Minima are devotees of a radically-extreme televangelist, and are described in Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima. Their powers are designed to be complimentary and Force Multipliers (a Combat / Military concept) for each other, a potent demonstration of what can be done in the Hero System with only a little deep thought about the design – so much so that many GMs wouldn’t hesitate to house-rule them out of existence. I briefly mention the Roman Catholic Church of this game world and it’s leader, Gregorovich II. St Barbara and Blackwing are explicitly involved in the backstory of the first (and so far only) encounter with the duo. There are suggestions for adapting the concepts and design techniques to D&D / Pathfinder and other genres such as Cyberpunk through magic items and rewards.