03 Campaign Plotting

Title

This is the Campaign Plotting blogdex page.

Before you can start creating and running adventures in your game world, you have to decide how they are all going to fit together, because there are several ways for adventures to be connected with serious implications for the content of those adventrures and the right choice for the campaign you want to run almost certainly won’t happen by accident. Will there be an overarching plotline? Or Will each adventure be completely isolated from all the others? What are the other considerations and what impact will they have? And what’s the best way to organize the whole thing, anyway? These issues and more are all addressed by the articles that relate to Campaign Plotting. Plots in this section are “adventure outlines”, not yet ready to run but complete enough to express the basic idea of the adventures that constitute the remainder of a campaign. Actual examples may be found on the “Campaigns” page.

This section includes articles on:

General Articles
Plot Sequencing,
- Campaign Pacing
- The “Swell and Lull – Emotional Pacing in RPGs” series
- The “Further Thoughts On Pacing” series
- Other Related Articles
Plot Ideas,
- The “Character Hooks” series
Subplots,
Writing,
Plot Problem-Solving,
Prophecies & Dreams, and
Big Finishes.


	General Articles See also the “One Player Is Enough” series on the Game Mastering page.
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. Spring Cleaning for your Campaign – How players and GMs can spruce up and refresh a campaign by cleaning up loose ends. Ask The GMs: Networks Of NPCs – The GM gave the PCs a bunch of contacts from which the Players expect to extract Intelligence, but the GM is out of his depth – how does he organize these NPCs and their info? How does he turn these NPCs into an Intelligence Network with drowning himself in paperwork & Prep? Includes 13 tips for handling informants and some links to related articles. The Nimble Mind: Making Skills Matter in RPGs – How to make skills important in an RPG. Too often, they don’t seem to be. ‘Nuff said. Ask The GMs: Giving Players The Power To Choose Their Own Adventures – How do you create a campaign that gives the players absolute freedom but still leaves the GM in control? 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. 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?”. Game Master Tool Illustrated: Plot Flowcharts – The Blog Carnival for September 2010 was on the subject of Preparation. Johnn provides Campaign Mastery’s entry by considering Plot Flowcharts. At the end of the article and in the comments, several software aids are listed for producing flowcharts to help. Plot flowchart example – Guest Author and Campaign Mastery reader Yong Kyosunim follows up Johnn’s article on using plot flowcharts with a real example. Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background – The third in this irregular series is actually the seventh post to be included because the first article was itself a five-part series-within-a-series. I discuss the concept that time continues moving even when the PCs aren’t present, and ways to make this practical. Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens – I examine the ways in which different Narrative Styles can combine with Episodic and Serialized campaigns to produce eight distinctly different combinations, and how those can be sandboxed. The goal is to help GMs choose the narrative style that best suits the campaigns and the adventure that they want to run – and to explain (if you’re using the wrong style) why the campaign keeps going off the rails. Starting In The Middle – The virtues of skipping the beginning and going straight to the middle. I offer three ways of getting straight into the action without railroading the players. There’s further discussion of the merits and drawbacks of railroading as well as some discussion of the ideas I’ve offered, in the comments. 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. GM’s Toolbox: Prep Tools Part One: Campaign and Adventure Planning – 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 deals with the upper-level planning that goes into running a game. Turning Reaction into Proaction – plotting techniques to get your players moving – After a couple of ‘soft’, speculative articles, I turn my attention back to practical measures. In this article, I consider ways to make your players active participants in campaign plotting and plot development. Ensemble or Star Vehicle – Which is Your RPG Campaign? – Is your game an ensemble, in which everyone gets an equal share of the spotlight, or a star vehicle in which a few characters dominate play? What are the differences and the impacts? And how can you keep your players happy, either way – or fix it, if your campaign is the ‘wrong one’? The Seven Strata Of Story – Any narrative – including RPG adventures – consists of multiple layers working together to tell the overall story. Giving PCs their independence from the central author (the GM) simply adds another layer, or perhaps a sub-layer. This article breaks down these layers of story, shows the relationships between them, and how they can be exploited or enhanced to improve the game – or the story, in any other medium – for everyone. 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. There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two of my series on how to beat the problem regardless of its specific nature offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks (Ideas), Specific-Scene Blocks (Scenes within an adventure), and Setting Blocks (Locations). People, Places, and Narratives: Matching Locations to plot needs – Your cast of characters isn’t limited to PCs and NPCs; this article shows you how to access and use the current location as another member of that cast. The Pattern Of Raindrops: A chessboard plotting technique – a technique of building up plotline that is more white noise than orchestrated plotline. The concepts can be really hard to follow (and almost as hard to explain), but everyone whose read this concurs that there’s a brilliant idea in there somewhere. One of these days, I might draw on my additional years of experience and have a stab at a simplified process, because I can almost see one… 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. Pretzel Thinking – 11 types of Plot Twist for RPGs, Part 1 – Wikipedia lists 11 kinds of plot twist mechanic and for one reason or another, not one of them is relevant to an RPG. After briefly looking at the need for plot twists, I set some ground rules about playing fair with the players, and then identify my own 11 plot twist mechanics that are relevant to an RPG. I then look at the first three in detail. This inspired John Large at Red Dice Diaries to post his own thoughts on the subject. Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2 – summarizes the introductory material from Pt 1 (like the ground rules) and then details the remaining eight types of plot twist. Along the way, I discuss plot sequencing and the relevance to Plot Twists. The Final Twist: Dec 2014 Blog Carnival Roundup – As host of the Blog Carnival in Dec 2014, it was my responsibility to compile the posts submitted. Some just list them, I like to review the submissions and classify them into some sort of rational overview. So this contains everything offered on the subject of plot twists and surprises. Inn Through The Side Door – Reinvigorating the cliché – This was a filler article that I wrote and then set aside until the next time I was caught short. After discussing the cliché of starting a campaign with the PCs gathering in an Inn, I offer 26 plot seeds for interesting and new twists on the idea. Part 8 of the Basics For Beginners series deals with 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Getting Into Character pt 1: NPCs – If your characterization is too deep, you’ll never be able to retain it when the time comes to quickly step in-and-out of character. In this article, I offer 7 techniques for getting into character as an NPC, and they all come down to extracting key points and simplifying either the characterization or the situation in some way. But the article goes beyond that, discussing how to use plot to show off the characterization and uniqueness of the individual, and how to use characterization to solve some plot problems.. Getting Into Character Pt 2: PCs – To make a PC the central focus of a plotline, the GM needs to get into the PC’s head as he/she is played by the Player, so that scenes can be crafted that lead the PC natuarlly from scene to scene within the adventure. This practice can also help the player get more deeply into character. The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs – I look at the reasons why RPGs make for the most difficult literary challenge there is. The final paragraph addresses Burnout. The Conundrum Of Coincidence – Players know that the GM has total control over the game world, and so expect that there’s no such thing as coincidence. Yet, if the game world is to be believable, it must have coincidence as part of its makeup. This combination makes coincidence the hardest phenomenon in gaming to simulate with verisimilitude, which is what makes this article (that explains how to do it) so valuable. As usual, this starts with theory and proceeds to assemble practical advice; I mention this because the “theory” section of this piece is some of my best writing to date. Plato, Aristotle, Quantum Theory, RPGs, and a measurable improvement in my gaming as a result – what more could you want? 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: Parting is such a frayed plot thread – When a player wants or has to leave, there are repercussions at every level of the game, and it can often be overlooked that unless you intervene, his PC is going to be leaving, too. This article attempts to forewarn and forearm GMs against events of this type, because the 11th hour (or the stroke of midnight) is the worst possible time to try and frame a coherant plan for coping with such trauma. 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. 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 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.
	Plot Sequencing Includes Campaign Structure. See also the “One Player Is Enough” series on the Game Mastering page.
My Campaign Planning Cycle – Johnn describes his campaign planning routine. When Good Ideas Linger Too Long: Compacting plotlines – Using scriptwriting techniques to compress a plotline that had lingered for too long. Ask The GMs: Pacing Your Campaign – How do you pace a campaign? How do you know if you’re giving too much or too little in experience and treasure? And how do you get the PCs to explore more than the local area? Also included is a complete outline for an original 3.x campaign. Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow – How to link adventures so that they flow naturally. There’s more to it than you might think. One of our readers offers an alternative system in the comments that might suit some GMs better. Plot Stat Block For The Organized Game Master – Johnn and I were so impressed with Eureka that we each wrote a review of the supplement and each got something different out of it. This is Johnn’s, about how he can better organize the plotlines that he has running at any given time in his campaigns. Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens – I examine the ways in which different Narrative Styles can combine with Episodic and Serialized campaigns to produce eight distinctly different combinations, and how those can be sandboxed. The goal is to help GMs choose the narrative style that best suits the campaigns and the adventure that they want to run – and to explain (if you’re using the wrong style) why the campaign keeps going off the rails. Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures – I examine the creation of an adventure and how the plot can be structured. This was very much written with Beginner GMs in mind. Back To Basics: Campaign Structures – This article continues the ‘For Beginners’ theme of the previous, exploring different ways of tying adventures together into a wider campaign structure, starting with the simplest and evolving through to an extremely complex one that is state-of-the-art (at least for me). I still get the occasional request for the campaign planning materials that I excerpted for the latter. I conclude the article by offering a process for the conversion of an existing campaign into the plotting structure that I offer. Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower – Part three of two in the articles about creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign offers an example of the process of adventure creation and connection from one of my actual campaigns. This article was carefully written and edited to conceal the actual ideas that I chose for the real adventure in the campaign. 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. To Module Or Not?: A legacy article – I originally wrote this article in 2006, but Johnn never got around to writing the second half of what wa planned to be a two-part article to cross-promote CM and Roleplaying Tips. It details the differences between writing your own adventures and running published 3rd-party modules while strenuously avoiding any suggestion that one approach is better than any other. Favorably reviewed as “another article that every GM should read” in a couple of places. The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure – I follow up the adventure structures series with a postscript article on how to foreshadow future events in a campaign, and how to use campaign planning to make it easier to do so. Amazon Nazis On The Moon: Campaign Planning Revisited – For those who prefer a simpler campaign structure to the one I use in most of my campaigns, I describe the technique I devised for use in planning the Co-GM’d Pulp Campaign, giving readers an original adventure in the process. Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures – To celebrate the 300th post (and some other great stats) I look at ways of celebrating campaign milestones with special adventures. Lessons from the Discworld of Terry Pratchett – I draw on the works of Terry Pratchett to unearth 7 lessons that lie at the core of how he structured the Discworld novel series, and show how they apply to the creation of an RPG campaign. A relatively light-weight article for various reasons but it proved wildly popular at the time. 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. The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues – The first part of a two-part article examining the techniques used to ensure each player is engaged in the plot even when the party is split up and everyone’s doing their own thing. The first part functions as introduction and foundation, looking at character Prologue Scenes and subplots, and the functions that they serve in the Adventurer’s Club campaign. This process makes the adventures longer, both to play and prep, but the benefits – not all of which are listed in the article (because I didn’t recognize them at the time) – more than justify the extra time. The Wandering Spotlight Part Two of Two: Shared Stories – The second part of this two-part article addresses main adventures and how we work to ensure spotlight time is shared amongst all the players. As the article closes, I also look at epilogues. One of the key points is discerning what makes an individual PC different from another PC; another key point is discerning what makes one Player different from another. These are both vectors to customizing content to shine the spotlight, however briefly, on a PC. 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. Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2 – summarizes the introductory material from Pt 1 (like the ground rules) and then details the remaining eight types of plot twist. Along the way, I discuss plot sequencing and the relevance to Plot Twists. Random Encounter Tables – my old-school way – I originally intended this to appear in an earlier article about the uses of randomness, but it started to dominate everything else in that article, which I didn’t want. So I extracted it and published it as a seperate item. I firmly believe that every geographic region and location should have its own unique random encounter table (sometimes referred to as a Wandering Monsters Table). This shows how I go about creating one. For a change, I put the process first and the logic behind using that process afterwards. I then discuss modernizing the technique so as to utilize more modern technology than pen-and-paper, leaving that option open to the reader. Finally, I conclude the article by looking at how random encounters can form part of the plotline, rather than being something superficial that gets.tacked on as an afterthought. 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 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. 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. Part 8 of the Basics For Beginners series deals with 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. 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 Conundrum Of Coincidence – Players know that the GM has total control over the game world, and so expect that there’s no such thing as coincidence. Yet, if the game world is to be believable, it must have coincidence as part of its makeup. This combination makes coincidence the hardest phenomenon in gaming to simulate with verisimilitude, which is what makes this article (that explains how to do it) so valuable. As usual, this starts with theory and proceeds to assemble practical advice; I mention this because the “theory” section of this piece is some of my best writing to date. Plato, Aristotle, Quantum Theory, RPGs, and a measurable improvement in my gaming as a result – what more could you want? To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget? – After reiterating a conversation about Hollywood Blockbuster budgets, which ends with the determination that for each individual, there was a sweet spot in terms of budget. I then equate movie budgets with GM time budgets after realizing that the same principle applies, coming to the conclusion that “the neglected question of game prep is knowing when to stop.” That’s followed by a necessarily-fuzzy technique for finding your optimum, and then applying the concept of a limited budget to what you most need by way of prioritization. The different requirements of different genres are briefly discussed. I show how to calculate the game value of a task, how to adjust that value for relevance over multiple adventures, and finally, the psychological and creative value of artificially weighting inspirational prep prioritization more highly. DON’T skip the section aimed at Beginners or you will get lost very quickly. 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. 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.

		Campaign Pacing I’ve written a number of closely-interconnected articles on Campaign Pacing for Campaign Mastery, mostly in the form of series rather than standalone posts. See also the Cinematic Combat series on the Rules & Mechanics page. The “Swell and Lull – Emotional Pacing in RPGs” series This is a two part article (which aren’t normally treated as series, but this one has sequels) about manipulating intensity and other emotional factors in RPGs to accentuate the experience, and has been described by experts in the field as “spot on”. Originally intended to be a single article, I fought against splitting it in two for a very long time. But perhaps it has greater impact for having a bigger imprint. One of a small group of articles that I very strongly think deserve to outlive me.
	Part 1 deals with the theory – pacing within campaigns, within adventures, within acts, and within scenes, of which five types are examined: Roleplayed encounters, Combat, Activity scenes, Transition & Narrative scenes, and Intermissions. The theory is then refined to give practical advice for pacing to generate, utilize, or deal with Tension & Frustration; Doubt, Uncertainty, Ignorance, & Confusion; Fear; Drama; Sacrifice & Sorrow; Tranquility & Calm; Unity & Harmony; and Acrimony & Fragmentation. Part 2 builds on the theory by looking at practicalities and ways to manipulate the emotional trends within a campaign, adventure, act, or scene to do everything from heightening a climax to getting players to pay closer attention to important bits – or to be distracted when the GM wants to embed misdirection into their thoughts. I then digress to briefly examine the use of “meanwhile” and flash-forwards before examining the use of pauses, breaks, and interruptions as a manipulative tool. The article wraps up by offering a couple of simple tools to help GMs understand and control the emotional flows within their own games.
		The “Further Thoughts On Pacing” series This is a three-part series that actually ran to four parts about breaks and interruptions within game play, the impact that they can have, and how to manipulate and manage such pauses (it’s also relevant to other forms of writing). The first part is mostly theory with little bits of practical advice, the middle half blends the two, and the last part is mostly practical advice based on the theory, with little bits of additional theory tacked on here and there. Be warned that this material can require a lot of practice to master.
	Pacing and the value of the Pause – This starts with observations about the impact of commercial breaks on television programs, as demonstrated by recutting them to have 3 interruptions instead of 2, or four instead of 3. Some additional observations come from DVD collections of TV series. I also contemplate movies on television, end-of-series episodes, and mid-season two-part episodes. In order to avoid confusion, I reserve the term “break” for such media and call all gaming interruptions “pauses”. After outlining the rest of the series, I look at pauses as punctuation (full stops, exclamation points, and ellipses – with an example in the latter case), look at the use of pauses to amplify or generate expectation (with example), to link two passages of play with different emotional intensities, and to give the GM thinking time, and conclude by analyzing pauses into six categories based on their cause and effect – Deliberate Pauses, Natural Pauses, Forced Pauses, Flawed Pauses, Unnatural Pauses, and Longer Pauses, i.e. those that occur at the end of the day’s play. Anatomy Of An Interruption – Endpoints – Doesn’t waste a lot of time recapping part 1. Pauses have three parts – before, during, and after – and the content of the three is critical; there are four types of content that matter pre-break, four types that matter post-break, and nine types of pause in the middle of this sandwich, yielding 144 combinations – not all of them desireable or effective. Part two starts by explaining the three parts and then focusses on the beginning and the ending, and the four content types to be found in those parts. Status Interruptus: Types Of Pause – Some of the combinations of pre-break and post-break content are more heavily impacted by the type of pause, but any of them can be enhanced or impaired by this factor. The length of break is another critical factor to be considered. This article analyzes the types of pause and their impact, and finished with a look at how to handle unexpected interruptions. Compound Interruptions: Manipulating Pauses – Just because there are “only” nine types of break doesn’t mean that there are only nine types of break – because you can combine two or even three types into a single interruption of play. Depending on whether or not the sequence of break-types matters (hint: it does!), that can give as many as 5376 types of Pause, far too many to analyze individually. Instead, this post outlines three assumptions and then analyzes ten General Principles that enable the GM to use any type of break to enhance their games. That’s followed, as the series begins to wrap up, by a summary of the best methods of using the information provided in practice.Finally, I offer an advanced technique, Retrograde Analysis, and then a really advanced technique, Flashbacks, and finally, I point out that hand-waving travel-time in an RPG effectively introduces another type of pause, one that – by extension – applies to any hand-waved content in any RPG..
		Other Related Articles
	Part 10 of the Basics For Beginners series covers the under-utilized subject of 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.

	Plot Ideas See Also the “Touchstones Of Unification” series on the Genre Overviews page. See Also the “Casual Opportunities For Priests” series in the Character Classes & Archetypes section of the Campaign Creation page.
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. Sophisticated Links: Degrees Of Separation in RPGs – We’ve all heard of the “Six Degrees Of Separation” game. I apply the concept to RPG Characters and come up with ways to take advantage of it within the game. This article only scratches the surface of what can be done with this tool. 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. 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. Vocabulary Hijinx: Using random word pairings for inspiration – I offer up an idea-generation technique that I haven’t seen written up very often, but that can really spur creativity. There’s a link to some technology that you can use to streamline the technique 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. Melodies & Rests: ‘Euphoria’ by Def Leppard – The first, and so far only, occurrence of this occasional recurring column in which I mine music or lyrics for plot ideas, in the process showing how its done. This prototype considers the Australian CD release of ‘Euphoria’ by Def Leppard. The Metaphor Engine: A surprising plot generator – Using a deck of cards and the rules of an established game like Poker to generate plots and campaign backgrounds. Splitting Hairs: Exploring nuance as a source of game ideas – It might seem like splitting hairs, but extremely minor differences between the meaning of words can be a great source of interesting ideas. There’s no such thing as a trivial difference, as this article shows. Patterns Of Unpredictability: Superheroics and the Stock Market – The impact of superheroes on the stock market and on economics in general. Trivial Pursuits: Sources of oddball ideas – I demonstrate the use of books of trivia for ideas, with a whole heap of examples interspersed throughout the article. The betrayal of all that’s unholy: Treason and infidelity in RPGs – I list dozens of plotlines involving oaths, promises, and betrayals. Useful for any campaign, some readers consider this to be essential reference for Espionage-oriented campaigns. The compounded interruption of basic services – Worsening computer problems inspired me to write this article about the impacts of failure in essential services. In addition to the impact on Campaign Mastery and my other activities, the article looks at 3 RPG-relevant applications – rules breakdowns, technological breakdowns and societal breakdrowns as plot ideas. 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. The Pillars Of Assumption: A Source of Plot Ideas – It’s always good to challenge assumptions – they will either emerge the stronger and more robust for it, or you will learn something. It’s just as good to challenge the players’ assumptions about an RPG and a great source of adventures. After all, everyone knows that the sun will rise in the morning and clouds are soft, fluffy, and white – right? 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. 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 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 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 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. 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. 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. Inn Through The Side Door – Reinvigorating the cliché – This was a filler article that I wrote and then set aside until the next time I was caught short. After discussing the cliché of starting a campaign with the PCs gathering in an Inn, I offer 26 plot seeds for interesting and new twists on the idea. 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! Plunging Into Game Physics Pt 3: Tales From The Ether shows how to use Game Physics to generate or facilitate plot ideas. 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 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 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. 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. 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 “Character Hooks” series A series in which Johnn and several guest contributors provide adventure/plot hook ideas for different character classes. Although mainly intended for 4e D&D, most can be imported into any D&D campaign and some suit an even wider range of games.
	50 Barbarian Hooks – Johnn’s initial article includes a brief review of the revised Barbarian character class in the D&D 4e version of Player’s Handbook 2, which inspired the series. 63 Wizard Hooks – Umm, actually no. Readers (and my humble self) have added more to the list, taking it up 81 plot hooks for Wizard Characters as of this writing. 50 Paladin Hooks – Guest contributor D. L. Campbell extends the series with these 50 Hooks for the Noblest of The Noble Warriors. Well, that’s what they would like to think about themselves… 54 Sorcerer Hooks – Guest Contributor Bobby Catdragon offers 54 hooks for the Sorcerer character class. Readers take the tally to 59. This is a rarity, I think it’s the only article posted at Campaign Mastery without some sort of accompanying illustration. 25 Cleric Character Hooks – Johnn concludes his character hooks series with this entry that offers 25 Cleric Character Hooks. This article is hands-down the 2nd or 3rd most popular article on the site, day in, day out.

	Subplots See also the Campaign Pacing subsection, above.
My Favorite PC Travel Game: Campfire Chats – The January 2010 Blog Carnival was about travel in games. Johnn wrote this article as Campaign Mastery’s contribution. I add what I think is a clever twist to the idea in the comments. 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. Who Got Poker In My RPG? – Poker is a card game that’s still growing in popularity, but which had a real boom a couple of years ago. Johnn offers some ideas on how to include the game within your campaigns. 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. Living in an RPG: The Accumulation Of Mundane Events – I devise a system based around playing cards for introducing cumulative small changes into a PCs life, in collaboration with the owning player. Along the way, I reflect on the changes that have occurred in my life over the preceding decade. 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. 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. Sophisticated Links: Degrees Of Separation in RPGs – We’ve all heard of the “Six Degrees Of Separation” game. I apply the concept to RPG Characters and come up with ways to take advantage of it within the game. This article only scratches the surface of what can be done with this tool. The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues – The first part of a two-part article examining the techniques used to ensure each player is engaged in the plot even when the party is split up and everyone’s doing their own thing. The first part functions as introduction and foundation, looking at character Prologue Scenes and subplots, and the functions that they serve in the Adventurer’s Club campaign. This process makes the adventures longer, both to play and prep, but the benefits – not all of which are listed in the article (because I didn’t recognize them at the time) – more than justify the extra time. The Wandering Spotlight Part Two of Two: Shared Stories – The second part of this two-part article addresses main adventures and how we work to ensure spotlight time is shared amongst all the players. As the article closes, I also look at epilogues. One of the key points is discerning what makes an individual PC different from another PC; another key point is discerning what makes one Player different from another. These are both vectors to customizing content to shine the spotlight, however briefly, on a PC. 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 1 – First part of a two-part guest article. This part deals with PCs acquiring vehicles. Lots of adventure seeds result. The “Quirks” and “Tweaks” of a vehicle would qualify as subplots. If the PCs have, or are likely to acqiure, a vehicle in your game, you need to read this. 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.
	Writing
The Right Quip at The Right Time: Humor in RPGs – More than a “try to lighten the mood by telling the occasional joke” article, I analyze a whole bunch of different types of humor and how to use them (and not use them) in an RPG, discovering why Comedy RPGs are hard. Action Trumps Description – GMs and authors are told to “Show, don’t Tell”, but Johnn takes this advice a step further in this article. The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs – How to use descriptive language more effectively when conveying information about a location or event to the PCs. With a fictional D&D city invented just to serve as an example. To Module Or Not?: A legacy article – I originally wrote this article in 2006, but Johnn never got around to writing the second half of what wa planned to be a two-part article to cross-promote CM and Roleplaying Tips. It details the differences between writing your own adventures and running published 3rd-party modules while strenuously avoiding any suggestion that one approach is better than any other. Favorably reviewed as “another article that every GM should read” in a couple of places. 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. Growing Plot Seeds Into Mighty Oaks – At their heart, every plot idea listed in the preceding section (or anywhere else) is a plot seed. It may have had additional development, but that development contains assumptions, and it may be necessary to strip all of that away and get back to the core idea before the content can be integrated into your campaign. This article describes the complete process of taking such a plot seed and building it into something on the scale of The Lord Of The Rings, on the premise that steps can be shortcutted or even eliminated altogether if something less epic is required. A tabula rasa – focusing the mind before writing – In response to the question, “How do you clear your mind before writing?” I wrote this article. Hint: I focus the mind, I don’t clear it. 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. 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. The Power Of The Question-mark in RPG Plotting – I struggled in deciding where this post should be indexed. It’s kind of about plot structure and kind of about plot writing and kind of about agency and giving some to players while keeping a measure of control as GM. I discuss 7 different uses for the question mark. Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth. Getting Into Character pt 1: NPCs – If your characterization is too deep, you’ll never be able to retain it when the time comes to quickly step in-and-out of character. In this article, I offer 7 techniques for getting into character as an NPC, and they all come down to extracting key points and simplifying either the characterization or the situation in some way. But the article goes beyond that, discussing how to use plot to show off the characterization and uniqueness of the individual, and how to use characterization to solve some plot problems.. The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs – I look at the reasons why RPGs make for the most difficult literary challenge there is. The final paragraph addresses Burnout. To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget? – After reiterating a conversation about Hollywood Blockbuster budgets, which ends with the determination that for each individual, there was a sweet spot in terms of budget. I then equate movie budgets with GM time budgets after realizing that the same principle applies, coming to the conclusion that “the neglected question of game prep is knowing when to stop.” That’s followed by a necessarily-fuzzy technique for finding your optimum, and then applying the concept of a limited budget to what you most need by way of prioritization. The different requirements of different genres are briefly discussed. I show how to calculate the game value of a task, how to adjust that value for relevance over multiple adventures, and finally, the psychological and creative value of artificially weighting inspirational prep prioritization more highly. DON’T skip the section aimed at Beginners or you will get lost very quickly. 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.
	Plot Problem-Solving You can solve some plot problems with a well-timed break, as explained in the Campaign Pacing subsection, above. See also the “Mistakes, Problem Solving, & Emergencies” section of the Game Mastering page.
Evil GM Tricks For Over-Resting PCs – Do your players stop to rest as soon as they run low on power for the game-day – even if that’s just five minutes after their adventuring day starts? Johnn excerpts some material from his Faster Combat course to offer some solutions to the problem. I offer a refinement in the comments. Sophisticated Links: Degrees Of Separation in RPGs – We’ve all heard of the “Six Degrees Of Separation” game. I apply the concept to RPG Characters and come up with ways to take advantage of it within the game. This article only scratches the surface of what can be done with this tool. A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies – There are times when everything seems to go wrong for the GM, and he needs help. When you’re in an emergency and the ship is sinking, you need a lifeboat. Here are eight to choose from. Boxed In: A problem-solving frame of reference for players & GMs alike – Using a box as a metaphor for problems you may encounter at the game table can reveal surprising solutions. This article shows you how to apply the concept as a problem-solving tool. I provide an original political D&D/Pathfinder adventure (and a variation) as one example. And discuss some possible relationships between the concepts of Life and Death. Refloating The Shipwreck: When Players Make A Mistake – For the April 2013 Blog Carnival, I look at how GMs can cope when the players make a major, potentially campaign-ending, mistake. Ask The GMs: Fresh Meat In A Hurry – After putting forth a plan to diminish the waiting list for responses (which worked for a while), this article turned to the question of how you integrated new PCs into a campaign after an existing one dies. From first principles, Ian Gray and I derive three key questions that need to be answered before the specific one can be properly answered – “What is the best way to introduce this specific character at this specific time within this specific campaign?”. We then examine nine general answers to the question before moving on to general advice relevant to the situation, before applying all this to the specific question asked (because the campaign concept was an unusual one, placing the answer in an unusual context). Lessons Learned: A change of perspective brings plot rewards – My Pulp co-GM and I had spent three months working on an adventure which was wiped out in a hard-disk crash. While piecing it back together, we were forced to confront a number of difficult plot problems that remained stubbornly insoluble using our usual techniques. This article spells out the solutions and the lessons we learned from the experience. 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. The Expert In Everything? – I may sometimes give the impression of being an expert in everything. Such an impression is a long way from reality, but being a good GM means knowing how to fake it. In this article, I share my quick-fire research techniques, how I build up layers of expertise in a looong list of subjects, the techniques I employ to look more educated than I am (while behind the metaphoric GM screen), and how to use technobabble and how to misuse it to further enhance your credibility as an expert. I even show how to get out of trouble when confronted with someone who really knows the subject. An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session – If you’re human, you make mistakes. If you’re a fair or better GM, you learn from them. Better still, you can learn from the mistakes of others. This article (and the discussion in the subsequent comments) is one big mea culpa on my part (and on behalf of my Pulp GM) for a total trainwreck of a game session. I detail what went wrong, why it happened, what could have been done to avert the trainwreck and why it wasn’t, what was done to get the campaign back on track, and conclude with ten lessons that I (and any reader) can take out of the experience, including what early warning signs were there to see but were ignored. In the comments, there’s a discussion between myself and one of the most-affected players, extending several of the threads mentioned above. How effective were the lessons identified? This was more than four years ago, as I compile the Blogdex, and not only is the campaign still running (with the same GMs) but the same player is still a regular. Now remember that the trainwreck was supposedly a bigger-than-life adventure to celebrate the campaign’s tenth anniversary… Pretzel Thinking – 11 types of Plot Twist for RPGs, Part 1 – Wikipedia lists 11 kinds of plot twist mechanic and for one reason or another, not one of them is relevant to an RPG. After briefly looking at the need for plot twists, I set some ground rules about playing fair with the players, and then identify my own 11 plot twist mechanics that are relevant to an RPG. I then look at the first three in detail. This inspired John Large at Red Dice Diaries to post his own thoughts on the subject. Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2 – summarizes the introductory material from Pt 1 (like the ground rules) and then details the remaining eight types of plot twist. Along the way, I discuss plot sequencing and the relevance to Plot Twists. 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 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. 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. Always Something There To Surprise You – Plots as Antagonists – This article is all about the right and fair and practical way to use metagaming, taking the most difficult type of plotline – a mystery – as its context and example. This is an article that memory and first impressions always underestimate, for some reason, yet the techniques here can solve many otherwise almost-unsolvable problems for the GM. Plunging Into Game Physics Pt 3: Tales From The Ether shows how to use Game Physics to solve plot problems. 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. Getting Into Character pt 1: NPCs – If your characterization is too deep, you’ll never be able to retain it when the time comes to quickly step in-and-out of character. In this article, I offer 7 techniques for getting into character as an NPC, and they all come down to extracting key points and simplifying either the characterization or the situation in some way. But the article goes beyond that, discussing how to use plot to show off the characterization and uniqueness of the individual, and how to use characterization to solve some plot problems.. The Conundrum Of Coincidence – Players know that the GM has total control over the game world, and so expect that there’s no such thing as coincidence. Yet, if the game world is to be believable, it must have coincidence as part of its makeup. This combination makes coincidence the hardest phenomenon in gaming to simulate with verisimilitude, which is what makes this article (that explains how to do it) so valuable. As usual, this starts with theory and proceeds to assemble practical advice; I mention this because the “theory” section of this piece is some of my best writing to date. Plato, Aristotle, Quantum Theory, RPGs, and a measurable improvement in my gaming as a result – what more could you want? 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”. 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. Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – Where does a GM go for help and advice? I discuss the history of GM connectedness from GM Bull sessions through to social media before creating a list of places where a GM could go for advice in a reasonable time-frame (read: a couple of days or less). Most of the advice contained in this post is still 100% accurate – the one thing that stood out is that these days FBook won’t even show you all the posts that you’re specifically tagged in, just the ones that IT thinks you are mostly likely to interact with. That’s a good thing – just because I liked a movie or a book or a TV series or whatever doesn’t mean that I want my FB timeline to be filled with posts about it, and you are still more likely to get a quick response through Twitter. I’m listing this in all the categories for which help has been asked and seen to have been recieved in recent years through my Twitter account, and redundancy be damned. 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.
	Prophecies & Dreams
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! Dream A Little Dream – using Dreams in RPGs – This is about character’s dreams, and especially PC’s dreams, how to make them seem like dreams, and all the things that the GM can do with them, how to do those things, the pitfalls that await, and even whether or not to do those things. The article has been in the top twenty at Campaign Mastery ever since it was published in 2014 – that’s more than four years now – so it must get something right. 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. 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.
	Big Finishes The correct pacing is critical to executing a big finish properly. See the Campaign Pacing subsection above.
Ask The GMs: An Epic Confusion, or how to stage a blockbuster finish – A self-explanatory title, really. And there are related tips in the comments. Best of all, one reader commented that he used our advice and had a great finish to his campaign as a result – so you know it works! A Grand Conclusion: Thinking about a big finish – I follow up the previous article with some further thoughts on the subject. Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures – To celebrate the 300th post (and some other great stats) I look at ways of celebrating campaign milestones with special adventures. 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. 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. Although Big Finishes are mentioned, this article is more about how to build up to one than how to achieve one. 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”. In a lengthy reply to Eric G in the comments of Adventure Structure: My Standard Formatting, I discuss the big finish to the first Zenith-3 campaign and the effort involved in crafting it.