12 Game Mastering

Title

This is the Game Mastering blogdex page. Everything that a GM does can be considered “Game Mastering”. But Campaign Mastery uses the term in a more restricted sense, to describe the actual process of supervising and adjudicating play. Even so, as befits such a subject so fundamental to the site’s purpose, there have been a LOT of relevant articles amongst the five hundred. On this page, you will find sections devoted to:

General Articles & How-tos,
Feedback,
At Conventions,
Mistakes, Problem-Solving, & Emergencies,
Stress & Exhaustion, and
GM Improv

	General Articles & How-Tos
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. Say Yes, but Get There Quick – A simple principle of good GMing, articulated by Johnn. Engaging Your Players: A Lesson from Crime Fiction – Means, Motive, and Opportunity as things to be provided to the players by the GM if the “crime” is to be a great campaign. Some good general advice and a fresh way at looking at things, in other words. The Literary GM: Expanding your resources for a better game – I describe my reference library, the other sources of information I use, and why they help my GMing. Its the latter content that stops this being a fluff piece. Bringing on the next generation, Part Two: Gamemaster Mentors – My introduction into the world of GMing and the fundamental lessons learned that made me good at it – and can do so for you, too. Go Hard Or Go Home: Graceful Character Aging – How I now simulate Aging in my campaigns, some of the approaches I’ve used to handle character aging in the past, and why those weren’t successful. Melodramatic License: Drama in RPGs – Drama vs Melodrama and their roles in an RPG. Ask The GMs: Essential Game Master Skills – Loz Newman – one of our regular commentators at Campaign Mastery – asks a ‘deceptively simple question’ – What are the essential skills of a game master? Check the comments for some additional suggestions and discussion. 3 Ways Game Masters Show, Don’t Tell – Johnn offers some great advice for making sure that the players are interacting with the game world instead of just watching it pass them by. As someone who sometimes has trouble with this, I really should pay closer attention to this article; I suspect that I’m not alone. Ask The GMs: How to GM solo PCs (especially in combat) – 31 pieces of advice (more if you count the extras in the comments) on how to handle this tricky situation. How To Be A Confident GM, Part 1 – First of a two-part article by Johnn, GMing is 80% confidence, as he writes in the article’s introductory paragraphs; this article aims to give you as much of that 80% as possible. How To Be A Confident GM, Part 2 – If you’ve read the description of the preceding article, then you’ll know what to expect from this one! 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. The failure of …urmmmm… Memory – I offer my more modular equivalents of a Campaign Binder, and why it is not just useful but necessary. More suggestions in the comments. Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe? – I apply the principles of good software design to work out how the perfect game mechanics for a tabletop RPG should be constructed. There’s interesting discussion in the comments. Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence – How do you maintain a campaign when several players are unable to attend regularly? Ask The GMs: How to Deal with Players Who Disagree with Game Calls – A GM is having trouble with a player who constantly disputes the rulings at the table, and it has reached the point of impacting the enjoyment of the other players. Johnn offers a range of solutions so complete that I have nothing to add. It sparks a great discussion on the role of the GM, and a couple of commentators add some novel and interesting approaches to the problem. Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear – As part of the Teach You Kids To Game Week, I write about my experiences serving as a relative novice GM to my teenaged older brother and my much younger brother in the very early 80s, and how their different ages and abilities shaped my role behind the screen. GM’s Toolbox – A megaseries written by Michael Beck with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. This series started with Michael offering a single-article version to Johnn for Roleplaying Tips. Johnn couldn’t make up his mind what to do with it (the fact that English is Michael’s second language may not have helped) and was on the verge of turning it down when he asked for my opinion. I responded that there were some really cool insights buried within it that I thought he had missed, probably because he (presumably) had only skimmed the proposed article, but that it would need a lot of editing and expansion, and that RPT might not be the right venue for the resulting series of articles. As a result, Johnn took a second look, and as he replied, “found the goodness”. The result was this 14-part detailed review and discussion of the basic tools and techniques that go into being a GM. This is not primarily a series on how to do various things; it’s more about identifying the need for techniques for doing these specific things, though there are suggestions along the way for what might fit those empty slots. In other words, it’s about identifying what you don’t know so that you can go about rectifying the deficiency. One of the things I would love to find time to do is read this from start to finish in one single session, as I suspect that there is even more juice to extract from the series that way. But I don’t think it will ever happen, there are too many demands on my time and too many plates to keep juggling. Following the Series Introduction, there are: …three articles on tools for game prep (One: Campaign and Adventure Planning, Two: Encounter and Scene Planning, Three: NPCs); …three articles on world-building (One: Geography and Landmarks, Two: Communities and Politics, Three: History, Mythology, and stocking Dungeons); …three articles on running a game (One: Creating the Mood, Two: Notes and Organization, Three: Rules and Combat); …and three articles on add-ons to provide additional sophistication (One: Handouts and Props, Two: Roleplaying and Reality, and Three: Learning to become a Better GM). The whole thing then wraps up with a Concluding article. Cause And Inflect: Marketing your way to a better game – Product marketing is as much about understanding the people you’re talking to as it is manipulating desire. The latter is relevant to a GM trying to “sell” his adventure and game world to his players, while the former helps make NPCs believable and realistic in behavior. Sure, it’s not what it was intended for – but who cares about that? The comments debate the thoughts that sparked the article, but don’t say much about the actual point that I was making. An Adventure Into Writing: The Co-GMing Difference – It’s unusual, but I regularly Co-GM a Pulp Campaign. This article describes the impact on how adventures get written for the campaign and along the way discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls of Co-GMing. Five Games That Will Wreck Your Life (and what we can learn from them) – Some videogames are so compelling that they can become an obsession. What characteristics does an RPG campaign have to have to be equally compelling? This article is a collaboration between myself and Jason Falls. The Heirarchy Of Deceipt: How and when to lie to your players – There are four types of deception involved in an RPG, and every GM has to practice them to at least some extent. This article, republished from my long-defunct personal blog in Yahoo 360, analyzes the craft of deception that the GM needs to master, starting with the fundamental decision of how much NOT to tell your players – at least for a while. I See It But I Don’t Believe It – Convincingly Unconvincing in RPGs – If it’s hard to lie convincingly to players while retaining your percieved integrity as a GM, it’s even harder to lie unconvincingly on demand and still retain that percieved integrity. It’s not a problem that comes up very often, but when it does, it can be a doozy. The Blind Enforcer: The Reflex Application Of Rules – The speed of events in the computer world mandate that rules be codified and violations detected, and acted upon, automatically. Yet, human behavior does not readily boil down to neat straight lines, and that opens the door to rules being enforced when they shouldn’t, or not being applied when they should. Human Error is an inherent part of the system. I use these thoughts to re-examine the question of how much dominion the GM should have over the rules and update a previous article, Blat! Zot! Pow! The Rules Of Genre In RPGs, which examined these issues from a genre-and-campaign perspective. Prodigious Performances Provided In Due Course – There are thousands of feats in print and on the net. Some of these will stack improperly, others will have broken mechanics, still others will simply not fit the campaign. This article describes the approval process that I developed and insisted on implementing within my Fumanor campaign to weed out the intolerable and flag the unsatisfactory for revision if and when there was time. Actually, in most cases, the changes that needed to be made (if any) were so obvious that I could make them at the same time as rejecting the original and accepting the modified version. Ask The GMs: My table runneth over (too many players) – How many players is too many, what are the consequences of having too many players, and what practical advice can be offered for coping? Scroll past the contributor’s bios for an update, or check the link immediately after this one (the content is the same). My Table Runneth Over – An Update – a long-time reader and friend of Campaign Mastery tried to offer his ten cents worth, but for some reason still unexplained, his comment was rejected by the system. So he emailed them to me and I appended them to the original article, but for anyone who relied on a subscription to advise them of new content, I also posted this special out-of-continuity extra to alert them to the contribution. Stormy Weather – making unpleasant conditions player-palatable – how to use weather in-game as something other than a boring-but-deadly background element. 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 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. 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. Tourism in Sleepland: Sleep management for GMs & other creative people – lessons from a lifetime of coping with not-enough-sleep are distilled into this rather lengthy article, produced because people kept asking me. How would you like to add an extra 5 productive years to your lifetime? Or more than 8 extra 35-hour weeks a year free from work commitments each year? Those are the sort of rewards that Sleep Management can confer. Because of my conditions, these days, I rarely get more than 4 1/2 hours sleep a night – and usually get awoken three or four times a night from pain and discomfort. These are no longer optional extras to me, they are now survival techniques. Fortunately, in my case at least, I know what I’m talking about, having practiced for decades. Your mileage may vary. Layers Of Mis-translation: RPGs and Dubbed TV – you have a TV show filmed in a foreign language, full of foreign cultural referances, that has been dubbed into your language by skilled translators and voice-over artists. What you see and hear becomes the basis of your relationship with the character on-screen. How much of that relationship stems from the original performer and how much is added by the voice-over artist? That question unlocks this article on the reality of an RPG as percieved by players, on the reality of player actions as percieved by the GM, and of the individual projecting themselves into what may be printed before them in black and white. “I know what’s happening!” – Confirmation Bias and RPGs – The human brain is always trying to convince itself that it has a complete picture of what is going on, and … when contradictory information comes in, there is a tendency called Confirmation Bias to ignore it, to concentrate on, and act upon, what you think is happening. I’ve encountered confirmation bias on a number of occasions as a GM. In this article, I examine the nine options the GM has for dealing with the problem when it occurs. the compromises and price-tags and baggage that they carry, and the pitfalls that can result. There’s additional meat in the comments for readers. After you’ve read it, click on this link and scroll to the bottom of the text for a description from Hungry of Ravenous Roleplaying of how Confirmation Bias on his part can tip the RPGing truck off the rails. Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – the first of two articles for the November 2014 Blog Carnival, this one asks “How do you create an original alien species?” then immediately points out the Fantasy RPG applicability before providing three answers, with multiple examples, including an entire alien environment and ecology. More examples and discussion in the comments. Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles. 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. Ask The GMs: Buzz and Background – This article is split into three parts: Ways to deliver campaign background to players, with their respective pros and cons; Ways to generate buzz and enthusiasm about a new campaign; and, finally, What common ground can be found between these two mutually-antagonistic objectives. Pieces of Ordinary Randomness: Random Techniques Of Chance – I should probably have called this “useful things to know about dice”. The first part could also be called “probability and die rolling for dummies” but it contains a number of tricks that have proven useful over and over again, some of which – like “The Middle Third” and “Average Blows To Death” – that you won’t find anywhere else. I also show how to roll practical things like AM/PM, Hour of the day, Time Of Day by season, Season, Month Of The Year, Month of the year with a seasonal bias, Month of the Season, Minutes of the hour, seconds of the minute, Latitude and Longitude, Day Of The Week, Day Of The Month (I offer multiple techniques), Temperature, Weather, and still more. That’s followed by techniques for rolling impractical numbers of dice like 394d10, and then some techniques for quickly totalling die rolls. I round out the article by reviewing all the exotic dice sizes that were then available, and what they might be good for. There have been a lot more added to that list in the subsequent years! Signs and Signatures: An essay on uniqueness of style – After discussing signatures, and the many ways the term can be used to mean vaguely the same thing, and the relevance to craftsmen in RPGs, I postulate that each GM develops his own “signature” GMing style – that can contain flaws and unwanted elements that should be excised. This is more of a ‘think’ piece, not offering any real advice on how to do so, largely because it was a last-minute fill-in. As such, it constitutes a more literal interpretation of “advice” than is usually the case. Hungry, at Ravenous Roleplaying, links my musings to GM Feedback. Readers may find his thoughts relevant. Principle, Cause, and Course – Complexities In Motivation – Reveals one of my secret techniques for getting into character quickly while consuming a minimum of my attention, freeing up my attention for other things, whether I am a player or a GM. It is based around four questions that define a personality. I go into detail using my personal ethos as an example. Principles define which Causes a character supports and how actively; they stipulate how a character will react upon finding that an organization he is a part of has adopted a more radical position than he’s expecting, or has sold out; they define the character’s sense of responsibility. Answering these four questions defines a character’s Alignment, his Morality, the circumstances that could produce a moral shift, what the character will do to improve himself and his abilities (when combined with a sense of the opportunities that are open to the character), define his biases and prejudices, explain his past decisions (in combination with the character’s capacity for percieving the options open to him), his current status, what he thinks of that status, and what he’s done and is doing to prepare for the future. The only thing they won’t tell you is how indecisive the character will be. They also enable snap decisions to be made in character. In a sidebar, I discuss an online product that I still wish for whenever I contemplate a modern form of D&D. Part 3 of the Basics For Beginners series, Preparations, points out that there are lots of articles about Game Prep here at Campaign Mastery, and no shortage of them elsewhere on the net, to boot. This is not like them, spending most of its time attempting to persuade the new GM that most prep is not only unnecessary, but potentially deliterious to a campaign. This is not the case for experienced GMs; this is advice aimed directly at the beginner and those of intermediate experience. I discuss using the expertise of more experienced players and GMs, the dangers posed by over-committing (which all GMs do, sometimes), the essential prep that has to be done (a very short list), and how to deal with the players going off-script (it will happen). That’s followed by advice on using and creating iconic moments, on letting prep take care of itself, and how a developing GMing style should start to alter this advice. Part 4 of the Basics For Beginners series, is About Players. I didn’t intend for this series to become a slayer of sacred cows, but for the second post in succession, that’s a theme. In this case, it’s spelled out in the opening line, “I’ve read a lot of nonsense and enlightened theory over the years when it comes to players”. I then go on to walk that back as being too dismissive of RPG Theory. After looking at the factors that go into making a particular part of a particular day’s play “the most enjoyable part” for a particular player-character combination in a particular campaign of a particular genre on one day in particular (try saying that three times fast!), I link to various pages discussing player types in various ways, each of which (I contend) have some validity but which also fail in various ways. Since it’s unfair to criticize without at least attempting to offer something better, I then present a richer 9-axis classification system in which preferances inhabit “zones” or “regions”, not pinpoints. After a few caveats, I discuss the nine (Character, World, Concept, Drama, Conflict, Plot, Interaction, Amazement, and Heroism) individually, especially looking at the sensitivity to GMing style, genre, and campaign. As usual at Campaign Mastery, theory is then translated into practical advice: classification of campaigns, recruiting of players, and designing campaigns and adventures, before considering the impact on player surveys and finally, on game prep requirements. After diving deeper than I really should have for an artiicle aimed at a beginner, I wrap up the article with a pair of much simpler general principles that, in combination, won’t steer beginners wrong: “Give every player a focus on something they enjoy in each and every game session, and your game will be a success,”, and “Predefining some aspects of the game to achieve that in the majority of cases frees your attention up to the task of being creative in all the other areas. The rest takes care of itself.” As a post-script, I (very superficially) review “Era: The Consortium & Secret War” in case I didn’t get to a more substantial review in time (I did, just barely). Part 7 of the Basics For Beginners series, Adventures begins by acknowleding that, (at the time of writing), there had been 140 articles at Campaign Mastery tagged “Adventure Creation”. That’s now up to 228. Most of this article selectively recapitulates, and sometimes expands upon, advice contained in this or that past article. After describing the usual growth path of GMing expertise, I look at how a GM can take shortcuts – and the limited value of those shortcuts. Next, I address the question of GMing confidence, both over- and under-confidence, before providing a simplified process for beginners to employ in creating a campaign, with an example. In the process of describing how to GM that campaign, I discuss the role of the GM and give further advice on how to avoid plot trains, before discussing sandboxing, prep schedules. and prep as an investment. In the conclusion, I provide a long list of topics that merit following up by the reader before announcing our 2016 Ennie nomination! 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. 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 Secret Arsenal Of Accents – Three techniques, two standards, and two general principles, are all that you need to go from “I can’t do accents” to being able to fake it well enough to fool players at the game table – provided they don’t speak the language you’re faking, of course. 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? Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – is “How much should there be?” if you’re wondering. This article defines a range of standards for handouts that are to be distributed pre-campaign, ranging from “The Tolerable Minimum” to “An Extreme Excess”. In the subsequent section, I describe a magic item and accompanying plotline, the “Tome Of Past Destinies,” that seemed to work very well. After some more general notes, I then describe (far more succinctly) the practices for pre-game, in-game, and post-game that I employ and best practice for delivering such background information. Lessons from the Literary Process – takes quotes from a half-hour TV show about writing and the Literary Process and examines the RPG applicability and relevance, and how the RPG writing process differs from the literary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it all comes down to confidence, so I then examine that in some detail, listing for substantial reasons for even a beginning GM to feel confident, and a way out if none of the four helps in your current situation. Note: the source TV show had 13 parts (but the channel went belly-up half-way through showing it), the article is a standalone item, not the start of a series. 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. In addition to that massive pile of great advice, there’s the usual analysis of blog performance, hints at the coming mega-series “The Essential Reference Library For Pulp And Others” (referred to as ‘Project X’, and an “interview” aimed at helping Beginners get the maximum from Campaign Mastery. Transferable Skills From Bottom to Top and back again starts by studying the theoretical foundations of Skills Systems, identifying two different types (bottom up, with lots of specific skills and narrow definitions, and top-down which has few skills and applies them liberally), and determining that a lot of GM problems and GM-player conflicts stem from using the wrong approach with a specific system type. I then find that the D&D / Pathfinder skills system (as of version 3.x) can best be described as “confused” in this respect, and offer three solutions: A bottom-up solution, A top-down solution, and a flexible compromise. I also describe (too briefly, to be honest) the skills system in use in my Superhero campaign. Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv.

		The “One Player Is Enough” series This started as a single article about One-player campaigns, but grew to become four large articles in the planning stages. The emphasis is on non-D&D / Pathfinder games, because these were covered (in less detail) in an earlier article, linked to in Part 1. However, much of the advice in these four articles would transfer to such campaigns.
	Part 1, Me, Myself, and Him: Combat and Characters in one-player games, introduces the series, provides a complete Table Of Contents, then dives deeply into how combat mechanics should be altered to suit having just one player. After that, the subject becomes character-mechanics interaction in a broader sense, how the opposition should change, how to set difficulty targets when there is no backup if things go horribly wrong, Dangers, Traps, Allies, the use of battlemaps and Minis, how the focus of characterization has to change, and lots more practical advice. Part 2, A Singular Performance: Roleplay and General Principles in one-player games, looks at roleplaying in a one-player game in depth, then general principles regarding the design of both campaigns and adventures. Tone, Pacing, Game Intensity, Rest, Downtime, the use of Randomness, and Puzzles and Mysteries all get examined in detail. Part 3, The Solitary Thread, Frayed: Plots in one-player games, goes further into the campaign and adventure design requirements of one-player campaigns. Everything from plot structure to plot complexity gets affected by the change. That’s followed by a deeper examination of adventure length, how to cope with plot over-complication and over-simplification, witness unreliability and the Persuasion Effect, diverging from the script, more on pacing and how to manipulate it, and finally, how much adventure to prep. Part 4, The Crochet Masterpiece: One-player games as Campaigns, steps back to look at bigger-picture elements and binding the whole series together. Everything from reliance on memory to mis-communications to the use of Rationality Bombs, continuity, and finally, why it’s worth running a one-player campaign.

		The (ongoing) “Tales From The Front Line” series This is an occasional series analyzing conflicting points of view at the gaming table from the perspective of actual “battlefield” experience. To date, there have only been two entries in the series, but you can never tell when another one will crop up.
	Tales from the front line: The Initiative Conflict – In my 3.x campaigns, a dispute arose over the meaning of Initiative scores. I was mapping initiative values over the round, and one of my players wanted initiative outcomes to be instantaneous. I still disagree with his interpretation – it means there’s virtually no difference between an “Instant” and a “1 round” casting time, for example – but once I figured out why he was so adamant, I was able to compromise my view of ‘reality’ to produce more player fun, and hence more fun for both of us. And his interpretation was, admittedly, a lot less work. Tales From The Front Line: Critical Absences – an unresolved question – Should characters whose player is absent be subjected to the risks-and-rewards of criticals, regardless of what the game rules say? This article explores the question and finds it extraordinarily difficult to resolve, with valid arguments on both sides. What’s at stake here can be permanent losses of friendships, so the question deserves to be taken seriously.

	Feedback I’ve never been a big believer in the utility of player surveys and the like. Others are big fans of the concept.
Ghosts Of Blogs Past: All The World’s A Suggestion Box – The first of an irregular series that resurrects and updates relevant blog posts from my long-defunct personal blog. This one deals with the way that suggestions we make improve the world often without our even being aware of the impact that we are having. It then connects this notion with gameplay and game feedback and examines the consequences on the economics and reality of Gaming and Game Publishing. Signs and Signatures: An essay on uniqueness of style – After discussing signatures, and the many ways the term can be used to mean vaguely the same thing, and the relevance to craftsmen in RPGs, I postulate that each GM develops his own “signature” GMing style – that can contain flaws and unwanted elements that should be excised. This is more of a ‘think’ piece, not offering any real advice on how to do so, largely because it was a last-minute fill-in. As such, it constitutes a more literal interpretation of “advice” than is usually the case. Hungry, at Ravenous Roleplaying, links my musings to GM Feedback. Readers may find his thoughts relevant. Part 4 of the Basics For Beginners series, is About Players. I didn’t intend for this series to become a slayer of sacred cows, but for the second post in succession, that’s a theme. In this case, it’s spelled out in the opening line, “I’ve read a lot of nonsense and enlightened theory over the years when it comes to players”. I then go on to walk that back as being too dismissive of RPG Theory. After looking at the factors that go into making a particular part of a particular day’s play “the most enjoyable part” for a particular player-character combination in a particular campaign of a particular genre on one day in particular (try saying that three times fast!), I link to various pages discussing player types in various ways, each of which (I contend) have some validity but which also fail in various ways. Since it’s unfair to criticize without at least attempting to offer something better, I then present a richer 9-axis classification system in which preferances inhabit “zones” or “regions”, not pinpoints. After a few caveats, I discuss the nine (Character, World, Concept, Drama, Conflict, Plot, Interaction, Amazement, and Heroism) individually, especially looking at the sensitivity to GMing style, genre, and campaign. As usual at Campaign Mastery, theory is then translated into practical advice: classification of campaigns, recruiting of players, and designing campaigns and adventures, before considering the impact on player surveys and finally, on game prep requirements. After diving deeper than I really should have for an artiicle aimed at a beginner, I wrap up the article with a pair of much simpler general principles that, in combination, won’t steer beginners wrong: “Give every player a focus on something they enjoy in each and every game session, and your game will be a success,”, and “Predefining some aspects of the game to achieve that in the majority of cases frees your attention up to the task of being creative in all the other areas. The rest takes care of itself.” As a post-script, I (very superficially) review “Era: The Consortium & Secret War” in case I didn’t get to a more substantial review in time (I did, just barely).
	At Conventions I have extremely limited convention experience, so this topic has always been an uncomfortable one for me. Nevertheless, those with more experience have told me that the few articles on the subject have hit the bullseye. Expect me to rest on those laurels for as long as possible.
Game Mastering at Conventions Tips – As our contribution to the Aug 2009 Blog Carnival, Johnn serves up links to a number of articles on GMing at conventions that had appeared in Campaign Mastery. I have never GM’d at a convention myself, but if I was ever intending to do so, this would be one of the places I would start. Gaming In A Crowd: Some Advice – Looks at the practicalities of gaming in a crowded space like a game store or convention, and how your game and GMing style will have to adapt. Ask The GMs: My table runneth over (too many players) – How many players is too many, what are the consequences of having too many players, and what practical advice can be offered for coping? Scroll past the contributor’s bios for an update, or check the link immediately after this one (the content is the same). My Table Runneth Over – An Update – a long-time reader and friend of Campaign Mastery tried to offer his ten cents worth, but for some reason still unexplained, his comment was rejected by the system. So he emailed them to me and I appended them to the original article, but for anyone who relied on a subscription to advise them of new content, I also posted this special out-of-continuity extra to alert them to the contribution. Morgalad In Reflection – I review the Morgalad starter book, finding some excellent content and some flaws. I offered the author the chance to rebut or reply to my comments and he stated that many of the issues I raised were in the process of being rectified – since that was 2015, and it’s now more than three years later, I would hope that this process is now complete. At the conclusion of my review, I recommend Morgalad as a “d20-lite”-like system (in feel, not mechanics) for the purposes of educating new players, playing with children, first-time GMs, and for convention play, all applications which would take maximum advantage of its virtues. An AcadeCon For Your Consideration – Sparked by an invitation to review a Kickstarter for a convention, I raise a number of strategies for consideration with the objective of ensuring that the next convention is bigger and better than the current one. I have extremely limited practical experience in running conventions, as explained in the article, so these are all strictly theoretical, and being raised for consideration/discussion only. Some of that discussion takes place in the comments, so if the subject is of interest/relevance, don’t skip them.
	Mistakes, Problem-Solving, and Emergencies We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. Some mistakes and problems can be dealt with using an interruption to play – refer to the Campaign Pacing subsection of the Campaign Plotting page. There’s a lot of overlap between this category and “Ad-hoc Adventures” section on the Adventures page. Check the articles listed there for more problem-solving techniques. See also the “Fixing Rule Problems” section and the “Plunging Into Game Physics” series on the Metagame page.
My Biggest Mistakes – Campaign Mastery hosted the September 2009 Blog Carnival about GM mistakes and how to fix them. We collected all the articles we published on the subject into this series. Johnn kicks us off by talking about the mistake of not gaming, and I offer up five biggies of my own. The first part also contains links to all the other articles on the subject posted by other websites. Retcon Rightly – Johnn offers his advice on how to undo major events in a campaign without destroying it. Don’t miss the additional techniques in the comments. 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. “Fire Fighting, Systems Analysis, and RPG Problem Solving” is a three-part series which uses lessons from my emergency training and professional education to offer advice on how to solve GMing problems in RPGs (and how Players can solve in-play problems using the same principles). Part 1 of 3: General Advice contains exactly what it says on the lid – general advice that will go a long way towards solving any problem you run into. This article always seemed underrated to me; I think it should be required reading. Part 2 of 3: Prioritization offers broad advice on prioritizing problems, dismembering problems into smaller (more solvable) issues, does a deep dive into a theory of Criticality and problem interactions, and then applies the principles derived to generate two different, practical, ways of prioritizing game prep requirements. I’m forever losing track of where I put the latter advice, so I’m going to emphasize it in blogdex cross-indexing. Part 3 of 3: Complexity and Nuance completes the series with more general but practical advice for more complex situations, covering everything from Surprises to Insoluble Problems, with a bit of advice on ad-hoc GMing on the side. 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). When Good Dice Turn Bad: A Lesson In The Improbable – The improbable can occasionally happen. This is a true story (I was at the table) of just such an improbable event. And then the GM explains how he coped. Don’t miss the comments. 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. 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. By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics – There are always situations that the official rules don’t cover. This article offers a guideline that can help solve them – while adding color to the game world. 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. Part Five of the series on Writer’s Block discusses translation blocks, also known as transition blocks, and shows that the solutions already provided work just fine – if you have plenty of time to implement them. But, when you need a solution in a hurry, this article will come to your rescue with emergency solutions to five subtype types. Which leaves five more to be covered in Part Six of that series, plus a solution to another type of problem, “Crowding Blocks”, and some final advice on the subject of Writer’s Block. The Soundbite Of Tomorrow is 140 Characters Long – An article that is as much about social media and its impact on communications, both past and future, as it is about RPGs. While there have been a few developments that weren’t anticipated, like Presidential Decree by Tweet, most of this article’s forecasts have come to pass. It rates listing in the section because it considers the problem of player misinterpretation or misremembering of information provided by the GM, and the processes that I use to combat the resulting confusion. 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… 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. 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. Part 1 of the Basics For Beginners series, Beginnings, details what you really need before you start, with exercises to help you develop it if you don’t have it. Re-reading it, I was struck by how down-to-earth the advice was on Roleplaying NPCs (it’s harder than roleplaying a PC), Rules Knowledge, Materials requirements, How often you play, how long a game session will be, game complexity & continuity, explaining the fantastic in-game, setting aside time for research and self-improvement, resources and how to accumulate them, and giving yourself permission to fail. One example needs to be excerpted and echoed: Don’t try to make your dream campaign your first campaign. Tales From The Front Line: Critical Absences – an unresolved question – Should characters whose player is absent be subjected to the risks-and-rewards of criticals, regardless of what the game rules say? This article explores the question and finds it extraordinarily difficult to resolve, with valid arguments on both sides. What’s at stake here can be permanent losses of friendships, so the question deserves to be taken seriously. 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? 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. Sequential Bus Theory and why it matters to GMs – I start by looking at the logic (some might say, ‘Illogic’) of bus timetables and why any given bus is almost always early or late. I then use the phenomenon of passangers getting on or off the bus to create a means of getting rid of monty haulism once and for all, and the distribution of game rewards like wealth and treasure, and (finally) consider a hypothetical way of letting PCs benefit from good character design without coming to totally dominate combat. That last is more of a thought experiment, not yet ready to be seriously advocated. 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. Transferable Skills From Bottom to Top and back again starts by studying the theoretical foundations of Skills Systems, identifying two different types (bottom up, with lots of specific skills and narrow definitions, and top-down which has few skills and applies them liberally), and determining that a lot of GM problems and GM-player conflicts stem from using the wrong approach with a specific system type. I then find that the D&D / Pathfinder skills system (as of version 3.x) can best be described as “confused” in this respect, and offer three solutions: A bottom-up solution, A top-down solution, and a flexible compromise. I also describe (too briefly, to be honest) the skills system in use in my Superhero campaign.
	Stress & Exhaustion See also the “Burnout” section of the Fiction & Writing page.
For quick but temporary recovery and Mike’s basic Theory Of Capacity, see Part 2 of the “New Beginnings” series. For slower but more long-term recovery, see Part 3 of the “New Beginnings” series. Tourism in Sleepland: Sleep management for GMs & other creative people – lessons from a lifetime of coping with not-enough-sleep are distilled into this rather lengthy article, produced because people kept asking me. How would you like to add an extra 5 productive years to your lifetime? Or more than 8 extra 35-hour weeks a year free from work commitments each year? Those are the sort of rewards that Sleep Management can confer. Because of my conditions, these days, I rarely get more than 4 1/2 hours sleep a night – and usually get awoken three or four times a night from pain and discomfort. These are no longer optional extras to me, they are now survival techniques. Fortunately, in my case at least, I know what I’m talking about, having practiced for decades. Your mileage may vary. 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. 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.
	GM Improv See also the Campaign Pacing subsection on the Campaign Plotting page. See also the section on “Ad-hoc Adventures” on the Adventures 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. Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – My front window overlooks the twentieth busiest road in Sydney. From traffic patterns and estimating how much busier those other roads are relative to this one, I estimate that the busiest road in the city takes part in ten million personal stories a day about the inhabitants of the city. Note that at the time this article was written, the city’s population was being officially measured as just over five million – a factoid I’m including to let you scale that 10M stories to other metropolises. “George” is an individual who is resident here. One day, he is approached by a stranger named “Sam”. From their conversation, if it’s extensive enough, George not only comes to life as an NPC, but so do various facts about the city and what it’s like to live in it, using a technique that I include and a deck of cards. This technique is fast enough that it can be applied “live at the table” and even interactively with the players contributing. This article has also been translated into French at Dix millions d’histoires de gens, and has been rated as 9.3 out of 10. 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. 3 Feet In Someone Else’s Shoes: Getting in character quickly – A potpourri of techniques for bringing NPCs to life quickly and easily, enabling you to switch from “being” one to “inhabiting” another with scarcely a breath in between. Layers Of Mis-translation: RPGs and Dubbed TV – you have a TV show filmed in a foreign language, full of foreign cultural referances, that has been dubbed into your language by skilled translators and voice-over artists. What you see and hear becomes the basis of your relationship with the character on-screen. How much of that relationship stems from the original performer and how much is added by the voice-over artist? That question unlocks this article on the reality of an RPG as percieved by players, on the reality of player actions as percieved by the GM, and of the individual projecting themselves into what may be printed before them in black and white. 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. Pt 4: Better Campaigns Through Physics looks at the campaign-level impact of a Game Physics, starting with a definitive heirarchy of campaign to game physics to plot to official mechanics, something that has been discussed multiple times in Campaign Mastery articles. This heirarchy is all about what can overrule what when there is a conflict. I then throw in a concept for a “shared world” campaign that’s wilder than any that I’ve ever seen in the past, before moving on to examine the downside of a Game Physics and how to contain and avoid them. There is a practical approach to making good ad-hoc rulings when these are needed, and I then look at using the “big concepts” approach to make game physics a lot easier to manage, examine some of the philosophic consequences of having one, and look at three different types of Game Physics and who each will best suit. Finally, I look at problem-solving for when game physics problems arise, and how to turn such problems into opportunities – with real-game examples. Part 3 of the Basics For Beginners series, Preparations, points out that there are lots of articles about Game Prep here at Campaign Mastery, and no shortage of them elsewhere on the net, to boot. This is not like them, spending most of its time attempting to persuade the new GM that most prep is not only unnecessary, but potentially deliterious to a campaign. This is not the case for experienced GMs; this is advice aimed directly at the beginner and those of intermediate experience. I discuss using the expertise of more experienced players and GMs, the dangers posed by over-committing (which all GMs do, sometimes), the essential prep that has to be done (a very short list), and how to deal with the players going off-script (it will happen). That’s followed by advice on using and creating iconic moments, on letting prep take care of itself, and how a developing GMing style should start to alter this advice. The Secret Arsenal Of Accents – Three techniques, two standards, and two general principles, are all that you need to go from “I can’t do accents” to being able to fake it well enough to fool players at the game table – provided they don’t speak the language you’re faking, of course. 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. Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv. 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. 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.