00 The Best
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This page contains a list of the hand-curated best articles at Campaign Mastery, 2008-2014.
The Best Of 2008-2009
- A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs
- Guilds, Organisations, and other Bad Company
- Distilled Cultural Essence [Series]
- Ask The GMs: Networks Of NPCs
- Ask The GMs: Weather, Not Climate
- Ask The GMs: Pacing Your Campaign
- Lore Enforcement: The Legal System in an RPG
- ‘There Is A Hole In Your Mind…’: Solving Mental Block
- Shadow Levels: A way to roleplay the acquisition of Prestige Classes in D&D 3.x
- Two related articles in combination – Ask The GMs: An Epic Confusion, or how to stage a blockbuster finish, and A Grand Conclusion: Thinking about a big finish
- Broadening Magical Horizons: Some Feats from Fumanor and Shards Of Divinity
- The Nimble Mind: Making Skills Matter in RPGs
- Ask The GMs: Going Beyond The Rules
- Ask The GMs: “Let’s Split Up.” – “Good Idea, we can do more damage that way!”
- Legendary Achievements: Colouring Your Campaign with Anecdote and Legend
- The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive
- Revealing the Exotic
The Best Of 2010
- Downsize Your Disasters: GMing catastrophes in your RPG
- Relatively Uncertain: Taking Control of Game Physics
- The Characterization Puzzle [Series]
- Ask The GMs: Penetrating the veil of mystery
- The Pursuit Of Perfection Sub-series (Parts 1 to 5 of the Lessons From The West Wing series)
- Ask The GMs: How do you GM Player Characters as Spectators?
- With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality
- Sophisticated Links: Degrees Of Separation in RPGs
- How To Be A Confident GM, Part 1 and Part 2
- Time Travel in RPGs [Series]
- Ask The GMs: Rubbing Two Dry Words Together
- A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power
- Action Trumps Description
- Ask The GMs: How to survive political games with paranoia and intrigue
- The Anatomy Of Evil: What Makes a Good Villain?
- “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope
- Examining Psionics [Series]
- 6 Ways to Enhance Magic Items
- 40 Great Name Resources, Lists and Generators
- The Ubercharacter Wimp: Plotting within your PCs limitations
The Best Of 2011
- Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background
- City & Government Power Bases [Series]
- Reinventing Pulp For Roleplaying [Series]
- Experience for the ordinary person
- The Nth Level Of Abstraction
- Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques
- Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens
- The GM’s Toolbox [Series]
- Creating Alien Characters: Expanding the ‘Create A Character Clinic’ To Non-Humans
- Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence
- Objective-Oriented Experience Points
- A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies
- By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On the Fly
- By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure
- Fascinating Topological Limits: FTL in Gaming
- Forging Unexpected Connections: Putting PC Dossiers To Work
- Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures
- Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic
- Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot
- Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic
- Gaming With The Family – Lessons from yesteryear
- Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures
- Back To Basics: Campaign Structures
- Pieces Of Creation: The Hidden Truth Of Dopplegangers
- Taking everyman skills to the next level: The Absence of an Alibi
- The Nuances of computer use in a simulated world
The Best Of 2012
- The Foundation Of Averages: Psychohistory and RPG Rules
- A Twist in Time: Alternate Histories in RPGs
- A Good Name Is Hard To Find [Series]
- Big Changes For The Little Guy: How to go from Premise to Campaign
- Living in an RPG: The Accumulation Of Mundane Events
- Look beyond the box: a looser concept for NPCs
- Theologies at 30 paces: The Hell of Evil in D&D
- The Butler Did It: Mystery Plotlines in RPGs
- By the seat of your pants: the 3 minute (or less) NPC
- A two-part article: Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 1 of 2 and Part 2 of 2
- By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics
- Ensemble or Star Vehicle – Which is Your RPG Campaign?
- Adventure Structure: My Standard Formatting
- Another two-part article: Been There, Done That, Doing It Again – The Sequel Campaign Part One of Two: Campaign Seeds and Part Two of Two: Sprouts and Saplings
- The Acceptable Favoritism: 34 ‘Rules’ to make your players’ PCs their favorites
- What do you give the Gamer who has everything?
- Making a Great Villain [Series]
The 2012 Honorable Mentions
- The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure
- Exceeding the Extraordinary: The Meaning Of Feats
- One word at a time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post
- Go Hard Or Go Home: Graceful Character Aging
- May the camels of 1,000 fleas – wait, that’s not right: Improving Curses in 3.x
- All Wounds Are Not Alike [series]
- The Physics Of Uncertainty
- Turning Reaction into Proaction – plotting techniques to get your players moving
- On Alien Languages [Series]
- Good Storytelling Technique Or Bad? – Chekhov’s Gun and RPGs
- What matters to your character: the value of the shameful secret
- The Arcane Implications of Seating at the Game Table
The Best Of 2013
- Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series parts 1-5 [Series]
- Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation
- Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity
- The poetry of meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity
- Creating ecology-based random encounters [Series]
- Refloating The Shipwreck: When Players Make A Mistake
- Amazon Nazis On The Moon: Campaign Planning Revisited
- Creating The World Of Tomorrow: Putting the SF into Sci-Fi [Series]
- The Seven Strata Of Story
- Breaking Through Writer’s Block [Series]
- The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs
- Location, Location, Location! – the Roundup and Wrap-up (for now) [Blog Carnival] –
- Location, Location, Location: How Do You Choose A Location?
- 52+ Miniature Miracles: Taking Battlemaps The Extra Mile
- People, Places, & Narratives: Matching Locations to plot needs
- Adjectivizing Descriptions: Hitting The Target
- Big Is Not Enough: Monuments and Places Of Wonder
- Six Wonders: A selected assortment of Wondrous Locations for a fantasy RPGs
- Five More Wonders: Another assortment of locations for a fantasy RPGs
- Still More Wonders: Fifteen Amazing Locations for a Sci-Fi RPG
- Trivial Pursuits: Sources of oddball ideas
- Quantum Distractions With Dice: Types of Sci-Fi Campaign
- The Bargain Arcane: Selling Magic Items
- Taking Care Of Business: The Corporia Kickstarter Campaign
- A folder for every file: My Document Organization for RPGs
- Gaming In A Crowd: Some Advice
- Fire Fighting, Systems Analysis, and RPG Problem Solving [Series]
- The Scariest Villain
- Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs
- The compounded interruption of basic services
- Lessons from the Discworld of Terry Pratchett
- A Blogdex Celebration: Campaign Mastery’s (official) 500th post!
The Best Of 2014, Part 1:
- The Application Of Time and Motion to RPG Game Mechanics
- Growing Plot Seeds Into Mighty Oaks
- 3 Feet In Someone Else’s Shoes: Getting in character quickly
- Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep
- Vampire’s Creep and other stories: Working With Places
- Quantum Entanglement and the Tech of Tomorrow
- I See It But I Don’t Believe It – Convincingly Unconvincing in RPGs
- The Envelope Is Ticking: Insanity In RPGs
- Brick By Brick: Base Rules Made Easy
- Swell And Lull – Emotional Pacing in RPGs Part 1 and Part 2
- Inversions Attract: Another Quick NPC Generator
- The Blind Enforcer: The Reflex Application Of Rules
- The Premise Of Falsehoods – Luck Vs Skill in RPGs
- Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative
- Domino Theory: The Perils and Practicalities
- The Hierarchy Of Receipt: How and when to lie to your players
- The Fields Of Magic
- The Personal Computer analogy and some Truths about House Rules
- The Pillars Of Assumption: A Source of Plot Ideas
- Dream A Little Dream – using Dreams in RPGs
- Ergonomics and the Non-humans
- Ask The GMs: My table runneth over (too many players)
The 2014 Honorable Mentions (part 1)
- Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time
- The Loss Of Innocence: Some unexpected insights
- Strangers sharing ideas: RPG writings in a Collaborative World
- Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population
- Writing to the limits of longevity
- Ethics For Sale? – The Role of Native Advertising
- By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves
- Prodigious Performances Provided In Due Course
- It’s Not ‘Just A Game’: The legacies we leave
The Best Of 2014, Part 2:
- The Flunkie Equation – quick and easy Hors d’Combat
- Stormy Weather – making unpleasant conditions player-palatable
- Shades Of Suspense Pt 1 – Eight Tips for Cliffhanger Finishes
- Shades Of Suspense Pt 2 – Fourteen Types of Cliffhanger Finishes
- Thatch and Confusion – creating a village
- The Expert In Everything?
- The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues
- The Wandering Spotlight Part Two of Two: Shared Stories
- The Secrets of Stylish Narrative [series]:
- Memorials To History – an ‘a good name’ extra
- There’s Something About Undead
- Ask The GM: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive)
- Layers Of Mis-translation: RPGs and Dubbed TV
- “I know what’s happening!” – Confirmation Bias and RPGs
- Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species
- The Unexpected Creeps Up Behind You – Dec 2014 Blog Carnival
- Pretzel Thinking – 11 types of Plot Twist for RPGs, Part 1
- Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2
- Ask The GMs: Buzz and Background
- The Thinking Man’s Guide to Intelligence for Players and GMs
- Seven Circles Of Hell – Creating Politics for an RPG
- A Population Of Dinosaurs and the impact on RPG ecologies
- An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session
- Race To The Moon – a lesson in story structure
- Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech
- Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail?
- Pieces of Ordinary Randomness: Random Techniques Of Chance
- Gifts In Gaming: Overlooked Seasonal Plot Hooks
The 2014 Honorable Mentions (part 2)
- Touchstones Of Unification [series]:
- A tabula rasa – focusing the mind before writing
- ‘I Can Do That’ – Everyman Skills For Pulp
- On the binding of Wounds – Everyday Healing For Pulp
- Dr Who and the secrets of complex characterization
- Tourism in Sleepland: Sleep management for GMs & other creative people
- There’s Something About Christmas
More to come…
