Archive for the ‘Campaign Creation’ Category

The Splash Vector: Delivering plots to unhittable PC Targets

There are lots of good reasons to have a strong supporting cast in an RPG. They permit interactions which reveal or highlight aspects of a PC that otherwise might get an infrequent airing, for one thing. Trusted NPCs can serve as proxies for the PCs, or can supplement their skill-base. Or, fourth, they can facilitate […]

Comments Off on The Splash Vector: Delivering plots to unhittable PC Targets

The Biochemistry of Anagathics and Elves

Anagathics (n) – drugs and treatments that halt and reverse the progress of aging. At least, that’s what they are called in Traveler – since we don’t exactly have any proven medications that achieve this yet, nor even research into the science on which such treatments could be based that’s advanced enough to make treatments […]

Comments Off on The Biochemistry of Anagathics and Elves

The Earth Below: An original DnD Cosmology and Campaign Setting

Or, “Dwarves are from Marz, Elves are from Venusia”, which was almost the title of this article! I was thinking about another post (that you will hopefully see in a week or so) when an idea for a completely original D&D/Pathfinder cosmology occurred to me. In a matter of minutes, it had become a fully-fledged […]

Comments Off on The Earth Below: An original DnD Cosmology and Campaign Setting

Thinking Alien Thoughts: Roleplaying First Contacts

This is something of an unusual article. As many of you know, I got my start submitting guest articles for Roleplaying Tips, and eventually co-founded Campaign Mastery with the writer/editor/publisher of that email newsletter, Johnn Four. A recent article was about “How To Think Like An Alien” – Johnn no longer numbers the issues in […]

Comments Off on Thinking Alien Thoughts: Roleplaying First Contacts

Patterns Of -archy: Family Units in RPGs

Although I’ve lived in the state capital for more than half my life, and am a creature of thoroughly urbanized habits and propensities, at my core, I come from a small town almost 600km away named Nyngan, as explained in Location, Location, Location: Nyngan, in which I describe the township and how to adapt it […]

Comments Off on Patterns Of -archy: Family Units in RPGs

Survivors Of The Underdark: A New Dwarven Paradigm

Long-time readers of Campaign Mastery will know that I love concepts that re-imagine standard game elements like races and classes through the prism of a completely new context. During a conversation at the game table a month or two back, I found just such a new context for a staple D&D/Pathfinder race, Dwarves. Traditionally, D&D […]

Comments Off on Survivors Of The Underdark: A New Dwarven Paradigm

Generational Landmarks And The Long-Lived

Looking at the photographs of the “March For Our Lives”/”Never Again” rallies, you can’t help but feel that an entire generation, who have grown up under the shadow of gun violence in schools since Colombine (April 20, 1999), have run out of patience and been energized. Calls for compromise, like those of Mark Rubio, who […]

Comments Off on Generational Landmarks And The Long-Lived

Obscurity and the Wellspring Of Uniqueness

Obscure Knowledge can be a great source of uniqueness in an RPG Campaign, but it needs to be handled with care. No-one enjoys being lectured to, and the more obscure the subject, the less likely it is to be of obvious interest to those receiving it. There are ways around the difficulties and problems, and […]

Comments Off on Obscurity and the Wellspring Of Uniqueness

Shape with a Feather, not a Bludgeon

There’s a bit of a rambling backstory to this article which I would omit if it weren’t central to the subject. Since that’s the case, I’ll have to ask you to bear with me for a bit. I was musing in the shower this morning of the significance of the Australian Music TV show, “Countdown” […]

Comments Off on Shape with a Feather, not a Bludgeon

IQ and Intelligence in RPGs

You learn something new every day, and today’s example was a small factoid: IQs are increasing so rapidly that the average person today would have scored an IQ of 130 a century ago, qualifying as “gifted”. Projecting Forwards Since the average back then was defined as a score of 100, that’s a rise of 3 […]

Comments (4)

Trends and other tricks in Campaign Design

This weekend’s session of the Zenith-3 campaign was a great success, and one of the big reasons for that was the real sense that the PCs were fully integrated elements within the game world. This article is going to look at some of the major reasons for that so that you can do it in […]

Comments (2)

Fear Itself and the GM

Fear Itself Fear is an enemy every GM will have to deal with on occasion; that’s simple reality. But fear comes in many different shapes and sizes, and many different intensities. The level of Fear that few of us ever have to deal with (phobias excepted) is the sort of fear that paralyzes, that washes […]

Comments Off on Fear Itself and the GM