Campaign Mastery

I’ve been making a conscious effort to use the term “Adventure” lately in articles here at Campaign Mastery, instead of any of the alternatives, simply because more people seemed familiar with it, and it seemed to be the most ubiquitous reference, but a few weeks back, I had a troubling thought: We all think we […]

Chatting with a fellow GM on twitter recently, I was reminded of a technique that I use from time to time to generate backstories, that I thought I would share, in somewhat fuller and more developed form than I was able to convey in a handful of 140-character tweets! There are two ways to use […]

Preface to Part 2, by Mike This is the second half of Ian’s article on Vehicles. The first half concentrated on the PCs acquiring a vehicle; this half is all about using one. I’ve also tossed in my two-cents worth here and there with the occasional aside and also jumped in with a few small […]

Preface, by Mike Today, I’m providing the first half of a guest article by my long-time friend, Ian Mackinder. Ian’s been nuancing this article for quite some time, and that shows in its depth. Part one deals with acquiring and designing vehicles, part two with using and abusing them. I’ve also tossed in my two-cents […]

Some background Before I can get to the main subject of today’s article, I need to tell a few short real-life stories to set the scene, putting the article into context. The Story Of Canterbury Road When I look out my front window, I am confronted by the somewhat depressing site of one of Sydney’s […]

To really get to grips with your RPG world, you have to understand how the invented environment affects the everyday life of the inhabitants. That’s more easily said than done. One technique is to answer a long series of questions, progressing from the simple to the profound, as shown in my first series here at […]

From time to time, I post thoughts on various subjects to twitter using the hashtag “#Musing”. I did just that a little while back – and then thought some more about what I had written and realized there were game implications/applications. The tweet said, “Traditions become empty when the meaning behind them is forgotten. We […]

A ‘Game Physics’ can shape plots, be revealed and extended by plots, but its greatest impact is usually more subtle and cumulative, and only experienced at a Campaign Level, where it can serve as a binding influence that ties disparate plots into a unified whole. Game Systems in service of plot This section was originally […]

In this series, I’ve been looking into the subject of Game Physics. Part one examined what a ‘game physics’ is, and what one can be used for. Part two focused in on one particular application, the generation and validation of House Rules. In this third part, the subject is the relationship between Game Physics and […]

Having just finished the “New Beginnings” series only a few weeks ago, I had no intention of publishing another article on the subject of campaign design for quite a while. Plans changed… An Endless Vista All campaigns start on a blank sheet of paper, which presents an endless vista of possibilities. This is not all […]

As you can see from the title, this is part 2 of a series looking at the underlying principles and applications of Game Physics. The first part looked at exactly what the term meant, and found that it needed quite a lot of definition because it could be used to mean any of several different […]

“Game Physics” is a term that not enough GMs take the time to think about in depth. Physics is about isolating a single variable and measurable quantity, then altering that variable while observing the measurable quantity to shed light on the relationship between the two – then trying to explain the results in such a […]