Archive for the ‘Campaign Creation’ Category

A Hint Of Tomorrow: The Future Evolution Of Homo Sapiens

Last night, I caught up with a documentary that I’ve been waiting to view (lack of time) since early February. The subject, and title, of the documentary was the question, ‘Are We Still Evolving?’. And, as with many subjects that I digest, it sparked a number of thoughts, all of which are relevant to the […]

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Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5

This entry is part 5 of 31 in the series Orcs & Elves

I’ve got a lot of campaign prep to get done. In fact, I’ve got so much to do that if I don’t do it here, I’ll either never get it done in time. But first, I have to paint a picture of the background for this to be useful to the rest of Campaign Mastery’s […]

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The Poetry Of Meaning: 16 words to synopsize a national identity

There are certain words whose literal translation can be considered telling when defining the mindset of a nation or culture. Most of these are identified after the fact, when a scholar matches a literal translation with a key insight into the profile of a particular group, but for roleplaying purposes we can define and redefine as necessary to employ selected terms as key indicators and giveaways to the psychology of a group or race.

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Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 4

This entry is part 4 of 31 in the series Orcs & Elves

I’ve got a lot of campaign prep to get done. In fact, I’ve got so much to do that if I don’t do it here, I’ll either never get it done in time. But first, I have to paint a picture of the background for this to be useful to the rest of Campaign Mastery’s […]

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Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity

I have a list of the topics that I intend to cover here at Campaign Mastery that I simply add to whenever I have an article idea. Sometimes when I look at the list, though, I don’t feel sufficiently inspired to write about any of them – then what should I do? I have a […]

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Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3

This entry is part 3 of 31 in the series Orcs & Elves

I’ve got a lot of campaign prep to get done over the next few months. In fact, I’ve got so much to do that if I don’t do it here, in public, I’ll either never get it done in time – or be so distracted that Campaign Mastery will suffer. I’ve chosen to do the […]

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Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation

There are three tricks that I use all the time when designing adventures, characters, races, campaigns, cultures, NPCs and Villainous Plans for RPGs, and for rebooting tired old characters. I call them the magic bullets of design, and I’ve written about most of them several times before – but there is always something new to […]

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Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2

This entry is part 2 of 31 in the series Orcs & Elves

I’ve got a lot of campaign prep to get done over the next few months. In fact, I’ve got so much to do that if I don’t do it here, in public, I’ll either never get it done in time – or be so distracted that Campaign Mastery will suffer. I’ve chosen to do the […]

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Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 1

This entry is part 1 of 31 in the series Orcs & Elves

I’ve got a lot of campaign prep to get done over the next few months. In fact, I’ve got so much to do that if I don’t do it here, in public, I’ll either never get it done in time – or be so distracted that Campaign Mastery will suffer. I’ve chosen the former course… […]

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Splitting Hairs: Exploring nuance as a source of game ideas

I’ve always found that I can get a lot of mileage out of exploring nuances, fine shades of differentiation between synonyms, when I’m looking for adventure ideas and character concepts. Sometimes I will introduce a character to do nothing but that, especially when the PCs are in the other camp – even if they don’t […]

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Theology In Fumanor: The collapse of Infinite No-Space-No-Time and other tales of existence

In Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity I talked about the relationship between divine beings and a campaign’s structure and narrative, and how a big-picture perspective on the role divine power plays within a campaign can make or break the plausibility of the campaign. At the end of that article, I suggested […]

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The Longex Dextora (The Hinterlands)

This entry is part 7 of 7 in the series On Alien Languages

Having given Campaign Mastery’s readers (and myself) a break from the series, today’s article contains another Kingdom write-up from my Shards Of Divinity Campaign, once again in more detail than even the players have seen it before… Metagame Origins A ‘Hinterland’ is technically a region behind a coast or rivers, i.e. separated from the main […]

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