Campaign Mastery

While introducing the players to the characters for the chase mechanics playtest a couple of weeks ago, I found myself ruminating on (of all things) the Charisma stat and what it represented. You might think that this is a simple question – but it’s not, as readers will see by the end of this article. […]

I’ve written over 1,800 answers on Quora and for every one, I’ve read 40 or 50 answers (probably more) written by other people in response to a question by someone else again. A surprisingly small amount of what I’ve read has been directly RPG-related. That’s because most of the content that gets offered derives from […]

I was thinking about this month’s Blog Carnival subject (Gods Of The Multiverse), hosted by Gonz over at Codex Anathema, when I was struck by a thought that had never occurred to me before. Deities, by their very nature, don’t belong in Dungeons and Dragons – or in most other RPGs, for that matter. Before you […]

Shane Warne was one of the greatest cricketers since the game began. His specialty was Leg Spin, which involves using your fingers during the delivery process to get the ball to spin so that it curves through the air, and when it bounces off the pitch, it ‘turns’ to one side or the other – […]

I recently came across a system for magical weapons that both opens up availability of high-level magical bonuses while also restricting them. This enables a campaign setting to be quite low-magic while still providing an avenue for those who absolutely must have a +5 weapon or better. I’m proposing, in this article, to adapt the […]

The other week, while hard at work on the Long Road trilogy of articles, I received an alert about a vulnerability in a plug-in and what to do about it. Nothing unusual about that, it happens regularly. I gave the message a quick scan, and double-checked that the affected software wasn’t in use at Campaign […]

Why are dystopian settings so popular? Is that a good thing? What are the consequences and what are the alternatives? Another relatively short post this week (in theory, if all goes according to plan), because this approach worked so well for me last week – I had time to get more than 16000 words of […]

1000 posts: a personal milestone So. 1000 posts. Four figures. That’s no small achievement. It’s something to be proud of. I’ve been casting about for suggestions on how to commemorate this milestone for the last few months, but the few suggestions I’ve received haven’t really been all that helpful – “Something reflective”, “Something forward-looking”, “Something […]

999! This is my 999th post at Campaign Mastery! Next week, four figures, a landmark achievement and one that I am quite proud of reaching! Old Words Today’s article is all about looking back, which is a natural thing to do when you approach any milestone. And yet, the connection with the currently-imminent landmark is […]

Finished at last – this is only about 90 minutes late! Enjoy :) Anytime a product with the combined talents of multiple industry heavy-hitters like Ed Greenwood and Skip Williams comes onto your horizon, you pay attention. When that product made its funding targets in just 2 1/2 hours, you pay even closer attention. Clearly, […]

A shorter article today (by CM standards), but one with a lot of impact to offer. The head of the ruined statue lay on its side, half-buried in soil and vegetation. Three meters from crown to chin, the sculpture of which it was originally a part must have been enormous. The left side of the […]

The article that I intended to publish today didn’t just go pear-shaped on me, it went prickly-pear shaped. Nothing was salvageable. That’s Okay – I have this series as a backup for that very contingency. So, today, I present another 40 or so of my RPG-related answers on Quora. Some of these will be little […]