Campaign Mastery

Every now and then I try to squeeze in reviews of Kickstarters and other new products that have caught my eye. I don’t have the time to do as many of these as I would like, but every now and then the stars collide in just the right way. Today I have six products and […]

This is the fourth part of a very intermittent series that is examining alternatives and possible implications to the standard spell storage solutions built into D&D, Pathfinder, and, in fact, most fantasy games. Today, We look at Permanent Magic Items. Permanent magic items are like the energizer bunny, they just keep going. That makes them […]

This 15-part series is an attempt to answer the question, “what advice do you have for a beginning GM?”, three articles at a time – while throwing in tips and reminders of the basics for more experienced GMs. This is the last article of the current trilogy. Rewards: Tabula Rasa To most beginning GMs, and […]

For anyone who didn’t know, and who hasn’t noticed the change to the masthead, Campaign Mastery was honored with the Silver Ennie for Best RPG Blog over the weekend, beaten only by the World Builder blog run by a long-time twitter-friend and supporter, James Introcaso. Congratulations again, James! You never do something like Campaign Mastery […]

While playing Edge Of The Empire last week, a topic of conversation briefly arose: should advantage mechanics grow more extreme in effect in the big finish to an adventure or campaign? Musing on Advantage Mechanics Advantage mechanics of various forms have become a popular game mechanic in recent years. You have something of the general […]

It has often been suggested that players get addicted to the ease of healing that comes with “Holy Water Drip Bottle” syndrome. And that prompted me to ask what would result from making it really addictive, with all the associated problems that come with it. In part 1, I simplified the general pattern of addiction […]

I wasn’t going to make this a two-part article, but – as happens all too often – there was simply too much to include in the one post. Part two of this article will appear next week. I’ve often seen it suggested that players get addicted to the ease of healing that comes with “Holy […]

This is the third of these Ask-The-GMs that I’m tackling without recourse to my usual allies and fellow-GMs. Battlemats, maps, and tiles all have a valuable role to play in creating game atmosphere and letting people get on with play. The old adage states that a picture is worth a thousand words; an appropriate terrain […]

Every player, and more importantly, every PC, who is participating in an RPG is a member of a team. That team can be constructed to form an idealized “machine” if the players collaborate on their character designs, but more normally, things are looser. At best, you have the GM constructing a team model in which […]

When I first started gaming, one of the hot topics of conversation was always Clerical Healing and how to stop Clerics being nothing more than “holy drip bottles”. Over the next 30-odd years, not much changed. At the heart of the problem are the “Cure” spells. Over the years, there have been many proposed cures […]

I get offered more product to review than I possibly have time to read, other than superficially. Sometimes that product is already commercially available, sometimes it’s the center of a fundraising campaign, sometimes it just comes out of the blue. While I would love to give every review it’s own post of prominence, reality dictates […]

For the record, none of the PCs in the Star Wars campaign is named Fluke. But the pun was irresistible. When we started playing Star Wars: Edge Of The Empire, we got the initiative system all wrong. What’s supposed to happen is that each PC and NPC / NPC-Group rolls initiative to create a set […]