Campaign Mastery

Last week, I wrote about creating adventures based on what a character could do. This week I’m going to look at the far more difficult proposition of basing a mini-adventure on what a character can’t do. This task is much trickier; just because a character is incapable of the action that would resolve whatever problem […]

Heroism is part and parcel of most fantasy campaigns and certainly central to Pulp and Superheroic Campaigns. In fact, most campaigns, driven by the need for drama, will incorporate heroism in some fashion, whether that be from greed / opportunity, enlightened self-interest, or the real deal. How can heroism stem from greed/opportunity? Heroism is doing […]

This is the second-last article in the great character giveaway of 2016. Today I present a pair of more traditional supervillains whose main interest lies in the way the character’s abilities are structured to make them exceptionally effective. These won’t translate as well as some of the past offerings into other genres, I’m afraid, but […]

I’m writing this article on the day that the idea occurred to me, but I’ve held it back until an opportune gap appeared in the publishing schedule. I was waiting for the bus today (well, on the day that I wrote this), and that got me to thinking. More on that a little later. If […]

Welcome to the Blog Carnival Host Page for November 2015! In the coming month it is once again Campaign Mastery’s turn to host the Blog Carnival (if you’re quick, you can still catch the tail end of the October Blog Carnival about creepy things coming to town over at Of Dice And Dragons). This time […]

The Context Saxon, one of my players and a fellow GM who has contributed guidance through ATGMs on a number of occasions was telling an anecdote the other week about what transpired in the D&D 5e campaign that he plays in. It seems that one of the players was unable to attend. That happens in […]

I was recently invited to review the Morgalad Starter Book by John McNabb, available through DrivethruRPG. Publication of Morgalad is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign which, like the result, is an interesting mixture of flawed ambition and success. The initial attempt at funding Morgalad sought to raise $20,000 and was a dismal failure; […]

I originally intended to present the Tavern Generator that I promised on Monday as today’s post, but it will take longer than I initially thought. Probably one more day of designing the tables and two days to format them – largely because what I am offering is far more robust and advanced than the basic […]

Why should the pace of gameplay be held hostage by combat mechanics? Anything else we can take or leave – we can assume success on any skill roll and get straight to the results. But combat? No – not unless we hand victories to the players on a platter. In part one of this series, […]

While merging all the tactical and attack mechanics into a single die roll, as described in part one, can greatly speed combat, there’s no reason to stop there. The next part of the combat sequence involves doing damage and may also require recording any losses of characteristics used in the attack if the system tracks […]

On any number of occasions, I’ve referred to using a Cinematic combat style instead of the “full treatment”, but I’ve never gone into detail of how I go about that. I’ve explained why, but never how. (just in case, I’ll recap “why” as we go along). I’ve always resisted doing so because I felt that […]

Sorry for the delay in posting this – my ISP is conducting maintenance of some sort, and my connection kept dropping out, making it hard to upload and format the article in the usual manner. Combinations So far, I’ve been looking at the different elements of pauses-in-play in as much isolation as possible, going beyond […]