Campaign Mastery

Late last night (as I write this), one of my favorite Anime movies (outside of the works of Studio Ghibli) was repeated on television. The Castle Of Cagliostro is a complex interaction of several different plotlines, but at it’s heart is a variation on that old plot standard, The Heist. More pure representations of that […]

This article won’t be very helpful to readers who are visually-impaired. I apologize for that, I know I have at least one reader who falls into that category. Maybe if you could get someone to describe the diagrams to you…? I tried including such descriptions, but found that the meaning of the article became buried. […]

While this article builds on some others that I’ve done here at Campaign Mastery, I didn’t feel it was enough of a sequel to any of them to qualify for the Blog Carnival. But I wanted to remind readers that if you’re thinking of doing so, there’s still time to submit a late entry! I’ll […]

I’m listing this as an entry in the Blog Carnival because it builds on several past articles about villains and villainy. See: The Anatomy Of Evil: What Makes a Good Villain? Shadows In The Darkness – The nature of True Evil Making a Great Villain Part 1 of 3 – The Mastermind Making a Great […]

I’ve been thinking about Influences, Styles, Trends and Oscillations. It started when I was thinking about Nostalgia and the “death” of Disco and its subsequent morphing into “Electronic Dance Music” in the very early 80s. All fads and styles have a natural lifetime; the length varies, but at the conclusion, they are clearly recognized as […]

When first I listed this article as a to-do, it represented a very straightforward concept, but I’ve taken so long to get around to writing it that other notions have presented themselves. I now find myself in possession of three distinct and – at first glance – mutually contradictory ideas on the subject. With these […]

I’m tagging this post as part of the Blog Carnival. The theme is sequels, and I think that being the third part in a series qualifies. The first two parts of this small series (Part 1, Part 2) looked at the tremendous impact of a community being located close to the major social, political, and […]

Introduction Since I first participated in my first session of D&D 3.5, what I enjoyed most was the feeling of sharing a fantasy with other people. There is something liberating in the idea of a bunch of people participating in a history, shaping and characterizing it in every moment. 15 years later, I remain fascinated […]

This isn’t the post I expected to put up today. The other one’s ready, and will appear later in the week. The reason is because it’s almost November – and that has a significance that will become clear any second now… Once again it’s time for Campaign Mastery to host the Blog Carnival for the […]

A side-comment by one of the players in my Zenith-3 campaign the last time we played raised some interesting questions. The player was speculating that the solution to a side-mystery that the PCs are currently investigating might have repercussions beyond those the players were presently aware of, simply to cause trouble between political authorities and […]

Documentaries are supposed to educate and enlighten, to Document and explain. There is little so irritating as a documentary that ignores or commits errors in basic facts to present a myopic, distorted, or one-sided view that provides only half the story. This evening I started watching just such a documentary. One segment was discussing the […]

The Elephant In The Gray Room is a metaphor that I have created to represent Plot Holes. These are matters of huge significance or importance that everyone is overlooking because they are not immediately obvious, but that once you see one, you can never forget that it’s there. This is a series about methods of […]