Campaign Mastery

The alternative damage-handling subsystem proposed in last week’s article suffers from one major flaw, as some of our commentators have pointed out – it involves additional processes and bookkeeping that can adversely impact the flow of combat. This flaw is present to a much smaller extent in this proposal. Once again, this is not a […]

What are hit points? The most obvious answer is that hit points are a numeric index between healthy and imminent death, but there are other interpretations of the significance of this ubiquitous character statistic, and some of them lead the GM down interesting paths. This article will examine the first of these options, while parts […]

One of the big questions that every GM should consider when creating their D&D campaign is how to resolve the anarchy of the theological implications of the cosmology. It’s a simple question: In a world where miracles are readily apparent at the hands of every cleric, where Gods and Demons and Devils and Heaven and […]

One of the most under-developed game mechanics in D&D is the Curse. This has so many problems its hard to know where to begin, but I’ll give it a shot: Only clerics can curse because its a clerical spell. They hold no fear for anyone because they are so easily lifted. The suggested effects don’t […]

Some game systems have rules built in for character aging. Others don’t. Some of those aging rules function gracefully. Others don’t, or are shockingly clumsy. This post is all about how I handle character aging in my campaigns – gracefully and relatively painlessly. The Harbinger Of Aging Quite early on in my GMing career, I […]

Only a short article this week (at least in terms of word count) because there is easily five times as much work beneath the surface! A few weeks ago, I read a really interesting analysis of the mathematics of the D&DNext advantage mechanic by the Online DM. And yet, there was a disconnect between that […]

The death of a player naturally forces a GM to reassess his campaign and plans. But this sort of tragic event is not the only reason why this might become necessary – a player might move away, or might simply tire of the campaign and want to play something else, or might even give up […]

An empty Death is a terrible thing When Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) died in Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was an outcry amongst fans. Not because the character had been killed off so much as because she died what was later described even within the series as “an empty death” – a death without […]

I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between intelligence and instinct as expressed by different game systems. Most systems have an INT or IQ score of some kind, but the handling of the other side of the equation varies considerably. D&D and Pathfinder have a WISdom score, the Hero System has an EGO score, my […]

I’m taking a break from the ongoing Earth-regency Alternate History series this week (mostly because research has been taking more time than I’ve had available. Instead, the following is based on an email exchange between one of my players and myself, raising some serious questions about the population dynamics of longer-lived species and aging in […]

From time to time, I like to look behind the curtain – to see what makes the mechanics of the games that I play tick, and what the implications are. Sometimes this leads down unexpected byways, and at other times it yields a nugget or two of insight. And sometimes, it just goes nowhere. So: […]

One of my regular players and an occasional contributor here at Campaign Mastery, Ian Gray, has a simple philosophy when it comes to rewards – never ask for +5 when five +1’s will do. The Judo Of Wishes It’s a philosophy that has developed from his experiences with Rings Of Three Wishes and similar items. […]