Campaign Mastery

While this article starts off with political analysis, it leads into the discovery of what appears to be a universal social truth that can be integrated into multiple situations in any RPG. I’ve done my best to avoid coloring the analysis with my own opinions, and have neither intent nor desire to belittle in any […]

Having been delayed 8 hours by a massive spam attack last night (650+ spam in 6 hours – but the effectiveness of my response is clear, only 17 spam made it through my protections while writing this article), it’s back to business. The fact that this is appearing rather less than 8 hours after it […]

We’re part-way through a comprehensive answer to the question, both direct and implied, by Jesse Joseph. Last time out, I repeated the basic advice I would offer to anyone in his situation, and looked at ways to make low-level undead more respectable opponents so that GMs weren’t forced to use Undead Royalty just to have […]

There is something about “undead” that tantalize GMs and players. Maybe it’s because their very existence in a game world hints at fundamental questions about what life is. Every GM will, sooner or later, run an undead-dominant campaign or adventure arc. So it’s kind of a pain that so many of them suck in so […]

There were only two DVDs by Derren Brown that were appropriate to the Pulp Reference Library, Items 1175 and 1176, which can be found reviewed towards the bottom of the Twelfth Shelf. These barely scratch the surface of the relevance of this man’s work in a broader RPG context, however, and so I determined to […]

This article offers an example to illustrate the process described in Part 5 of the Spell Storage Solutions series, by which much of the sting and stigma attached to relics can be designed out of them. From the footnote to that article: “I was actually going to explain the process by way of presenting an […]

The Thirteenth Shelf: Odds & Sods I – GMing, Tools, and Fiction – Introduction by Mike Being the GM can be isolating at the Game table, especially when a problem strikes. It’s usually too late when you’re in the hot seat to do much research into solutions (unless the problem is so grave that you […]

There’s a whole spectrum of collaborative modes in existence these days, ranging from the cameo appearance or recurring pastiche all the way through cross-overs to the tightly-knit true shared creative spaces that are almost completely collaborative in nature. Although in literature, the Thieves’ World series is generally thought of as the first shared world that […]

(I’m sure some have been wondering when it would resume – Part 9 was published in September 2016, after all…) I’ve been asked a number of times what advice I have for a beginning GM. This 15-part series is an attempt to answer that question – while throwing in some tips and reminders of the […]

The Twelfth Shelf: Beliefs III – Superstition, Mysticism, and More – Introduction by Mike Strange creatures. Strange beliefs. We pass no judgment on the reality of any of them; in fact, from a game point of view (and regardless of any personal opinion) there’s always room for the fantastic in an RPG. In the Adventurer’s […]

There are five attributes to any encounter that define it, and any one of them can be the foundation of that encounter. In the old days of D&D, it used to be that there was relatively limited flexibility. You chose an encounter based on one of these five criteria and everything else was more-or-less dictated […]

The Eleventh Shelf: Beliefs II – Ghosts, Poltergeists, and Apparitions – Introduction by Mike Wouldn’t the world be dull if everything was predictable? That’s as true of the world in a pulp game as it is of the so-called objective reality that surrounds us. And from the cracks and crannies of what is usually a […]