Campaign Mastery

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 […]

Well, that didn’t take long! It seems like only a couple of days since I made noise about the new plans for Campaign Mastery… wait, it has only been a couple of days! Having realized late in the day that there is absolutely no chance of finishing the first big article in time for publishing […]

0. New Year, Old Business Welcome to 2017! I hope every reader has had a happy and safe Holiday period and is now ready to face the New Year with gusto and confidence, recharged and re-energized. For the first time in, I think, eight or nine years, I took the Christmas/New Period off, completely. No […]

This article was started way back when I was submitting articles to Roleplaying Tips, in fact, more than ten years ago, but it was never finished – until now. So “recently” means “relative to 2006″… I recently read a book describing the calamities that befell Lloyds of London in the early 80s and 90s and […]

The Tenth Shelf: Beliefs I (Religions, Nazi Occultism, & Cthulhu) – Introduction by Mike It’s always difficult when you need to take something that was supposed to be whole and split it in two, usually for reasons of practicality. Take this shelf and the next as a case in point: No-one can argue that Religion, […]

The Ninth Shelf: Life In The Pulp Era II – Non-Civilian Life [Crime, Policing, and Militaria] – Introduction by Mike It sometimes seems that the term “delicate balancing act’ is over-used, but when it comes to Pulp it is a true description of some aspect of reality for the GM in at least some respects. […]