Campaign Mastery

The Backstory: When my pulp co-GM and I started talking about this article, it had a very different shape. The original intention was to list the cities that we considered iconic settings for pulp adventure, and explain in each case why it had been selected to receive that accolade. As the article progressed, however, it […]

I wasn’t going to make this a two-part article, but – as happens all too often – there was simply too much to include in the one post. Part two of this article will appear next week. I’ve often seen it suggested that players get addicted to the ease of healing that comes with “Holy […]

In Part 1 (make sure you have read it before continuing) I made reference to a map of Australian Aboriginal Languages which contrasted so strongly with the media stereotyping of these peoples as a single collective population that it was revelatory and inspirational. I meant to provide a link to that map, but ran out […]

When I first started gaming, one of the hot topics of conversation was always Clerical Healing and how to stop Clerics being nothing more than “holy drip bottles”. Over the next 30-odd years, not much changed. At the heart of the problem are the “Cure” spells. Over the years, there have been many proposed cures […]

Inspiration can strike anytime, anywhere, sparked by some completely unexpected collision of thought and random sensory experience. There have been several articles here at campaign mastery with such origins; this is another, sparked by a random comment made during the pre-game conversation and socializing that normally takes place before a session of my Zenith-3 campaign. […]

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 […]

I’ve been asked on more than one occasion what advice I would have for a beginning GM. It’s a question that troubled me; I’ve been GMing for so long that I thought I might have lost contact with the beginner. I have also resisted the topic because Campaign Mastery is more targeted at experienced GMs. […]

From time to time, I post thoughts on various subjects to twitter using the hashtag “#Musing”. I did just that a little while back – and then thought some more about what I had written and realized there were game implications/applications. The tweet said, “Traditions become empty when the meaning behind them is forgotten. We […]

A ‘Game Physics’ can shape plots, be revealed and extended by plots, but its greatest impact is usually more subtle and cumulative, and only experienced at a Campaign Level, where it can serve as a binding influence that ties disparate plots into a unified whole. Game Systems in service of plot This section was originally […]

As you can see from the title, this is part 2 of a series looking at the underlying principles and applications of Game Physics. The first part looked at exactly what the term meant, and found that it needed quite a lot of definition because it could be used to mean any of several different […]

“Game Physics” is a term that not enough GMs take the time to think about in depth. Physics is about isolating a single variable and measurable quantity, then altering that variable while observing the measurable quantity to shed light on the relationship between the two – then trying to explain the results in such a […]

It’s not easy making a completely fresh start. This series examines the process of creating a new campaign in detail. Last time, I went through the development process of taking ideas and some indications of direction and welding them together into a campaign plan. Now it’s time to think about the game world… I am […]