Archive for the ‘Fumanor/Seeds Of Empire (D&D 3.5)’ Category

Grokking The Message: Naming Places & Campaigns

This entry is part 5 of 11 in the series A Good Name Is Hard To Find

So, here it is: a day late, thanks to the Easter long weekend, but better late than never! Normal Service will be restored next week… in the meantime, enjoy. We’re still working our way through what was originally intended to be Part 4 of this series, believe it or not! Part 1 concerned itself with […]

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The House Always Wins: Examining the Concept of House Rules

Sometimes we old hands, tired of a subject that’s been talked to death, or thinking that everything there is to be said on the subject has been said, forget that a lot of players and GMs have come into the hobby more recently than we have, and hence weren’t privy to those discussions. This produces, […]

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Have WordPress, will game

WordPress has a lot going for it – that’s why we use it for Campaign Mastery! For a long time now, I’ve been thinking that it has many of the advantages of a campaign Wiki, and a few more on the side, that would make it an ideal platform for game documentation – with the […]

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Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic

How much is a magic item worth? Well, there’s the book value, which can be obtained by cracking open the sourcebook to the relevant page. But that just gives its price – I want to talk about how much it is worth. What is it’s value to its owner? What’s it worth from a character […]

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The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene

Recalling the creation of a Divinity We’re continuing to build up to the big release of Assassin’s Amulet, and my excitement is reaching fever pitch (I can’t speak for Johnn & Michael). As part of that buildup, next week I’m going to present you with another excerpt from the book – but before I do, […]

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Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures

300 and other landmarks This is our 300th post here at Campaign Mastery! Over the last couple of months we’ve seen a number of other landmarks come and go, but this is the biggest of them. While we thought about making a fuss over the others, it just didn’t seem that long ago that we […]

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Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons

Ian Gray was going to be providing a second guest post for us today, but he’s had computer problems during the week and seems to have run out tof time. Fortunately, I had this post in reserve, just in case… A Sad Truth Dragons are supposed to be the most awe-inspiring, iconic creatures in D&D […]

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A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies

Sometimes GMing is flashy, and fun. When everything is ready, and you’re in the groove, when you know what is going to happen and can lose yourself in the game, and simply present the PCs with the consequences of their actions and concentrate on your performance in the guise of NPCs and on the delivery […]

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Life, Death, and Life Renewed – March 2011 Blog Carnival

I’ve put the “Reinventing Pulp” series on hold for a week in order to do a short article for this month’s Blog Carnival, which is all about life and death in RPGs. The series will return next week. One of the problems with a campaign that spans multiple game systems is that there are parts […]

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Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps

This entry is part 6 of 9 in the series Lessons From The West Wing

It’s time for another of my occasional Lessons From The West Wing. This draws heavily on concepts put forward in a single episode, Episode 16 of Season 2, “Somebody’s Going To Emergency, Somebody’s Going To Jail”. Some people have decried the episode as one of the weakest in the West Wing’s repetoir, others found it […]

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A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power

This article deals in subjects that are sensitive issues to a lot of people. Everything contained within is written from a roleplaying context and no judgements are intended regarding the validity of any individual perspective on theology or on any social issues that may be referred to; no offence is intended. It’s just a game, […]

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The Critical Threshold: A brief debate on the Merits of Extreme Results

This is not the post that I expected to make this week. I simply ran out of time and could not finish either the article I had intended to post this week [about time travel] or the one for next week [the long-awaited followup to last year’s Pillars of Architecture article], in time. Instead, I […]

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