Campaign Mastery

I’m going to zip right along under the assumption that you’ve read Part 1 of this article because I don’t really have the time to recap. Color impacts on Cognition There have been studies that showed that exposure to the color red can impact scholastic performance by as much as 20%; other studies looking at […]

In Pigment On Canvas – Six GMing Lessons from Oil Painting I drew inspiration from the oil painting techniques of two TV programs, Masterclass In Oils with Ken Harris and The Joy Of Painting with Bob Ross. In the course of Episode 7 of Season 7 (1985) of the latter, Bob made a very interesting […]

The First Frontier: Appearance Early science fiction depicted aliens as having animal heads or other elements of animal anatomy. Fantasy, myth, and legend carry the principle even further back in time – the Minotaur of Knossos comes to mind. And I would not be at all surprised to be told that centaurs predate even those […]

“Game Physics*” have been on my mind lately, no doubt because of my recently published article on the underpinning theory of how Magic works in my superhero campaign. This article is primarily aimed at D&D / Pathfinder / Fantasy GMs, but it may also serve in other genres in which the underlying “science” doesn’t match […]

There have been three shows that seriously went into oil painting on Australian TV. The first was the Rolf Harris Show, in which Rolf used house-paints on a large board, paining in just two or three pigments; his art was often comprised of abstract shapes until the whole image came together in a fairly impressionistic […]

It has always been my opinion that of all the pantheons, the Norse are the most suited to application within a superhero campaign. The Greek deities are too whimsical, the Romans too arrogant; the Norse are the most level-headed in many respects. What’s more, the Vikings had a sense of the rule of law that […]

Campaign Mastery’s turn as host of the Blog Carnival has now passed into the dusty pages of history, and the baton has passed to Gonz at Codex Anathema, whose topic is “Whose Relic Is It Anyway?” That means that it’s time for a roundup of the submissions in response to our round of hosting – […]

It’s a classic television trope: the message story (sometimes called the Aesop). But there are some serious problems that you’ll encounter adapting the concept to an RPG adventure. Fortunately, they aren’t insuperable. The Problems There are four issues that frequently present themselves in creating message stories: There needs to be a script Players won’t follow […]

Last time I outlined the first half (roughly) of a process for the introduction of a system of organization for plotting to an existing campaign. I hope everyone’s already familiar with what was in Webs Of Gossamer: Retrofitting For Plot Pt I because I don’t have time to do much of a recap. Instead, I’m […]

So let’s say that you have an RPG campaign that is doing well. Your plotlines are interacting with each other, your adventures are compelling, your players are happy, and everyone’s having fun, but you’re starting to struggle to keep on top of the entwined complexities of your plots and your prep is becoming a nightmare […]

Last weekend, Ed Johnson, author of Bars, Clubs and Bands, contacted me to ask that I take a look at a guide that he had written for adding bars and nightclubs to role playing games including modern fantasy and modern horror, which was available for pay what you want on DriveThru RPG I took a […]

A long time ago – 2013 – I wrote a series on Writer’s Block. Recently, that problem reared it’s ugly head in a very specific circumstance within my (still shut-down-for-Covid-19-reasons) superhero campaign. I’ve never encountered a writer’s block this bad in my entire life, to be honest. You see, I have a long string of […]