Campaign Mastery

Assassins should be compelling NPCs in every encounter in which they appear. This article, an excerpt from the forthcoming Assassin’s Amulet, describes how to run Assassins as compelling characters to roleplay and deadly adversaries to fight. And don’t forget to vote for the cover! Step 1: Pick an Archetype or Example Creating an assassin NPC […]

Real Life has caught up with me this week, so this won’t be as extensive an article as I was originally intending. But I’m going to do my best to turn that into an asset. This post was also intended to be Campaign Mastery’s entry into this month’s Blog Carnival, which was going to be […]

Last week I offered seven-and-a-half secrets to the art of successfully creating ‘adventures on the fly‘, with minimal or no prep. The fourth “secret” (everyone knows it now, even if they didn’t know it before!) was incomplete, presented only in summary form, because I could tell that it was going to take more room and […]

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 […]

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 […]

Why do we hand out experience for combat? No, I’m serious – this is a question that’s been preying on my mind as a consequence of an article I wrote earlier this year, “Experience for the ordinary person” – you should probably go and read at least the first section (down to and including “Reward-matching […]

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments […]

Introduction Back in late February or early March, Holly Lisle’s books came to my attention – I’m no longer sure how, but it was probably a Twitter link to her blog. Several of her e-books sounded interesting, so I passed the information on to Johnn, who surprised me in late March by giving me several […]

I have a friend, with whom I have gamed for many, many years, who has never read The Lord Of The Rings; he found the slow pace of The Fellowship Of The Ring so completely off-putting that he was never able to gather enough interest to finish the trilogy. I never had that problem – […]

Monsters generally come in three parts: Stat Blocks, Descriptive passages (which some people refer to as Fluff), and Templates, enabling you to add the “monster description” to an existing race – sort of an ersatz Class. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the differing values and usefulness of books on the subject. NB: This is an […]

Johnn’s recent mention of the Ostrich-GM approach he sometimes takes to the question of how Administrators and Nobles get their character levels (comments, City Government Power Bases – Class and Level) struck a chord. There are really only two answers besides the close-you-eyes-and-hope-it-goes-away approach, and adopting one of them has some interesting implications for the […]

Disclaimer: This article was prompted and inspired by my receipt of a free copy of Player’s Option: Flaws from 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, but it is largely based on my experience with the Hero System. 4 Winds did not solicit this review and did not recieve notice of the content. /Disclaimer So that we’re all […]