Campaign Mastery

Character Development for an RPG is unlike it’s analogue in any other medium. That wasn’t always the case; we have learned how to do it the way most GMs and players do it now, the hard way. But I’ve recently become aware of a perception that the modern way is the only way, and that’s […]

0. Preliminaries Combat is a central aspect of almost every RPG, but most GMs are not as familiar with Tactics and Strategy as the forces they command within a game would be. That’s a problem, but the situation becomes even more untenable when GMs become aware that a basic knowledge of tactics can broaden their […]

Have you ever watched a repeat of a show that you once enjoyed and thought, “this hasn’t aged well?” Have you ever re-read a book that you enjoyed in your youth, only to discover that the magic just wasn’t there any more? When you listen to old favorites on the radio, do they ever sound […]

If you want to start a conversation with a tabletop gamer, all you have to do is ask their opinion on GMs fudging die rolls. Everyone has an opinion, a theoretical best-practice policy, and everyone has a preferred approach in the real world – and the two don’t always match. Some people even have different […]

This is an article about a technique for repairing continuity and plot problems that is especially suited to long-running campaigns and to campaigns deriving from published sources. I’m not going to leave anyone who hasn’t mastered telepathy in suspense: the technique is Patching one plot hole with another. For some that will be enough of […]

Watching the Australian performance in the Women’s Ashes cricket series last night, where they absolutely destroyed the English opposition, inspired this article. Australia batted first, and set England a target of 270 from their 50 overs (refer to this post if you don’t know enough about Cricket to know what I’m talking about). This is […]

This month’s Blog Carnival is being hosted by Pitfalls & Pixies, and the subject is all things Fey. I’ve never been very satisfied with the way D&D handles Fey. There was not enough information in AD&D to run them properly; they seemed to be just dressed-up humans, or monsters like any other (just a little […]

Over the weekend, Campaign Mastery was described by the very flattering term, “one of the best Treasure Troves for a DM”. Aside from feeling very chuffed at the compliment, my mind immediately started to think about Treasure Troves. This article is the result. The Map So, how do you find a treasure trove? The two […]

This article was prompted by last Saturday’s play in my Zenith-3 (superheroes) game, but I use the techniques in all my campaigns. But I want to start by quoting a question that I answered over the weekend on Quora, because it’s also relevant. When running an AD&D game, what do you do to really make […]

All players expect to be thrown into the deep end from time to time by the GM, with no idea of how to solve the conundrum that confronts them. Most commonly, this results from characters not having the skills that would solve the problem via the most straightforward course. Instead, the character has to take […]

The Genesis Of An Article A little more than two weeks ago, as I write this, I had an unusual dream (a known side-effect of some of my medications) in which I wrote two articles for Campaign Mastery. When I awoke, I remembered them, and immediately made the appropriate notes. In the dream, one had […]

This article started with an invitation to write a review of RPGSmith. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that is, all will be clear by article’s end. After an introduction, and a summary of what the product was, the co-founder who made the offer threw in a provocative statement: “I would like to note […]