Campaign Mastery

Yesterday, on Quora, I answered a question about beginning as a GM.. The question originally posed was “How can I play NPCs in DND and how can I get started DMing? This is my first time and I’m so lost.” There was already an excellent answer to the question, so I took a more general […]

Integration. What does that mean, exactly? Well, in mathematical terms, it means – essentially – accumulation of results from designated start point to designated end-point. In social terms, it roughly translates to incorporating or mixing one thing with another so well that the results appear completely uniform and consistent. Both are on speaking terms with […]

“Sometimes I’m a foodie, and sometimes I revert to good old American comfort food.” That was said, in-character, by one of my players in the course of this weekend’s game session, and it is at the heart of today’s article. First, some information on the narrative thread that led to this line of conversation: Four […]

I’ve written a lot of articles about luck and a lot of articles about plot, but very few about how the two intersect. Time to change that. A linear plot, like that depicted in Figure (1) Below, is very boring. Nothing the players say or do – and, more importantly, nothing the players have their […]

Some article ideas are simply not big enough to sustain an entire post on their own. From time to time, I gather these mini-posts together to form one more substantial post. The last time I did this was in Eight Little Tips: A Confection Of Miniature Posts, 6 months ago. It’s time I did it […]

I’ve been an active Quora user for the last few years, as long-time readers would know. Since August 2017, more than 1200 answers have been viewed almost 250,000 times. My content there averages more than 2000 readers a month (my content here averages more than three times that number). I’ve even built whole articles here […]

This article started in my mind when I was thinking about the Covid-19 situation here in Australia (and elsewhere where the virus has been close to eliminated) but I’ve since broadened and generalized it to some extent. It began with my imagining a set of random tables to describe someone’s interaction with Covid-19. Such-and-such a […]

This article is likely to ramble a bit. There will be times when I have to talk around the subject so as not to give away any surprises to my players, or to provide a proper foundation for the point of discussion. That’s an unfortunate reality for life as an RPG Blogger; the only alternative […]

I generated two images to accompany this article (actually, I generated 10, but these were the two that made the cut) – and could not pick between them; they both reflected the content and title in equally-compelling but distinctly-different ways. So I’m using both of them. The second image will appear a bit later. While […]

Something of a bare-bones post this time around, necessitated by the fact that I’m away from home and all its resources. I haven’t been idle while away; I had prepared more than enough RPG work in advance to see me through. Part of that work involves… well, that’s a little more complicated. You see, the […]

I didn’t intend to create a new Doctor Who campaign. The last one, “Lovecraft’s Legacies” had trodden new territory in expanding the lexicon and history of all the great races of Dr Who – Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, Omega and the Time Lords (amongst others). It integrated elements of Dr who with the Lovecraftian Mythos, […]

“A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet” – or so wrote Shakespeare. This afternoon, I watched (not for the first time), the Star Trek (original series) episode of (almost) the same name, and spent a few seconds ruminating on the expression. This essay will expand and expound on the passing thoughts that […]