Campaign Mastery

Novels and RPGs have one thing in common – you have to describe a whole boatload of locations every time you play. As a result, every GM learns the basics of doing so very quickly. Unfortunately, once they achieve a level of minimal proficiency, most GMs never give this aspect of their craft a second […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it in public, I’ll never get it done in time! A number of interruptions today have left me with only two (rather longish) chapters complete. Since some future chapters have to follow each other very closely, this forces me into a […]

This article is going to provide solutions to three of the specific types of writer’s block identified in the first part of this series: Conceptual Writer’s Block, when you trouble breaking an overall story idea down into a detailed plot outline, Specific-Scene Writer’s Block, which is a difficulty in taking that detailed plot and putting […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time… I’m trying a slight change in layout this week, formatting the text more closely to that of a book than the usual web format. Let me know if you think it’s an […]

I’ve long thought that the term “writer’s block” is an oversimplification and generalization of a whole range of different phenomena that can afflict the creative endeavor. I have a unique perspective on the subject, being a writer, an artist, and a composer; all three bring with them virtually the same problems when confronted with an […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time… For those who read the player-redacted version of The Ages Of Existence (presented in Inventing & Reinventing Races in D&D: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3), it should […]

Let’s talk about institutional secrecy. Organizations have all sorts of reasons for keeping secrets. Good ones. Necessary ones. Bad ones. I’ve watching repeats of JAG lately and recently they aired the Season 8 episode “Need to know” which is about a submarine which was lost at sea 34 years earlier, with the loss of all […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time… This is the material that in the original plan (as revised a couple of weeks ago), would have been posted last week. Chapter 59’s content would have appeared as Chapter 55. And […]

I thought I was done with this series, I really did. But then I watched a seemingly-unrelated TV documentary series called The Genius Of Design from the BBC, (available on DVD from Amazon), and a persuasive new perspective was opened for my consideration. (You might want to read of the series to see why it […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time… It’s a peculiar thing when you’re writing. You are continually reshaping and tweaking the content to be included to make the narrative as clear and valuable as possible, and sometimes what seemed […]

In part one, I looked at techniques for extrapolating from the world of today into a future world where technology has changed. These techniques have served me well in both fiction writing and developing sci-fi oriented game settings. In the second part, I examined some core technologies that everyone engaged in anything sci-fi really needs […]

       While there is nothing graphic in the content below, it definitely warrants a PG-13 rating for    adult concepts. Children should obtain parental permission before reading.     We interrupt our regularly-scheduled programme for this late-breaking development: I spent so much time developing the infrastructure and notes apon which the next chapters of the […]