Campaign Mastery

It happens in virtually every campaign. The longer the game runs, the more overprotective of their characters the players become. They become more and more attached to the characters and more adverse to exposing them to serious risk. The GM, on the other hand, wants to continually raise the stakes and up the ante, in […]

In part one of this series, I demonstrated that a pause or interruption in play can be enormously beneficial, if used correctly. Last week’s article examined before-pause and after-pause content and found that these had to match in order to extract that benefit, and that the type and length of pause was a critical variable […]

It’s not easy making a completely fresh start. This series has examined the process of creating a new campaign in detail, and at last, the new campaign is ready for the curtain to lift and the show to begin – right? Right? This isn’t the first time it has seemed that way since this series […]

Having established in part one of this series that a pause or interruption to play or to the primary plot being deployed within the game can be more than a necessary inconvenience, it can be a tool whose manipulation by a savvy GM or TV producer can enhance the game or production, it’s time to […]

Discovering The Principles This was originally envisaged as one small and relatively quick article. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, this is the first part of three… I was watching a repeat of an old TV show the other week – one that had been subsequently re-cut to facilitate more ad breaks – and […]

As humans, we rely on our senses to connect us to the world around us. There is a hierarchy amongst those senses that GMs can take advantage of, the better to communicate with our players. The Associated Senses At the bottom end of the senses are the associated senses – the sense of balance, and […]

It’s not easy making a completely fresh start. This series examines the process of creating a new campaign in detail. So far, we have a campaign plan and a development plan for the game world along with a schedule for that development. We’re now dotting i’s and crossing t’s and building up the foundations of […]

The subject of today’s article emerged during a twitter discussion between John Kahane (@jkahane1), Joe Kushner (@JoeGKushner), and myself (@gamewriterMike) on Twitter last week. The conversation started when I mentioned to John that I had just started a mystery plotline in my Zenith-3 (superhero) campaign, and that special effort was going to be needed to make […]

It’s not easy making a completely fresh start. This series examines in detail the process of creating a new campaign. What more do you need? You’ve got the basic plot, you’ve got the basic world, you have these organized so as to spread the developmental workload over the life of the campaign, you’re ready to […]

Terry Pratchett OBE (28 Apr 1948 – 12 Mar 2015) The world lost a giant of the fantasy genre on March 12th. Terry Pratchett brought farce to the elements of his novels while spinning straightforward fantasy stories out of those elements that built and built until reaching the point of melodramatic farce in their own […]

It’s not easy making a completely fresh start. This series examines the process of creating a new campaign in detail. Last time, I went through the development process of taking ideas and some indications of direction and welding them together into a campaign plan. Now it’s time to think about the game world… I am […]

Another filler article, I’m afraid. I’ve made quite a lot of progress but – due to external factors – simply ran out of time. I’ve been saving this one for just such an eventuality… For the purposes of this article, “FRPG” is considered restricted to D&D / Pathfinder and similar systems. I know that’s unrealistic, […]