Archive for the ‘Western Games’ Category

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 2: Trade Units Pt 2

This entry is part 4 in the series Trade In Fantasy

Repeated from last time: The concept of an abstracted “Trade Unit” lies at the heart of making Trade a playable event on a recurring and large scale. Without it, you bog down in minutia; with it in place, direct comparisons become easier and decisions far more prone to “make themselves” unless overridden for story purposes. […]

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Trade In Fantasy Ch. 2: Trade Units Pt 1

This entry is part 3 in the series Trade In Fantasy

The concept of an abstracted “Trade Unit” lies at the heart of making Trade a playable event on a recurring and large scale. Without it, you bog down in minutia; with it in place, direct comparisons become easier and decisions far more prone to “make themselves” unless overridden for story purposes. Understanding the process of […]

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The Mundane Application Of Genre Part 3

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. Part 2 took a solid look at Science Fiction campaigns (and was supposed to also include everything I cover this time around. These genres were not chosen capriciously; between the four […]

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Epic Kickstarters Deserve Epic Responses

I love being able to bring something new to the attention of others. So much so that I’m diverging from the intended schedule (which called for the next part of the series on Economics on RPGs) to bring news of something exciting to readers. The subject of today’s article has so many new elements to […]

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Economics In RPGs 3: Pre-Industrial Eras

This entry is part 3 in the series Economics In RPGs

Welcome & General Introduction Readers may have noticed that the previous part of the series promised the Renaissance and then barely mentioned the subject. That happened because, at least at first, there wasn’t a lot of economic difference, and what trends later started to manifest themselves were essentially the same trends that drove industrialization in […]

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The Braiding Of Plot Threads

Today’s article can be viewed as a sequel to Spotlights In Focus: Plot Structure Impacts, which I wrote last November. That article examined the impact that a plot structure could have on the content of an adventure, and vice-versa, inspired by the work then being done on an plotline for the Adventurer’s Club campaign that […]

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The Artificial Mind: Z-3 Campaign Canon

Lately, a lot of the spam that CM has been receiving has proposed the use of AI-generated content to make the life of the writer/publisher easier, as though content creation was nothing more than the means to an end. The Flaw In The Argument Mankind has yet to build an artificial system that can pass […]

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Boundaries Of The Fantastic

I try very hard to provide balance in my coverage of different genres here at Campaign Mastery, guided by the relative popularity. Out of every 15 posts, 6 should be Fantasy oriented, 4 should be sci-fi oriented, 2 should be ‘realistic’ (Modern-day or Pulp, hence the inverted commas), 2 should be Superhero/Secret Agent oriented, and […]

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The Meta-Physics Of Magic

(originally titled ‘Flowing Mana and other arcane concepts’) Today, I thought I would share with you a few concepts from my superhero campaign that relate to the “science” of how magic works. I’ve addressed the circumstances under which these were presented in-play in an earlier post; this is more about delivering the high-concept ideas themselves […]

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The Inversion Substitution: Quick Characterization

It’s happened to us all at some point: the adventure has sidetracked down an unexpected alleyway and brought the PCs face-to-face with a character that you’ve made up on the spot. When this happens, you’re generally thinking only in physical terms, at least in the immediate term; that is because the first interaction that the […]

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Trap-tastic

I’ve always had problems with traps in D&D. Some of these problems have their origins all the way back in AD&D, others are more recent in origin. Rules changes with the different editions have solved or mitigated some of my concerns while creating whole new headaches to take their place. I have solutions to these […]

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Thinking Alien Thoughts: Roleplaying First Contacts

This is something of an unusual article. As many of you know, I got my start submitting guest articles for Roleplaying Tips, and eventually co-founded Campaign Mastery with the writer/editor/publisher of that email newsletter, Johnn Four. A recent article was about “How To Think Like An Alien” – Johnn no longer numbers the issues in […]

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