Campaign Mastery

It’s my contention that with every encounter, the canny GM will expand on the lore surrounding the creatures encountered. I’ve been plugging away steadily at the next part of the Trade In Fantasy series, in which a lot of the elements discussed start to come together into a coherent picture of the processes, but it’s […]

Preliminaries: A long time ago, I wrote “Trade In Traveler”. This week (and in the weeks to come) I’m starting a companion piece, “Trade In Fantasy”. Non-Fantasy GMs – I suggest either using the Trade in Traveler rules or updating them using this series as a guide. Depending on how long winded I get in […]

What non-magical songs should a bard know? There’s more to it than you might think. The Wedding DJ At a wedding some years back, I got to talking with the DJ about song selection. It was a fascinating conversation that I’ll do my best to recreate, but it was so long ago that I don’t […]

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 […]

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. This time, Science Fiction! Recapping The Process 0. Make a list of possible Mundane Activities (optional, but it helps). 1. Pick A Mundane Activity. 2. If it’s not something the PCs […]

Today’s article is sci-fi in orientation but fantasy GMs should stick around, there’s stuff for you too before I’m done. In a similar way, this is all about “world” design, but the techniques can be applied elsewhere, for example, adventure creation. So Buckle Up, we’re about to take a wild ride together. Theory / Concept […]

Although I have outlined this post in the usual manner, something about the structure doesn’t feel quite right, as though at some point, my narrative is going to zig when my plan calls for it to zag. If there appears to be the occasional discontinuity in the discussion, that’s what’s caused it. No AI.-generated content […]

So, here we are, back again for another serving of 2 more dangerous creatures based on sound. In fact, these are potentially even deadlier than last time’s offerings, the Humming Bee and Hissing Wyrm. First up, there’s the Whisper Willow, the perfect place to catch a quiet nap between adventures. Or not. And then there’s […]

It’s been quite a while since I sat down at the keyboard to write one of these articles without a clear idea in mind of what the subject matter would be – usually from weeks in advance of publication date. When a deadline is looming, that experience can be extremely stressful and unwelcome, but when […]

0. Introduction Even if the main subject matter doesn’t interest you, or doesn’t fit the genre of your campaign, there’s still content of value for you within the article – look for the sidebars, they contain useful tools, techniques, and fascinating side-issues, and apply to D&D / Pathfinder / Cthulhu / Pirate / Western games […]

Okay, so here we go with #2 of three locations generated for my campaigns. This is definitely sci-fi in nature, and would especially suit Traveler campaigns, though it can be used more generally. As usual, a bit of a preamble, but I’m setting it off in a text box so that those with no interest […]

This was originally going to be one monster post containing three locations that I have devised recently for different campaigns. I quickly realized that this was too ambitious, so this will be a trilogy of articles, one every 2 weeks. This is an idea that hints at deeper connections in the game world, metaphysical relationships […]