Campaign Mastery

Today’s article contains another Kingdom write-up from my Shards Of Divinity Campaign. This one isn’t quite as developed as the others (but the last time I said that, I wrote 11300 words and it became one of the most developed of the Kingdoms. I don’t expect history to repeat itself, but you never know…. Postscript: […]

Today’s article contains another Kingdom write-up from my Shards Of Divinity Campaign. So far, these have appeared in exactly the same order as they were presented to my players in the initial pre-campaign briefing notes apon which these articles are being based. With this part, that changes; the next item on the agenda, if that […]

Today’s article contains another Kingdom write-up from my Shards Of Divinity Campaign. My players will be examining this one carefully for any additional nuggets of additional information that I include because this particular group are tied up in their current in-game situation. They think they know who’s responsible and have a working theory – are […]

* This article was updated on 23 Sept 2012 * Metagame Origins & Status Bher Yuralvus is one of the least-detailed of the Shared Kingdoms. Several Paragraphs of information concerning it appear to have gone missing during the editing process of the House Rules, so that what little remains is full of non-sequitors. As a […]

A bit of a departure from the usual today, with an article that is only indirectly game-related. Every now and then, you have to let your imagination run wild or it gets soft and flabby… normal service will resume on Thursday, this was just something that I had to get out of my system. Hopefully, […]

Human nature never changes. That’s what makes science fiction and fantasy accessible to modern audiences. Often, it is by denying that fundamental truth that poor science fiction and fantasy are created. This was especially rife in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (in terms of television and movies) and the 30s, 40s, and 50s in terms […]

This is an article that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for a very long time, encouraged in part by the Numb3rs Season 2 episode ‘Double Down’ (and several subsequent episodes), in part by movies such as ‘The Sting’, ‘Oceans 11’, and ‘Oceans 13’, in part by the Babylon-5 Season 1 episode ‘The […]

Confession Time: This is not the article I intended to post today. I simply ran out of time – after my sense of the day-of-the-week was thrown off by the Holiday Season, leading me to start late. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible! Over the last few weeks, I’ve re-read the Foundation […]

In Roleplaying Tips #536, Johnn ran a tips request (reproduced below) asking for tips on how to GM computer hacking. I decided that simply offering a few tips wasn’t quite going to cut it, and that the subject deserved a slightly more in-depth treatment. I’m currently running a sci-fi future campaign where computers are an […]

Introduction to ‘Everyman Skills’ As GMs develop in experience, and begin to develop their campaign worlds more extensively, they generally arrive at the idea of everyman skills. Typically, this idea will first emerge in a modern-setting campaign, or future-tech campaign, though this is becoming less true all the time. The idea is that characters, by […]

From everything I’ve read – starting with early issues of The Dungeon, continuing with “Through Dungeons Deep”, and running all the way through to numerous blog posts – a lot of GMs have trouble connecting the desire to “make the loot part of the plot” with techniques for actually achieving this goal. It’s my impression […]

While chatting with one of the players in my Superhero campaign yesterday, the subject of FTL travel in superhero and sci-fi games came up in the course of the conversation. Since I’m always on the lookout for good subjects to write about for Campaign Mastery, and this is a problem that’s come up in many […]