Campaign Mastery

Starting and Running a campaign is a lot easier if there’s a clearly understood process that maximizes the opportunities for success and avoids the largest traps and pitfalls. As usual, I worked on the next part of Trade In Fantasy until it became clear that it wasn’t quite going to be ready in time, then […]

Today’s post focuses on Rafts and small boats like Kayaks and Canoes. The defining trait of such vessels is that while they can have sails, their primary motive power derives from the use of oars or paddles. It’s taken quite a bit longer than I intended, due to a fundamental truism of publishing, at least […]

So your character has a cooking skill. What dishes can he prepare? What will be inedible? What does that mean? Adaptable all systems. We’ve all grown up with the concept of a recipe being utterly reliable. If you do the same thing every time, you will get the same result, every time. Most of us […]

“I attack him while he’s distracted.” That’s not an appropriate response to an antagonist Monologing, but it happened once. There came a time when a new player, unfamiliar with the genre, joined the Adventurer’s Club campaign. At one point, in an adventure, the villain began to Monologue – and that was this player’s response. This […]

Rivers provide a natural alternative to roads and overland travel, if the river happens to go where you want it to. That’s more likely than it might initially seem, because rivers provide natural resources and defenses that make them natural locations for settlements, with transportation of cargo a bonus on top of those advantages. Table […]

The 4th chapter of the Trade In Fantasy series looks at Modes Of Transport and trade route planning (9th post in the series). Table Of Contents: In today’s post: Chapter 4: Modes Of Transport 4.0 A Word about Routes 4.0.1 Baseline Model 4.0.2 Relative Sizes 4.0.3 Competitors 4.0.4 Terrain I 4.0.5 Terrain II 4.0.6 Multi-paths […]

The 2nd of likely four posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade. In this part, Beasts of Burden, Provisions, Carts, and Wagons. For anyone wondering at the cause of the delay, just look at the number of tables that I’ve ended up using in this post – then remember that each of them has to […]

The first of at least three posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade. This covers everything from wagon drivers to guards to dock-hands and farmhands. Anybody who can be considered a faceless cog in the trade machine, in fact! Credit where it’s due: The series title graphic combines three images: The Clipper Ship Image is […]

There are six types of skill roll modifier that I take into account when assessing any attempt by a character – PC or NPC – to carry out some task. Past articles have focused on just a few of them; this post is intended to provide an overview of the whole. I worked on the […]

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. […]

There is no standardized, consistent, approach to how long it should take to do things in an RPG. It’s time that changed. A strongly-related question is how long is a skill roll good for, before a new roll is required. I was musing about what to write for this week’s post when I saw something […]

What is INT, and (in practical terms), what can it be used for? I was strolling down the street the other day and noticed a logo consisting of a name and a number of dots, and for some reason, it sparked a new way of looking at INT scores, one that emphasized a practical application […]