Campaign Mastery

A real-life example of solving a plot problem for an RPG.

There are four more primary types of Writer’s Block that I identified in part one of this series, and this article is going to tackle two more of them, and offer 17 solutions to those specific varieties of problem. The types of Writer’s Block to be dealt with in this article are:- Action Block, when […]

Novels and RPGs have one thing in common – you have to describe a whole boatload of locations every time you play. As a result, every GM learns the basics of doing so very quickly. Unfortunately, once they achieve a level of minimal proficiency, most GMs never give this aspect of their craft a second […]

This article is going to provide solutions to three of the specific types of writer’s block identified in the first part of this series: Conceptual Writer’s Block, when you trouble breaking an overall story idea down into a detailed plot outline, Specific-Scene Writer’s Block, which is a difficulty in taking that detailed plot and putting […]

Exhaustion has gotten the better of me, I’m afraid, and has prevented me from making enough progress with the next part of the Orcs & Elves series. I always knew it was likely that sooner or later I would run into deadline trouble, and planned accordingly. So here’s an article that I prepared earlier and […]

I’ve long thought that the term “writer’s block” is an oversimplification and generalization of a whole range of different phenomena that can afflict the creative endeavor. I have a unique perspective on the subject, being a writer, an artist, and a composer; all three bring with them virtually the same problems when confronted with an […]

I’ve received a lot of compliments for the titles and logos that I’ve done over the years. You can see several of them in the illustrations for this article about my gaming schedule and the need to juggle campaigns to match player commitments when you have half-a-dozen GMs and a pool of perhaps a dozen […]

There are certain words whose literal translation can be considered telling when defining the mindset of a nation or culture. Most of these are identified after the fact, when a scholar matches a literal translation with a key insight into the profile of a particular group, but for roleplaying purposes we can define and redefine as necessary to employ selected terms as key indicators and giveaways to the psychology of a group or race.

I have a list of the topics that I intend to cover here at Campaign Mastery that I simply add to whenever I have an article idea. Sometimes when I look at the list, though, I don’t feel sufficiently inspired to write about any of them – then what should I do? I have a […]

There are three tricks that I use all the time when designing adventures, characters, races, campaigns, cultures, NPCs and Villainous Plans for RPGs, and for rebooting tired old characters. I call them the magic bullets of design, and I’ve written about most of them several times before – but there is always something new to […]

In any modern-day team environment, there is usually one member of the team who focuses on the tactical situation. Characters that each go their own way tend, sooner or later to get in each other’s way, or make the mistake of two going for the same target while another target is left uncovered; the team […]

I’ve tried every way I can think of to set this topic aside until after I had finished the series on names, but it just doesn’t work. So I guess it’s time to take a side-trip into the wonderful world of creating and simulating Alien Languages in RPGs… I once, back in the early 1990s, […]