Campaign Mastery

There is a cooking show in Australia (it actually started in the UK, and a US version was recently announced) called Masterchef Australia. The goal of the series is to identify and winnow through the best amateur cooks in the country until they are left with the one best cook of the bunch, who gets […]

How do you organize your plot notes so you are on top of the details? In my Riddleport campaign, I have several plots hatching, and I would find tracking them difficult without using my plot stat block. It does not matter if you use Obsidian Portal, another wiki, a notebook or Post-Its; you must find […]

I’m using Google Calendar as the in-game calendar for my Riddleport Pathfinder campaign. It started as an experiment, but it’s worked so well I’m making it a permanent addition to how I run the campaign. Perhaps you can do this too. Riddleport is set in Paizo’s world of Golarion, and the calendar in that world […]

A friend I once gamed with was awesome at celebrating gaming. He made sessions into special events. He had props. He talked about games in a special way, like a sports fan does about when their team won the championship that year. He celebrated the details and told stories about special session moments. It was […]

Architecture is often an afterthought in campaigns, so it under performs as a GM tool. I’ve set about to fix that for my Riddleport campaign. Here are a few of the ways I’m using building architecture to enhance the campaign, and I describe my thought processes so you can do the same for yours. The […]

Bryan Howard recently submitted this tip to Roleplaying Tips: Former PCs as NPCs The best and easiest way to have great NPCs is to inject your old characters. The fighter who settled down and opened a tavern, school or guild. The cleric who built his own temple. Another way is to use former player characters […]

“Show, don’t tell is an admonition to fiction writers to write in a manner that allows the reader to experience the story through a character’s action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the narrator’s exposition, summarization, and description.” – Wikipedia Great advice for writers. And the third dimension – interactivity – makes this […]

In 2008 I implemented the Getting Things Done system (GTD) for organizing my RPG campaign’s emails, ideas and to do items. It worked so well that I now use it for every campaign, and I think you should consider it as well. Here is my version of GTD for managing and organizing my campaign. Gather […]

In a previous blog, I’ve written about my Superhero campaign currently facing a big finish (A Grand Conclusion: thinking about a big finish). This post will be a sequel of sorts, because any big finish naturally invites the question, “what’s next?” In this case, “next” is a sequel campaign. Many of the preceeding characters will […]

In one campaign years ago, the PCs did so much travel it seemed far-fetched to give them an encounter every time they hit the road. However, I still wanted to pace things so the party was not instantly appearing at their destination each time. A fun solution we came up with was campfire chats. This […]

This post is the end of a long road! It started with a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. Parts two and three highlighted what I believe to be the causes of the problems Garry identified, and provided an alternative perspective on Alignment that turned it into one of the most useful […]

In part one of this 5-part examination, we presented a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. In Part two, “A Neccessary Evil?”, I discussed the justification for alignment being part of the rules, looked at the historical precedent for oversimplified moral arguements, and concluded that the real problem with alignment was misuse […]