Archive for the ‘World Design’ Category

In My Cosmological Pocket: From Portable Holes to The End Of The Universe

Pocket dimensions have been an important element of my superhero campaign for decades. Over that span of time, the understanding of their origins and properties have evolved in richness and complexity. Pocket dimensions were also much-sought-after magic items in my Fumanor campaigns, in the form of Bags Of Holding. And so I applied the conceptual […]

Comments Off on In My Cosmological Pocket: From Portable Holes to The End Of The Universe

Appointment, Inheritance, Victory, Desperation, and Need Pt 1 of 5: Appointment

This started off as a simple idea for a quick little article. It grew….. How rulers gain their offices should be reflected in the society around them. Think about that for a moment. How rulers gain their offices should also be reflected in the personality and capabilities of the ruler, either at the time of […]

Comments (6)

Divine Worlds To Conquer: Four Campaigns for the Jan 2019 Blog Carnival

Because I was able push the latest mega-update to the Blogdex out a day earlier than expected, I’ve had time to work on this article for the January Blog Carnival. I love a good, provocative turn of phrase, a coupling of words that stimulates the creative juices, tantalizes the imagination, and makes you think of […]

Comments Off on Divine Worlds To Conquer: Four Campaigns for the Jan 2019 Blog Carnival

The Biochemistry of Anagathics and Elves

Anagathics (n) – drugs and treatments that halt and reverse the progress of aging. At least, that’s what they are called in Traveler – since we don’t exactly have any proven medications that achieve this yet, nor even research into the science on which such treatments could be based that’s advanced enough to make treatments […]

Comments Off on The Biochemistry of Anagathics and Elves

The Earth Below: An original DnD Cosmology and Campaign Setting

Or, “Dwarves are from Marz, Elves are from Venusia”, which was almost the title of this article! I was thinking about another post (that you will hopefully see in a week or so) when an idea for a completely original D&D/Pathfinder cosmology occurred to me. In a matter of minutes, it had become a fully-fledged […]

Comments Off on The Earth Below: An original DnD Cosmology and Campaign Setting

The Narrative Approach To Dungeon Design

How do you design your dungeons? For me, the only technique worth contemplating is the Narrative Approach, in which the dungeon’s location and structure derive from the adventure in which they are to be found, and the encounter content and similar details derive from the location, structure, and adventure. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But, as […]

Comments (2)

(In)Human Survival: The Biology of Elementals and More

I’ve been reading a fascinating book lately: “The Biology Of Human Survival” by Claude A Piantadosi, M.D. This relatively hard-to-find book from Oxford University Press deals with the biological processes by which humans react to various conditions, and hence the hazards posed by those conditions, in a way that is both technically accurate and yet […]

Comments Off on (In)Human Survival: The Biology of Elementals and More

Survivors Of The Underdark: A New Dwarven Paradigm

Long-time readers of Campaign Mastery will know that I love concepts that re-imagine standard game elements like races and classes through the prism of a completely new context. During a conversation at the game table a month or two back, I found just such a new context for a staple D&D/Pathfinder race, Dwarves. Traditionally, D&D […]

Comments Off on Survivors Of The Underdark: A New Dwarven Paradigm

Conditional Modifier Magic: Combating Power Creep in RPGs

One of the banes of RPGs since time immemorial has been been the seemingly inevitable drift toward out-of-control character capabilities at high levels. It’s something that afflicts almost every campaign that persists for any length of time, regardless of genre, but most notably, the various incarnations of D&D. This problem is so ubiquitous that there […]

Comments Off on Conditional Modifier Magic: Combating Power Creep in RPGs

The Difficulty Of Deeper Delving: When Dungeon and Story Collide

I’m posting this early to beat the kickstarter deadline. If you want to back the project, which has now reached its funding target, you will need to act quickly – you have less than 52 hours! Background A week or so ago, relative to the publication date of this article, Campaign Mastery received an invitation […]

Comments Off on The Difficulty Of Deeper Delving: When Dungeon and Story Collide

The Diversity of Seasons, Pt 4: Winter (cont)

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series The Diversity Of Seasons

This series is a concordance of Seasonal Summations for different locales around the world. That serves a number of different functions: it provides a climatic baseline from which any number of analogues, regardless of campaign genre, can be generated; it compares and contrasts different locations, enabling the reader (and the author) to start getting a […]

Comments (5)

Generational Landmarks And The Long-Lived

Looking at the photographs of the “March For Our Lives”/”Never Again” rallies, you can’t help but feel that an entire generation, who have grown up under the shadow of gun violence in schools since Colombine (April 20, 1999), have run out of patience and been energized. Calls for compromise, like those of Mark Rubio, who […]

Comments Off on Generational Landmarks And The Long-Lived