Campaign Mastery

Why are dystopian settings so popular? Is that a good thing? What are the consequences and what are the alternatives? Another relatively short post this week (in theory, if all goes according to plan), because this approach worked so well for me last week – I had time to get more than 16000 words of […]

WARNING: At around 35000 words, this is certainly one of the longest posts here at Campaign Mastery! Settle in for a long and sometimes-bumpy ride, folks… This is part two of my review / demonstration of the “Tangled Web” campaign sub-structure. I’m going to presume that you’ve already read part one, which you can find […]

This article started out as a way to save time and at the same time present some tips and tricks that often get overlooked in my scramble to get material ready for publication here. It was also intended (originally) to be part of last week’s 1000th-post celebration – so there are certain themes that will […]

999! This is my 999th post at Campaign Mastery! Next week, four figures, a landmark achievement and one that I am quite proud of reaching! Old Words Today’s article is all about looking back, which is a natural thing to do when you approach any milestone. And yet, the connection with the currently-imminent landmark is […]

  This is my 998th post at CM! Two more to the 4-figure milestone!   In my superhero campaign, the PCs are currently shopping for a building to convert into a base of operations for a second set of superhero/civilian Identities that UNTIL has prompted them to create so that they can deal with problems […]

Finished at last – this is only about 90 minutes late! Enjoy :) Anytime a product with the combined talents of multiple industry heavy-hitters like Ed Greenwood and Skip Williams comes onto your horizon, you pay attention. When that product made its funding targets in just 2 1/2 hours, you pay even closer attention. Clearly, […]

A shorter article today (by CM standards), but one with a lot of impact to offer. The head of the ruined statue lay on its side, half-buried in soil and vegetation. Three meters from crown to chin, the sculpture of which it was originally a part must have been enormous. The left side of the […]

Back in the mid-90s, when I was preparing the campaign background for my rebooted superhero campaign, I had to think about cyberware – not the relatively reliable and semi-routine stuff that you would find in a Cyberpunk campaign, but the stuff that you would have before all the bugs were worked out. I wasn’t interested […]

Many of my campaigns either do not feature “dungeons” or employ transformative conceptualizations to justify their existence within the campaign world, because – to be frank – they don’t make a lot of sense, otherwise. But there can be other structural concepts that don’t obey all the technical principles of the generic ‘dungeon,’ in other […]

Whew, finished at last! Six hrs overdue, but it’s more than twice the usual length, so hopefully that can be forgiven! Is it too easy to cure disease in RPGs? I analyzed that question from various angles last week and came to the conclusion that the answer was arguably ‘yes’ – and also arguably ‘no’ […]

A Post In Two Parts This is a post in two parts. The first is the traditional blog carnival roundup; the carnival has now moved on to a new host. Turnout for July was disappointing, though, so that wouldn’t be enough to reward readers for taking the trouble to check in. So I was already […]

I saw a question on Quora the other day asking how you could give an RPG a particular style. I thought about giving an answer, but the more I thought about it, the more complicated the question became. No campaign is imbued with its own unique style right from the get-go. It takes time, and […]