Campaign Mastery

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. Part 2 took a solid look at Science Fiction campaigns (and was supposed to also include everything I cover this time around. These genres were not chosen capriciously; between the four […]

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. This time, Science Fiction! Recapping The Process 0. Make a list of possible Mundane Activities (optional, but it helps). 1. Pick A Mundane Activity. 2. If it’s not something the PCs […]

It goes without saying that we want players to sense the distinctive ‘aura’ of a campaign’s genre, but all sorts of things get in the way of that, so it only happens occasionally and fleetingly. But there’s an easy solution, and it works in literary applications as well! When I broke this article down into […]

Sub-stories are akin to small anecdotes of a dramatic nature that can add interest, depth, color, and backstory to encounters. What’s not to like? I’ve started writing this article at least half-a-dozen times over the years, but it’s always fallen apart on me before I got to the interesting parts, simply because it’s been so […]

Today’s article is sci-fi in orientation but fantasy GMs should stick around, there’s stuff for you too before I’m done. In a similar way, this is all about “world” design, but the techniques can be applied elsewhere, for example, adventure creation. So Buckle Up, we’re about to take a wild ride together. Theory / Concept […]

It seems natural to me to follow an article about campaign structures with one about adventure structures. So that’s what I’m going to do. Furthermore, since the campaign structures addressed were specifically about Sandboxed campaigns, so will be this Adventure Structures post – though it can easily have relevance beyond those limits, that’s just a […]

Today, I get to focus on one of my favorite subjects, campaign structure! There are lots of choices out there, but today I’m going to focus on one that I don’t use all that often, the improv sandbox. This article was prompted by something I saw on the screenwriter’s blog that I linked to an […]

I love it when I discover something that GMs should be using and aren’t, because it means that I get to analyze the reasons, and devise solutions to whatever is holding people back – and I learn things and develop tools for my own use in the process. By my count that’s win-win-win-win – and […]

One of the newsletters to which I subscribe offers advice for scriptwriters (“The Story Guy Newsletter”). Occasionally, there’s a nugget that can be adapted to service a TTRPG, it’s well-written, and not too long to read (having said that, I’m about 4 behind). One post that dropped shortly before or just after I moved talked […]

Although I have outlined this post in the usual manner, something about the structure doesn’t feel quite right, as though at some point, my narrative is going to zig when my plan calls for it to zag. If there appears to be the occasional discontinuity in the discussion, that’s what’s caused it. No AI.-generated content […]

Preliminaries / Introduction: Why you should read this article I h\ave found a whole bunch of material from my old TORG campaign, which I intend to use through 2024 as the foundation of various articles. I’m doing this for a number of reasons, which collectively spell out why it’s worth your time to read them […]

Preliminaries / Introduction: Why you should read this article One of the good aspects of packing everything is that you discover where you had hidden away things that have been archived for long enough that those hiding places had been forgotten. So it is that I h\ave found a whole bunch of material from my […]