Campaign Mastery

A Narrative Evolution Of Reality I construct very detailed plotlines for most of my campaigns. There are: Primary Campaign-Level Plotlines that permanently shape or reshape the context within which all the individual adventures take place. Usually consist of tent-pole Events and paradigm shifts within adventures, and are often describable as the outcome of a string […]

I hardly ever start plotting a story or an adventure at the beginning. There’s too great a chance of chasing yourself down a blind alley when you do so. The First Pass: Back To Front Instead, I leap ahead to the next significant development and ask “what do the star(s) of the story – the […]

New years are about new beginnings, about punctuating the year that was, to separate it (however artificially, however optimistically) from the year that is to come. This article is about new beginnings, and being aware of the options you have, but it might not seem so, at first. Bear with me…. One of the hardest […]

  There’s a long tradition of TV shows doing Christmas episodes. These are Christmas themed in some way, often by having the action occur over the holiday period, and if necessary are out-of-continuity or even non-canonical. This has led to an equivalent pattern occurring in some RPG Campaigns. Christmas adventures are often much harder to […]

This article has been in preparation for a very long time – since May 2017, in fact. I hope it proves to have been worth the wait… While there is no such thing as “winning” in an RPG, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t success, and that not all success is created equal. Some success […]

Anarchy. Chaos. Flexibility. Uncertainty. Control. Challenge. Unpredictability. All of these words can be used to describe the influence of Randomness within an RPG. Every GM uses randomness in all seven of these ways, the relative significance being the primary variant. But why do RPGs contain a random element? Randomness in RPGs derives from two sources, […]

There’s a show that I like to watch now and then on a local Free-To-Air lifestyle channel called “Rescue My Renovation”. It appeals because it not only explains what was done wrongly but the correct way that it should have been done, and why. This presents practical information that I’ve found useful from time to […]

I know a number of former GMs who gave up the job. Some of them reverted to being players, some of them occasionally still dabble in the big chair, and some were so traumatized by the experience that they gave up RPGs entirely. There are always three parts to the equation that dictates a GM’s […]

There are lots of good reasons to have a strong supporting cast in an RPG. They permit interactions which reveal or highlight aspects of a PC that otherwise might get an infrequent airing, for one thing. Trusted NPCs can serve as proxies for the PCs, or can supplement their skill-base. Or, fourth, they can facilitate […]

The GM puts a problem in front of the PCs – a couple of thugs extorting the locals. The players come up with a plan to solve the problem which works perfectly. The public shower the PCs with rewards and gratification. Sounds pretty boring to me. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the adventure? Roadblocks, Tripwires, Deceptions, […]

Although I’ve lived in the state capital for more than half my life, and am a creature of thoroughly urbanized habits and propensities, at my core, I come from a small town almost 600km away named Nyngan, as explained in Location, Location, Location: Nyngan, in which I describe the township and how to adapt it […]

At the end of the last Pulp session, one of our players informed my co-GM and I that they might not be able to attend the next session. Because sessions of this campaign are a month apart, this constituted ample notice, and we’re going to be able to carry on without him. We’re sure that […]