Campaign Mastery

There is a principle of script-writing and fiction writing that says that if you want to grab the audience’s attention, you should start the story in the middle. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this principle is the James Bond teaser. I’m not sure if it’s the case with the most recent movies – I’m not […]

There are two different visions of a typical winter’s day. If altitude and latitude permit, you have your snowy day with bitter winds and flurries and whiteouts and snow getting down your back; if not, then cold and wet with howling winds and driving rain that sheets horizontally and in which the only cover is […]

It’s easy to fall into the trap of having a singular arch-enemy in a campaign. If anything happens to that enemy, it can leave the GM casting around for a direction. What’s more, having one central villain who is responsible for all that ails the world (and his flunkies, of course) is inherently a harder […]

So you’ve come up with a great character for your game and want to gain maximum value for your creativity? No problem. TV has been doing that in one-hour dramas for decades. There are two paths to follow: the Good Guy path, and the Bad Guy Path. The ‘Good Guy Path’ is all about establishing […]

I’ve seen all sorts of ways to ignite your creativity, nudging your mental capacities into a completely different orbit to their usual. I’ve even offered a few, myself, here at Campaign Mastery, that work best when you have some idea of what it is that you’re trying to create. They don’t work that well, however, […]

“He skulked down the alleyway, blending into the shadows and taking care to avoid the occasional patche of loose cobblestones…”   Sounds good, doesn’t it. Sounds literary, the way you would read – or write – it in a novel or short story. Let’s translate that into typical Game dialogue, and see how well it […]

This is being written a little under the deadline pump; I’m still playing catch-up from my week away at the Family Reunion / 40th Birthday party for my nephew. So it may not quite live up to my usual standards, but I’ll do my best. Actually, I’m cheating for a lot of this article, which […]

In part 1, I identified AERO, four roles that the majority of significant NPCs occupy in most adventures or encounters: Ally Enemy Resource, and Opportunist …and then considered the combinations, demonstrating how rich the in-game plot functions of characters became when one of these roles adopted one of the other roles as a secondary function. […]

Most NPCs occupy one of four niches in terms of their impact within an adventure or an encounter: Ally, Enemy, Resource, and Opportunist. I use AERO as a mnemonic to remind me of them. The four roles These four roles define, in broad parameters, how an NPC will interact with the PCs and how that […]

The examination of the consequences to a community being located close to the center of administrative, political, and economic power that is a national capital continues. To recap: So far, I have looked at: Proximity To Power Proximity To Authority Proximity To News Access To Communications Proximity To Trade Proximity To Opportunity Proximity To Fashion […]

When I started writing this article, it was expected to be another short one. I had only 3 or 4 impacts in mind… deeper analysis when I started detailed planning soon dispelled that expectation. Of necessity, I’ve had to break it into smaller pieces… Being close to the population / administration / social center of […]

Have you ever tried to run a prison-break scenario? Was it as successful as you would have hoped? I’m betting that most readers will have answered “no” to the first question and that virtually everyone else will have answered “no” to the second. There’s good reason for this state of pessimism: no matter how essential […]