Campaign Mastery

We all suffer from the occasional bout of writer’s block. This series started with the premise that different types of content meant different kinds of writer’s block, and needed different solutions to the problem. The immediate success of listing so many different solutions while outlining the article showed the validity of the approach; so far, […]

Everything has to happen somewhere, and that means that locations are an essential element of RPGs and RPG settings. And that makes locations a worthy subject for this month’s Blog Carnival. Posts I would like to see as part of this month’s carnival are:- How do you choose a location? How do you represent a […]

Translation blocks are a type of writer’s block which occurs when moving from one level or layer of the story that you’re telling to the next.

In part one of this series, I identified several primary types of writer’s block. All but two have been dealt with; this article examines solutions to those remaining primary types: Dialogue Blocks, when you have a conversation to write but have no idea what the participants will say, or what they are saying seems wrong, […]

“Lessons From The West Wing” is a series of occasional articles inspired by the Television Series. I’ve had this article sitting around in partially completed form for a couple of years now, waiting for the right example with which to illustrate the concluding point. Finally, that condition has been met, so it’s time to look […]

A real-life example of solving a plot problem for an RPG.

There are four more primary types of Writer’s Block that I identified in part one of this series, and this article is going to tackle two more of them, and offer 17 solutions to those specific varieties of problem. The types of Writer’s Block to be dealt with in this article are:- Action Block, when […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it in public, I’ll never get it done in time… This was supposed to be just two chapters, but at the last minute I broke the first into two smaller, more digestible, chunks. ************************************************************************************************* Clan Wars XVI: Faith & Politics “It […]

Novels and RPGs have one thing in common – you have to describe a whole boatload of locations every time you play. As a result, every GM learns the basics of doing so very quickly. Unfortunately, once they achieve a level of minimal proficiency, most GMs never give this aspect of their craft a second […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it in public, I’ll never get it done in time! A number of interruptions today have left me with only two (rather longish) chapters complete. Since some future chapters have to follow each other very closely, this forces me into a […]

This article is going to provide solutions to three of the specific types of writer’s block identified in the first part of this series: Conceptual Writer’s Block, when you trouble breaking an overall story idea down into a detailed plot outline, Specific-Scene Writer’s Block, which is a difficulty in taking that detailed plot and putting […]

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time… I’m trying a slight change in layout this week, formatting the text more closely to that of a book than the usual web format. Let me know if you think it’s an […]