Campaign Mastery

For the last few weeks I’ve been (occasionally) reading a board-game development blog/newsletter – Brandon the Game Dev for anyone who might be interested – at the invitation of a relatively new twitter contact, @brandongamedev. This week’s post was about playtesting; in it, Brandon wrote, Since people can do unexpected and strange things with your […]

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 […]

These two poker terms should have special relevance to RPGs. I’ll explain why in a moment – first, let’s make sure that everyone is on the same page as to meaning. Bluffing Bluffs are a rather broad subject. The traditional bluff in poker and other types of gambling is an attempt to make a weak […]

Things didn’t exactly go according to plan in the Adventurer’s Club campaign this weekend past. Entirely my fault; I was running late and assumed that the adventure that we were about to start had been copied onto a USB stick as is our usual practice. After all, it was finished several months ago. On top […]

There is something about “undead” that tantalize GMs and players. Maybe it’s because their very existence in a game world hints at fundamental questions about what life is. Every GM will, sooner or later, run an undead-dominant campaign or adventure arc. So it’s kind of a pain that so many of them suck in so […]

I’d like, in this article, to take a closer look at something that I mentioned in passing on a previous occasion – specifically, the concept that sports simulations and similar games can get away with less engaging storylines because competition itself generates its own narrative. In a sporting contest, one side scores, taking the lead […]

Once again I’m daring to tackle a topic without the counsel of my friends and fellow GMs, largely because I had a clear answer in mind. Today’s question comes courtesy of Jason B, who asked, “Hey, I was about to start up a campaign that would ultimately take characters to all ends of the world. […]

This is the fourth of five articles scheduled to be part of the November 2016 Blog Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is hosting. The carnival subject is “ordinary life” – in this case, how I create and manage subplots based on the ordinary lives of the PCs in my Zenith-3 campaign, how they connect seamlessly to […]

This is the first of five articles scheduled to be part of the November 2016 Blog Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is hosting. The carnival subject is “ordinary life” – in this case, the ordinary life of a GM and how it impacts his game… This article was within about 3 hours of completion, some 4 […]

This is being written on October 31, which is one of those Iconic dates in North America and catching on (thanks to the marketing muscle of various supermarkets and retailers, who are always looking for an angle that will persuade you to buy something extra) through large parts of the rest of the world. This […]

Music can provide an iconic trigger that instantly transports the listener into an associated memory. Soundtracks and scores for Film and TV have long recognized this effect and played on it. You might not know it, but every major character in a movie or TV show has their own “theme”, a handful of notes, usually […]