Campaign Mastery

So this was all ready to post – and then my internet connection went out. Thankfully that was only a problem for a day or two. But it has delayed the series slightly. The story so far… This is the sixth in a set of mini-posts that I’m writing and publishing as quickly as possible, […]

The story so far… This is the fifth in a set of mini-posts that I’m writing and publishing as quickly as possible, something I’m calling a mini-blitz. My normal publication schedule will resume at the end of the series. Each post examines one of the specific image categories nominated in the first post of the […]

This was intended to be part of a single, self-contained article – but the more I look at it, the more inevitable it seems that what did happen, would happen. Make sure you’ve read Part 1 before continuing! I intend to dive straight in and pick up exactly where I left off, but first, there’s […]

One of the essential skills that has to be in every GM’s toolkit is the ability to interleave research into subjects that they, and their players, know nothing about into the stories that they craft for their campaigns. Way back in September 2014, I produced an abbreviated list of subjects that a GM arguably had […]

While introducing the players to the characters for the chase mechanics playtest a couple of weeks ago, I found myself ruminating on (of all things) the Charisma stat and what it represented. You might think that this is a simple question – but it’s not, as readers will see by the end of this article. […]

I’ve written over 1,800 answers on Quora and for every one, I’ve read 40 or 50 answers (probably more) written by other people in response to a question by someone else again. A surprisingly small amount of what I’ve read has been directly RPG-related. That’s because most of the content that gets offered derives from […]

I was thinking about this month’s Blog Carnival subject (Gods Of The Multiverse), hosted by Gonz over at Codex Anathema, when I was struck by a thought that had never occurred to me before. Deities, by their very nature, don’t belong in Dungeons and Dragons – or in most other RPGs, for that matter. Before you […]

Shane Warne was one of the greatest cricketers since the game began. His specialty was Leg Spin, which involves using your fingers during the delivery process to get the ball to spin so that it curves through the air, and when it bounces off the pitch, it ‘turns’ to one side or the other – […]

I recently came across a system for magical weapons that both opens up availability of high-level magical bonuses while also restricting them. This enables a campaign setting to be quite low-magic while still providing an avenue for those who absolutely must have a +5 weapon or better. I’m proposing, in this article, to adapt the […]

Few campaigns make any attempt to match real-time with game-time, and mine certainly don’t. I’m quite capable of hand-waving days, weeks, or even months of time if nothing of interest is happening. I’m equally capable of spreading a single game-day over 3 or 4 game sessions if there’s a lot going on. And I don’t […]

This is the third, longest (53,566 words!), and final part of my review / demonstration of the “Tangled Web” campaign sub-structure. I’m going to presume that you’ve already read part two, which you can find at this link and dive straight in right where I left off. And, if you haven’t gotten in on the […]

Why are dystopian settings so popular? Is that a good thing? What are the consequences and what are the alternatives? Another relatively short post this week (in theory, if all goes according to plan), because this approach worked so well for me last week – I had time to get more than 16000 words of […]