Campaign Mastery

Landscapes are wonderful things, more significant & useful than many GMs realize. This post focuses on using Landscapes, both literal and metaphoric, using the lessons from the first part of the article. This is Part t 2 of 2. This is the 4th of my time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series, which […]

The 3rd of 4 posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade focuses on the Labor Unit and how to use it to make GMing a business easier. Today’s post starts with a couple of short sections that were inadvertently left out of last week’s examination of carts. They had been written, but not where they […]

The 2nd of likely four posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade. In this part, Beasts of Burden, Provisions, Carts, and Wagons. For anyone wondering at the cause of the delay, just look at the number of tables that I’ve ended up using in this post – then remember that each of them has to […]

The first of at least three posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade. This covers everything from wagon drivers to guards to dock-hands and farmhands. Anybody who can be considered a faceless cog in the trade machine, in fact! Credit where it’s due: The series title graphic combines three images: The Clipper Ship Image is […]

I know some readers (Hi, Johnn!) who simply zone out when the word “Alignment” is mentioned, but bear with me. There’s good reason why it’s downplayed in the newest editions, decoupled from racial profiles and game mechanics, but this is alignment as you’ve never seen it before, with a whole different purpose. This is the […]

Repeated from last time: The concept of an abstracted “Trade Unit” lies at the heart of making Trade a playable event on a recurring and large scale. Without it, you bog down in minutia; with it in place, direct comparisons become easier and decisions far more prone to “make themselves” unless overridden for story purposes. […]

The concept of an abstracted “Trade Unit” lies at the heart of making Trade a playable event on a recurring and large scale. Without it, you bog down in minutia; with it in place, direct comparisons become easier and decisions far more prone to “make themselves” unless overridden for story purposes. Understanding the process of […]

Certain fundamental questions need to be answered about any business operation that the PCs get involved with, either as employees or owners before we can get into game mechanics for the actual operation of an in-game business. Credit where it’s due: The series title graphic combines three images: The Clipper Ship Image is by Brigitte […]

Preliminaries: A long time ago, I wrote “Trade In Traveler”. This week (and in the weeks to come) I’m starting a companion piece, “Trade In Fantasy”. Non-Fantasy GMs – I suggest either using the Trade in Traveler rules or updating them using this series as a guide. Depending on how long winded I get in […]

Cuisine is one of the ultimate distillations of culture. This is how RPGs can harness this fact. Introduction I watch a lot of travel documentaries and short videos, especially those that compare cultures. Not only are they inherently interesting to me, they give me vital cultural reference for games that take place in those nations, […]

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. Part 2 took a solid look at Science Fiction campaigns (and was supposed to also include everything I cover this time around. These genres were not chosen capriciously; between the four […]

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. This time, Science Fiction! Recapping The Process 0. Make a list of possible Mundane Activities (optional, but it helps). 1. Pick A Mundane Activity. 2. If it’s not something the PCs […]