Campaign Mastery

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but there are some creature types that automatically get tagged as the villains as soon as they appear. This is true in D&D, in Pathfinder, in a superhero game, a pulp / horror game – you name it. These are ‘the obvious villains’ and today’s article is all […]

I steal inspiration and technique from anywhere that I can find it, but I’m always careful to credit my sources (especially when the application is a bit left-of-field). In the past that has given me articles such as Growing The Perfect Family Tree (Part 1, Part 2), The Ashes: Understanding Brit and Aussie Characters, and Lessons […]

My co-GM and I have almost finished designing the next adventure in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, entitled “Lucifer Rising”. This will be the 33rd adventure in the main continuity (which doesn’t count a half-dozen of fill-in adventures along the way). This adventure is notable for having a slightly different structure to most of them, and […]

With the conclusion of the Zener Gate campaign, I’ve been thinking about what comes next. In fact, it’s fair to say that it’s been somewhere on my mind for most of 2022, if not always front-and-center. About six months ago, I decided that I would resurrect the Warcry campaign, even though it would need some […]

The story so far… This is the third article in this series, and the second of a set of mini-posts that I’m going to be 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 will examine one of […]

The story so far… This is the second article in this series, and the first of a set of mini-posts that I’m going to be 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 mini-blitz. Each post will examine one of […]

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 – […]

For a long time, I’ve been working on a Lifestyle / Wealth system for my superhero game system, which is loosely based on the Hero System (4th ed). The rules needed to be simpler than the official rules, less able to offer benefits to PCs and NPCs beyond the value that would normally be associated […]

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 […]