Campaign Mastery

Today I’m going to discuss the art and utilization of the Synopsis. While I might omit these from time to time in my campaigns, notably at the start of a new adventure, or even position a “big-picture status update” after an opening action / dramatic sequence, they are routinely part of my mid-adventure structure. This […]

RPGs have a lot of genre elements that do not exist in the real world. Magic, Divine visitations, strange creatures, non-human races with exotic capabilities, exotic potions and arcane enchantments of all kinds, and that’s just the fantasy genre! On top of that, there’s the look-and-feel of the environment, and that means that certain actions […]

It’s a classic television trope: the message story (sometimes called the Aesop). But there are some serious problems that you’ll encounter adapting the concept to an RPG adventure. Fortunately, they aren’t insuperable. The Problems There are four issues that frequently present themselves in creating message stories: There needs to be a script Players won’t follow […]

It’s happened to us all at some point: the adventure has sidetracked down an unexpected alleyway and brought the PCs face-to-face with a character that you’ve made up on the spot. When this happens, you’re generally thinking only in physical terms, at least in the immediate term; that is because the first interaction that the […]

Folk wisdom is a funny old thing. Sometimes it’s a pearl, other times it’s what in Australia might be called a Pearler. Much of the time, it’s sensible, practical advice when applied to situations that are comparable to that which gave rise to the saying; – and incredibly foolhardy when not. For example, take that […]

A Tale Of Australian Cuisine I have the advantage of living in a country which is remote from just about everywhere, in which much of the culture has been imported from Europe and the US, and parts of Asia. That’s particularly true when it comes to diet. Our basic recipes have all been imported from […]

I didn’t quite get the next part of the Sixes System written up in time – I’m only a few hours short of target, having written almost 6000 words, but time has run out. So I’ll use one of my standby articles and finish the Sixes System up for publication before next week’s disruption. Have […]

Part 4 of the Sixes System is almost done – It only needs another day-and-a-half of work. Sadly, 1.5 doesn’t fit into 1, and I reached that point with only 1 more working day to get a post ready. So here’s one of the fill-in articles that I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for […]

When a deity shows up in your game, how do you make sure the PCs – and more important, the players – know what they are dealing with? How do they recognize that the being that stands before them is something more than mortal? Of course, sometimes it’s obvious that the creature before them isn’t […]

Some History It used to be so simple, back when I first started GMing AD&D. Each monster had a treasure type, and each treasure type had a table (or sequence of tables) that you rolled on, and a set of rolls on that table determined what treasure would be found in the vicinity. Room, Inhabitant, […]

Maximilian Hart puts out a daily newsletter with a short thought and some links to resources that may be of value to D&D GMs called Dungeon Master Daily (subscribe and read some more about this resource here. Of course, some of those links and resources have a broader applicability, which is the main reason I […]

I have a professional interest in Runes. The Mage in my superhero campaign (Zenith-3) uses Runes as the focus of his spell-casting, and I’m always looking for ways to invoke the resulting flavor, and for the implied limitations and benefits that come from this approach. It has been established, for example, that it’s not enough […]