Campaign Mastery

Of late, I’ve had to create fantastic creatures for several of my campaigns, and despite the clear and obvious differences between the game systems employed, I found myself struck by a number of similarities in the process employed. When I tried to articulate those similarities for an article here at Campaign Mastery, it refused to […]

During play this Saturday past, I had reason to dissect a Save. The entire process took only a few seconds at the time, thoughts following one on another so quickly that there was barely enough time to get a fleeting impression of one before it was chased out by the next. I was helped in […]

Like most article writers, I accumulate ideas that prove to be too small to be a worthwhile post in their own right. Every now and then, I gather these up and compile an assemblage of unrelated miniature articles as a single item. That’s today’s recipe… 1. Surrounding Language English is full of synonyms, words and […]

Character Development for an RPG is unlike it’s analogue in any other medium. That wasn’t always the case; we have learned how to do it the way most GMs and players do it now, the hard way. But I’ve recently become aware of a perception that the modern way is the only way, and that’s […]

I saw an answer on Quora the other week which related to the consequences of a 200-tonne asteroid made completely of gold crashing to Earth. The answer dealt with the economic repercussions based on the resulting crash in the price of gold because the value attached to many commodities is a measure of their rarity. […]

When you create an RPG adventure, what’s the first question you should ask? This very issue became a factor when my co-GM and I set about writing Adventure 31 for the Adventurer’s Club Campaign a week or two ago. The First question should not be how you get the PCs involved. It should not be […]

It’s September again (already!) and that means that Campaign Mastery has its regularly-scheduled hosting duties for the Blog Carnival (The one back in March was an ‘extra’ because no-one else stepped forward to host, and I thought of a topic). So what have I got to offer this time around? Places Of Exotic Reality Describe […]

0. Preliminaries Combat is a central aspect of almost every RPG, but most GMs are not as familiar with Tactics and Strategy as the forces they command within a game would be. That’s a problem, but the situation becomes even more untenable when GMs become aware that a basic knowledge of tactics can broaden their […]

Have you ever watched a repeat of a show that you once enjoyed and thought, “this hasn’t aged well?” Have you ever re-read a book that you enjoyed in your youth, only to discover that the magic just wasn’t there any more? When you listen to old favorites on the radio, do they ever sound […]

Last time we played my superhero campaign, the players got through all the material that I had prepared and polished with more than an hour of playing time remaining. (I thought that I had prepped enough – but, oh well…) While I had some vague ideas about what was to follow, I hadn’t yet put […]

This is an article inspired by a bus stop. As I got off the bus at my stop the other day, I briefly contemplated the fact that I had two different routes to choose between. I always choose one over the other as being faster than the alternative, despite having to wait for a ‘walk’ […]

If you want to start a conversation with a tabletop gamer, all you have to do is ask their opinion on GMs fudging die rolls. Everyone has an opinion, a theoretical best-practice policy, and everyone has a preferred approach in the real world – and the two don’t always match. Some people even have different […]