Campaign Mastery

Another monster post (18,400 words), another late posting. I once swore that I would never be involved in anything this large and complicated on a weekly deadline again; but every two or three years, it seems, overconfidence or hubris combine with a really good idea, and before you know it… Three things in particular caused […]

This is the second half of this article; the first dealt with character backstories during character generation, and this deals with making use of them once play has started. It is also the third of five articles scheduled to be part of the November 2016 Blog Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is hosting. The carnival subject […]

This is an article in two parts – the first dealing with character backstories during character generation, and the second dealing with them during play. It is also the second of five articles scheduled to be part of the November 2016 Blog Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is hosting. The carnival subject is “ordinary life” – […]

The Sixth Shelf: Hardware I: Weapons, Things, and Science – Introduction by Mike Pulp technology and science is a very strange animal. It can encompass everything from steampunk to space opera, Monoplanes to UFOs, and yet it remains grounded in the very real technology available in the 1920s and 1930s. The difficulty is always not […]

This is being written on October 31, which is one of those Iconic dates in North America and catching on (thanks to the marketing muscle of various supermarkets and retailers, who are always looking for an angle that will persuade you to buy something extra) through large parts of the rest of the world. This […]

In addition to everything else I have going on here at Campaign Mastery, next month we are scheduled to host the Blog Carnival. The current carnival over at of Dice and Dragons is all about potions, and – despite having covered that subject in depth in the first part of the Spell Storage Solutions series […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the size of creatures lately, because it seems to me that size poses unexpected problems for the GM. This is a subject that’s been at the back of my mind for years, ever since it was pointed out to me that Dragons are never as tough as they are […]

Finally, it’s done! This has turned into the largest single post ever published by Campaign Mastery, and by a huge margin. So, what happened? Well, when the initial blowout took place I calculated, based on the Europe results, that I could expect to have to add another 216 entries or so, at an average of […]

The Fourth Shelf: The Exotic Places Another delayed post, caused by the same expansion that caused trouble last time – and will again cause delays once more. Reluctantly, it has become necessary to revise both the breakdown and publishing schedule to insert an additional shelf. For consistency, Part Zero will be revised accordingly at the […]

Every now and then I try to squeeze in reviews of Kickstarters and other new products that have caught my eye. I don’t have the time to do as many of these as I would like, but every now and then the stars collide in just the right way. Today I have six products and […]

The Third Shelf: More-Ordinary Places We struggled a little in trying to find a good summary for this shelf’s contents, the first of two dealing with locations and geography. Locations are important to any RPG – that’s why Campaign Mastery devoted an entire Blog Carnival to the subject a while back (you can read summaries […]

This is (still) the fifth of these Ask-The-GMs that I’m tackling without recourse to my usual allies and fellow-GMs. Traps and puzzles are always a tricky problem for the GM. All too often they focus attention on one particular character and leave the rest sitting around doing nothing, possibly for what feels like an extraordinary […]