Posts Tagged ‘DM-Advice’

Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures

A short time ago, we received an ATGMs question that made me stop and think for a minute. The question was straightforward; Angeline wrote, “I need some help, I’m a starting DM and I just have so much trouble coming up with Campaigns or good plot lines. Please help!!” Every now and then in this […]

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Running the Game II: Notes and Organization

This entry is part 9 of 14 in the series GM Toolbox

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane and Johnn Four. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to […]

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Running the Game I: Creating the Mood

This entry is part 8 of 14 in the series GM Toolbox

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments […]

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Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: The Value Of Magic

How much is a magic item worth? Well, there’s the book value, which can be obtained by cracking open the sourcebook to the relevant page. But that just gives its price – I want to talk about how much it is worth. What is it’s value to its owner? What’s it worth from a character […]

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Loot As Part Of The Plot: Making, Earning, Finding, Analyzing, Using, Selling, and Destroying Loot

Today, I wanted to once again cast a glance over the subject of this month’s Blog Carnival and try to give a general view of the many number of ways that Loot can be made part of the plot, without getting too deeply into specifics. This article is intended to be a companion piece to […]

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Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic

From everything I’ve read – starting with early issues of The Dungeon, continuing with “Through Dungeons Deep”, and running all the way through to numerous blog posts – a lot of GMs have trouble connecting the desire to “make the loot part of the plot” with techniques for actually achieving this goal. It’s my impression […]

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The Creation Of A Deity: The Origins Of Cyrene

Recalling the creation of a Divinity We’re continuing to build up to the big release of Assassin’s Amulet, and my excitement is reaching fever pitch (I can’t speak for Johnn & Michael). As part of that buildup, next week I’m going to present you with another excerpt from the book – but before I do, […]

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Dark Shadows In The Night: Lessons from the writing of Assassin’s Amulet

Intro Rather than present another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, I thought that today I would take the time to extract a few valuable lessons from the experience of writing it. Several reasons commend themselves for doing so: first, there are some ideas there that we would be happy to see adopted by our peers in […]

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Five (Plus One!) Effective Combat Tactics for Assassins

Here’s another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet while you’re all waiting for the announcement of the winner of the cover contest. This is taken from the GM Advice chapter and first appeared in this week’s Roleplaying Tips. Many GMs struggle with running killer NPCs. One big goal of the book is to arm you with enough […]

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50 Assassin Hooks

An edited excerpt from the upcoming book for game masters, Assassin’s Amulet. Assassins make awesome NPCs. Thing is, they often have paper-thin character development. Well, you can fix this right now. Start by giving your next assassin one of the tasty hooks below. Some hooks concern motives, others personality traits, and others situations or objectives. […]

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Roleplaying Assassins: An excerpt from Assassins Amulet

Assassins should be compelling NPCs in every encounter in which they appear. This article, an excerpt from the forthcoming Assassin’s Amulet, describes how to run Assassins as compelling characters to roleplay and deadly adversaries to fight. And don’t forget to vote for the cover! Step 1: Pick an Archetype or Example Creating an assassin NPC […]

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Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures

300 and other landmarks This is our 300th post here at Campaign Mastery! Over the last couple of months we’ve seen a number of other landmarks come and go, but this is the biggest of them. While we thought about making a fuss over the others, it just didn’t seem that long ago that we […]

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