Campaign Mastery

Landscapes are wonderful things, more significant & useful than many GMs realize. This post focuses on using Landscapes, both literal and metaphoric, using the lessons from the first part of the article. This is Part t 2 of 2. This is the 4th of my time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series, which […]

It’s my contention that with every encounter, the canny GM will expand on the lore surrounding the creatures encountered. I’ve been plugging away steadily at the next part of the Trade In Fantasy series, in which a lot of the elements discussed start to come together into a coherent picture of the processes, but it’s […]

Sub-stories are akin to small anecdotes of a dramatic nature that can add interest, depth, color, and backstory to encounters. What’s not to like? I’ve started writing this article at least half-a-dozen times over the years, but it’s always fallen apart on me before I got to the interesting parts, simply because it’s been so […]

I love it when I discover something that GMs should be using and aren’t, because it means that I get to analyze the reasons, and devise solutions to whatever is holding people back – and I learn things and develop tools for my own use in the process. By my count that’s win-win-win-win – and […]

I get asked every now and then how I’m doing, same as everyone else, but there’s a difference since I am officially disabled. I’ve always resisted talking about my physical condition and medical problems in any depth here are Campaign Mastery, though I relented a little in Dice & Life: pt 2. But recently I […]

Writing and uploading this in advance in hopes of forestalling any disruption. It’s been a while since I did something on characterization; the last such was Four Roads To Characterization, back in late 2022. Hopefully this is a worthy extension of the subject. While packing recently, I discovered first-hand something that I already knew, deep […]

This is literally the second part of the article I posted last week, so I’ll forego all the usual preamble bits and pieces, just as I did the last time this happened, diving straight in from where I left off – well, almost. Writing like this sometimes has strange confluences and coincidences, and in this […]

“Show, don’t tell” is a common maxim when it comes to literary entertainments, and something that has been gleefully expropriated as good advice for other media. That includes TV, Movies, and, of course, Roleplaying Games. I was thinking about that during the last week, and noting how much easier it was for the other two […]

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 […]

So November has come and gone, and with it, Campaign Mastery’s bonus hosting of the Blog Carnival. Those who got inspired by the topic did a stellar job with some very interesting contributions, which I’ll summarize later in this wrap-up post. Sadly, there weren’t really enough participants for that to fill this article. Possibly, misunderstanding […]

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 […]

I have said before that you can never have too many approaches to determining the characterization of an NPC up your sleeve. Today’s article offers a new one, and a systematic way of looking at simpler approaches that can also be useful. Let’s start by setting a baseline for comparison… 0. Going Nowhere: The Null […]