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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Distillations Of Personality is an unfinished series at Campaign Mastery about the tips and tricks that I use for designing NPCs in my campaigns. As originally conceived, and as it will be executed, this article was not part of the 3-part series. So don’t bother searching for parts 2 and 3 – they haven’t been […]

One of the oldest plots in the RPG canon is the search for a lost treasure, guided either by a map or trail of clues. This, like any other puzzle, gets solved like a detective novel or TV show – a mystery to be divined, one clue or step at a time. But there are […]

This month’s Blog Carnival is being hosted by Pitfalls & Pixies, and the subject is all things Fey. I’ve never been very satisfied with the way D&D handles Fey. There was not enough information in AD&D to run them properly; they seemed to be just dressed-up humans, or monsters like any other (just a little […]

Over the weekend, Campaign Mastery was described by the very flattering term, “one of the best Treasure Troves for a DM”. Aside from feeling very chuffed at the compliment, my mind immediately started to think about Treasure Troves. This article is the result. The Map So, how do you find a treasure trove? The two […]

This article was prompted by last Saturday’s play in my Zenith-3 (superheroes) game, but I use the techniques in all my campaigns. But I want to start by quoting a question that I answered over the weekend on Quora, because it’s also relevant. When running an AD&D game, what do you do to really make […]

The Genesis Of An Article A little more than two weeks ago, as I write this, I had an unusual dream (a known side-effect of some of my medications) in which I wrote two articles for Campaign Mastery. When I awoke, I remembered them, and immediately made the appropriate notes. In the dream, one had […]

There are lots of good reasons to have a strong supporting cast in an RPG. They permit interactions which reveal or highlight aspects of a PC that otherwise might get an infrequent airing, for one thing. Trusted NPCs can serve as proxies for the PCs, or can supplement their skill-base. Or, fourth, they can facilitate […]