Campaign Mastery

This is part 2 of the guest article on Wars in TTRPGs by Alexander Atoz. Wars are inevitable in most RPGs, sooner or later, but GMs often struggle to walk the fine line between making the conflict seem realistically big enough and keeping the experience personal to the players. Vast armies lend themselves to Roll-playing, […]

An observed pattern sheds surprising light on how RPG styles differ from one nation to another. This is the latest in my series of time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series. The YouTube viewer that I use most often displays, at the end of a video, thumbnails of other videos that you might […]

Preliminaries: A long time ago, I wrote “Trade In Traveler”. This week (and in the weeks to come) I’m starting a companion piece, “Trade In Fantasy”. Non-Fantasy GMs – I suggest either using the Trade in Traveler rules or updating them using this series as a guide. Depending on how long winded I get in […]

A word of advice: Each part of the series builds heavily on the content from the previous one. While you may be able to get relevant information without doing so, to get the most of out of each, you should have read the preceding article. In this case, though, that “previous part” is actually the […]

A word of advice: Each part of the series builds heavily on the content from the previous one. While you may be able to get relevant information without doing so, to get the most of out of each, you should have read the preceding article. Welcome & General Introduction I’ve said it before: With each […]

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 […]

This was intended to be part of a single, self-contained article – but the more I look at it, the more inevitable it seems that what did happen, would happen. Make sure you’ve read Part 1 before continuing! I intend to dive straight in and pick up exactly where I left off, but first, there’s […]

One of the essential skills that has to be in every GM’s toolkit is the ability to interleave research into subjects that they, and their players, know nothing about into the stories that they craft for their campaigns. Way back in September 2014, I produced an abbreviated list of subjects that a GM arguably had […]

It took so much longer to plan out the article that I intended to publsh today, and it contains so many sections that I hasd grave doubts that I could finish it in time. Rather than risk having nothing to post in what is already shaping up to be a very busy week, I decided […]

Chase mechanics are some of the hardest things in an RPG to get right – so much so that a lot don’t even try (and sometimes go to considerable lengths to hide the fact). So I was very interested when Evil Genius Games offered me the chance to review the chase mechanics from their upcoming […]

Not long ago, I saw a game result that bucked the established trend in outcomes, a potent reminder of the unpredictability of sports. After losing the first four games of a five-game series against Australia (T20 International Cricket), the Sri Lanka team posted a comprehensive win to salvage some pride and deflate Australian egos just […]

I was originally going to post a collection of mini-articles, as I did a while back in Typo Inzpiration and other mini-posts – but, just before actually starting work, I changed my mind. Separating the three into distinct posts not only gives each room to grow (the way this one did), which may be important […]