Campaign Mastery

In many respects, it’s easier being a player than a GM. Since the player determines the personality of the character, as well as what the character says and does, there is in fact no ‘right way’ or ‘wrong way’ to roleplay any given character – only ‘better’ or ‘worse’. It’s a bit like being able […]

Prophecies and prophetic visions are a staple of just about every game genre (even in Western Campaigns, the Indian Medicine Men might have them). GMs like using prophecies for a number of reasons: They impart a sense of wonder to the campaign They confer the impression of a wider universe around the PCs They show […]

I know I’ve written about this before (An Epic Confusion, Or How To Stage A Blockbuster Finish), but I’ve been thinking some more about big finishes to campaigns, prompted by the fact that my superhero campaign is currently in what I hope turns out to be an epic conclusion. As I developed this final scenario, […]

This is always a controversial subject, and one that I was already contemplating a blog post discussing, when Johnn added the following to last week’s Roleplaying Tips: RPT reader Brock writes: I enjoy good role-play and developing my character’s personality. To me, that is still the primary reason I play RPGs. On the other hand, […]

This post is the end of a long road! It started with a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. Parts two and three highlighted what I believe to be the causes of the problems Garry identified, and provided an alternative perspective on Alignment that turned it into one of the most useful […]

How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world? Sometimes, the simplest questions have the most complicated or profound answers. So it was with some trepidation that we’ve approached this question, which was asked virtually exactly as it’s quoted at the head of this article. The short answer […]

Some GMs read nothing but official gaming product. Others expand their horizons to include Game Supplements from other sources, both officially-sanctioned and homebrew. A few go further, and seek out genre-related works and referances from which they can seek out inspiration and detail. Very few are what I would describe as “Literary GMs”, who read […]

What are the best ways to handle splitting the party up – especially over the long term? An interesting question was asked of us recently: I’m planning a pretty good science fiction game that will most likely involve party splits during a good percentage of the game. While this seems like it may be a […]

Some mistakes you (hopefully) only make once; the mistakes that I’ve blogged about so far as part of this month’s carnival fall into that category. But some mistakes are bound to recur by their nature, and it is just as important to know how to recover from those. These mistakes might derive from a flawed […]

How do you extrapolate from existing rules to cover new situations? Recently, Campaign Mastery was asked, If a giant has rapid shot can he throw 2 rocks in a full round action? (d&d 3.5) This sparked some debate over whether Campaign Mastery should answer rules questions of this sort; we aim to deal with big-picture […]

Someone once asked me why D&D bothers to include skills at all. After all, the GM generally tells the players anything they really need to know (rather than seeing all his hard work in preparing the game crash and burn); and even if he doesn’t, players can always take a twenty. After further discussion, this […]

Means, Motive, and Opportunity. The M-M-O triad are the foundation of mystery stories and crime fiction in general, and have been for centuries. To be fair, most stories rely on the fallability and limitations of the triad as a means of solving those mysteries, especially on the first and third of the trio. Motives, after […]