Campaign Mastery

My apologies for the delay in posting this. I was struggling with exhaustion for hours last night (my time) in a bid to get it done; sometime between 11 and midnight, I succumbed, awaking almost 4 hours later, slumped over the keyboard. I still wouldn’t have been able to post it on time without that […]

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 […]

Have you ever watched a repeat of a show that you once enjoyed and thought, “this hasn’t aged well?” Have you ever re-read a book that you enjoyed in your youth, only to discover that the magic just wasn’t there any more? When you listen to old favorites on the radio, do they ever sound […]

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 […]

This is an article about a technique for repairing continuity and plot problems that is especially suited to long-running campaigns and to campaigns deriving from published sources. I’m not going to leave anyone who hasn’t mastered telepathy in suspense: the technique is Patching one plot hole with another. For some that will be enough of […]

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 […]

A Narrative Evolution Of Reality I construct very detailed plotlines for most of my campaigns. There are: Primary Campaign-Level Plotlines that permanently shape or reshape the context within which all the individual adventures take place. Usually consist of tent-pole Events and paradigm shifts within adventures, and are often describable as the outcome of a string […]

New years are about new beginnings, about punctuating the year that was, to separate it (however artificially, however optimistically) from the year that is to come. This article is about new beginnings, and being aware of the options you have, but it might not seem so, at first. Bear with me…. One of the hardest […]

At the end of the last Pulp session, one of our players informed my co-GM and I that they might not be able to attend the next session. Because sessions of this campaign are a month apart, this constituted ample notice, and we’re going to be able to carry on without him. We’re sure that […]

Clickbait. That one word can open a fascinating can of worms in any discussion, should anyone care to sample the contents. In researching this article through Wikipedia, “Clickbait” led me to “Betteridge’s law of Headlines” which led me to “Sensationalism”, while the original article also called up “Yellow Journalism” and “Media Manipulation”. I’m going to […]

Being invited recently to participate in play-testing for Pathfinder 2.0 (or whatever they are calling it) – an invitation that I had to, regretfully, decline – has, nevertheless, fired my imagination. I keep returning to the question, “If I were one of the authors tasked with updating the game system, what would I do?” Surprisingly, […]

There’s a TV Series that every GM, regardless of the genre of their games, should be watching. It’s a show that I’ve discussed before, in a completely different context – in The Expert In Everything, and it’s name is Scorpion. Why? Simply put, because it contains so many lessons for the GM. To be specific: […]