Campaign Mastery

GMs are called apon to make decisions all the time. Sometimes we can make our choices off the top of our heads using common sense and our knowledge of the in-game environment/circumstances, sometimes we can be guided by the rules after identifying an analogous situation, and sometimes when both of these fail us, we can […]

Hero Game’s Policy on publishing house rules is both enlightened and occasionally maddening. They have no problem with people posting their own characters, or discussing their rules, or publishing house rules – provided that you don’t quote directly from their rulebooks and your rules don’t exceed 5,000 words in length. You can’t publish variations on […]

I’m going to step aside from the usual practice of talking to GMs about how to improve their game for a few weeks in favor of what used to be a popular subject around the watercooler-analogue – and still causes game companies angst and sweaty nights, even today: the perceived value-for-money of game products. If […]

A bit of a departure from the usual today, with an article that is only indirectly game-related. Every now and then, you have to let your imagination run wild or it gets soft and flabby… normal service will resume on Thursday, this was just something that I had to get out of my system. Hopefully, […]

Introduction (reprised from Part 1) I use scenario/adventure titles all the time. Used correctly, they can put players into the correct frame of mind to react in the “right” way to the events in a scenario, conceal the identity of a villain until or hide a plot twist until the big reveal, heighten the drama […]

Pieces Of Creation is an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike offers game reference and other materials that he has created for his own campaigns. All images used to illustrate this article are public-domain works hosted by Wikipedia Commons, or derivations of such works. This article is a work of fiction and […]

I use scenario/adventure titles all the time. Used correctly, they can put players into the correct frame of mind to react in the “right” way to the events in a scenario, conceal the identity of a villain until or hide a plot twist until the big reveal, heighten the drama of a situation and/or raise […]

Pieces Of Creation is an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike offers game reference and other materials that he has created for his own campaigns. All images used to illustrate this article are public-domain works hosted by Wikipedia, Wikipedia Commons, or derivations of such works, except as noted, and except for the […]

Pieces Of Creation is an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike offers game reference and other materials that he has created for his own campaigns. All images used to illustrate this article are public-domain works hosted by Wikipedia, Wikipedia Commons, or derivations of such works, except as noted. This article is a […]

So, here it is: a day late, thanks to the Easter long weekend, but better late than never! Normal Service will be restored next week… in the meantime, enjoy. We’re still working our way through what was originally intended to be Part 4 of this series, believe it or not! Part 1 concerned itself with […]

Pieces Of Creation is an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike offers game reference and other materials that he has created for his own campaigns. All images used to illustrate this article are public-domain works hosted by Wikipedia, Wikipedia Commons, or derivations of such works, except for the image of Prince Charles […]

Only a short post this week, I’m afraid, and half of it is taken up with a reality check on where things stand at this point for readers who may be coming in late. I could have continued, but I would like to start each Chapter in it’s own post – so I’ll make up […]