Campaign Mastery

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 […]

WARNING — This turned into a very long post of more than 12,500 words – that’s three times my usual length. Get yourself a drink and a snack before you start! How Long Can You Hold Your Breath? It’s a simple enough question, isn’t it? And so easy to resolve – all it takes is […]

For a long time, I’ve been working on a Lifestyle / Wealth system for my superhero game system, which is loosely based on the Hero System (4th ed). The rules needed to be simpler than the official rules, less able to offer benefits to PCs and NPCs beyond the value that would normally be associated […]

I recently came across a system for magical weapons that both opens up availability of high-level magical bonuses while also restricting them. This enables a campaign setting to be quite low-magic while still providing an avenue for those who absolutely must have a +5 weapon or better. I’m proposing, in this article, to adapt the […]

WARNING: At around 35000 words, this is certainly one of the longest posts here at Campaign Mastery! Settle in for a long and sometimes-bumpy ride, folks… This is part two of my review / demonstration of the “Tangled Web” campaign sub-structure. I’m going to presume that you’ve already read part one, which you can find […]

  This is my 998th post at CM! Two more to the 4-figure milestone!   In my superhero campaign, the PCs are currently shopping for a building to convert into a base of operations for a second set of superhero/civilian Identities that UNTIL has prompted them to create so that they can deal with problems […]

This is a post in three almost completely unrelated segments. I start with some sad news, follow that with our regularly-scheduled article, and conclude with a sneak preview of next week’s article, for reasons that will become obvious.   In Memorium I have to open today’s post with some sad news: Brian “Fitz” Fitzpatrick has […]

I saw a question on Quora the other day asking how you could give an RPG a particular style. I thought about giving an answer, but the more I thought about it, the more complicated the question became. No campaign is imbued with its own unique style right from the get-go. It takes time, and […]

“Game Physics*” have been on my mind lately, no doubt because of my recently published article on the underpinning theory of how Magic works in my superhero campaign. This article is primarily aimed at D&D / Pathfinder / Fantasy GMs, but it may also serve in other genres in which the underlying “science” doesn’t match […]

(originally titled ‘Flowing Mana and other arcane concepts’) Today, I thought I would share with you a few concepts from my superhero campaign that relate to the “science” of how magic works. I’ve addressed the circumstances under which these were presented in-play in an earlier post; this is more about delivering the high-concept ideas themselves […]

It has always been my opinion that of all the pantheons, the Norse are the most suited to application within a superhero campaign. The Greek deities are too whimsical, the Romans too arrogant; the Norse are the most level-headed in many respects. What’s more, the Vikings had a sense of the rule of law that […]

I originally started writing this as a contribution to the May 2020 Blog Carnival, hosted by Moebius Adventures, but when I wasn’t able to finish it in time, I set it aside for later completion. It is now “later”… Travel The theme of the May carnival was “Are we there yet”, and the subject matter […]