Campaign Mastery

0. New Year, Old Business Welcome to 2017! I hope every reader has had a happy and safe Holiday period and is now ready to face the New Year with gusto and confidence, recharged and re-energized. For the first time in, I think, eight or nine years, I took the Christmas/New Period off, completely. No […]

I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last couple of weeks working on the next adventure in the Zenith-3 campaign, and the techniques employed have enabled me to illustrate some of the techniques that I’ve written about in the past. Normally, I would not post an article on the subject until after the […]

The Tenth Shelf: Beliefs I (Religions, Nazi Occultism, & Cthulhu) – Introduction by Mike It’s always difficult when you need to take something that was supposed to be whole and split it in two, usually for reasons of practicality. Take this shelf and the next as a case in point: No-one can argue that Religion, […]

The Ninth Shelf: Life In The Pulp Era II – Non-Civilian Life [Crime, Policing, and Militaria] – Introduction by Mike It sometimes seems that the term “delicate balancing act’ is over-used, but when it comes to Pulp it is a true description of some aspect of reality for the GM in at least some respects. […]

The Eighth Shelf – Life In The Pulp Era I: Civilian Life – Introduction by Mike This month’s blog carnival is about “Ordinary Life” and is being hosted by Campaign Mastery, so its’ fitting that the vagaries of chance and publication schedules has this shelf of the reference library appearing in the course of it. […]

Another monster post (18,400 words), another late posting. I once swore that I would never be involved in anything this large and complicated on a weekly deadline again; but every two or three years, it seems, overconfidence or hubris combine with a really good idea, and before you know it… Three things in particular caused […]

This is the second half of this article; the first dealt with character backstories during character generation, and this deals with making use of them once play has started. It is also the third of five articles scheduled to be part of the November 2016 Blog Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is hosting. The carnival subject […]

This is an article in two parts – the first dealing with character backstories during character generation, and the second dealing with them during play. It is also the second of five articles scheduled to be part of the November 2016 Blog Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is hosting. The carnival subject is “ordinary life” – […]

The Sixth Shelf: Hardware I: Weapons, Things, and Science – Introduction by Mike Pulp technology and science is a very strange animal. It can encompass everything from steampunk to space opera, Monoplanes to UFOs, and yet it remains grounded in the very real technology available in the 1920s and 1930s. The difficulty is always not […]

Finally, it’s done! This has turned into the largest single post ever published by Campaign Mastery, and by a huge margin. So, what happened? Well, when the initial blowout took place I calculated, based on the Europe results, that I could expect to have to add another 216 entries or so, at an average of […]

The Fourth Shelf: The Exotic Places Another delayed post, caused by the same expansion that caused trouble last time – and will again cause delays once more. Reluctantly, it has become necessary to revise both the breakdown and publishing schedule to insert an additional shelf. For consistency, Part Zero will be revised accordingly at the […]

Every now and then I try to squeeze in reviews of Kickstarters and other new products that have caught my eye. I don’t have the time to do as many of these as I would like, but every now and then the stars collide in just the right way. Today I have six products and […]