Campaign Mastery

Last week, I gave you the backstory behind the creation of Cyrene, a deity of Life who figures prominantly in our forthcoming game supplement, Assassin’s Amulet. This time around, it’s time to followup that post with an edited excerpt from AA describing the lady herself… Cyrene (Greater Deity) Titles/Incarnations: Giver of Mercy, Weaver of Nets, […]

An edited excerpt from the upcoming book for game masters, Assassin’s Amulet. Assassins make awesome NPCs. Thing is, they often have paper-thin character development. Well, you can fix this right now. Start by giving your next assassin one of the tasty hooks below. Some hooks concern motives, others personality traits, and others situations or objectives. […]

Real Life has caught up with me this week, so this won’t be as extensive an article as I was originally intending. But I’m going to do my best to turn that into an asset. This post was also intended to be Campaign Mastery’s entry into this month’s Blog Carnival, which was going to be […]

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments […]

March 2011’s RPG Blog Carnival covered Life and Death in RPG. Full XP to everyone who participated with insightful and inspirational articles, and thanks for your contributions. Readers, you are in for a treat as you have many articles to choose from this month. I encourage you to read through them and make life and […]

Who says undead can’t have personality? While rank and file skeletons and zombies will get mowed down faster than you can roleplay, you can turn any single undead into a remarkable NPC. To do that, you just need to add a few details beyond the stat block. Today’s generator will help you do this. Skull […]

Drow are soon to make their appearance in my Riddleport campaign. They are part of The Great Game being played out in the background as the characters struggle for fame and power in the pirate city. To help me GM the dark elves I created the following tables and references. Maybe they would be useful […]

Great names are critical for immersion. Name an NPC Bob and you set a bad tone for any serious campaign. However, even the best GMs get stumped occasionally on generating great names. Following are links to several online names resources, lists and generators. Before diving into the links though, I have a naming tip for […]

Continuing the hooks series, today we have a bunch of priestly ones for your holy edification. Many came out as missions rather than internal character struggles or personality quirks. More actionable than character-revealing this time around. Use these for PCs or NPCS. Sensing his wanderlust and noting his independent manner, the church has asked him […]

Q-Workshop sent me a set of orange elven dice. The design and graceful script on their faces would give great luck to any elven PC or NPC, I’m certain. Very nice dice. Continuing on with the series started last month with a random political plot generator, this month we offer you a random high elf […]

A friend I once gamed with was awesome at celebrating gaming. He made sessions into special events. He had props. He talked about games in a special way, like a sports fan does about when their team won the championship that year. He celebrated the details and told stories about special session moments. It was […]

Bryan Howard recently submitted this tip to Roleplaying Tips: Former PCs as NPCs The best and easiest way to have great NPCs is to inject your old characters. The fighter who settled down and opened a tavern, school or guild. The cleric who built his own temple. Another way is to use former player characters […]