Campaign Mastery

There are three tricks that I use all the time when designing adventures, characters, races, campaigns, cultures, NPCs and Villainous Plans for RPGs, and for rebooting tired old characters. I call them the magic bullets of design, and I’ve written about most of them several times before – but there is always something new to […]

A book on the structures and natures of different governments within our world got me to thinking anew about perhaps the most seminal creation within the background of the Hero System – U.N.T.I.L. Specifically, thinking about who the organization is; how they fit into the policies, principles and charter of the United Nations; what’s wrong […]

What do you do when the PCs start recruiting people as information sources? A game master writes: Hi Mike and Johnn, I’m running a 3.5 D&D campaign, where the player characters are largely based in a major city. Because of the structure and history of the campaign world, my major cities are quite large, which […]

The DMG II for D&D 3.5 defines Prestige Classes as representing organisations; Taking a prestige class is synonymous with joining the organisation that the Prestige Class represents. At least, that was the original theory. The fact is that it was only ever partially true in D&D 3.5, and D&D 4 has a completely different paradigm […]