Campaign Mastery

A shorter article today (by CM standards), but one with a lot of impact to offer. The head of the ruined statue lay on its side, half-buried in soil and vegetation. Three meters from crown to chin, the sculpture of which it was originally a part must have been enormous. The left side of the […]

The article that I intended to publish today didn’t just go pear-shaped on me, it went prickly-pear shaped. Nothing was salvageable. That’s Okay – I have this series as a backup for that very contingency. So, today, I present another 40 or so of my RPG-related answers on Quora. Some of these will be little […]

Many of my campaigns either do not feature “dungeons” or employ transformative conceptualizations to justify their existence within the campaign world, because – to be frank – they don’t make a lot of sense, otherwise. But there can be other structural concepts that don’t obey all the technical principles of the generic ‘dungeon,’ in other […]

There are times when you need to change things up, and give yourself a break from the routine. There can be lots of reasons for this need, so its something that most GMs encounter sooner or later. I have known one GM who took this as a sign that his campaign was played out, and […]

An Earworm is one of those songs that you can’t get out of your head. Often, the only cure is to expose yourself to “just enough” of another earworm! For the last two months, I’ve been afflicted with a case of the far less-known Dreaded Plotworm. This is when a plot idea that doesn’t quite […]

Today’s post comes courtesy of an ear-worm. I recently played Glen Campbell’s Greatest Hits, and the theme from the John Wayne movie “true Grit” stuck in my head (not for the first time). Not at the time, mind, but afterwards, when it was triggered by writing about gritty reality in a Quora post and mentioning […]

Whew, finished at last! Six hrs overdue, but it’s more than twice the usual length, so hopefully that can be forgiven! Is it too easy to cure disease in RPGs? I analyzed that question from various angles last week and came to the conclusion that the answer was arguably ‘yes’ – and also arguably ‘no’ […]

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 […]

Some weeks ago, I was offered a review copy of a “solo-player RPG”. I was hesitant at first because it sounded like a computer RPG, which is not the meat-and-potatoes of Campaign Mastery, but reading the invitation more closely made it clear that this was a tabletop game, and that intrigued me, in particular with […]

Today’s article was originally going to be just an example of using logical structures to construct an adventure from the middle out, but that should be fairly standard (and possibly dull) fare for anyone with a reasonable amount of experience – so I was looking for a way to dress it up and add to […]

I love doing art-related posts for Campaign Mastery because they give me an opportunity to flex my artistic muscles and have some fun. As a result, I’m afraid that the example that I planned to use as an introduction to this post has grown rather larger than expected. It’s worth reading, though :) One of […]

Once again, the wheel of days has traversed the circle of time to Campaign Mastery’s turn at hosting the Blog Carnival, following on from Full Moon Storytelling’s Festivals, Holidays, and Birthdays. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a post up for that Carnival (sorry, Dave) – I had a post run over two weeks when it was […]