Campaign Mastery

By D.L. Campbell One of the first posts I ever read at Campaign Mastery was the amazing 50 Barbarian Hooks. I instantly thought, ‘I hope there will be more of those!’ followed by ‘I wanna try that!’ Another list has joined the party (though I’m still greedy for more – hint, hint everybody) and I […]

The following ideas could be used for player characters stuck on a PC background and purpose. Game masters could also use them for interesting NPC wizard hooks. If you have any ideas for more hooks, just comment below, maybe we’ll get to 100. Master’s experiment goes wrong, transforming the PC and cursing the master. PC […]

I know I’ve written about this before (An Epic Confusion, Or How To Stage A Blockbuster Finish), but I’ve been thinking some more about big finishes to campaigns, prompted by the fact that my superhero campaign is currently in what I hope turns out to be an epic conclusion. As I developed this final scenario, […]

In part one of this 5-part examination, we presented a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. In Part two, “A Neccessary Evil?”, I discussed the justification for alignment being part of the rules, looked at the historical precedent for oversimplified moral arguements, and concluded that the real problem with alignment was misuse […]

Garry’s Article, The Conundrum Of Alignment, which appears as part one of this series, raised some excellent points. I agree with many of them, and felt that further discussion – and an alternative point of view – was merited, since I had reached radically different conclusions from much the same foundations. In parts 2 & […]

Johnn received this article submission for Roleplaying Tips, but it’s not a fit for the e-zine, which tries to be systemless as much as possible. He “didn’t read much of it because 30 years of alignment discussions puts this on my topics blacklist, even for personal reading (smiley).” So he asked me to take a […]

How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world? Sometimes, the simplest questions have the most complicated or profound answers. So it was with some trepidation that we’ve approached this question, which was asked virtually exactly as it’s quoted at the head of this article. The short answer […]

A few years ago, one of my players asked me why I had the Guinness Book Of Records amongst my RPG referance materials, and I told him that it was an essential source of colour for my campaigns. This puzzled him somewhat, because while he could see the applicability to a modern-day campaign, he knew […]

For a long time, I’ve been dissatisfied with the way some games handle wild, improbable, luck. D&D, for example, has no luck mechanism per se; only the critical hits subsystem comes close, where if you roll well enough, you score multiple damage, and in the skills subsection, whereby rolling a 20 on a skill check […]

How do you create a campaign that gives the players absolute freedom but still leaves the GM in control? Recently, Campaign Mastery was asked, Is it possible to create a truly player-choice driven campaign (within reason)? I’m trying to create a campaign that’s anywhere from 75 – 90% roleplaying (there will be dice, but not […]

What are the best ways to handle splitting the party up – especially over the long term? An interesting question was asked of us recently: I’m planning a pretty good science fiction game that will most likely involve party splits during a good percentage of the game. While this seems like it may be a […]

There came a time when I had to move out of the city (where my players were), and back to the small town in which I had grown up, for financial reasons. That would spell the end of most campaigns, but I had willing players and exceptional determination. I would write a scenario each week […]