Campaign Mastery

Hopefully, my internet connection is now fixed. It’s been functioning perfectly since Friday when a technician attended the hardware connection – at least, I assume they did; I was notified that they were on their way, and then notified some time later that the call was completed, without ever seeing them or being informed about […]

My internet connection is still fraught. It will sometimes work for hours, and then not be available for days. Which makes this article fraught with potential problems. I’ll do my best – but it’s worth noting that less than an hour after last week’s post, the internet crashed and stayed down for about seven hours. […]

You may not know it, but it’s possible to be too creative. Last week, as usual, I spent some time thinking about what I would be writing about in this post, and almost immediately, three different ideas came to mind in what felt like a single flash of inspiration. Well, by the time I had […]

I realized, the other day, that it has been a while since I posted a fantasy-dominated article, so I set about thinking of one. In no time at all, in a singular flash, today’s article came to me, inspired by the singular concepts of D&D / Pathfinder character classes. But it didn’t take me long […]

Attitude and Intensity We all have NPCs who are more driven than most, more obsessed or more sassy. This is never as easy as it sounds. We all have to raise our voices a little just to be heard clearly from all parts of the gaming table. Simply employing the “intense whisper” for the dialogue […]

While introducing the players to the characters for the chase mechanics playtest a couple of weeks ago, I found myself ruminating on (of all things) the Charisma stat and what it represented. You might think that this is a simple question – but it’s not, as readers will see by the end of this article. […]

It took so much longer to plan out the article that I intended to publsh today, and it contains so many sections that I hasd grave doubts that I could finish it in time. Rather than risk having nothing to post in what is already shaping up to be a very busy week, I decided […]

Chase mechanics are some of the hardest things in an RPG to get right – so much so that a lot don’t even try (and sometimes go to considerable lengths to hide the fact). So I was very interested when Evil Genius Games offered me the chance to review the chase mechanics from their upcoming […]

I was thinking about this month’s Blog Carnival subject (Gods Of The Multiverse), hosted by Gonz over at Codex Anathema, when I was struck by a thought that had never occurred to me before. Deities, by their very nature, don’t belong in Dungeons and Dragons – or in most other RPGs, for that matter. Before you […]

WARNING — This turned into a very long post of more than 12,500 words – that’s three times my usual length. Get yourself a drink and a snack before you start! How Long Can You Hold Your Breath? It’s a simple enough question, isn’t it? And so easy to resolve – all it takes is […]

I spent most of my Sunday evening trying to put together a submission for this month’s Blog Carnival. It’s been a while since I was last inspired to create a submission – way back in June of last year, in fact. Blind Alley I The first thing you notice when you scroll to the bottom of […]

For a long time, I’ve been working on a Lifestyle / Wealth system for my superhero game system, which is loosely based on the Hero System (4th ed). The rules needed to be simpler than the official rules, less able to offer benefits to PCs and NPCs beyond the value that would normally be associated […]