Campaign Mastery

You can never tell where inspiration is going to come from. The best you can do is remain alert to the world around you and leap in with both feet whenever you find it. That’s what I was thinking while enjoying a chocolate treat – A mint Aero bar – the other day. For some […]

Having been delayed 8 hours by a massive spam attack last night (650+ spam in 6 hours – but the effectiveness of my response is clear, only 17 spam made it through my protections while writing this article), it’s back to business. The fact that this is appearing rather less than 8 hours after it […]

A trio of questions that take me out of my comfort zone, because I don’t know the game system, and they are – to some extent – heavily system-related issues. But I had the advantage of being able to consult my fellow GMs on this one, and also had the luxury of being able to […]

The Fourteenth Shelf: Odds & Sods II – Practicalities – Introduction by Mike Practicality can mean many things when it comes to RPGs, and the contents of this shelf touch on many of them. Practicality can be utilizing things that have already been done for game content. There are many intriguing stories of lost treasures, […]

The fundamentals of what a campaign is and how to manage one.

There must be something in the air. Or maybe it’s a reaction to Alternative Facts. I had this week’s article scheduled and outlined before I even became aware of Updated: Elf or Scroll, Handling the Info dump by Phil over at Takes Of A GM on essentially the same subject. Since I agree with everything […]

The Thirteenth Shelf: Odds & Sods I – GMing, Tools, and Fiction – Introduction by Mike Being the GM can be isolating at the Game table, especially when a problem strikes. It’s usually too late when you’re in the hot seat to do much research into solutions (unless the problem is so grave that you […]

There’s a whole spectrum of collaborative modes in existence these days, ranging from the cameo appearance or recurring pastiche all the way through cross-overs to the tightly-knit true shared creative spaces that are almost completely collaborative in nature. Although in literature, the Thieves’ World series is generally thought of as the first shared world that […]

Modern video games are becoming more dynamic when looking at console capabilities, online functions and graphics. The diversity in game types is also increasing. It is never enough these days to have wonderful graphics; so many games with outstanding graphics end up failing, as they lack the story element. When we look at the very […]

(I’m sure some have been wondering when it would resume – Part 9 was published in September 2016, after all…) I’ve been asked a number of times what advice I have for a beginning GM. This 15-part series is an attempt to answer that question – while throwing in some tips and reminders of the […]

During the week I thought up a design for an infographic that would have encapsulated last week’s post in a single, easy-to-digest/use diagram. But Infographics aren’t my strong suit and I have no experience at doing them, and it became clear that it was going to take longer to complete than it was worth – […]

On twitter the other day, one of my regular contacts (Rising Stars Press) posted a meme that read something along the lines of “All right folks, give yourselves 500 xp for surviving 2016” and an image of Gary Jackson. And, as sometimes happens, one stray thought had a whirlwind romance with another, and before you […]