Campaign Mastery

I know some readers (Hi, Johnn!) who simply zone out when the word “Alignment” is mentioned, but bear with me. There’s good reason why it’s downplayed in the newest editions, decoupled from racial profiles and game mechanics, but this is alignment as you’ve never seen it before, with a whole different purpose. This is the […]

A word of advice: Each part of the series builds heavily on the content from the previous one. While you may be able to get relevant information without doing so, to get the most of out of each, you should have read the preceding article. In this case, though, that “previous part” is actually the […]

This was originally going to be one monster post containing three locations that I have devised recently for different campaigns. I quickly realized that this was too ambitious, so this will be a trilogy of articles, one every 2 weeks. This is an idea that hints at deeper connections in the game world, metaphysical relationships […]

Last week, I promised readers something completely different from the Economics in RPGs series, and even though this is a different article to the one I had in mind at the time, I still think it delivers – in classic Campaign Mastery style :) While working on the Adventurer’s Club campaign this week (as I […]

I’ve clearly decided to push on and get this trilogy of posts out of the way before interrupting the series for another break. As usual, because this is a direct continuation of what’s already been posted, I’m going to skip the usual preamble, so make sure that you have read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 […]

This is literally the second part of the article I posted last week, so I’ll forego all the usual preamble bits and pieces, just as I did the last time this happened, diving straight in from where I left off – well, almost. Writing like this sometimes has strange confluences and coincidences, and in this […]

A word of advice: Each part of the series builds heavily on the content from the previous one. While you may be able to get relevant information without doing so, to get the most of out of each, you should have read the preceding article. Welcome & General Introduction With each part of the series, […]

Because this is literally the second half of the article I posted last week, I’ll forego all the usual introductory bits and pieces and dive straight in from where I left off. Industrial Economics III: War & Depression Many of the economic influences that defined the era came together in the First World War, and […]

A word of advice: Each part of the series builds heavily on the content from the previous one. While you may be able to get relevant information without doing so, to get the most of out of each, you should have read the preceding article. Welcome & General Introduction I’ve said it before: With each […]

Welcome & General Introduction With each passing entry in this series, we get to ground that is more familiar to all of us – either part of, or directly related to, our everyday lives, or part of the collective zeitgeist concerning the forces that influence those lives. This makes analysis easier (I know more of […]

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but there are some creature types that automatically get tagged as the villains as soon as they appear. This is true in D&D, in Pathfinder, in a superhero game, a pulp / horror game – you name it. These are ‘the obvious villains’ and today’s article is all […]

Dialogue: Essential Techniques There are three basic approaches to writing dialogue. 1. Canned Dialogue This involves writing the central dialogue in advance, making assumptions about the conversational cues that the players will provide. There are obvious advantages to this approach; you can take as much time as you need to polish and nuance the words, […]