Campaign Mastery

Last time, in part 1 of what has now become a series (more on that in a moment), I demonstrated the composite modes that I use most frequently, and some of what I can do with them. But the rule zero of image editing is to always have an objective, a purpose, in mind – […]

A picture, it is said, is worth 1,000 words. Sometimes, it’s worth more than that. In an earlier post, I posited that the GM should make darned sure that he gets a full thousand-words-worth out of an image if he is going to spend serious time editing it. Past posts on image construction and editing […]

This article started out as a way to save time and at the same time present some tips and tricks that often get overlooked in my scramble to get material ready for publication here. It was also intended (originally) to be part of last week’s 1000th-post celebration – so there are certain themes that will […]

1000 posts: a personal milestone So. 1000 posts. Four figures. That’s no small achievement. It’s something to be proud of. I’ve been casting about for suggestions on how to commemorate this milestone for the last few months, but the few suggestions I’ve received haven’t really been all that helpful – “Something reflective”, “Something forward-looking”, “Something […]

  This is my 998th post at CM! Two more to the 4-figure milestone!   In my superhero campaign, the PCs are currently shopping for a building to convert into a base of operations for a second set of superhero/civilian Identities that UNTIL has prompted them to create so that they can deal with problems […]

This is a post in three almost completely unrelated segments. I start with some sad news, follow that with our regularly-scheduled article, and conclude with a sneak preview of next week’s article, for reasons that will become obvious.   In Memorium I have to open today’s post with some sad news: Brian “Fitz” Fitzpatrick has […]

Back in the mid-90s, when I was preparing the campaign background for my rebooted superhero campaign, I had to think about cyberware – not the relatively reliable and semi-routine stuff that you would find in a Cyberpunk campaign, but the stuff that you would have before all the bugs were worked out. I wasn’t interested […]

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 […]

All GMs should recognize and follow the rule of cool, which states that if a player wants his character to do something cool, the GM should try to find a way to let him, even if it violates canon or what the character should normally. be capable of. Alas, in one of the great inequities […]

I explained in Part 1 what the Omega Archive is, why I’m creating the contents of it, how to use the contents in your own campaigns. Instead of repeating all that, I intend to get more or less right down to the content! But first, the ongoing index list: In part 1 I covered entries […]

If I mention sailing ships designed to travel from one world to another, the game system that comes to mind for most readers will be the Spelljammer game setting for D&D, introduced late in 1989, or perhaps Planescape, which came out in 1993 as a replacement for Spelljammer. Despite the official discontinuation, every release of […]

I didn’t expect to be writing about this right now. I knew that I would need this sometime towards the end of the year for my Dr Who campaign, but I had months in hand. What has brought this forward is the February 2021 Blog Carnival, hosted by the Sea Of Stars RPG Design Journal, which […]