Campaign Mastery

The third dimension of the battlemat has long been a problem. How do you represent it with minis, other than by holding them up with your hand and making airplane noises? The first problem is marking which minis are going vertical because they are hovering, levitating, swimming or flying. The second problem is tracking height […]

Many games use experience points, and if you game master such a game, you might wonder when the best time is to handout XP – before, during, or after? I’ve done all three, and there are pros and cons to each approach. Here are a few tips. Character wants Characters live for experience points. They […]

This is part five of this six-part series. Parts 1 and 2 discussed the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers. Parts 3 and 4 described a step-by-step procedure for conducting battles between two armies. But if the PCs are mere bystanders, there is not a lot of point to it all. […]

This is the final installment of this 6-part series. Parts 1 and 2 discussed the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers. Parts 3 and 4 described a step-by-step procedure for conducting battles between two armies, and Part 5 described how to integrate the PCs into the war action. This final part […]

Part 1 and Part 2 of this six part series discussed the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers. Part 3 begins applying the theory… Part 3: Playing At War: The War Round Having turned each unit of 100 men into, effectively, a single creature, and simplifed the combat mechanics down to […]

This is part four of this six part series. Part 1 and Part 2 discussed the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers. Part 3 began discussing the practicalities of war in play, introducing the Initiative and Action Phases, the Action Order and handling Initiative for army units, and unit Morale. Part […]

The subject of this month’s blog carnival is War. As part of that canival, I present an article on how to referee a war in an rpg. Not one that happens in some distant country, or a neighbouring city, but up close and personal – so close that the PCs can touch it. And not […]

Part 1 began discussing the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers, dealing with the number of hits that they could inflict in a round of battle, and the amount of damage that they could inflict. Part 2 picks up right where we left off… Part 2: Fundamental Concepts (continued) Ranged Attacks […]

Within The Flói Af Loft Finally, the characters have reached the floor of the great chasm, and started looking around. It is even colder than expected, no more than 10°C, and there is perpetual dust and ash in the air. The sand dunes underfoot are treacherous; seemingly-solid surfaces offer no more support than smoke. As […]

Fólk Afsteinn (The People Of Stone) These are a race of people capable of living in this environment not through physical adaption so much as through intelligent manipulation of their environment. I chose a blending of Dwarf and Halfling and called them Dwarvlings, because I wanted them to make a reasonable basis for PCs, but […]

The following is based on material prepared for My ‘Seeds Of Empire’ campaign in mid-2006. It has been rewritten to form a standalone setting for an encounter with an original creature to be found there (amongst others), as part of the February blog carnival. A day or so late, but better late than never… It […]

This is the final part of a four-part article. The first part gave a relatively straightforward technique for creating a unique society; the second and third parts identified four ways of communicating the uniqueness of the result to the players, selling them on its credibility, and exploiting it for scenarios and subplots, and examined these […]