Campaign Mastery

Landscapes are wonderful things, more significant & useful than many GMs realize. This post focuses on using Landscapes, both literal and metaphoric, using the lessons from the first part of the article. This is Part t 2 of 2. This is the 4th of my time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series, which […]

Before you can use a landscape, you have to understand them. Have no fear, this post will equip you with everything you need to know. Pt 1 of 2. This is the third of my time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series. I made the time-out logo from two images in combination: The […]

It’s my contention that with every encounter, the canny GM will expand on the lore surrounding the creatures encountered. I’ve been plugging away steadily at the next part of the Trade In Fantasy series, in which a lot of the elements discussed start to come together into a coherent picture of the processes, but it’s […]

Gamemasters are human, and just like everyone else, vulnerable to mental health problems. It’s entirely possible that the active participation in an immersive hobby like TTRPGs provides a measure of relief from, and insulation from, such problems, but reducing them in frequency and/or severity does not mean that they are eliminated. My evidence for the […]

There are six types of skill roll modifier that I take into account when assessing any attempt by a character – PC or NPC – to carry out some task. Past articles have focused on just a few of them; this post is intended to provide an overview of the whole. I worked on the […]

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 […]

Preliminaries: A long time ago, I wrote “Trade In Traveler”. This week (and in the weeks to come) I’m starting a companion piece, “Trade In Fantasy”. Non-Fantasy GMs – I suggest either using the Trade in Traveler rules or updating them using this series as a guide. Depending on how long winded I get in […]

What non-magical songs should a bard know? There’s more to it than you might think. The Wedding DJ At a wedding some years back, I got to talking with the DJ about song selection. It was a fascinating conversation that I’ll do my best to recreate, but it was so long ago that I don’t […]

There is no standardized, consistent, approach to how long it should take to do things in an RPG. It’s time that changed. A strongly-related question is how long is a skill roll good for, before a new roll is required. I was musing about what to write for this week’s post when I saw something […]

Cuisine is one of the ultimate distillations of culture. This is how RPGs can harness this fact. Introduction I watch a lot of travel documentaries and short videos, especially those that compare cultures. Not only are they inherently interesting to me, they give me vital cultural reference for games that take place in those nations, […]

What is INT, and (in practical terms), what can it be used for? I was strolling down the street the other day and noticed a logo consisting of a name and a number of dots, and for some reason, it sparked a new way of looking at INT scores, one that emphasized a practical application […]

In Part 1, I shared a simple technique for creating immersion within the specific genre of a campaign, and applied it to Fantasy campaigns. Part 2 took a solid look at Science Fiction campaigns (and was supposed to also include everything I cover this time around. These genres were not chosen capriciously; between the four […]