Campaign Mastery

It took so much longer to plan out the article that I intended to publsh today, and it contains so many sections that I hasd grave doubts that I could finish it in time. Rather than risk having nothing to post in what is already shaping up to be a very busy week, I decided […]

I’ve written over 1,800 answers on Quora and for every one, I’ve read 40 or 50 answers (probably more) written by other people in response to a question by someone else again. A surprisingly small amount of what I’ve read has been directly RPG-related. That’s because most of the content that gets offered derives from […]

When I studied Chemistry in Secondary School (which, when I started, was known more commonly as “High School”), we started with the Dalton Model of Atomic Structure, of atoms as fundamental units of matter that could not be subdivided, and then moved on to the Thompson “Plum Pudding” model. In essence, this describes a negatively-charged […]

In the first part of this series, I detailed the compositing modes that I use most frequently, along with a few other hints and techniques. The second part showed project number 1, taking a black and white photograph (grayscale) and adding unconventional colors to transform the image into a blue-skinned alien on some strange other […]

For a long time, I’ve been working on a Lifestyle / Wealth system for my superhero game system, which is loosely based on the Hero System (4th ed). The rules needed to be simpler than the official rules, less able to offer benefits to PCs and NPCs beyond the value that would normally be associated […]

In the first part of this series, I detailed the compositing modes that I use most frequently, along with a few other hints and techniques. The second part detailed project number 1, taking a black and white photograph (grayscale) and adding unconventional colors to transform the image into a blue-skinned alien on some strange other […]

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 […]

Information Dumps, better known as Infodumps, are a necessary evil in every RPG from time to time. Creating and delivering one is a little like trying to feed vegetables to a child – you get the occasional good experience but it’s more often an uphill struggle. I describe them as a necessary evil because they […]

Few campaigns make any attempt to match real-time with game-time, and mine certainly don’t. I’m quite capable of hand-waving days, weeks, or even months of time if nothing of interest is happening. I’m equally capable of spreading a single game-day over 3 or 4 game sessions if there’s a lot going on. And I don’t […]

The other week, while hard at work on the Long Road trilogy of articles, I received an alert about a vulnerability in a plug-in and what to do about it. Nothing unusual about that, it happens regularly. I gave the message a quick scan, and double-checked that the affected software wasn’t in use at Campaign […]

This is the third, longest (53,566 words!), and final part of my review / demonstration of the “Tangled Web” campaign sub-structure. I’m going to presume that you’ve already read part two, which you can find at this link and dive straight in right where I left off. And, if you haven’t gotten in on the […]