Campaign Mastery

The story so far… This is the second article in this series, and the first of a set of mini-posts that I’m going to be writing and publishing as quickly as possible, something I’m calling a mini-blitz. My normal publication schedule will resume at the end of the mini-blitz. Each post will examine one of […]

This was intended to be part of a single, self-contained article – but the more I look at it, the more inevitable it seems that what did happen, would happen. Make sure you’ve read Part 1 before continuing! I intend to dive straight in and pick up exactly where I left off, but first, there’s […]

One of the essential skills that has to be in every GM’s toolkit is the ability to interleave research into subjects that they, and their players, know nothing about into the stories that they craft for their campaigns. Way back in September 2014, I produced an abbreviated list of subjects that a GM arguably had […]

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 […]