Campaign Mastery

Anagathics (n) – drugs and treatments that halt and reverse the progress of aging. At least, that’s what they are called in Traveler – since we don’t exactly have any proven medications that achieve this yet, nor even research into the science on which such treatments could be based that’s advanced enough to make treatments […]

This is something of an unusual article. As many of you know, I got my start submitting guest articles for Roleplaying Tips, and eventually co-founded Campaign Mastery with the writer/editor/publisher of that email newsletter, Johnn Four. A recent article was about “How To Think Like An Alien” – Johnn no longer numbers the issues in […]

There’s a bit of a rambling backstory to this article which I would omit if it weren’t central to the subject. Since that’s the case, I’ll have to ask you to bear with me for a bit. I was musing in the shower this morning of the significance of the Australian Music TV show, “Countdown” […]

You learn something new every day, and today’s example was a small factoid: IQs are increasing so rapidly that the average person today would have scored an IQ of 130 a century ago, qualifying as “gifted”. Projecting Forwards Since the average back then was defined as a score of 100, that’s a rise of 3 […]

There’s a documentary series that airs on Australian TV sourced from an American Cable channel, or maybe an Internet platform, called Cyberwar. As part of the advertising for the series, one of the people interviewed offers the statement, “The next war will be cyber.” And that got me thinking: what if there was a global […]

Let me challenge your perceptions. Almost everything modern physics thinks it knows about reality is wrong, and I can prove it! The last time I did one of these articles, it was looking at Parallel Worlds, and it was such fun that I have turned around to go again! A long time ago (August 2011, […]

I’ve been thinking about Influences, Styles, Trends and Oscillations. It started when I was thinking about Nostalgia and the “death” of Disco and its subsequent morphing into “Electronic Dance Music” in the very early 80s. All fads and styles have a natural lifetime; the length varies, but at the conclusion, they are clearly recognized as […]

It’s been a while since I’ve done a straight pseudo-physics article, but as I write this I’m in the final preparations for the Zener Gate campaign*, and as a result the subject has been on my mind. In fact, the campaign is due to have it’s second session next week. Nevertheless, this will all be […]

The Elephant In The Gray Room is a metaphor that I have created to represent Plot Holes. These are matters of huge significance or importance that everyone is overlooking because they are not immediately obvious, but that once you see one, you can never forget that it’s there. This is a series about methods of […]

I get far more invitations to review products and Kickstarter campaigns and the like than I could ever hope to satisfy. Every few months I gather several of these together for a round-up set of mini-reviews. This time around, with Christmas Shopping on the immediate horizon, I have no less than 25 products to bring […]

As long-time readers will know, I like to break up larger series, on the theory that any given subject will interest only part of the readership. On that basis, I’ve let this series lie fallow for a few weeks, but now it’s time to get back to it! The Elephant In The Gray Room is […]

Prelude I: Someone asked why readers might want to read a diary of rules creation. The Answer is simple: it helps you understand rules and rules processes, making it easier for a GM to interpret other game mechanics as they encounter them. That’s always the value of a glimpse behind-the-scenes!   Prelude II: Well, that […]