Campaign Mastery

RPGs have a lot of genre elements that do not exist in the real world. Magic, Divine visitations, strange creatures, non-human races with exotic capabilities, exotic potions and arcane enchantments of all kinds, and that’s just the fantasy genre! On top of that, there’s the look-and-feel of the environment, and that means that certain actions […]

It’s a classic television trope: the message story (sometimes called the Aesop). But there are some serious problems that you’ll encounter adapting the concept to an RPG adventure. Fortunately, they aren’t insuperable. The Problems There are four issues that frequently present themselves in creating message stories: There needs to be a script Players won’t follow […]

Last time I outlined the first half (roughly) of a process for the introduction of a system of organization for plotting to an existing campaign. I hope everyone’s already familiar with what was in Webs Of Gossamer: Retrofitting For Plot Pt I because I don’t have time to do much of a recap. Instead, I’m […]

So let’s say that you have an RPG campaign that is doing well. Your plotlines are interacting with each other, your adventures are compelling, your players are happy, and everyone’s having fun, but you’re starting to struggle to keep on top of the entwined complexities of your plots and your prep is becoming a nightmare […]

A long time ago – 2013 – I wrote a series on Writer’s Block. Recently, that problem reared it’s ugly head in a very specific circumstance within my (still shut-down-for-Covid-19-reasons) superhero campaign. I’ve never encountered a writer’s block this bad in my entire life, to be honest. You see, I have a long string of […]

It’s happened to us all at some point: the adventure has sidetracked down an unexpected alleyway and brought the PCs face-to-face with a character that you’ve made up on the spot. When this happens, you’re generally thinking only in physical terms, at least in the immediate term; that is because the first interaction that the […]

I didn’t quite get the next part of the Sixes System written up in time – I’m only a few hours short of target, having written almost 6000 words, but time has run out. So I’ll use one of my standby articles and finish the Sixes System up for publication before next week’s disruption. Have […]

Part 4 of the Sixes System is almost done – It only needs another day-and-a-half of work. Sadly, 1.5 doesn’t fit into 1, and I reached that point with only 1 more working day to get a post ready. So here’s one of the fill-in articles that I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for […]

0. Preface I’ve been thinking about writing this article – and the rest of this series – for a while now. You may be wondering, what is The Sixes System? It’s a slight refinement of the sophisticated but minimalist game system that I’ve been using for my Dr Who: Lovecraft’s Legacies campaign for about 3 […]

When a deity shows up in your game, how do you make sure the PCs – and more important, the players – know what they are dealing with? How do they recognize that the being that stands before them is something more than mortal? Of course, sometimes it’s obvious that the creature before them isn’t […]

Some History It used to be so simple, back when I first started GMing AD&D. Each monster had a treasure type, and each treasure type had a table (or sequence of tables) that you rolled on, and a set of rolls on that table determined what treasure would be found in the vicinity. Room, Inhabitant, […]

Maximilian Hart puts out a daily newsletter with a short thought and some links to resources that may be of value to D&D GMs called Dungeon Master Daily (subscribe and read some more about this resource here. Of course, some of those links and resources have a broader applicability, which is the main reason I […]