Campaign Mastery

There have been three shows that seriously went into oil painting on Australian TV. The first was the Rolf Harris Show, in which Rolf used house-paints on a large board, paining in just two or three pigments; his art was often comprised of abstract shapes until the whole image came together in a fairly impressionistic […]

I Spent much of the weekend a few weeks ago performing my regular data backup. Everyone in IT has horror stories resulting from inadequacy of backups. Even IT professionals and past professionals like myself – who know how essential backups are – have lost irreplaceable material to inadequacy of backups. That’s because there are two […]

I originally started writing this as a contribution to the May 2020 Blog Carnival, hosted by Moebius Adventures, but when I wasn’t able to finish it in time, I set it aside for later completion. It is now “later”… Travel The theme of the May carnival was “Are we there yet”, and the subject matter […]

Today I’m going to discuss the art and utilization of the Synopsis. While I might omit these from time to time in my campaigns, notably at the start of a new adventure, or even position a “big-picture status update” after an opening action / dramatic sequence, they are routinely part of my mid-adventure structure. This […]

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 […]