Listing the best posts offered at Campaign Mastery in the first third of 2015.

Oh my, was it really ten whole years ago? The original intent of this series was to compile a list of the best articles at Campaign Mastery roughly 2 years after the date, but that interval has slipped, and slipped, and slipped again.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing; quite a number of readers have come along since then, and these posts deserve to be brought to their attention.

As always, this is a personal judgement, and readers may disagree with the choices made.

I need to also explain why this is appearing now, even with the above context. When the time came to write a post for today, I realized that there was not going to be enough time to do a proper job on the next part of the Trade In Fantasy series, so I looked around for something that I thought I could finished in the time available.

And I found part III of the “fuzzy plastic memories” mini-series – which I published a while back, somehow without saving the article. So, I started writing the second half of it again. This consumed 2/3 of the available time before I went checking for a link and had my own fuzzy memory jolted.

So, it was officially scramble time. What’s below is the result.

The Very Best Of Jan-April 2015

The 10/10 list

• The Final Twist: Dec 2014 Blog Carnival Roundup – Summarizing and linking to the Offerings of the December 2014 Blog Carnival. The subject was “With A Twist” and it covered Surprise Mechanics, Plot Twist Theory, Surprises & The Unexpected, Tricks & Trickery, Chance, and relevant Game Aids – plus a heap of plot twist examples.
• The One Player Is Enough series – A 4-part series looking at one-on-one or “solo” gaming in depth. A full table of contents at the start of Part 1. I won’t link to each part individually in this list, just to the whole series.
• The New Beginnings series – Ten substantial parts plus an introduction about designing and prepping a new campaign, with lots of solid advice along the way. It’s those occasional nuggets of wisdom / experience that elevate this series above a 9/10. I won’t link to each part individually in this list, just to the whole series.
• The End Of The Adventure – Ponders the emotional tone of the end of an adventure. Includes a detailed list of 19 options that work and 12 options that don’t – that’s 31 variations on how to end an adventure analyzed! This one seems to have flown under the radar for many readers, but I think it’s worth checking out.
• Ask-The-GMs: The ‘Some Arcane Assembly Required’ Series – A three- four-part ATGMs that focuses on Customizing Spell Components. Part 1 “The Sales Pitch” looks at “Why Use Spell Components At All?” and some rules infrastructure that’s relevant. Part 2, “Sourcing Parts” considers principles for generating custom spell components to occupy the categories identified in the original question and part 1. Part 3, “Tab A into Slot B”, and Part 4, “Cut At The Dotted Line”, offer example custom spell components from the rarer end of the scale and discuss how spell components can become game rewards in their own right. It’s the examples that have elevated this set above a 9 out of 10, to be honest.
• Always Something There To Surprise You – Plots as Antagonists – Another goodie that flew under the radar, this is a technique for creating and running mysteries in RPGs using Metagaming, in the process demonstrating that there is more to that than “plot trains”.
• Stealth Narrative – Imputed info in your game – Showcases a technique for inserting ‘stealth narrative’ into various aspects of the RPG process, so that you don’t have to spend a lot of additional narrative describing them. This offers some substantial benefits for the GM who masters this (admittedly tricky) technique.
• Principle, Cause, and Course – Complexities In Motivation – Yet another under-the-radar post, this starts with four simple questions to be asked about an NPC and uses ripple effects to then define their characterization far more richly than most more complicated techniques, even while making it easier for the GM to play that character..
• Disease and Despair – the healing-resistant nightmare – Posits the questions, first, what would the social impacts be of widespread availability of low-level healing magic, and second, what would the impact be of the rise of a disease that resisted such treatment. You want an apocalyptic Fantasy campaign? This is one sure way to create one.

The 9/10 List

• Random Encounter Tables – my old-school way – Examines the theory of random encounter tables, why and when and how to use them, and a step-by-step process for constructing region- and season-specific tables. The article concludes by looking at a way of modernizing the technique and integrating the encounters into a plotline, and that last part is probably the best content in the article.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – Examines the perennial question, “How much travel do you roleplay”. A short but useful article, aimed principally at Fantasy Gaming but applicable to a wider audiance, I now realize.
• Stride The Earth in 7-league boots: Travel (and Maps) in FRPG Pt 2 – A sequel to the article above which digs into scaling of maps and how it relates to the question posed in the first article.

The Honorable Mentions: The 8/10 list

• Incredible Truth and Improbable Stories: Oratory in an RPG – The first third or so of this post is spent offering a snapshot of Australian Politics at the time, and while it was relevant, this dates the article quite badly. The advice content, on how to handle Oratory as a skill in an RPG, is sound and would notmally rate at least one step higher. I still link to this article from time to time.
• 3-D Battlemaps for the financially challenged – Updated & Enhanced – How to construct 3D terrain for miniatures using ice-cream sticks and tissue boxes.
• Inn Through The Side Door – Reinvigorating the cliché
  I offer 25 variations on the cliche of PCs meeting for the first time in an Inn, after poking a couple of holes in the whole concept.
• Shadows In The Darkness – The nature of True Evil – An essay on what “True Evil”” is arising from a conversation with my co-GM. Makes a nice companion piece to “Principle, Cause, and Course,” listed above.
• A Legacy Of War: The Founding Of National Identities – Looks at how defining events like wars become fundamental and transformative to an inchoate society, and how to reflect those events in more modern times within a setting. Makes the argument that this process should be applied to every nation / state that you create.

Definitely more to come…