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

The next part of the Trade In Fantasy series is so close to completion that I pushed on with it until it became clear that it would fall a few hours to the wrong side of the publishing deadline – and that even a quick ‘filler’ post might not be ready in time. But I’m a strong believer in trying to publish something every week, so – even if it’s a little late – here goes….

The Very Best Of 2015 Pt 3: Sept-Dec

The 10/10 list

• The Secret Arsenal Of Accents – I have five secret weapons to help me import accents from other languages into the speaker’s pronunciation of English. This article not only looks at all five, it digs deeper into them than I had ever done previously.
• What Empowers A Curse and other dangerous questions – usually, if an article doesn’t reach a conclusion, it gets an automatic ratings deduction, but not this time. Curses in D&D (and many other RPGs) are weak, wimpy, and too-easily lifted. This article suggests ways of making them far more troublesome – and ways of moderating the results if they seem to go too far.
• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity – a technique for focusing free association by giving it direction. I use this technique regularly.
• Getting Into Character pt 1: NPCs – Techniques for wearing an NPCs personality like a cloak, taking it off and putting it on as necessary, with minimal delays. This is even more challenging when the GM has to represent multiple characters at the same time or in short succession – such as when two of them have a conversation.
• Getting Into Character Pt 2: PCs – Making a PC the focus of an adventure requires getting inside the head of that PC to forge connections between plot content and focal character. This article offers a technique for digging even more deeply than many players go.
• The Conundrum Of Coincidence – Coincidences are the hardest thing for a GM to incorporate with plausibility and believability in their campaigns – but if this force of accident doesn’t exist, the absence can be even more corrosive to plausibility and suspension of disbelief. This post examines the problem and offers solutions.
• A Stack Of Surprises: Blog Carnival November 2015 – Campaign Mastery hosted the December 2015 Blog Carnival, nominating “Surprise” as the subject. This is the anchor post, and looks at the question of whether or not Surprise is an absolute, or can surprise modifiers stack, how long does surprise last, and other relevant questions.
• The Portals To Celestial Morphology series – four posts on the subject of gates and portals between worlds. The first of the four analyzes six defining parameters – between them, 4000 combinations are possible. The rest of the series offers twenty unique ideas for such portals, some of them with multiple sub-types.
• Ask The GMs: The Great Handouts Question – how much handout is too much? Can misinformation be included? Should it be incorporated? Can handouts backfire? And how do some of these answers change as the campaign progresses?
• Lessons from the Literary Process – there’s a huge difference between how the public perceives a writer’s lifestyle and the reality. I employ thoughts offered in a 13-part series on writing to correct the perceptions – and then apply the material to the writing of content for an RPG.
• Blog Carnival: The Unexpected Reality – Inspired by another GM’s entry into the Blog Carnival, I take a look at Rules as Plot Delivery Systems – and Plots as Rules Delivery Systems.
• Sequential Bus Theory and why it matters to GMs – two busses on the same route leave a set interval apart. So why do they always seem to end up nose-to-tail at the end of their route? And why is the answer important for GMs to understand?
• A Campaign Mastery 750th-post Celebration – there’s what amounts to an interview with myself (only rates an 8/10) and 183 answers to the question, If you could give just one piece of advice to another GM, without knowing anything about their campaigns, rule systems, or players, what would it be?
• Transferable Skills From Bottom to Top and back again – A sequel to the Challenge of Writing Adventures for RPGs (listed below) that looks at character skills and the assumptions that social conditioning make in game systems regarding them, in general, and the concept of transferable skills specifically.
• I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization – You have to be able to imagine what you are going to describe. This is even more difficult and complicated than it sounds. Fortunately for anyone who struggles with that (and we all do, sometimes), this post is here to help.

The 9/10 List

• Tales From The Front Line: Critical Absences – an unresolved question – Some groups handle player absences by having the character controlled by another player, or the group of players collectively, or by the GM, this article isn’t about handling those situations, but takes a hard look at a related question: if a PCs player is absent, should that character be permitted to experience critical successes or failures? This only rates a 9/10 because it doesn’t come to a firm conclusion, leaving decisions to individual GMs after its from-all-angles examination of the subject.
• The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs – Every GM feels under-appreciated from time to time, thinking “If only they realized how much effort went into that…” – this filler article isn’t about that, not directly. Instead, it looks at the many difficulties GMs have to overcome every time they write an adventure, and briefly canvasses possible solutions.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Having tossed the plot train aspects of Prophecies overboard in The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive, this article looks at ways that the GM can use prophecies to benefit and strengthen a campaign.
• Ask The GMs: Parting is such a frayed plot thread – how should characters be written out of a campaign when a player departs?
• To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget? – A discussion about Hollywood movie budgets combines with the thought that “Time Is Money” to suggest that every GM has an optimum ‘sweet spot’, with time enough to do everything that needs to be done but not enough for self-indulgence. With advice for the GM on how to find their own personal “sweet spot” and some extra help for beginners.
• Yrisa’s Nightmare and other goodies – while this is mostly a review, there are sections of relevance even though the product being reviewed has now been out for ten years! Subject like whether or not to use previews & teasers to excite players about the next adventure, inspiration from maps, and using art to dress up your adventures, are as relevant today as they ever were.
• Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – where can GMs posit questions / content to get answers / feedback from other GMs? I fear this post may have dated somewhat, which is why I’ve bumped it down to the 9/10 list.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – how much are goodies really worth? How big is $100 million? Current Value -> Value Then -> Currency Conversion Then gives a different answer than Current Value -> Currency Conversion Now -> Value Then – so which way is right? How common are large gemstones? What are collectible coins worth? And Art? And Real Estate? And is there some common system that can be used to approximate common answers to these questions?
• Pieces of Creation: Mortus – The Pieces Of Creation series offers material created for my campaigns for other GMs to adapt / use. I love villains whose very concept challenges fundamental assumptions made by players (and by society in general). Mortus and his philosophy do just that. Mortus takes “The End Justifies The Means” and “Being Cruel To Be Kind” and applies the principles to medical research – and then amplifies it all to 11. He’s polite, urbane, civil, patient, warm, and an absolute monster.

The Honorable Mentions: The 8/10 list

• What is An Adventure? – examines the differences in meaning that attach to various synonyms employed for “an adventure” in an attempt to extrapolate a more concrete and functional definition. It’s actually a more important and profound question than it seems on the surface, and something that a lot of GMs struggle with.
• Pieces Of Creation: Lon Than, Kalika, and the Prison Of Jade – Lon Than is a villain, Kalika is an alternate form of Kali, and the Prison of Jade is a magical mind-control effect. Lon Than explores the moral ambiguity of “War for the prevention of War”. Even if none of those appeal, there’s a lot of research on Jade included that might be useful.

The next post in this series will look at 2016 – well, part of 2016, anyway!