A Monument To Their Sins

Not 100% sure where today's post is going as of the time of writing. I have an idea for what I want to talk about, and I guess we're going to see where it goes. Sorry if it comes off as rambly or ranty, but it will be wh[...]
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On Temptation

I’ve been thinking a little bit lately about temptation in an RPG setting. None of these thoughts are fully fleshed out. I’m putting this up in the hopes of starting some sort of discussion on how to best app[...]
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How Much Agency Do You Give?

This is something I've been thinking about a lot in relation to my own games. The question is simple, and right up there in the topic. The question comes down to how much control do you give to your players? Does it chan[...]
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Savage Worlds, playing The Wild Hunt (and a long winded retrospective…)

I have been intrigued by Savage Worlds ever since I first read about it. A system designed to be “fast, furious and fun”, without sacrificing the detailed character creation and the tactical aspects I’ve come to li[...]
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The Wellspring Of Euonyms: Name Seeds

Wow. I just realised this is the 351st post here at Campaign Mastery! A quick thank-you to everyone who has contributed, participated, commented, or read our stuff along the way! I also want to spare a moment to mention [...]
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Saving The World – And Other Favored Cliches

What is your favorite cliche to use in game? Seriously. No, this isn't a full on discussion post, but our game stories are absolutely full of various cliche plots. I can't blame us either. I mean, general theory sug[...]
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Planning for a Kickstarter

If you’ve not seen me talk about it already on Twitter, my first game, School Daze, has a Kickstarter drive going to raise funds to publish the book in the... Read more »[...]
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Story > Mechanics For Feeling Epic

This post is inspired by a recent session of City of Heroes I played over the weekend with a house mate. While the topic is inspired by the game, it is applicable to our table top games as well. See, in City of Heroes th[...]
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Hanging Out

In the early days of Dungeons and Dragons, people would take their characters from table to table, playing with different groups, different DMs, and experiencing a wide variety of games. Sometime later, as the fad of D+D[...]
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Attention = Obstacles

When you say it bluntly, GM attention equals obstacles towards the goal, it seems obvious. However, while it is blatantly true, sometimes it feels like it is so easily understood that we actually miss it altogether. Also[...]
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Mistaken Monster Identity

In my post introducing the Strigoi I showed the inn patrons panic in the belief that there was a vampire out to get them. While the creature was a dangerous one, knowing that it wasn’t a vampire saved the adventurers a[...]
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A Good Name Is Hard To Find (Part 1 of 5)

Introduction Let’s talk about the art of naming characters, especially NPCs. This is one of the (thankfully few) aspects of the GMing craft that doesn’t come naturally to me. I can usually get there in the en[...]
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Inspired by Television

Television programs have long inspired role-playing games; we have adapted concepts from TV into games, like arcs, episodes, etc. Books on scriptwriting have been incredibly useful for me when creating adventures. This �[...]
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Stealing Names is A-OK

Today's post is a quick one, but I want to take a moment to talk to you about names in your world design. What I want to tell you is that it is ok to steal names from works of fiction along with works of myth. After[...]
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Magical Alternatives for AD&D/D&D

The Greyhawk Grognard has an article about runecasters.  My own solution involves 4e style rituals.I have a rule that to cast any spell that is a ritual you need components equal in value to the spell level squared [...]
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Crushes, Lovers, and Romance

Yeah, yeah, I'm a day late. Still, with yesterday having been VD it seems a good time to talk about romance. I've done a bit here and there about romance at the table, so today I want to focus on romance in your game. Ho[...]
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Alternative Core Activities

At the center of every game is a core activity. In a First Person Shooter video game it is the shooting, in a game like Devil May Cry it is the hacking and slashing, and in puzzle games it is - surprise surprise - the pu[...]
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Strategy game meets RPG

On the weekend I downloaded a game called “Rebuild” onto my iPad. In this game you reclaim a city one square at a time after a zombie apocalypse. The game has a few roleplaying elements and allows you to create your [...]
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Diseases in roleplaying games

Earlier that week I have been coping with a nasty cold. My head felt like someone smashed it with a sledgehammer, I was freezing all the time, overall I felt awful. And don’t get me started on the coughing, sneezing an[...]
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Role Playing 101 #11: How Embedding makes your Players better Role Players

Know this situation? Your heroes enter a new town you spent all week detailing. You thought about the innkeeper, the lord, the abbot and his secret wife, the beggars, the insane jealousy of the baker toward his daughters[...]
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The trouble with social conflicts

I have been roleplaying for about two decades now but there’s still one thing that causes me headaches as a GM: social conflicts. Usually when player characters act in a roleplaying game, it’s their characters’ ski[...]
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Group/Unit Dynamics

At present I have two games where the core idea of the "story" is to be about a unit of soldiers and the bonds of brotherhood/sisterhood that form between the members. Both games, due to this focus, have a mechanic in pl[...]
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The Gassy Gnoll: Time in a Bottle Summary – Advice from the Trenches

Greetings from the world of the Gassy Gnoll. Last week I asked the question – How do you continue to game as you age and still keep your obligations the next day? I offered a $10 gift certificate for DriveThruRPG/R[...]
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Anticipation Is A *@*((@

As I write this I am remembering a number of things that I forgot to do today. The clients at work I need to call back about their various issues on campus, the laundry I need to get done before Saturday, and whether or [...]
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Game Mastering Conundrums… Limiting player choices!

For those wondering why there was no post yesterday, the Stargazer is sick! Doesn’t seem to be anything life threatening (sorry guys we are not inheriting the blog just yet!). With our fearless leader sick it falls upo[...]
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The Importance of Narrative

Human beings are natural story tellers. We love them and more to the point, we need them. Think about it. How many stories do you tell in your average day? When you get home from work, you probably tell someone a story o[...]
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[World of Darkness] Working with WoD: Innocents

The World of Darkness is a harsh place, and one of the places where this is most apparent would be through the eyes of the children in the setting.  Playing children in the World of Darkness presents a unique sort of ex[...]
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Good Roll, But You Still Lose

On Friday I did something kind of mean to one of my players in my game. It wasn't without reason. It wasn't just out of a sense of cruelty. It was still mean though. In general terms, I set him up for action in his chara[...]
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How to Present Canon NPCs without Antagonizing Your Players

One of the things I’ve noticed about players is that they have a tendency to feel intimidated or threatened when put in the presence of an Canon NPC in an established setting. Whether in Faerun or Rokugan, players [...]
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From the Attic: The Computation Book

The best cool tool for creating dungeons is a really big sheet of graph paper. The only problem is that it is too cool. You want to save it for the extra special dungeon that never seems to get done. But back in the 80s [...]
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Consequence Case Study: Exalted

At the request of Lugh, we’re taking the discussion on consequences a little further today, and taking apart an actual game I’ve run and examined how consequences may have worked (or failed) in the context of[...]
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Keeping the Ball in the Air, or The Art of Consequences

Part of how I GM has always revolved around consequences.  My default assumption is simple: “The player characters are the protagonists, and they should be able to inflict significant and long-term changes to the [...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 8: Publish

Finish your game. Finish your game. Finish your game. Stop procrastinating and finish it. The act of creation can be exciting and a struggle but if you don't finish it, you'll never know if it was any fun to play. Publis[...]
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Doing The Impossible

It seems I have once again set this blog to update at the wrong time. Sorry for that.RPGs are funny things. Especially the campaigns that you run at your own table. Why? Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'd wage[...]
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Concepts You Shouldn’t Allow

This is something of an odd topic because there is a lot of variance between different play groups, and so I'd imagine that there will be a lot of different opinions on just what you should and shouldn't allow a player t[...]
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The Secret to Background Creation

Do you enjoy the Dragon Age RPG? Wish you could invent your own Backgrounds? Do you think this is a short introductory paragraph? WHO CARES!? Here is my official “How To” on creating your own Backgrounds. The Breakdo[...]
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Know Your Conflicts

Sometimes it’s easy for GMs and players to make the mistake of thinking that Combat is the only form of conflict that can harm characters. While combat is admittedly one of the easiest and most obvious means to inj[...]
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The Problem with Story Points

...and a possible house rule solution.In many of my latest role-playing endeavors, the games have used some kind of Story Points mechanic (I even imposed optional Cinematic Points to a high-octane, John Woo-ish GURPS ser[...]
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The Multi-Strand Game

I promised I'd talk about this at the beginning of the week and then got distracted by other things. That said, today I want to actually talk about it before I break my promise.Now, I don't know if this kind of game is a[...]
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Selfishness Ruins Games, Or The Importance of Meeting Halfway

Dialog, negotiation and compromise.  These are important things for any social activity, and roleplaying games are not exempt from this.  I often get rants from people who either GM or play in a campaign that they̵[...]
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Make Or Break Time (What Would You Do?)

As I write this, I'm fresh out of a game where going in the GM was not sure if he had just killed us all with what he was planning for the session. The good news - for the PCs anyhow - is that everyone made it out alive.[...]
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Players: Take Some Time To Read Up On The Setting

There’s something deeply rewarding about being able to play in a game that has a complex and elaborate setting.  Legend of the Five Rings, Exalted, World of Darkness, Fading Suns, Shadowrun, Eclipse Phase… t[...]
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How to write a free RPG – Chapter 7: Testing

Your game needs to be tested before it’s devoured by the general public. Testing ranges from simple mechanics tests all the way through to a full blow campaign play test. If you do not have a group to test with and can[...]
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Ask The Stargazer: “Would you be willing to provide some insight into your thoughts on layout for free RPG PDFs?”

A couple of days ago Stargazer Games fan and fellow amateur game designer Michael M. contacted me via email and asked me to share a few tricks on doing the layout for free RPGs. Here’s what I came up with: Get a desk[...]
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Small Obstacles are Sometimes The Best

So, my Friday game has come and gone. Over all it was a successful game, though I did learn a few things about the weaknesses and strengths of the format I've been using for the game - more on that later in the week. How[...]
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TPK Avoided . . . so why am I depressed?

So, we were playing Pathfinder last night and we got to the final battle, our four 5th level characters (barbarian, cleric, sorcerer and alchemist) against the Frost Rider -the big bad-, his ghoulish thug and four mephit[...]
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Favors and Compromise – Politics Part 3

Today I'm going to conclude my talking about Politics with this last bit. We talked on Tuesday about the NPCs and doing prep on it, with some great additional bits of advice in the comments. Yesterday we talked about gam[...]
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Role Playing 101 #10: How the Patron moves your Adventure

Last issue I touched upon story hooks – and player motivation. The simplest story hook you can think of is actually an employer, or as some call it – a patron. And if the patron is right, he or she can motivate all o[...]
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Sandbox games: A collection of links

When I had the idea of running a sandbox game I did some research first. Especially when you try a new game or a new style of GMing things can go terribly wrong when you’re unprepared. So in order to avoid that I got s[...]
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Court Games and Distractions – Politics Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, this Friday one of my games is moving more heavily into the realm of politics. I am simultaneously scared and excited by this. Why? Well, I've got an awesome group and I want to do this right fo[...]
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