A Twist in Time: Alternate Histories in RPGs

The latest iteration of my superhero campaign has just gotten underway. Being set (mostly) on an alternate-history Earth, it holds a number of elements that may be of interest to readers, especially if I explain the thin[...]
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Beyond the Game III: Learning to Become a Better GM

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather t[...]
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Beyond the Game II: Roleplaying and Reality

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather t[...]
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Critical Hits Podcast #34: The Id DM and the Psychology of D&D

Mike Shea of Sly Flourish and Michael Mallen, practicing psychologist and author of the Id DM D&D blog, discuss the psychology of the gaming table. This podcast discusses some of Mallen’s excellent studies into th[...]
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DM Advice – Roleplaying Combats

In this week’s DM Advice column I discuss one of the various ways in which a DM can bring the roleplaying back into gaming. This week I am specifically going to concentrate on how to run quick combats without the use o[...]
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Beyond the Game I: Handouts and Props

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather t[...]
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The Echo Of Events To Come: foreshadowing in a campaign structure

The Campain Structure series: Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures Back To Basics Part 2: Campaign Structures Back To Basics Part 3: Example: The White Tower Back To Basics Part 4: Example: The Belt Of Terra In my[...]
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DM Advice – There’s No Rule for That!

Almost every tenured DM has faced the challenge where a player character wanted to do something that was not covered by the rules. It could be that they want to use illusionary magic to cause an effect not covered by the[...]
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How To Create An Interesting Solo In 10 Seconds

The idea for this post grew out of a desire to use the alien miniature I talked about a few weeks ago in the Gamma World game I’m running. Before you click away because this is “another Gamma World article,&#[...]
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The Architect DM: Winging It

Let me know if this situation sounds familiar to you: You're the DM/GM for your gaming group and you've just wrapped up an adventure, and you have at least a whole week until the next one. You sit down the next day, or e[...]
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The Foundation Of Averages: Psychohistory and RPG Rules

Confession Time: This is not the article I intended to post today. I simply ran out of time – after my sense of the day-of-the-week was thrown off by the Holiday Season, leading me to start late. Normal service wil[...]
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The Nuances of computer use in a simulated world

In Roleplaying Tips #536, Johnn ran a tips request (reproduced below) asking for tips on how to GM computer hacking. I decided that simply offering a few tips wasn’t quite going to cut it, and that the subject dese[...]
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The Season Of Optimism

So it is Christmas once again, as happens every year at this time. This is a time of year that means many different things to different people. For some, it is a time of commerciality run rampant; for others, it is a pro[...]
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Critical Hits Podcast #33: Erik Scott De Bie and Mike Shea on Sandbox Gaming

Mike Shea and Erik Scott De Bie talk sandbox gaming, specifically in Dungeons & Dragons 4e.[...]
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DM Advice / Player Advice – Play to Win?

Today Porky's blogpost over at The Expanse hit a nerve but in a good way. For me the game is about playing and not so much about winning though it is wonderful fun to win it is also equally as important to be a fair[...]
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Ghosts Of Blogs Past: All The World’s A Suggestion Box

This irregular column resurrects (relevant) lost blog posts from Mike’s 2006 personal blog on Yahoo 360 and updates them with new relevance and perspective. From December 2006: There’s never enough time to do[...]
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Back To Basics: Example: The Belt Of Terra

This is part four from two (yes, you read that right) in a discussion of the basic principles of creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign; I wasn’t originally going to include these examples[...]
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Back To Basics: Example: The White Tower

This is part three from two (!) in a discussion of the basic principles of creating adventures and hooking them together to form a campaign; I wasn’t originally going to include these examples, feeling that the pri[...]
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DM Advice – Converting Screen to Paper Pt II

Thanks for all the feedback! WOW! Legend of the Seeker has a great deal of fans. Many have asked me to not butcher the game so I won't but what I will do is give options. If you remember, the purpose of this thread was t[...]
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Have WordPress, will game

WordPress has a lot going for it – that’s why we use it for Campaign Mastery! For a long time now, I’ve been thinking that it has many of the advantages of a campaign Wiki, and a few more on the side, t[...]
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DM Advice – Telling Stories

As Peter puts it on his blog CanadianRPGGuy in his post on Cheating Players "DMs should remember they are not gods but very powerful bards." As I was reading his post on cheating players I laughed at a few[...]
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Back To Basics: Campaign Structures

A short time ago, we received an ATGMs question that made me stop and think for a minute. The question was straightforward; Angeline wrote, “I need some help, I’m a starting DM and I just have so much trouble com[...]
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DM Advice – Running Evil Campaigns – Part I

Whether cheesy villains out to get the hero at any cost, reformed criminals, thugs and cutpurses or antiheroes eventually as a DM your group is going to ask you if you will run an ‘evil’ game. Wait! Have not I been s[...]
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Redesigning the Epic Tier

Both Sly Flourish and I have talked a lot lately about the issues we’ve run into at epic levels in D&D. While there are certainly rules issues, I believe fixing them all would take up a lot more than single co[...]
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The Scaling Woes of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

D&D 4e is a wonderful refined combat-focused RPG but it scales poorly as levels increase. While many of the elements of 4e scale along a linear path, many powers and effects scale at a much greater rate resulting in[...]
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Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures

A short time ago, we received an ATGMs question that made me stop and think for a minute. The question was straightforward; Angeline wrote, “I need some help, I’m a starting DM and I just have so much trouble com[...]
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Running the Game II: Notes and Organization

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane and Johnn Four. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a cam[...]
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Running the Game I: Creating the Mood

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane. GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather t[...]
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