Minions on the Table

Monsters can lose a battle before it begins if they have bad tactical positions. This is even truer with minions. Even if we assume, narratively, that your minions have no way to know they’re little competition for the[...]
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Toronto Fan Expo: The DM Master Class Seminar

One of the highlights of my visit at last weekend's Toronto Fan Expo was the one hour panel I had the honour to share with RPG legends Ed Greenwood and Robin D. Laws. We ended up speaking to packed room of 100+ people. I[...]
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Beware the Siren Song

As more and more players come to Dungeons & Dragons from a video game background, they bring with them a very specific sensibility. The result is that the teacher becomes the student, and D&D players begin to int[...]
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A Picture Should Be Worth 1,000 Words

How good are you at doing two things at once, both of which require concentration? That’s what I thought! Few people are. And yet, we GMs often seem to expect our players to be able to do just that, and on a regu[...]
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Ask the GMs: What we have here is A Failure To Cooperate

Campaign Mastery was asked, GM Izzy: “I am a very green GM running a pulpy run around campaign set in modern day London, everyone has a laugh each session but it is impossible to progress with any major plot p[...]
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Minions of Differing Flavors

Just like the epicure needs new and exciting experiences, numerous DMs among us need new ways to mix it up with minions. This is especially true if you feel your minions disappear too quickly to be interesting or seem to[...]
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I’ve Been Framed

Q-Workshop sent me some lovely Pathfinder Curse of the Crimson Throne dice. These dice are beautiful and they made me think of politics, which then made me think about plots where an NPC or PC has been framed for a serio[...]
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Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps

It’s time for another of my occasional Lessons From The West Wing. This draws heavily on concepts put forward in a single episode, Episode 16 of Season 2, “Somebody’s Going To Emergency, Somebody’[...]
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Action Trumps Description

Wise words for game masters. Authors are advised to always show, never tell. So too it is with gameplay, where more fun comes from playing things out than listening to a GM drone on. Next time you are about to start a mo[...]
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Epic-Tier Pitfalls

I recently read an excellent post on Enworld that described one DM’s experience running two epic-tier campaigns. I’ve recently been at the tail end of an ongoing 1 to 30 campaign, with a group of PCs currentl[...]
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A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power

This article deals in subjects that are sensitive issues to a lot of people. Everything contained within is written from a roleplaying context and no judgements are intended regarding the validity of any individual pers[...]
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Break Down The Door – 5 Encounter Seeds

In my article about how to be a confident game master, I mentioned I have encounter seeds ready during games that I categorise as break down the door. Campaign Mastery reader Will asked to see what these were, so here th[...]
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Pulling That Lever: The Selection Of Leaders In RPG Societies

Okay, so for the first time since we started this online magazine/blog, one of us has missed getting a post up. Johnn struck problems with his planned post at the last possible moment, and then tried to rewrite it but mi[...]
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The Dungeon Master Guys, Episode 4

In our pre-Gen Con episode 4, Newbie talks about railroading, Chatty DM gives some tips on how to keep players focused at the table, and Dave the Game outlines how to run a flashback adventure.[...]
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The Guest DM

Occasionally, DMs need a break. In long-running highly developed game worlds players may find that there are parts of the campaign or the world that they are particular interested in. If they notice that the DM needs a[...]
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We All Have Our Roles To Play: A Functional Perspective on Personality Archetypes, Part 1

Everything that I’ve ever read on the subject has defined archetypes for RPGs either in terms of the psychology of the character or the abilities of the character. Filling out a team roster is often a case of playe[...]
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Minions Are Spice

A minion is a tiny onion used for flavor, especially in soups. That’s what my father told me when I was a kid. Even then, though, the D&D game had imparted enough for me to see the lie and the humor. In fact, if an[...]
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Grow The Hobby With Great Game Mastering

How to tell compelling stories about your campaign to non-gamers. This month’s RPG carnival, held at Mad Brew Labs, covers the topic of growing the hobby. Topics of new player recruitment and teaching come to mind.[...]
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Ask The GMs: Rubbing Two Dry Words Together

Why have different languages in an RPG? How can they be used to enhance a story? And what’s wrong with Universal Translators, anyway? I have a question about using languages in fantasy RPGs. There are numerous[...]
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Interview: Steve Townshend, D&D Freelancer and Co-Author of “Demonomicon”

Steve Townshend is a freelance writer (both for D&D and his own fiction) and actor living in Chicago. We recently had the chance to interview Steve over email about the release of the new D&D Demonomicon book, of[...]
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Dungeonaday.com Sponsors Campaign Mastery

I love the idea of Dungeonaday.com. I use a laptop at the game table, Personal Brain software to organize my campaign, email to organize my group, and an iPad to generate content. I’m all about digital. Yet, I sti[...]
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Dungeon Master Tips book released

This week I released Sly Flourish’s Dungeon Master Tips, an e-book focused on giving you useful tips to help you prepare and run awesome 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons games. You can learn all about the book or b[...]
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Eureka! – Some inspiring notions

There is a cooking show in Australia (it actually started in the UK, and a US version was recently announced) called Masterchef Australia. The goal of the series is to identify and winnow through the best amatuer cooks [...]
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Blog Carnival Wrap-Up – What Inspires Your Games?

Thanks to all the bloggers and commentators who participated in June’s carnival about what non-game media have most inspired your games and how. I was surprised by the variety of answers. I think there’s an i[...]
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Like Sand through the Klein Bottle: Time Travel in RPGs, Part 3

Hopefully, this will wrap up the article on Time Travel! Part 1 looked at the problems of Time Travel in RPGs, and reached the conclusion that the GM had to have some understanding of the nature of time in his campaign [...]
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The Dungeon Master Guys, Episode 3

Welcome to the third episode of the Dungeon Master Guys podcast! Improvising games, "what if" campaign design, using props to make your game more immersive, using cursed items, answering reader questions, and more.[...]
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Mailbag 8—All By Myself, Part 5

This final piece is all about the competition for your solos—the players and their characters. You design encounters to challenge those others at your game table, so almost all of this series has really been about them[...]
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A Journey Of 1,000 Years: Time Travel in RPGs, Part 2

The first part of this article looked at two simplistic solutions to the question of how to handle time travel in RPGs, and found that as they stood, neither was satisfactory. A number of readers were kind enough to writ[...]
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How To Be A Confident GM, Part 2

Confidence is key to having fun long term as a game master. Last week we covered several tips on how to become a confident GM, and this week we deliver more. Collaborate Say yes whenever possible. Get into the habit of b[...]
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When Inspiration Is Not Enough: Time Travel in RPGs, Part 1

When writing my submission to the June 2010 Blog Carnival, A Medley Of Inspiring Media, I said that Time Travel was a special case. This article started off as just another section of that Blog Post, but quickly showed s[...]
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How To Be A Confident GM, Part 1

Gnome Stew recently posted an article about running on minimal prep game. One of the points was to GM with confidence, and that got me wondering about how exactly do you be a confident GM? Following are a few ingredients[...]
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DM Advice: Contention At The Table

We’re going to try something a little different with this article today. I received a note from Youseph Tanha, a writer for Stargazer’s World that I thought would be of interest to a lot of Dungeon Masters ou[...]
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The Critical Threshold: A brief debate on the Merits of Extreme Results

This is not the post that I expected to make this week. I simply ran out of time and could not finish either the article I had intended to post this week [about time travel] or the one for next week [the long-awaited fo[...]
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Google Calendar As Awesome Campaign Calendar

I’m using Google Calendar as the in-game calendar for my Riddleport Pathfinder campaign. It started as an experiment, but it’s worked so well I’m making it a permanent addition to how I run the campaign[...]
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Blog Carnival June 2010: A Medley Of Inspiring Media

This month’s RPG Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is delighted to host, poses the question: What non-game media have most inspired your games and how? A doozy of a topic, this. Sure, there are the obvious genre-rel[...]
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What inspires your games?

This month’s RPG Carnival, which Campaign Mastery is delighted to host, poses the question: What non-game media have most inspired your games and how? The answer for me is Saturday morning cartoons, which I grew up[...]
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Write the Damn Ending First!

Some say the journey is more important that the destination. I disagree. No matter the journey’s quality, the destination needs meaning, a reward for the long road travelled. This applies equally to novels, televi[...]
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Mailbag 7–All By Myself, Part 4

DMing a solo is at least as rewarding as running encounters with more monsters. It can be even more satisfying, since a solo can and should evoke strong reactions from players as it deals out destruction. But running a s[...]
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It’s Not Like Shooting Sushi In A Barrel: A Personalised Productivity Focus For Game Prep

While watching the special features from Numb3rs season 3 on DVD, I got to thinking about one of the phenomena of TV shows – that some episodes you really like, and some you don’t, and some episodes are real[...]
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Ask The GMs: An Inconsistency of Play

How do you fix it when inconsistent roleplay or interpersonal conflicts are killing the campaign? The more restrictions on gameplay you have, and the more expectations on play style you have, the more you need to talk ab[...]
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Skill Challenges for Combat Groups

Some groups love role playing. They love weaving detailed intricate stories among themselves. They love thinking how their character would think. They love sitting back, closing their eyes, and imagining what they would [...]
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Mailbag 6 – All By Myself, Part 3

In this installment of the exploration of solos, we have two statistics blocks based on what we’ve been talking about. First is a dragon. In or out of the dungeon, this monster has to leave an impression. Next we have [...]
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Sophisticated Links: Degrees Of Seperation in RPGs

Introduction This is not the post I was originally going to write for today, but a paragraph in one of the books I am reading brought to mind the game that seemed to be everywhere just a few years ago, “Six Degrees[...]
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Book of Dead Characters to Celebrate Your Gaming

A friend I once gamed with was awesome at celebrating gaming. He made sessions into special events. He had props. He talked about games in a special way, like a sports fan does about when their team won the championship [...]
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Mailbag 5 – All By Myself, Part 2

It ain’t easy DMing, and solo monsters heap some responsibility on your shoulders. You might think that one monster on the field is an easier management task. Sometimes you’re right. But good management starts well b[...]
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Ask The GMs: How to GM solo PCs (especially in combat)

Campaign Mastery was asked, GM Brian: “I’m trying to run a D&D 3.5 Eberron campaign that will mostly be a solo campaign for my friend. I’m just looking for tips on how I can run a well balanced[...]
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Architecture of Riddleport Inspires Plots

Architecture is often an afterthought in campaigns, so it under performs as a GM tool. I’ve set about to fix that for my Riddleport campaign. Here are a few of the ways I’m using building architecture to enha[...]
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With An Evil Gleam: Giving Treasure a Personality

All too often, treasures in a game – be they gadgets in a high-tech setting, high-powered sports cars in a modern campaign, or arcane thingies in a fantasy campaign – are about as interesting as the cardboar[...]
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Former PCs as NPCs

Bryan Howard recently submitted this tip to Roleplaying Tips: Former PCs as NPCs The best and easiest way to have great NPCs is to inject your old characters. The fighter who settled down and opened a tavern, school or g[...]
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A Slippery Slope: Level Adjustments Under The Microscope

There are times when an Ask-The-GM’s question doesn’t inspire one of us, or is too attached to the mechanics of one specific game system, or doesn’t have enough depth to justify a full blog post, or ha[...]
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