A Wealth Of Stylistic Factors
I saw a question on Quora the other day asking how you could give an RPG a particular style. I thought about giving an answer, but the more I thought about it, the more complicated the question became....
View ArticleTake Two And Call Me: Blog Roundup
A Post In Two Parts This is a post in two parts. The first is the traditional blog carnival roundup; the carnival has now moved on to a new host. Turnout for July was disappointing, though, so that...
View ArticleTake Two And Call Again
Whew, finished at last! Six hrs overdue, but it’s more than twice the usual length, so hopefully that can be forgiven! Is it too easy to cure disease in RPGs? I analyzed that question from various...
View Article(So You Think You’ve Got A) Reputation
This is a post in three almost completely unrelated segments. I start with some sad news, follow that with our regularly-scheduled article, and conclude with a sneak preview of next week’s article, for...
View ArticleWelcome To Tanares, Land Of Chaos
Finished at last – this is only about 90 minutes late! Enjoy :) Anytime a product with the combined talents of multiple industry heavy-hitters like Ed Greenwood and Skip Williams comes onto your...
View ArticleThe Price of Bricks and Soil (and more)
This is my 998th post at CM! Two more to the 4-figure milestone! In my superhero campaign, the PCs are currently shopping for a building to convert into a base of operations for a second set of...
View ArticleA Long Road – Zenith-3 Notes for all Pt 2
WARNING: At around 35000 words, this is certainly one of the longest posts here at Campaign Mastery! Settle in for a long and sometimes-bumpy ride, folks… This is part two of my review / demonstration...
View ArticleAll About The Plugins: A campaign creation metaphor
The other week, while hard at work on the Long Road trilogy of articles, I received an alert about a vulnerability in a plug-in and what to do about it. Nothing unusual about that, it happens...
View ArticleLow-level magic for the power gamer
I recently came across a system for magical weapons that both opens up availability of high-level magical bonuses while also restricting them. This enables a campaign setting to be quite low-magic...
View ArticleA Universal Wealth System for RPGs
For a long time, I’ve been working on a Lifestyle / Wealth system for my superhero game system, which is loosely based on the Hero System (4th ed). The rules needed to be simpler than the official...
View ArticleHow Long Can You Hold Your Breath?
WARNING — This turned into a very long post of more than 12,500 words – that’s three times my usual length. Get yourself a drink and a snack before you start! How Long Can You Hold Your Breath? It’s a...
View ArticleThe Atomic Theory of RPGs
When I studied Chemistry in Secondary School (which, when I started, was known more commonly as “High School”), we started with the Dalton Model of Atomic Structure, of atoms as fundamental units of...
View ArticleA Step Forward – Chase Mechanics Reviewed
Chase mechanics are some of the hardest things in an RPG to get right – so much so that a lot don’t even try (and sometimes go to considerable lengths to hide the fact). So I was very interested when...
View ArticleCharisma: A Lovely Little Dump Stat?
While introducing the players to the characters for the chase mechanics playtest a couple of weeks ago, I found myself ruminating on (of all things) the Charisma stat and what it represented. You might...
View ArticleChances Are: Lessons in Probability
I hadn’t intended to publish another math-heavy article so soon, but when the muse strikes you have to follow it… To be a top-class GM, you need to have an almost instinctive understanding of...
View ArticleUncoupling DnD’s Heisenberg Compensators
My internet connection is still fraught. It will sometimes work for hours, and then not be available for days. Which makes this article fraught with potential problems. I’ll do my best – but it’s worth...
View ArticleUncoupling DnD’s Heisenberg Compensators 2
Hopefully, my internet connection is now fixed. It’s been functioning perfectly since Friday when a technician attended the hardware connection – at least, I assume they did; I was notified that they...
View ArticleTo Roll Or Not To Roll, pt 1
The December Blog Carnival by Rising Phoenix Games is on the subject of “No Dice“. This is the beginning of Campaign Mastery’s contribution to the subject. There are times when it can be useful to the...
View ArticleTo Roll Or Not To Roll, pt 2
Concluding Campaign Mastery’s contribution to the December Blog Carnival hosted by Rising Phoenix Games is on the subject of “No Dice“. In Part 1, I looked at why we roll dice for various things in...
View ArticlePerceptions Of Randomness
I was reading something on Quora the other day that offered a fairly convincing argument that most people wouldn’t recognize real randomness if it bit them on the toe (in less colorful language). Now,...
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