Cause And Inflect: Marketing your way to a better game from Campaign Mastery
This is actually the article that was supposed to appear next Monday. I started making some notes for it, and before I knew it, the whole article was written – and I no longer had enough time to finish...
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Harrowing a Setting from Glimm's Workshop
One of the gaming items I purchased at Gen Con was the Pathfinder Harrow Deck. It is a deck of 54 cards that each feature a different name and image, such as The Queen Mother or The Empty Throne. These...
View ArticleTurning Reaction into Proaction – plotting techniques to get your players...
A number of my recent articles here at Campaign Mastery have been derived from conversations with other GMs on Twitter (yes, readers, we GMs do actually talk to each other – and no, it’s not to find...
View ArticleBoxed In: A problem-solving frame of referance for players & GMs alike from...
We’ve all had mental blanks from time to time. When we’re players, a GM presents a problem that should be a slam-dunk to solve – but we can’t seem to grasp the blindingly obvious. Similarly, there are...
View ArticleGE17: Meet Ben and Brent from Troll in the Corner » Role Playing Games
Ben Gerber & Brent Newhall cover for Jonathan while he’s engaged with real life stuff for his first home. Brent and Ben sneer at real life, preferring to spend our time on the internet. Where it’s...
View ArticleImprov, Accepting Good Ideas, and D&D from The Rhetorical Gamer
For many years I ran Amber games which were about 15% planning and 85% improvisation. I’d just run with the flow of the game, make stuff up when I felt I needed to, and just generally inserted whatever...
View ArticleImprov, Accepting Good Ideas, and D&D from The Rhetorical Gamer
For many years I ran Amber games which were about 15% planning and 85% improvisation. I’d just run with the flow of the game, make stuff up when I felt I needed to, and just generally inserted whatever...
View ArticleIn Someone else’s Sandbox: Adventuring in an established setting from...
I’m sneaking in after the deadline for last month’s blog carnival, hosted by Dice Monkey… The benefits of an established setting There are a lot of obvious benefits to the use of an established...
View ArticleGM: Never Too Old to Change from The Rhetorical Gamer
So I’m running an Amber game for a mixed group of players… some who know Amber well, some who are totally new, and some who are reading the books even as we play our first few sessions. I always love...
View ArticleBy The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics from Campaign Mastery
GMs are called apon to make decisions all the time. Sometimes we can make our choices off the top of our heads using common sense and our knowledge of the in-game environment/circumstances, sometimes...
View ArticleThe Game of Words from The Rhetorical Gamer
…or a few thoughts about the flow of information between GM and Players in RPGs. More than any other game, running Amber causes me to reflect on the nature of what happens at the game table, what...
View ArticleThe Game of Words from The Rhetorical Gamer
…or a few thoughts about the flow of information between GM and Players in RPGs. More than any other game, running Amber causes me to reflect on the nature of what happens at the game table, what...
View ArticleWhat really bugs me about Zombie stories from KORPG™ Games » Roleplaying game...
No big shocker here, I’m a fan of the zombie genre of horror stories. But there’s something that has always bugged me about them. So today’s Trilogy of Terror posting is brought to you by a problem and...
View ArticleAn Adventure Into Writing: The Co-GMing Difference from Campaign Mastery
I thought that I’d talk a little today about the way Blair and I write adventures for the Adventurer’s Club campaign. Because we share the GMing responsibilities in that campaign – and I don’t mean...
View ArticleEnsemble or Star Vehicle – Which is Your RPG Campaign? from Campaign Mastery
For some time now, I’ve been aware of a subtle difference between the advice being dispensed here at Campaign Mastery and what really happened in the games that I run. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure...
View ArticleWho are the Prime Movers in your game? from KORPG™ Games » Roleplaying game...
You’ve just sat down at the table and are ready to begin a new role-playing game with your friends. The entirety of possibilities lie before you like a landscape of infinite opportunity. As the game...
View ArticleAdventure Structure: My Standard Formatting from Campaign Mastery
I mentioned in my last article that each GM evolves their own standard style and formatting for the adventures that they write. This time around, I thought I would look at exactly how I format...
View ArticleFrom A Certain Point of View… from The Rhetorical Gamer
…Or, Don’t Post Angry. So I did a bad thing the other night. I made the mistake I try to avoid at all costs and I wandered into the horrible wallow of awful that is a gaming forum. I know better. I...
View ArticleThe Acceptable Favoritism: 34 ‘Rules’ to make your players’ PCs their...
With contributions from Ian Mackinder, Ian Gray, Steven Beekon, Saxon Brenton, & Blair Ramage This article has been sitting around in my to-do stack for a little over three years. I simply never...
View ArticleThe Arcane Implications of Seating at the Game Table from Campaign Mastery
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Benoit, a regular reader and occasional commentator here at CM, who has translated a couple of my articles into French for a wider audience. He had noticed an...
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