Campaign Setting Design: Scenario Structure

This process owes its genesis to ideas I had while reading Justin Alexander’s Node-Based Scenario Design essay.  This essay formalized processes I had been applying and helped focus my mind on them… and led to me to some abstractions I hadn’t considered before. An adventure, a scenario, can ultimately be …

Campaign Setting Design: Published Guidelines

As part of my research for these articles, I’ve been reviewing published guidelines for adventure design. In the last couple days I have reviewed DMG 3.5, DMG II, Green Ronin’s Advanced Gamemaster’s Guide, and the Pathfinder GameMastery Guide. They have all had much the same advice for developing adventures: devise …

Campaign Setting Design: Scope Level Sizes

This is a quick addendum to my last post, particularly the section on scope levels. I wrote how scope levels describe how broad an impact or influence entities can have.  However, I didn’t write about how big I expect game elements of each scope level to be in play.  This …

Campaign Setting Design: Definitions

This article is a follow-up to my earlier Campaign Setting Design article. It expands somewhat on the idea of entities (there called ‘features’; I have formalized the structures somewhat). I will be providing some greater description of the techniques I use to develop settings and scenarios. In order to do …

Old Site Materials

Update March 6, 2011: I’ve incorporated as much material as I’m likely to from the old site.  It looks like the articles I’d posted to my old site have been migrated (look early in the archive, around 2003-2006), most of the rules documents I was putting together have as well.  The …

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