I personally always recomend creating your own game worlds for your campaigns. It makes the game your own, rather than something you are just using. Most people will not run characters that other people create. why should game worlds be any different.

How may times have you read a book in which a famous hero's sword is treasured and valued, not because it is magic, or because of its powers, but just because the hero wielded it. The 'Sword of Enthar' the great warrior may just be a normal steel broadsword; but because he used it, it will be prized and treasured.

With first-time players, learning the rules may seem like a burden and rolling up characters can be glossed over. We used a new method for explaining the rules and creating characters which the Harry Potter-setting made possible and which I would recommend using in other adventures.

From Feudal Japan to the modern Pizzaria, you can learn a great deal about gaming from food.

Literally, Campaigns are like plants. They can only grow if the conditions are right. The GM must plant them in the correct place and right environmental conditions (i.e. the players must like the ideas behind the games and be willing to play in them). Just like the gardener must prepare the soil and growing environment, the GM must create the basics of the campaign before play.

This is a great article posted on another site (who reposted it from another site, who took it from another), but I thought many would enjoy it here. It is The Lazy Man's Guide for Constructing a Call of the Cthulhu Adventure, written by Sandy Petersen, original author of the Call of Cthulhu.

A little advice on magic items reposted from the Runebearer website.

Larping is Live Action Role Playing. Instead of sitting around a table, play is done 'in action', up and moving about. Any resolution besides social ones are done by some 'lite' mechanic. It can be a great deal of fun.

One of the most heated topics in gaming is the arguments about player character death. Should the GM and the Players be antagonistic with each other? Should the results lay like the dice? What about story continuity and the investment in time and effort into the characters. Everyone seems to have strong opinions about this.

The journey of 1000 metaphorical miles begins with putting your hands on keys and typing away.

Shelandra looks the part of a powerful Necromantic Sorceress. She is tall, pale, and coldly beautiful. She has a castle that always seems to have a storm over it. She has pet monsters. She has a small personal army of Skeletons. She scares the peasants and makes the local nobles uneasy. However, if pressed, nobody can actually recall her doing anything really Evil.

The Crown of the Storm brings great power to it's wearers, but at a great cost...this can chage the weather but it also has a nasty habit of changing it's wearer too.

The roads of zone 4 of Star Lake are uniformley white. The roads are cleaned nightly once the services of this district are shut down for the evening. With few reason to be in this area at night the militia closes it off and sets a patrol to make sure it is kept clean.

The roads in zone 3 are paved with bricks of black and blue. Trees line every path and street and the buildings are uniform in appearance. All having to look the same per a city decree set in stone ages ago with the founding of the academy. This zone is where Blackrose Academy rests. It offers a view of the lake from the highest portion of the island and has the added bonus of being on the eastern side of the island affording the best view of the sunset.

All the streets in zone 2 are paved with a smooth water stone pulled form the shore of the lake. Some of the nicer houses have gutters to wash the refuse from the streets down to the harbor, but the lower houses have no such luck at having a free service such as this to clean their streets.

Houses vary from size to size, the smaller houses are closer to the warehouse and waterfront districts in zone 1. With the nicer and much larger houses being toward the better districts of zone 3. These usually house richer merchants or guild officials.

All the streets in zone 1 have been paved with red brick cobble stone. The rain gutters lead down to the dockside and the harbor where the dirt and refuse is washed away by rain and by a Service crew designated by those in the Civic District. Most of the cleaning duties are done at night when the streets are devoid of travelers. Different service crews handle different zones. One is designated for each zone as the duties required to keep up the districts and zones different slightly per zone.

Star lake is the city in which Blackrose Academy is built on. The city was originally a small spot on the way to the school but has grown into a vast city sprawling acorss the island like a weed. The city has been divided into four Zones, each one housing the different districts of the city itself.

Griffin is the brother of the King. He used to live in the royal court at the capital city, but that all changed when his wife was called to testify before the court against a friend of Griffins. She lied under oath to protect her husband about a hidden issue. Her lie was discovered. She was summarily executed and her husband was reprimanded not punished, being the brother to the King. His offense was very minor even in this kingdom, but this opened his eyes to the fact that his family's kingdom despite being lawful and protective of all its subjects, it was not as good as it portrayed.

There are two 'villages' here. They are totally different, yet totally linked.

Avalon is set among the beautiful green rolling hills of the biome. The homes here are right out of a Maxwell Parish or Thomas Kincaide painting, little Tudor styled cottages and a quaint temple. They cluster around the central plaza, which is really just the intersection of three undertravelled Imperial roads (South to Antioch, East to the Villages, NorthEast of GreatRidge road).