Far back in the mists of the distant past, in the ancient year 1996, there was this movie about a sports agent named Jerry Macintosh. He was played by Tom someone. Tom Hanks. Tom Arnold. Tom Hardy. I don’t remember. Now, as a sports agent, Tom’s job is to negotiate contracts for sports artists. Footballers, baseballers, hockeyists, the whole shebang. He works for the sports artists and tries to get them the best contracts with the best teams. Right? Only, one way, Tom Jerry wakes up and realizes that isn’t actually what he’s doing. Because the big agency he works for is managing too many people. And they are focused on results. Getting sports artists to sign contracts quickly and easily, not getting the best contracts. They are just pushing through deals to push through deals. Going with the flow. And, even though they are doing well, they aren’t doing the best they can for the people they serve. So, Tom writes this amazing manifesto about everything wrong with the company and the industry, and then he quits his job, and he quits the interesting movie about the failure of a sports agency to go have a romantic comedy instead. With Rene F$%&ing Zellweiger. Yeah, that’s right. He quits the move to go star in a Bridget Jones knockoff. I don’t know what happened after that. I frankly stopped watching. Which is a shame because I wanted to know what happened to the guy from Sliders and that guy who hit it big in Crash and the Boyz n the Hood. You know who I mean. He hosted that weird Nickelodeon game show with all the physical challenges. Not Double Dare. Not Guts. Before those. And actually, I think that was his brother. He was in that show Hanging Out with Mister Cooper too. Either him or the brother.
Look, I’m getting off topic. My point is, there was this movie about a sports agent who realized that everything had gone wrong in his industry and he decided to strike out on his own make it right after penning a big, crazy manifesto. But he got distracted by Bridget Jones.
What does that have to do with me? And role-playing games? And this particular article you’re reading? If you guessed anything to do with Bridget Jones, get out. Just get the f$%& out and don’t come back. But if you guessed something to do with a big, crazy manifesto, well, let me SHOW YOU THE MONEY!
A lot of big things have happened in a very short period of time. I have just moved from Chicago to Wisconsin. It’s my second big, triple-digit-mile move in three years. But I’m going to be settled down for at least four to five years. That’s because The Tiny GM – my girlfriend – is going to college to get her degree. Meanwhile, at literally the same time, I just ran a major funding drive through Kickstarter to publish a book. And it was wildly successful. Like, more successful than I imagined. It was almost five times as successful as I thought it couldn’t possibly be. And there’s some other big news around that which I can’t break yet. It involves someone I partnered with to publish that book.
Now, the book thing is nice and all. But the book wasn’t the real goal. I mean, it was. That’s why I needed the money. To publish the book. And it’ll be coming in December, as promised. Everything is on schedule. Or within a few days to either side of on schedule. But publishing the book was – and I made this clear before I even launched the Kickstarter so it shouldn’t be a surprise – publishing the book was – and still is, because it isn’t actually published yet – publishing the book was a test. It was a test to see if there was enough of a market for my work to support future products. And there does certainly seem to be a teeny, tiny little corner of the market that wants stuff from me. And they are willing to pay for stuff. And it was – still is – a test to see if I could manage to get a product to market on a proper deadline. Beyond that, the Kickstarter was also about recouping the money I put into organizing Angry Games, Inc. as an actual business corporation – a small-business, Subchapter S corporation, in case you care. And it was about squirreling away any profit realized from the Kickstarter to keep the corporation running and to maybe bring on some help so I could pursue the next step. Basically, that would supplement the corporations Patreon income.
Look, how I’m managing the funds isn’t terribly important. What is important is that all of this has been about something bigger than just The Angry GM’s Amazing Book of RPG Advice. It’s about pushing my own role-playing game to market. Something I’ve been teasing for the better part of eighteen months. And something that was actually part of the plan as far back as three years ago. Turns out, it takes a long time to build a stable business. Especially when you keep moving hundreds of miles to do it.
Now, I am not starting development on the Angry RPG right now. Except insofar that I have started development already because I’ve been building the core mechanics and a lot of other little bits and pieces gradually over the last year. But, given the development cycle I anticipate – about two years – I’m going to start pretty soon after that book thing is finished and out the door.
So, what does any of THAT have to do with this article? Well, last week, someone asked me a question on Twitter about the future Angry RPG. And it led to this sort of Jerry Macintosh style breaking point. A moment where I looked at everything that was going on in and around RPGs and realized that somewhere, something had gone wrong. And like Jerry’s company, it wasn’t obvious. Because things seemed to be going well enough. But something was still rotten in the state of Denmark.
The question was: “Why do you have to write your own RPG? Why not just create content for Dungeons & Dragons?” My snarky answer was “because if I’m going to put in all of that work, why should I inherit 40 years of other people’s mistakes?” It was flippant. And it gave the wrong impression. And I did go back and expand on the answer. But…
What I’m envisioning is not a small project. It’s going to be big. It’s big enough that it’ll take a couple of years and it’s big enough that I’m going to need to hire people to help eventually. Which I will do when I am ready. From a pool of candidates that I have gradually identified over the years. So please do not try to apply for a job in my comment section. Or e-mail me. I get enough of that s$&% already as it is.
Now, maybe it will never be big. Maybe, I don’t have what it takes. Maybe what I eventually do develop will be just another one of the thousands of indie RPGs that come out, enjoy a bit of popularity on social media, and then get put on the shelves and never get played. And if that’s all I manage, well, I tried. And I gave a bunch of people a good time in the process. I can feel happy about that. But that’s not what I’m aiming for. You know what they say: aim for the stars so that, even if you miss, you hit the moon. Well, I’m aiming to be big. If I miss, I miss.
But that brings me around to the point: this article. Apart from telling you what the big, grand, future plan is, this article is my Jerry Macintosh manifesto. This is my indictment of the role-playing game industry. Of what’s out there right now. What needs to be fixed. What I intend to fix. Because, in a lot of ways, the RPG industry is failing its customers. The demand for a book that contains nothing more than basic, step-by-step instructions for how to run a game kind of proves that. The success of my website is proof that something has gone wrong somewhere.
So, here we go: why does the industry need my new RPG?
But first, let me reassure you that this website isn’t changing anytime soon. I will still be putting out content that will help you get the most out of the games you’re playing right now. I’ll still give all the same great RPG advice and build D&D content and stuff. Same as before. Very occasionally, I will co-opt a monthly bulls$&% article the way I’m doing here to discuss something more conceptual and less system specific that will hint at what I’m working on behind the scenes. But those will be the exception, not the rule. Nothing is changing for the next two to three years on this site. Stay calm. Don’t panic. Okay?
But I figure this stuff is important enough to discuss because, in a lot of ways, most of this stuff explains why my website even exists in the first place. A lot of it is stuff I have ranted about before. And if you’re thinking about creating content of your own, this is stuff that you might want to think about too. So, I figure people can get something out of it.
Now…
Why do we even need an Angry RPG?
Everything is Fine, Nothing is Ruined
Okay, let’s get this out of the way first: this isn’t entirely about game design. This is not about how games like D&D and Pathfinder are put together. Their rules. Their mechanics. Well, it is a little bit, but not much. Design is just design. Everyone designs things differently. And everyone has different goals. I’m not going to rant about how hit points and spells and Charisma are all problems that need fixing. And that’s because, if you set out to create a product that fixes someone else’s product, you’re constraining yourself far more than you need to. And you can make it hard for your product to grow beyond your origins.
Take Pathfinder for example. That was very consciously a product designed to fix the rough edges of D&D 3.5 while still being D&D 3.5. Which, by the way, is perfectly fine. D&D 3.5 was going away. Paizo had built a company around supporting D&D 3.5. They weren’t allowed to support D&D 4E. So, they made their own D&D 3.5 and supported that. It worked out well for them. And I don’t begrudge that at all. That was their goal.
But it did mean that Pathfinder wasn’t going to break any really new ground. I mean, it eventually did. Pathfinder has added a lot of really neat stuff on top of the d20 model. A lot of the options they added in later books really did expand the modes of gameplay. And I have to confess I really didn’t come to appreciate that stuff until recently. Because of the deluge of content, it was buried inside. But all of Pathfinder’s innovative stuff is held back by it’s connection to D&D’s d20 engine. Pathfinder can do a lot of things, but it can’t add or change ability scores. Or add narrative dice mechanics to action resolution. And when it does TRY to add that sort of crap, it doesn’t quite fit well. It’s clumsy. It’s kind of like how my Time Pool and Fighting Spirit mechanics are really great ideas that hit speed bumps every time you have to deal with some weird duration on some effect or a spell that does some tricky thing with hit points or whatever.
If you set out to just fix the problems in another system – even if you build your own system that is an improvement on the existing system – you are tied to the way that system does things. And that’s what happened in the d20 era. Everyone who wanted to make a game just put out a d20 game. To the point where many mainstream gamers these days can’t imagine not having ability scores at all or cutting out an entire mechanic, like Charisma, or not having skills as a layer that sits on top of ability-score based action resolution. Some people can’t even imagine classless systems. Try to teach someone who has only ever played class-based systems how to make a character in GURPs. Holy mother of f$&% is that a nightmare for some people. They just can’t wrap their head around it.
D&D is a perfectly adequate game. 5th Edition is fine. It’s totally playable. Pathfinder is a good game. At least, it is now. The gods only know what Pathfinder 2 will look like. It’s fine. There is nothing broken or wrong about either of those games. Or any of the others. The worst thing I can say is that they are missing elements I’d like to see in a game, and they put too much focus on some things and not enough on other things, but those aren’t problems. They are just the way those games are. I am not setting out to FIX D&D. Or FIX Pathfinder. Once upon a time, yes, that would have been my goal. But now, I understand what a small-minded, short-sighted, limited goal that is.
Do I think I can build a better game? Yes. But that’s a subjective statement. I don’t think my game will be better because those games are broken or bad or need fixing. I think my game will be better because it will do the things I want it to do in a streamlined and elegant way that is fun and approachable but allows a lot of depth of play to emerge. And I’m going to design – I have already started designing a system – that fits that description. From the ground up. I’m not evolving or fixing their design. I’m starting from scratch.
So, if I don’t see any problems in the big games that already exist, what the hell am I complaining about? Why am I going all Jerry Cruise and yelling at the industry for f$&%ing everything up? Well, I admit there are a few little bits of poison in existing RPG design? But they are more about the mindset behind the design. Worse, though, I think what the industry is really f$&%ing up is how RPGs are built AS PRODUCTS. How they are packaged, sold, and marketed. And that’s how they are really failing their customers. But let’s start with the toxic mindset first.
Rulebooks, Not Toolboxes
Let’s start with how the rules themselves are presented. Almost every RPG in existence is presented the same way. It doesn’t matter if you get one book or three books or whatever. They all follow the same pattern. They start by introducing the concept of the role-playing game and the world, give you the most basic, minimal understanding of the game concepts they can, and then they hit you with character generation. After that, it’s rules, rules, rules. And finally, they start talking to the GM about whatever things they want to talk to the GM about? Making encounters, building settings, running the game, whatever.
Now, there’s a few problems with that presentation. But the biggest one is that it is very focused on teaching the players the rules instead of telling the GM how to run the game. Now, there’s nothing wrong with teaching the players the rules. I’m not one of those f$%&wits who thinks that RPGs would better if the players were perpetually kept in the dark about everything. But, it does create this impression that the rules represent the system for playing the game. And that leaves the impression that the GM is there to execute the rules and that the GM’s judgment is the last resort. It creates an image in the mind of players – and, consequently, the mind of the GM – that the GM’s job is to function as a computer executing the game program.
In reality, the rules are tools that the GM uses to create and run the game and resolve the action fairly and consistently. But those rules rely, first and foremost, on the GM properly applying them in the right circumstances using their best judgment. Here’s a simple example of what I mean: every RPG rulebook has a section somewhere in it – AFTER it has taught you the rules of action resolution – where it explains that you shouldn’t use the dice for EVERYTHING. Basically, it tells the GM to look out for the rare exceptions where the dice – the rules – aren’t needed. That’s actually pretty f$&%ing backward. Because the game is played out as a narrative first and the action resolution mechanics are only invoked when the players take meaningful, dramatic actions. That means, most of the time, you DON’T use the rules. The dice are the rare exceptions. Think about it. How much time do you spend at every RPG rolling dice in absolute minutes? Now, how much time do you spend NOT rolling dice?
It is a mistake to present the rules before the GM instruction. Because the rules are tools the GM uses to resolve the game. And that means the GM has to understand what they are supposed to be doing before you start explaining the tools they have at their disposal. That’s why so many people come to my website. Because someone handed them a toolbox and carefully explained the exact way to use each and every tool in the box, but no one told them what they were trying to build or how.
It’s not just presentation though. The rules are designed as rules, not tools. And that’s because, 50 years ago, some wargamer who was used to rules and systems decided he had the right to decide how these games would function just because he invented the genre. They are designed as procedures. When this happens, do this. That’s why GMs have trouble either knowing when to USE the initiative system OR have trouble knowing when to STOP using the initiative system. And that confuses players. So, the players are always asking “wait, are we still in initiative or not?”
Initiative is a thing you roll when combat starts, right? That’s the procedure. When combat starts, roll initiative and take turns. Well, when does a combat actually start? And when does a combat actually stop? Can you stop using initiative early, if, say, the players decide to retreat? Can you use initiative outside of combat?
If initiative were presented properly, as a tool to provide structure to any part of the game where the order of actions is important and time needs to be tracked on the order of seconds, that would make it much easier to use as a tool. Hostage situation? Yes, definitely needs an initiative system. But not every ambush needs initiative. If five heroes leap on two unawares guards, they don’t need initiative at that point. Each hero just takes one action. Those actions all happen at once. If the guards aren’t subdued after all of the players have executed their actions, then you can roll initiative.
It’s just an example.
The point is that the rules need to be designed as tools and then they need to be presented as tools. Not as procedures to follow. And only after the role of the GM is clearly defined. And that role is to be the first, most important game mechanic. The core mechanic of every role-playing game is, after all, the GM. No matter what those games claim about their engines.
The GM as Part of the Game
The RPG industry has this weird relationship with Game Masters. And it’s not a healthy relationship. I mean, the worst are the games that try to minimize or remove the GM altogether. Look, we already have GMless games. They are called video games. And even the best of them are terribly constrained. Most mainstream RPGs don’t go that far, but they do live in terror of out-of-control GMs who ruin the game for their players. Things get spelled out in the rulebooks in excruciating detail, to the point where most of the rulebooks are written in this bizarre sort of gamer legalese, for fear of there being any ambiguity at all. And that’s because ambiguity is where abusive, power-mad GMs live. There is this really systemic pattern of trying to “reign in” the GM. It started in D&D 3.5, hit its stride in 4E, and is only weaker in 5E because 5E is just badly presented and organized, so the legalese just doesn’t work. And that’s notwithstanding the games that take away the GMs dice and put rules around what the GM can and can’t do. The GM is not there to have fun. They are not there to play a game. They are there to execute the game correctly. And not ruin the players’ fun.
And then everyone wonders why its so hard to find people who want to run games.
Seriously. The games industry as a whole seems to view the GM as a necessary evil. It knows it needs GMs, but it’s afraid to let them get out of hand. And the sad thing is, the major reason that GMs get out of hand is that they have a pile of rules and no actual instructions. What’s the result? You have GMs who are absolutely f$&%ing terrified of making judgment calls. So, they jump on Twitter and beg Saint Crawford to tell them what to do. I have had GMs tell me they are afraid of being anything other than completely systematic. They are afraid of using their judgment and feeling things out because it feels too arbitrary. Lots of them. I get those e-mails all the time. That tells me that GMs don’t know what the hell their role actually is.
GMing should be fun. It is fun. If you know how to do it and if you have the right tools. It IS fun. But you can’t do it right if you’re afraid to make a move without oversight, terrified of having to use your brain, and if someone takes your dice away. Role-playing games need to embrace the GM as the single greatest game mechanic ever invented. They allow the freedom that makes RPGs better than every other game that exists. They allow a limited rule-set to represent the infinite possibilities of an entire fantasy world. And they need to get the hell on the floor and thank every person willing to run a game for their hard work and dedication despite the bad instruction, terrible abuse, and Orwellian rules structures.
So, to properly instruct GMs and to provide them with tools instead of rules, RPGs need to recognize something very important.
Players Don’t Want Rulebooks
Most RPG players don’t read rulebooks. They don’t give a f$&%. Most of my players have never actually read an entire Players Handbook or Core Rulebook or whatever. The only reason they even open them is that the one thing they do care about is character generation. And that’s sandwiched between all the rules.
The truth is, most players don’t care about the rules. Players rarely even buy the rules. And players don’t usually choose the game. GMs buy the rules. They learn the game. They teach the players. And, usually, they pick the game. But the rulebooks are generally written to speak to players, not GMs. That’s why they put character generation front and center. And that’s a mistake. The rules should be written to speak to – and engage – the GM. Players can read them too, sure. If they want to. Some players like to learn the rules. And there are rules the players should know up front. But the rules written for the players, what you might call the Players Handbook, should be very brief and only cover the very basic, broad-stroke rules. It should focus primarily on the things players care about: creating and playing a character. The details should be reserved for the GM.
Which gets us to something a little bit more technical.
Understanding the Role-Playing Game Markets
If you pay attention to the way people collect and buy RPG products, there are four different major buying patterns. Four different markets. Most RPG companies seem to sell to only two markets. Some sell to just one. For example, Paizo sells to two different markets: players and GMs. Well, sort of. Most of their products straddle the line between players and GMs. But they don’t really recognize the two different types of GMs. Wizards of the Coast seems to be a complete mess. They don’t know who the hell they are selling what to.
What’s the consequence? Well, you end up buying a bunch of crap you don’t have to. I mean, if you’re only ever going to run published adventures as a GM, why the motherloving f$&% should you have to buy a Monster Manual? But you do. Because the adventures are incomplete. They can’t be used completely by themselves. And, as a player, why the f$&% do you need a giant-a$& rulebook filled with rules you ain’t going to use to make a character?
Now, I know – I KNOW – there are going to be a bunch of smarta$&es who are going to feed me all the wrong reasons for those selling patterns. Monster stats would make the adventures too big and waste page space. That just tells me that the monster stats are designed really badly. I mean, why would you design a rule system for monsters that is so big and complicated that it doesn’t fit in adventures. Because monsters only exist for ONE REASON. They exist to go into adventures. Or the old chestnut about how splat books and published adventures don’t sell. Or whatever other crap you want to throw at me.
Because, here’s the thing: the major RPGs are being sold the same way they were sold 50 years ago. One or two core rulebooks, one book of monsters, individually sold adventure modules, setting books, individual splat books filled with miscellaneous options. You might combine some or all of that crap into one book, but it’s still the same f$&%ing system that TSR was using to sell AD&D 1st Edition. You want me to believe that a f$&%ing teenaged actuary stumbled on the PERFECT system for selling RPGs fifty years ago and it’s beyond reproach and improvement? Bulls$&%! I don’t buy it.
I also don’t believe that the best way to sell a role-playing game is in a bunch of giant-a$&, boring textbooks. Here’s the thing: bookstores don’t exist anymore. They don’t. There’s one big one left. Everyone gets their s$&% through Amazon. And Amazon is great if you already know what you are looking for. Sure, there are game stores. But those stores sell to people who are already gamers. And even if you did somehow hear about these games, the fact that they are sold as dozens of textbooks means you have no idea what to buy. Even if you did manage to buy the one right book, you’re going to discover you need to go back to the store and buy some more books. And some dice.
And that is really where things fall apart.
RPGs are Failing New Players
I talk about RPGs all the time. To strangers. I am willing to strike up a conversation with anyone. And when anyone asks me what I do, I tell them that I’m a freelance game designer. Role-playing games. And, I’m almost at the point where that isn’t totally a lie. And do you know what I hear more than anything else? I hear “oh, I’ve heard of Dungeons & Dragons” or “I saw that on Big Bang Theory” or “oh yeah, I’ve seen YouTube videos of people playing that,” and then I hear “it always seemed like fun, but I have no idea how to get started.” I’ve also started paying attention to online communities devoted to YouTube series like Critical Role. Same s$&%.
Here’s the thing: every hobby I used to hide my interest in – role-playing games, video games, superheroes, comics, weird card and board games, science fiction – those have all exploded in popularity over the last 15 to 20 years. They are all huge. Except one. Except role-playing games. No, don’t link me to the latest non-news piece about how “D&D is back, and bigger than ever” and how it’s doing so much better now than it ever has and how it’s sales are the highest they’ve ever been. Those articles have come out for every new edition in every publication that cared about such things for the past 25 years. D&D is always back. It’s always better than it ever was. It’s always bursting into the latest pop-culture fad. Always.
It’s lies. I mean, it’s technically all true, but it’s business true. I know all about business true. I studied business true. I have a degree in business true. Every product that is not actually failing is growing every year. That means, every year it has more sales than the year before. That’s not special. And if you read the actual things the companies actually say, you can see exactly what they aren’t saying. “50% of current players have watched a D&D livestream on YouTube?” Really? Did they start playing because they saw that stream? No. You’d say “50% of new players.” So, 50% of existing players watch livestreams of D&D games? Regularly? No. You’d say. You said, “have watched.” What does that mean? At least once? How long did they have to watch for? And are you basing that entirely on a survey you asked the online gaming community on the Internet who are more likely to watch YouTube videos? Uh huh.
That’s how business true works.
RPGs are unapproachable as hell. Even when there WERE bookstores, people didn’t discover RPGs by accident. They didn’t stumble on them. And even if they did, they didn’t know what to buy. They took one look at the massive shelf and said “what the f$&% is all of this? Which one of these is Dungeons & Dragons?” And, unless I’m missing some big part of every episode of Critical Role, nothing Mercer is doing is demystifying that s$&%. It is HARD for people to get into RPGs unless they have someone telling them how to get in. And the big companies know that. They have a term for it. They call it “the older cousin model.” That is, you get into RPGs when someone – like an older cousin – who already plays decides to bring you in. The entire marketing plan for D&D and Pathfinder relies almost entirely on this “older cousin” bulls$&%. You know what that means? It means “limited growth.” Your community can only grow as fast as the current size of the community allows. And to allow more growth, you not only need more players, but you also need to convert some of those new players into GMs, and some of those GMs need to become older cousins. Your community can’t handle exponential growth. At best, it will get stuck at a nice, steady growth rate. Which means, if there is suddenly an explosion in the popularity of your game and huge numbers of new people want in, you can’t get them in. They are left outside the gate, wishing they had a way in.
The older cousin model cannot offer anything more than stable, steady, slow growth. It can’t. So, great, millions of people are watching Critical Role. How are they actually getting into the hobby? Well, if WotC can’t find anything better to say than “50% of existing players have watched Critical Role,” odds are most of them aren’t. What a f$&%ing failure.
And that’s not even to mention younger people. I know the 18 to 35 demographic is marketing gold, but role-playing gamers follow a weird pattern. They tend to engage when they are younger, take time off the game when they are establishing themselves in life, and then come back to the game when they get older. Grabbing people in their early to mid-twenties is grabbing people who will be lapsing out of the community in five years and then coming back in fifteen years. That’s stupid. Grab them young. When they have friends around them.
And, for f$%&’s sake, don’t rely on your customers to be your marketing department. You have to find a way to make it easy for people to discover your game and then you have to make it easy for them to buy precisely one thing and start running games for their friends. Not playing. Running.
And don’t start in on the Starter Sets. Those are utter failures. For one thing, why does such a simple game – because RPGs aren’t that complicated – need to be stripped down into a smaller, simpler game before it’s possible for someone to start actually playing it? Your game shouldn’t need a starter set. You should be able to start with the actual game.
Show Me the Money!
In the end, the RPG industry is a complete mess. You know how I know? Because of this joke:
“How do you make a small fortune in role-playing games?”
“Start with a large fortune.”
Yeah, that’s an actual joke people who work for this industry actually tell. One of several. Now, yes, that joke has been around forever, and a lot of people in a lot of industries have used it, but I have had actual professionals at large companies tell me that joke. People who are actually making money in the RPG industry. Supposedly. Wizards of the Coast is rudderless. They are adrift at sea, and no one is at the helm. You can tell because their product releases are so scattershot and contain so much random, unrelated crap. They have no plan for supporting D&D. They are making up the plan as they go. And the are the masters of the industry. Everyone else in the industry relies on Wizards of the Coast to bring in new players so they can take the castoffs. And every last product imitates D&D. The really interesting stuff – like always – is happening among the indies. And they are focused on unique and interesting game design, but they couldn’t give a crap about how to actually produce, market, and sell these games.
Is the RPG industry doing well? Yeah. It’s fine. It’s just like Jerry McDonalds’ sports agency. It’s doing well, but it’s pretty much hit the limit of what it can do. It’s not shrinking, it’s staying afloat, it’s growing at the nice normal pace it always has, but that’s the business equivalent of surviving. But there are signs of trouble brewing. Paizo’s new edition of Pathfinder is going to be a serious shakeup. And it looks they are chasing WotC’s tail. WotC, meanwhile, is having some troubles inside they are trying to put a happy face on. It’ll probably survive. It’ll probably continue to be fine. But fine isn’t good enough.
And that’s why, in the end, I am not going to waste my time publishing for someone else’s game. Because it isn’t the game design that’s really the issue. Oh, sure, I can design a good game. As good as anything that exists. Better, I think. But of course, I think that. It’s me talking. But someone needs to figure out a different way of doing things. A way that caters to the strengths of RPGs, that really does empower GMs to run great games, that simplifies and streamlines while still providing actual depth instead of just stripping out features, that doesn’t make you buy anything you personally don’t need or want, and one that makes it easy for a young, new player to discover the game exists and start playing it with three of their friends right away.
And I’m inviting you all along for the ride. Once that book is published and delivered and sitting on store shelves, it’s time to start Phase 2.
Ha!
Ha ha ha!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Great post. I am working on an RPG of my own as a side project atm, and I have thought about some of these questions as well. One thing I am seriously considering for if/when I move to publication is to publish online (perhaps in wiki format) and move away from the single rulebook model entirely. Free accessible website with some good artwork and focus on community is where I see the TTRPG moving to.
I think a wiki format is a good idea in principle. However a lot of people seem to like having a physical book, and a few potential backers told me that the lack of a print run on my Kickstarter was the thing which led to them settling on not backing me.
So a SRD? As a poor-as GM I LOVE SRDs. They’re categorized and free, with easy access and bookmarking. No need to “go to page 193 of the CRB” anymore!
Soylent Green is people. We as humans like to be around other humans, RPG, at its core, is about being around and “hanging out” with our “friends”. And yes, quotes intentional. Watch a 12 year old switch from WOW/Halo to DND and they’re hooked fast, why, true human interaction. Way back when we all thought computers would make it better, well they dint. My bad grammar = AGM swearing
I couldn’t buy your first book because I’m a poor f%ck who lives in a Third World Country, but if you ever release an Angry RPG I would sell a kidney in order to support it. It would be specially great if you teach people who to come up with a good setting and/or publish your own Angryverse. I would die for an elegant, efficient system. A system build with a sense of wonder and adventure (I’m thinking about your Low Magic article here – I’m tired of how mundane and stupid magic is DnD). I’m f%#king tired of DnD and Forgotten Realms and yet it seems there is nothing better out there. Please, release your own stuff. People complain about your persona, but the truth is you are the most skilled person talking about DnD right now.
This guy has, word for word, said everything I wanted to say after reading this article. If you ever release the Angry RPG you can count on two third-world kidney’s worth of money, Angry.
How much does a third-world kidney go for these days?
…Asking for a friend. 😛
GURPS 4e did the “just character generation” book idea. I’m not sure if it was because they realized “that’s all the players need” or because GURPS character generation is so complicated that it needed its own book. It’s certainly not easy on new players, either way.
This post certainly causes my interest re: The Angry RPG to continue to be piqued.
I do hope with respect to distribution, bookstores being dead etc, that you’ll still distribute The Angry RPG in physical form.
I’m excited to learn more about the product.
What are your plans to reach new players who’ve never heard of you?
What do you think makes the potential ttRPG market larger than the board game market, given that ttRPGs don’t deliver the sort of visual appeal that video games do?
Hey angry, would you kindly make the pdf version of your book available for those assholes who missed the opportunity to support the kickstarter but still want to buy it ?
Asking for a friend.
I don’t know what the electronic only options would be, but Angry has officially stated that the physical book will be available after the Kickstarter orders are filled. Presumably, Dec-Jan timeframe.
Interesting article Angry.
I’m gonna be one of those people that disagrees with you on monsters being included in adventures. I don’t think that makes sense. Yes, I’m sure monster stats could be made smaller, ability scores are useless for example, all you need is the modifiers. There’s also tons of repetition, like “Melee Weapon Attack” on five different entries on the same monster. I’m sure that could be cut down with some clever symbolism or something, board games have been doing it for years.
However, I don’t think it would cut it down enough to be able to fit in adventures, not without significantly increasing the page count. Which in turn would increase the cost of the adventures, and they are already expensive enough.
The only other option is to cut down on the size of adventures, which is obviously entirely possible, but that seems to be a different question all together.
Another side to the coin is that if monsters were all included in the adventures, then how would people that weren’t interested in adventures get monster stats? We’re back around to a monster manual.
With respect, there are two types of people in the world: those who explain why something can’t be done and those who don’t have time to discuss it because they are too busy doing it.
Lol. I’d love to be proven wrong on this for sure. I look forward to when your RPG is released!
Tangential question, what (if any) systems have you played where Monster stats where small enough to fit in an adventure? The first that comes to mind is Numenera, but that combat system was a little… lackluster (booooring). Heck how, small exactly are we talking? Half the 5e size? 1/4? 2/3?
D&D 4e included full monster stats in the modules. If you ran nothing but modules, you could get away with never owning a Monster Manual, but it was still available as an option for anyone who wanted to do some writing of their own.
Actually, 4E abandoned the full monster stat approach – which was called, by that point, the Tactical Encounter Format – just before they shut the whole of 4E down. And it was then that Perkins put out the stupid-a$& remark that monster stats were too big and complicated to waste page space in adventures with. Even then, many published products for 3E and 4E used page references to the MM for lots of the more common monsters. So it was something they weren’t very consistent on. But that was the right approach. If all you want to run is published adventures, you shouldn’t need a reference manual or two or three for the monsters in the adventure you already paid for.
How long were the modules? Like levels 1-5, 1-10, 1-15?
To go back to a really old system, Star Frontiers always inlined the opponents stats in the adventure text. They typically took up 2 lines (in adventures with the text in 2 columns) or 3-4 lines (in adventures with text in 3 columns). And that was for NPCs, robots, creatures, whatever. There were often additional descriptions elsewhere (e.g 2 or 4 pages of monster manual style entries for new creature) but the important stats were inlined in a few lines right where they were needed.
The obvious move is to do both: publish a monster manual for those who want to make their own adventures and include an abbreviated stat block in published adventures that gives you everything you need to run the adventure without the monster manual – ideally in each encounter description that features a monster.
Earlier editions of D&D did exactly that. It didn’t bulk out adventures all that much.
See, I figured that this would be too cost prohibitive for most RPG companies. Considering they would essentially be making an extra book that only a certain portion of their player-base would purchase. It would be the best solution though.
Whatcif you have one rule book and put the actual rules toolbox including monster making in that one book. Then people know what to buy, like for a gift.
Then your adveture tells you how to make thematically appropriate monsters and includes examples when needed.
I would really like the monster building rules to be in the MM (or whatever equivalent). Packing those, and the magic items in the DMG is annoying to no end.
A really well-organized RPG shouldn’t really need a DMG. Just saying.
Thinking about it, most indie games I can think of don’t have a DMG.
Hell, 5e barely has a DMG, almost like they just assumed they should make one but couldn’t think of much to put in it so they made a few pages of useful content and a whole book of filler just so they could have the standard trio of d20 core books.
They could easily have combined the DMG and MM into a single book of “How to Homebrew Content, with Examples”, but by this point it’s probably just expected of them to continue the now-traditional format they’ve gotten themselves stuck into.
Coming from the only place in the world where D&D ist NOT the number 1 RPG I can assure you that monster stats can easily be included in adventures. DSA does that in every module, and it works fine.
Angry has demonstrated that 5e monster stats can be cut down significantly: https://theangrygm.com/abbreviate-stat-blocks/
Granted, some monsters are a bit more complex, but even a long adventure wouldn’t need more than a couple of extra pages in this way.
And that is cutting down someone else’s work. Imagine if I designed monsters – not just the stat blocks, but the monsters themselves – from the ground up with the design requirement that they are expressible in a few lines of text. I mean, why should monsters have all the same stats as PCs to begin with? Monsters and PCs do fundamentally different things in the game. They should work differently. And the amount of space they take up should depend on their importance in the game. Characters should take up an entire page. A cannon-fodder goblin mook should fit into a paragraph. Or less. They are literally only slightly more important than furniture.
This reminds me of one of the Starfinder pregens whose second page is TWO THIRDS OF GODDAMN BACKSTORY.
It was the SF equivalent.of a Sorcer so explaining magic spells did force two pages… But it makes you wonder if they could’ve done something more interesting than explaining me this girl’s family and school.
I thought the purpose was to make thing easier to run for people new to the game though. Because I’m pretty sure those shortened stat-blocks are pretty intimidating to new players. This is only really in regards to 5e though, obviously as Angry said, something could be done in the initial design of the game to make monsters smaller.
In terms of usefulness, inside the module is where you need them. I am running some stuff from Tales from the Yawning Portal (or whatever) right now, and in order to prepare the sessions in a format that I can actually run, I need to go through and create multiple 30+ page documents specifically so that I can include the monster stats along with any other referenced item (e.g. on the skeleton is yellow mold – see page XX of DMG for how yellow mold works). Every reference to another book, or even to an appendix, to be honest, creates additional prep time. When the PCs are in room 39 of a giant dungeon, I don’t want to be opening books and flipping pages, I want everything I need for room 39 at my fingertips.
In addition, I know some people are claiming the support for print books. I just wanted to throw in the vote for a nicely organised electronic version of everything. Maybe it doesn’t feel as nice in your hands while you’re reading it, but it’s more useful in terms of prep. Ironically, this really does allow you to actually write each thing (including a monster stat block) once, and actually link (not just reference) it from the appropriate place in the adventure. At that point, monster stat block size isn’t about page count, but about fitting on a phone screen, since that’s how people actually play the game. 3rd party resources for Pathfinder are much better for this than D&D, but even those could use improvement.
This. I understand there will always be some prep before a session, but having to rewrite every goddamn stat block and half the exploration/hazard rules just so they can be referenced at the table definitely feels like doing the designers’ work for them.
Hell, even the online supplements that contain the MM stat blocks omitted from the adventure books (until they phased them out in later adventures for god-knows-what reason) would be vastly more useful if they ALSO contained the stats that WEREN’T omitted, just so you didn’t need to have two different reference sources for the same goddamn thing.
Semi-related, I’ve been working on a simplified “generic monster of a given CR” stat formula, specifically so that druids can use wild-shape or cast Conjure Animals without having to look up stat blocks (which can be lengthy and frustrating, and can’t reasonably be done at the table).
Essentially it allows me to improvise a stat block on the fly, and could therefore be used to improvise an unplanned encounter with a creature that wasn’t expected to see combat, or even to calculate social stats for when the players inevitably try to reason with a creature intended solely for combat.
This could allow for much simpler inline stat blocks, because you’d only need to include the stats that differ from the default stats for that CR.
I’ve started using Roll20 recently, and one of the things I really enjoy is the way the modules actually come with the monsters included. I really appreciate being able to have the info on the monster right there when I’m looking at the map.
(Then again I’m also one of those DMs who has always written on my maps so I can see what’s there without paging through notes.)
I will be following you along with great interest as you begin work on the rpg you are definitely ~~not developing. The distribution model will definitely be interesting. Will you be using this blog to let us follow you along with your development or will it remain primarily focused on GM advice? Both sound interesting to me and I will continue following it either way. I can’t wait for that article explaining why your dice system is better than every other dice system /s.
This. This entire article is why I’ve been reading your stuff for a many years now. I can’t say that I have been a follower since the beginning, but when I did find your stuff, I definitely felt like it resonated with me.
Because beyond your particular stylistic tone, there is some solid substance. When you sift through the grawlix and intentional mocking of geek culture, it is quite clear that you have put a lot of time and effort into drilling down and looking for some solid principles on which to design your systems. Not only are there consistent and coherent principles, but there are practical methods that can be implemented at the table.
I am a person that became disenfranchised with the D&D model of “support” for their game. I’ve played since 1e and after 4E only got about a 4 year run, I realized that the WotC/Hasbro idea was not in line with supporting a game that I wanted to run and play. I have recently settled on a new RPG system that seems to be meeting my needs as a DM/GM and also being accessible to the pool of players in my area that have minimal RPG experience. And so far, it is working out.
The great thing I’ve found about your material is that by and large, it is system agnostic. Yes, you have developed some things that are specific to a particular edition of D&D, but most of it can be applied across editions and systems because of the underlying principles of what you’re writing.
All of this to say that I’m definitely looking forward to your future Angry RPG (which would actually be a pretty cool title, or possibly a subtitle, anwyay). Even if it isn’t a game that I run/play, I’m certain that the content of that system would give me lots of food for thought to make me a better DM/GM, no matter what system I run.
So I look forward to all that you are bringing in the future. And thanks for inviting us all along for this ride. It has been a lot of fun so far, and I’m sure it will continue to be as you move forward!
There might be a reason to place character generation near the beginning of the rulebook. I suspect this is a good way to get traction with GM, to show what the system is about, what it allows to do.
The trend of explaining how the game is actually meant to be played in the first chapter is pretty new, and having such explanation is immensely useful. Nonetheless, nothing demonstrates what players will be able to do more clear than character sheets, class lists, magic schools and various generation options. For me, skimming through character generation provides enough excitement and momentum to swallow the whole book. It might not be immediately useful for me as GM, but it’s engaging, becayse I’m imagining experiencing all those options in the game. If chargen would be moved to the back of the rulebook, I would probably immediately skip to it, and then read the rest.
I suspect it might be very different for new players, though. You have experience with RPG’s, so you know what sort of things to expect, you know how to organize your brain to file away references to things you don’t yet understand for later, etc. I imagine the full character generation options (all of which refer to the rules of gameplay, which are not explained until later), would be daunting and disorienting for newcomers.
Said the experienced gamer who has context for how RPGs work and is familiar enough with RPGs that you can use character generation as a way to assess a system instead of as an arcane and nonsensical mess of options that lack any context at all.
Even for an experienced gamer, trying to understand character gen before I know what the terms actually mean is pointless. On a similar note, I am becoming more appreciative of books which have pre-generated characters. I don’t need infinite variety the first time I play a game, I need a character that teaches me how to work with the system.
This is part of why asking experienced gamers what products written for new players should look like is always trouble. Because most people do not have the talent of looking at things with a beginner’s mind. They can’t actually put aside their own knowledge and experiences to look at things as if they were brand new. And I’m not criticisng people for that. It’s a hard thing to do. It’s part art, part talent, and part skill. It’s what makes some teachers very good and others very bad. It’s also what allows some people to distill complex subjects down to very simple roots. Frankly, It’s a skill I’ve been building for ten years by writing this website. Many of my early articles were all about breaking things down to their bare essentials so I could explain them to less experienced gamers.
As a player, I enjoy reading through all the avaiable stuff and possibilities.
As a GM, I groan at how cluttered the info is.
I was quite literally brought into the game by an older cousin, played when I was young, left for a while as a young adult and then came back.
How far will you have to lower the barriers to entry to draw in people that aren’t brought in by a “cousin” of some sort? If you lower them that far, what kind of game is left? Cultivating a GM and three players from a group of four people with absolutely no RPG experience is a tall order.
As you say, the focus will have to be on the GM and you will have to begin by convincing potential GMs that not only will the game itself be fun but that the process of learning to play the game will either be fun in and of itself or will take no more than, say, two hours. Preferably both.
It would be fascinating to run play tests where you give published materials from existing games to total neophytes, give them two hours alone in a room, and then bring in three other total neophytes to play a game. What would that game look like? It would also be fascinating to watch iterations on that same play test through the course of the development of a new game. How do you optimize a game for that goal?
Looking forward to following your progress.
> It would be fascinating to run play tests where you give published materials from existing games to total neophytes, give them two hours alone in a room, and then bring in three other total neophytes to play a game.
This would be basic procedure for a real industry.
For what it’s worth, even if the site content changed to better accommodate the development process I’d still be here. I have zero interest in Yandere Simulator but I follow the developer precisely because he’s one of the most open and responsive developers I have come across, and I have learned a lot about the backside of videogame design by listening to him and his followers/detractors. I actually DO have a vested interest in running better tabletop games, and I can’t imagine any part of the AngryRPG development process would be wasted space on the site.
I, too, am working on an entirely superfluous indie RPG, but… damn, Angry… you got me thinking. I think you’re right, there’s blood in the water, and the right project, marketed and promoted correctly could very well muscle it’s way in alongside some of the genre veterans, even overtake them, certainly if given enough time.
So! I wish you well sir, on your endeavors.
I might just end up following in your footsteps here.
That’s pure grade Angry GM, that is. Brought a tear to my eye.
The highlight for me was “Role-playing games need to embrace the GM as the single greatest game mechanic ever invented.” Thank you for this; I have always been flailing around on the fringes of this concept, so it’s great that you have put it into words.
When they were designing 4th edition, they considered introducing an “aggro” mechanic like the ones World of Warcraft and its ilk apparently uses (apparently, since I’ve never played it). In the end they decided against it.
I was aghast that they had even considered it. People didn’t understand my attitude – what’s wrong with them thinking up a mechanic, and then deciding against it; isn’t that what happens when you design a new game?
Next time I have to re-hash decade-old internet arguments I can say “The GM is the single greatest game mechanic ever invented, and once it became clear these guys didn’t recognise that then I knew I wasn’t going to like their new game”.
My most major concern is , given the correct (or perhaps incorrect) timing of an Angry RPG release, it’s not impossible that Wizards may end up stealing some of your ideas for 6th Edition D&D, and burying your game, and it’s good ideas through brand recognition. That is, assuming they’re desperate enough, and your game is good enough.
I haven’t shared that many actual ideas. All I’ve done is call out problems. And frankly, I’m not the first person or the only person calling out these problems. Hell, I know WotC employees and former employees who have called out these exact same problems. So, WotC has already chosen to either ignore these problems or has failed to fix them. I’m not afraid of them trying to beat me to the punch because, with all respect to the skeleton crew that’s left running WotC, I don’t think they’re up to the task anymore. As a whole. I have nothing but respect for Mearls as a game designer. He’s a smart guy and I don’t believe that WotC is actually using his talents anymore. Perkins is a developer. He’s a fluffy story guy. But he’s really good at building compelling stuff when he isn’t dicking around trying to get laughs out of an audience. And he’s very good at paring mechanics down into actual expressions of the fiction. But I also think he’s on a fundamentally different page from Mearls. As for Crawford… well… he’s also there. So, let them try to beat me to the punch. If they can outdo me, well, that’s the risk I took. And the gaming community will be better off for it. But I don’t think they can.
This is a great article, Angry. I agree that the industry needs serious shaking up – I had hoped the surge in streaming RPGs would have some sort of effect on it but (pun intended), no dice. As a 3pp I’ve been trying to bend the envelope a little: like abandoning the garbage standard of two-column portrait PDFs.
I’m looking forward to the angry RPG, and I hope your take on what the industry needs catches on, because for the love of god the industry needs it.
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Blog posts are a lot like magazine articles. If I can’t get through it in one bowel movement, it’s just too fucking long. A little background color is awesome, drowning in kaleidoscopic hues is the opposite of that. Oh yeah, and welcome to Wisconsin!
I’d think with all that Wisconsin cheese, your bowel movements would be at least long enough to read two of my articles. You must eat a lot of fiber.
“Now, I know – I KNOW – there are going to be a bunch of smarta$&es who are going to feed me all the wrong reasons for those selling patterns. Monster stats would make the adventures too big and waste page space. That just tells me that the monster stats are designed really badly. I mean, why would you design a rule system for monsters that is so big and complicated that it doesn’t fit in adventures.”
I AM going to disagree with your premise here. There is a good reason to have the monsters in their own book. But first, most adventures that I have run/read do have the monster stats in the adventure along with monsters that are unique to it. So, I am not sure what you are reading, but most D&D adventures do include the monsters (at least in a abbreviated stat block if nothing else).
However, it would be very inconvenient if monsters were spread around in a bunch of adventure books instead of complied into one or two. As a GM, I often flip through the MM in search of monsters that fit in adventures I create/modify. Sometimes they form a template so I can tweak them.
Paging through a bunch of different books to find the particular creature you are looking for would be annoying. Second edition D&D had the interesting idea of creating a monster binder, which might have worked if they actually followed through on the execution of it.
Third edition D&D had just the problem above. Five monster manuals plus a bunch of source books that had different monsters in it. Total PITA to find a particular monster to fit an encounter.
I’m trying to find the spot where I said there shouldn’t be Monster Manuals. Yeah, doesn’t seem to be there. What I said was that there was no reason that monsters should not be designed so that every adventure can’t include the stats for the monsters in it. All of the monsters. Not just the unique ones. The ones not currently included in adventures published by WotC and Paizo in lieu of references to a bunch of giant, expensive textbooks that GMs who only want to run published adventures SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BUY.
I’m not even sure I can count you among the smartasses I knew would be coming considering how poorly you understood the point.
[[ Commented deleted because commenter doesn’t know when to let something drop and walk away – The Angry GM ]]
I can’t wait to see where this goes. I missed the kickstarter, but we will be able to buy the book afterwards right? Will this include the pdf, and do you have any idea when these would be available?
Physical and electronic copies will be available for sale in December. Once the print run is delivered. Physical books will be available through my own store front, Third Act Publishing’s store front, and possibly through other venues but we’re still hammering out those deals and I can’t talk about the exciting possibilities yes. Electronic copies will be available through the same store fronts and also through Drive Thru RPG.
Literally NO ONE is doing a good job marketing RPGs these days. Bury them.
The best marketting trick I’ve seen is Society play, specially online. It takes a while to find it though…
But you didn’t tell us the most important thing…are you using d20s or d6s?
d12 and d8 maybe. Basing it on just d6s would make it more accessible to new players though, everyone already have some of them laying around from board games etc.
The 5th Edition starter set seems to be pretty close to what you’re asking for, doesn’t it? It has an adventure, the monsters and treasure needed for that adventure, and doesn’t require you to buy anything else. It’s not complete, but it’s not dumbed down, just reduced in scope. WotC probably also doesn’t make much money on it, because it’s about $40 worth of product for $20, acting as a loss leader. (All prices MSRP)
Pretend you’re running WotC. If you added full monsters and treasure to each adventure, they would cost $5 to $10 more, unless your descriptions are *really* compact or the adventures get shorter. Customers who only play canned adventures save money, at least at first, especially if they can avoid buying the DMG too, but customers who do both canned and homebrew adventures pay more. If new players stick to canned adventures it can lower the barrier to entry. But is it enough?
The game is still expensive. This pricing situation is probably a big part of why the “cousin model” sticks around. You can sell a $50 PHB to someone who already has a group, but $130 for the core game system (PHB, DMG, and an adventure – not even the MM) is a harder sell up front no matter how easy the game is to play.
So don’t reject the starter set, build on it. Start there, and sell additional products based on what the characters need. The starter set works just like the 5E starter set. The expanded set comes with the character generation rules, more powerful spells/equipment and worldbuilding tips. Then you can sell additional sets and allow the customers to choose their game upgrade. They can buy a book of new classes, or new races, or the book with all the level 7+ spells in it, or whatever. More products, less expensive and more tightly focused, instead of a splatbook that’s 1/3 lore, 1/6 stuff for players, and 1/2 monsters, like Volo’s is.
Look at Star Fleet Battles for an example of this system. While as a game it’s going downhill, it does have an exceptionally well organized product lineup. In total, it’s much more expensive even than D&D, but it actually costs less to get started with. The basic set only costs $35, it’s got everything a new player needs, but the rules in it are at the core of the game no matter how advanced you get. And you never have to buy those same rules in another, more advanced product.
The starter set is crap. All they did was hastily abridge their textbooks and add an unbalanced garbage adventure. There is nothing remotely instructive about it. And yes, if I designed my stat blocks the way WotC designed theirs – with zero thought for how they’d be used at the table – it would increase the price for published modules. Assuming I also accepted the idea of publishing modules as bloated, expensive textbooks filled with walls of text. In short, to pretend I was running WotC, I would need to lobotomize myself. Or at least do enough yoga to be able to get my head up my own ass. If you build on crap decisions, all you get is more crap.
When you make YOUR starter set, I’m sure you will take the necessary steps to make it more useful for learning. But that is not my point.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and excluding the Cousin Model, the place they start IS a starter set. The only way it’s not is if the entire game system fits in one book. But then it’s hard to expand, and if you do, it gets disorganized, rules get duplicated, nobody knows what order to buy things in.
But if you go into it intending to start with the starter set, then the game ends up much better organized and you can keep selling add-ons as long as you can think up new content. That’s why I cited Star Fleet Battles. One Basic Set, which is a totally playable game all on its own, and about a million expansions, most of which cover a single topic.
Another, more common example of the model is trading card games. You get the basic mechanics of the game with your first starter set, and they never change. But you can still use as many cards as you can afford, and (aside from completely artificial limitations on which cards can be used in various game formats) you can make a deck with any cards that you got, in any order.
Either have a starter set or have a game that is crammed into one book and is too hard to expand is a false dichotomy. Just because you can only imagine those two solutions, that doesn’t mean they are the only ones.
The 5e Starter Set is designed to introduce people already familiar with D&D to the new rules in 5e. It’s in no way designed to introduce novice players to the game. The utter lack of hand-holding for new DMs in the adventure is a testament to that.
The starter set should be included in the CRB. A short mission, featuring a battle or two and a social encounter, for players and GMs to get a feel for the game.
It can, then, dissect the mission, the structure of the encounters, the decisions made, to give the GMs a good reference.
There is NO REASON TO NOT do this. It’s as important as explaining how attacks work. Not adding a example, playable and explained adventure is just being lazy.
I like where you’re going with this :). On Angry’s advice, I looked up Menser’s red box just to see the Choose Your Own Adventure portion. If more RPGs had stuff like that, they would be more approachable. Glad to hear he wants to buck industry tradition and go in a sane direction!
The argument that including stat blocks would drive the prices of adventure modules up is really blown out of proportion. Just look at i.e. Tomb of Annihilation.
50$, 256 pages makes it roughly 0.2 $/page (not even taking into account the price of printing a hardcover book.
Looking at the SRD, they can fit about 3 monsters per page, assuming they don’t have a ridiculous number of attacks.
Adding 40 monsters would then take about 15 pages, accounting for the odd monster with a huge stat block.
15 pages times 0.2 $/page is 3$
Of course, this is an upper bound, and a gross oversimplification as there are many other factors that go into the price of a book.
So people that argue that it would be prohibitively expensive to include the stat block are essentially arguing that 50$ is acceptable but 53$ is prohibitively expensive.
It’s not necessarily prohibitively expensive, just MORE expensive. Why even spend that $3 when “everybody has the Monster Manual anyway”?
Right now WotC has everyone in the mindset that the Monster Manual is a core book, but published adventures are add-ons. If you want to be a DM, you simply have to have a copy of the Monster Manual. Why would WotC change that? All it would do is cost them sales of the Monster Manual while increasing the prices (but not the profits) of their other products. Status quo isn’t foolishness by WotC, it’s very smart – given their position in the market.
An indie publisher wanting to compete on value for money could easily come to a different conclusion. Most of them probably already have.
“If you want to be a DM, you simply have to have a copy of the Monster Manual. Why would WotC change that?”
Because then it would lower the entry cost to the game, allowing more people to join the hobby, resulting in more sales. Monster manuals would still get bought when these people graduate to encounter building.
Also there’s this thing called “respecting your customers” where if you sell a “complete runnable adventure” you don’t make it an “incomplete unrunnable adventure unless you buy our other book”.
Why can’t we just nix the hardcovers on the adventures? I know they’re very proud of their wall of matching book bindings, but I don’t need to pay the same price as a new video game for an adventure book that assumes I’ve already spent $120 (or more!) on other “more important” books. I haven’t even bought a 5e Monster Manual yet because they’re so bloody pricy.
It seems clear that Wizards only tacitly accepts the frugal DM’S existence. This is the company that brings us Magic the Gathering, after all.
Does the Megadungeon have a place in the Angry RPG plan, or is that still a 5E project? Or both?
I just saw his answer on that a day or two ago, sorry I can’t find it. He said that the MD is built with 5e’s engine and is designed to work around its flaws. Hence, it would not be compatible with The Angry RPG, since it’s an entirely different design concept and foundation.
It’s like trying to build a new car with a weed-whacker motor.
I know this article is a couple days old now, but I’m wondering: do you have any strong feelings on how big a “typical” RPG should usually be? Obviously, a thousand page door stopper for the core book is gonna scare a lot of newbies away, but where is the ideal size if you’re trying to have mass appeal (not just catering to experienced gamers and their little cousins)? 100 pages? 200 pages? 50 pages? Likewise, how do you feel about the dual column layout used in most RPGs (or even worse, the triple column layout as seen in GURPS)?
But what are the four markets? GMs, players and… the other two?
… and why should I give anyone the edge over my by giving away the thing that apparently only I’ve figured out. Wait and see.
Then can I at least ask where I will find the revelation? In a future article or in your fancy book?
Well, I’m also designing this RPG thing. It’ll take a year or two, but that’s when you’ll have your answer.
I’d say ‘fiction consumer’ or something along those lines is one of them. I’ve never played a game of L5R in my life, but I find the setting fascinating, and pick up books when I can.
I can give my ten cents having introduced Dungeon Crawl Classics to new players (comes in one book that the DM uses).
When we say we are going to play for the first time:
Everyone sits down. GM shuffles stack of random pre-made level 0 characters (printed from website https://purplesorcerer.com/create.htm, 4 to a page). Every player gets 4 character cards.
Read backstory to adventure module and why this group of peasants needed to get together to solve their problem and what they are trying to do.
Read first room description in adventure module and what the players see.
Ask “what do you do?”
—–
Then play the game. Anything they want to do that needs it you can explain how a number on their sheet impacts it. Maybe they have a basic “what to roll” sheet.
They start climbing walls, trying ropes to lower other characters down pits, setting up ambushes.
Any characters that survive, the players care about how quirky they are and now they get to level 1.
Another 3rd World potential customer waiting for you to release your book. You’ve hit the nail in the head in so many ways. I’ve quit GMing 10 years ago now, and even with all your articles every time I grab a rulebook to pick up the hobby again it’s just too damn hard, either I’m not passionate enough(although I have followed every article of your for the past 4 years), or I just can’t find the time and energy to digest the rules again, even in games I already ran(maybe the fact that I ran Rolemaster doesn’t help). I’ve been saying for the past 4 years the same things you did: that compared to other ‘geek’ hobbies, RPG didn’t grow at all, much less evolved.
So I really hope you can shake things up. There are a lot of potentials players/gms like me who are just looking for the right game.
So go Scott! You complete me. 😛
It’s weird thinking about it, but I guess I was introduced to D&D through the “older cousin” model, and then I introduced my friends to it.
But geez it’s quite an investment to get the player’s handbook + potentially 2 other books to play the game right at the start.
If there were a book to buy which had a pre-made adventure/dungeon dive with pre-generated characters and a couple pages on how to GM, that shit would be amazing. One book to get people into the game and potentially hooked. I don’t feel like Wizards can do that though, not just because of the Monster Manual, but because when you walk in you’re faced with so many books that make it such a nightmare to pick something. Maybe something might change with 6e.