Silver and Gold: How You Should Handle Treasure at the Table (Part 2)
It’s time to finally finish telling you how you should handle treasure at your table.
Want to learn how to twist, bend, break, and rebuild the rules of your game to your liking? Want to see a bunch of new rules and systems created by The Angry GM? Start here on the path to becoming a hack like The Angry GM himself.
It’s time to finally finish telling you how you should handle treasure at your table.
Now that I’ve told you how I handle treasure at my table, it’s time for me to tell you how you should handle it at yours. And I’ve got a lot of options for you.
Originally, I had this Long, Rambling Introduction™ about how I made a little extra cash in high school by reading Tarot and constructing astrological charts for people. Which is true. And I highly recommend every GM learn to read the Tarot. Yeah. Seriously. That is actual, honest-to-f$&%ing-goodness legitimate GMing advice. Learn to read the Tarot.…
Now that I’ve posted the Final, Definitive version of the Tension Pool rules, I never have to talk about it again. So, let’s talk about it again by responding to feedback! Whee!
Here it is. At long last. The definitive, comprehensive, actual, final Tension Pool rules. Well, final until I change them again.
This one’s what I call a shower article. Mainly because people complain when I call articles like this, “articles I s$&% out while I’m s$&%ing.” The idea’s the same though. The article’s the result of an idea that came to me while I was dealing with some biological need or another. I wasn’t specifically working…
The thing I like most about having a large fanbase and an active Discord community – apart from having my big-a$& ego stroked constantly — is that I don’t have to pick my own fights anymore. Used to be that if I wanted a f$&%ing fight, I had to go out and start one. But…
Let’s not talk about role-playing games today. Let’s talk about other games and how they might help us design role-playing game downtime systems. And why that’s a terrible thing to talk about.
Before I can show you how I present towns, I have to talk about what players can do in towns. And before I can talk about what players can do in towns, I have to talk ABOUT what players can do in towns. That’ll make sense when you read the article. But the article’s about downtime activities.
Once upon a time, D&D allowed players to lead fellowships, attract merry men, and even just hire some temps from the Henchman’s Local #246. I miss those days and I’ve brought them back.
Once upon a time, D&D allowed players to lead fellowships, attract merry men, and even just hire some temps from the Henchman’s Local #246. I miss those days and I’m bringing them back.
It’s that time of the month: it’s time to make incremental progress on AngryCraft. This time, I define all of the different kind of things you’d make stuff out of.
In the long awaited next-but-definitely-not-last part of the AngryCraft series, I come up with a way to describe every item in the DMG in just 20 words.
It’s time for the AngryCraft Great Magic Item Analysis. Well, it’s time for the first part. The boring one with all the math. But, when it’s done, we’ll know exactly how to set a magic item’s price.
Systems and rules are nice, but tools are better. So here’s a simple tool that you can use to do whatever you need to do. Really.
Continuing the design of AngryCraft for D&D, my play experience description has left with me with a solid plan. A plan I just can’t follow because I’m shackled to D&D.
Most amateur and professional game designs try to jump from the feeling they want something to evoke right into mechanical game design. And that’s a mistake. Because, to design a good system, you need a big, strong D. As the Angry GM demonstrates by talking about the return of his magic item crafting system!
Weeks ago, I showed you how to f$&% CR and build monsters with my way better and way more awesome system. And then I promised I’d also show you how to put those monsters together into encounters. Well, I’m finally back to make good on that promise.
Weeks ago, I told you to f$&% CR and build monsters and encounters the better way. And I confused a lot of people and even made a few people angry. So, here’s a quick and dirty example of how to build a simple monster – two different ways – that should dispel the confusion. But it won’t make the angry people less angry. Not that I care. F$&% ’em.
How much stuff should an adventure have? How many encounters? How many goals? How long should an adventure take to play? Is there a simple template you can build an adventure around? Yes. Yes there is. Because I wrote one.
You know what? I’m sick of dealing with all the overly complicated, overly precise mathematics of encounter and custom monster design in D&D 5E. So I’m going to design an easier way to handle all of this. Unfortunately, I have to rewrite the whole Monster Manual to do it.
You know what? I’m sick of dealing with all the overly complicated, overly precise mathematics of encounter and custom monster design in D&D 5E. So I’m going to design an easier way to handle all of this. I just hope I don’t have to rewrite the whole Monster Manual to do it.
The Tension Pool was such a nice, simple mechanic. Why’d you GMs have to make it so complicated? Is it because I didn’t explain how to use it? Or where to build the complexity? Hint: you put the complexity in the Complications!
Once upon a time, D&D featured complex morale rules. Then the designers realized the problem and simplified and streamlined them. Nah, I’m just kidding. They just said, “screw it” and threw everything. Because fixing things is harder than deleting them.
I’ve been tinkering, off and on, with this Time/Tension Pool thing because my readers were smart enough to recognize a good thing even when I didn’t. And I’ve finally figured out a way to incorporate it into wilderness travel adventures.
Every time I talk about experience points, people want to pick a fight about it. Well, this is my last word on XP: how to properly award XP in D&D 5E, regardless of what the rules say, and regardless of what other players and GMs say.
Hacking a complex subsystem into a game requires you to work within the limits of the system. Sometimes, though, the system has some underlying patterns you can spot if you look hard enough. And those patterns help you make room for what you’re doing.
Hacking a complex subsystem into a game requires you to work within the limits of the system. Unfortunately, the system doesn’t always make it easy to find those limits. For example, let’s look at how D&D 5E might constrain my crafting system?
We’re back to talking about crafting. And it’s time for more thinking and pondering and brainstorming. Sorry, kids, that’s what design is. It’s about thinking, pondering, and making things way more complicated for yourself.
Accepting the disappointment that we’re going to have to stick with the obvious cliche of smashing ingredients together to make equipment as the basis of a D&D crafting system, now it’s time to figure out what those raw ingredients look like. And keeping it manageable.