How to Wilderness Right

You wait patiently for one week. Then, on the morning of Wednesday, October 13, an Angry article appears! It reveals Angry’s Secret Step-by-Step-ish Wilderness Travel Adjudication System! And that’s the problem with real life. You’ve got to actually wait through the passage of time. No time for a Long, Rambling Introduction™ today, though. We’ve got…

As the Game Turns

Basic RPG turn order. It’s easy when the actions are easy. But when the actions are big and complex, it’s still easy. You just have to know how to handle arbitrary s$&%.

Like Players Do

I promised I’d write a whole article about that Player Do List thing. So here it… isn’t. Because I can’t. But I wrote you a better article about something that’s related to Play Do Lists but it’s also way better. Not that you’ll think so.

Exploring by the Rules

Today’s lesson about how you all break your games and then ask me to fix them. Specifically, it’s about how all the little, fiddly rules that don’t seem to do anything are actually the key to interesting, meaningful, fun gameplay.

How to Run an Angry Open-World Game, Part I: You Can’t

Let’s talk about this Angry Open World Game thing. We all knew this was coming. You knew it. I knew it. The moment I said, “I could tell you all how I’m running my open-world campaign, but I know you’re not really interested,” you knew I was playing “dance for your article.” And you should…

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Dice

It’s time for me to answer the same basic GMing question I’ve been answering differently every few years for the last twelve: when should you resort to using the rules and the dice to resolve things.

On Being a (Game) Master Storyteller

Now that I’ve confused all of y’all thoroughly about plot structure, let’s start a new series on narrative theory for game masters. That can’t possibly go wrong.

Plot Architecture 101

In the SECOND part of my TWO part so far series on plotting a campaign, I explain what plot structure is and why it’s useful. You know, before I do any crazy s$&% like trying to tell you about Korean narrative structures and their applicability in exploration-based campaigns.

The Road Trip to Adventure

All you need to start a campaign is a bunch of a characters and a first adventure, right? That’s what I said. But if you’re going to start a campaign with an ongoing plot, that’s not true is it. Yes. It is. Come on a road trip with the Tiny GM and I and I’ll show you how.

Ringing in the New Game

I’m in the midst of starting a new campaign. So it’s a good time to look at how to start a new campaign. Especially when you don’t have the time to do a full Session Zero.

Investigative Resolution

A long time ago, I tried to write a blog post about how to run good mysteries in D&D. But then, I got distracted and became The Angry GM. Ten years later, D&D has become even worse for running mysteries and I need to fix it to finish my latest project. But this isn’t about mysteries. It’s about using proficiencies right in 5E.

Sending Players to the Bench

Ideally, your game will have a perfect one-to-one ratio of players to characters. But sometimes the characters split up or a player skips a game or someone gets killed. What do you do then?

Angry’s Two-Note NPC

How can you possibly populate an entire world with relatable NPCs and role-playing them effectively? You can’t. Because you suck. But here’s how you can fake it.

Kobold Draft Picks

Homebrew adventures work so much better with custom-designed monsters. So let’s design some kobolds for my kobold adventure.

An Angry Shower Scene

Come into my shower. Lather up. Rinse off. And let your bored brain do a bunch of heavy lifting to make your adventure and scene design easier.

You Can Quit Encounters Anytime You Want

Why can’t you run a complex, engaging encounter with nothing but a paragraph of prose description and a copy of the PHB handy? Because you’re a system junkie, that’s why.