Actually… Players Don’t Suck at Tracking Inventory
In the first in an official series of supporter-requested Features, I’ll tell you why your players don’t suck at tracking inventory and how to fix that.
Want to read a bunch of random useless gamer theory bulls$%&? If you really want to, these articles are loaded with useless bulls$&%.
In the first in an official series of supporter-requested Features, I’ll tell you why your players don’t suck at tracking inventory and how to fix that.
Thanks to a courageous remark by a Frienemy in my Discord server, I finally have my New Year’s Post. And to show my respect and gratitude, I shall now proceed to piss all over that remark.
Thanks to Frienemy-for-Life Mendel, I get to cancel myself by talking about what “always evil” means, how it’s different for orcs and devils, and why both are good for the game. Whee!
All I wanted to do was clarify myself. I didn’t mean to end up rambling about what playstyles mean and where they come from and whether it’s time to add another letter to our favorite playstyle acronym.
“Angry,” everyone keeps asking me, “how can I fix D&D’s shallow-seeming, boring combat?” Well, here’s your answer: “You can’t! But maybe you shouldn’t!”
Sometimes, all it takes is one remark to set me off. And this time, I saw one remark about how to handle illusions. I didn’t read the actual remark or the hours of discussion around it, but I have opinions nonetheless.
Let’s continue the discussion from last week and explore how Game Masters don’t roleplay. Ever.
Put your books and syllabusi away, kids. We need to settle some things before we go any further. It’s time you either believe me or you get out. Because you can’t run an NPC if you don’t believe everything I’ve said so far. And you can run social and stealth scenes without NPCs.
Now that I’ve explained Macrochallenges — whether you understood them or not — I can finally defend a choice I made years ago that many of you still haven’t forgiving: why I stopped calling Non-Encounters Scenes.
It’s time once again to dig into the well of stupid that never runs dry. Yes, it’s mailbag time again.
In today’s ranty bullshit screed, I declare myself the winner of three different arguments about Hacking.
I really effed up that Attrition Macrochallenge thing, didn’t I? Don’t think so? Well, all the questions and comments I’m dealing with certainly say I did. So let me try that shit again.
It’s Random Bullshit time. Today, I’m bullshitting about challenge, difficulty, stupid game masters, and why attrition is the most brilliant mechanic ever invented.
Ever since I dropped a side remark about how the swinginess of the d20 was a bullshit nonissue, I’ve heard from literally severals of people asking me to expand. So I expanded. Holy crap did I ever expand.
Just a little digression about magic: detecting it, identifying it, and why D&D’s answers to what can be detected are stupid as hell.
As I made a mess of that last True Game Mastery lesson on Problematic Actions — given the feedback anyway — I’m holding a special study session to answer your questions and clarify my points.
You know what players love? Discovering secrets. You know what GMs and game designers hate? Players discovering secrets. That’s kind of messed up; don’t you think?
Time for clickbait part 2! Here’s the best and worst things 5E has to offer. According to Angry.
I ain’t a reviewer or a critic. I don’t trash things for easy laughs. I don’t do tier rankings. And I don’t do clickbait lists. In that spirit, he’s my list of the Five Best and Five Worth Things About D&D 3.5.
Hot take: fumble mechanics are more valuable than crit mechanics. In fact, crits are only valuable if the monsters are rolling them. But I’m only proving one of those things today.
When it comes to explaining roleplaying games, there’s a giant, glaring question no one seems to be able to sufficiently and properly answer. And that is: just what the hell does it mean to be a Game Master. And really, that’s the first question anyone must answer before they can teach anyone else how to run games.
There’s this discussion that happens anytime anyone brings up death, failure, and loss in RPGs online. About how RPG systems should be better at handling failure because it’s so vital in RPGs. And that discussion… is wrong.
Let’s complain about a how a twelve-year-old game’s brilliant ideas were marred by the language used to communicate them. Because that’s a GOOD use of my time.
One of the most important Townbuilding tools, believe it or not, has to do with Training. And that’s why it’s such a problem that no one knows what PC Training looks like.
I designed this thing I’m calling Town Mode so the stuff the players do in Town actually matters. And so that there’s a game to play in Town. But if you don’t know how to handle the time between adventures, it won’t work for you.
In this rambling pile of bulls$&%, I complain about a forgotten piece of 4E mechanics and how it never should have been brought into 5E. Which it wasn’t.
Once upon a time, I promised I’d show you a cool way to build an adventure by casting a Tarot Spread. And here I am to do just that.
Once upon a time, I said that not only did I once learn to read the Tarot as a hobby, but that it made me a better GM. And for that reason, I said you should learn to read the Tarot. Well, you demanded I explain myself. So here I am.
It turns out that Curated Character Creation isn’t just the easiest and best way to get characters out of your players for a Simple Homebrew Campaign. It’s the best way to make characters. Period. Well, second best.
This is a load of bulls$&% about two issues, two games, and two GMs. And why I’m the greatest GM at my table, no matter who is at my table. And why you should be too.