Ask Angry: Advantage Stacking and First-Time Campaign Building
Justin asks why advantage doesn’t stack in D&D 5E and what would happen if it did? And Tristan wants to know when a new GM is ready to run their first homebrew campaign.
Justin asks why advantage doesn’t stack in D&D 5E and what would happen if it did? And Tristan wants to know when a new GM is ready to run their first homebrew campaign.
And now, it’s time to build your player’s next adventure. And then, it’ll be time to build their next next adventure. And so on. Forever.
Now that you’ve started your Simple Homebrew Campaign and you’ve got your players distracted with an adventure, it’s time to start building the world around them. First step: make a town. Or rather, make Town.
Better late than never! It’s time for the third Ask Angry Megablitz! I answer questions about group size, mismatched player levels, and letting the players pick their adventures.
Let’s keep the Not-Character-Arc Momentum going. Here’s my super secret recipe for executing an absolutely terrible Personal Character Quest Campaign in the least terrible way possible.
Now that you’ve decided to start a campaign and ignore your players’ input — you master of selfishness you — it’s time to start having visions.
You can’t manage a social gaming club that provides your friends with hours of fun unless you’re willing to be a selfish prick. Trust me; if there’s one thing I know, it’s being a selfish prick.
With this new, ongoing series of lessons, I — the Angry GM — intend to teach you everything you need to know to keep a Campaign alive until you grant it the sweet mercy of death.
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.
It’s time to finish this Simple Homebrew Campaign thing. At least, it’s time for me to finish it. Your work has only just begun.
Time for the fourth article containing the third which explains the second step in the Simple Homebrew Campaign startup process: how to sit your players down and squeeze them until playable characters come out. And how to stop them from ruining the simplicity of your Simple Homebrew Campaign.
Sit down and shut up. Class is back in session. Time for the second real lesson in this whole simple, homebrew campaign thing. Or maybe the third. Or the fourth. I’ve lost track. I probably shouldn’t count the bulls$&% introduction wherein it took me 5000 words just to define the word campaign — and I…
So you think you’re ready to start a homebrew campaign, huh? Well, you definitely are. Because it’s not as hard as you think. It’s all about making premises. And keeping them.
Were you a little disappointed that my “Let’s Start a Simple Campaign” article didn’t include 5000 words of definitional, pedantical bulls$&%. Well here’s all the definition, pedantical bulls$&% I pulled out of it. Enjoy.
Real GMs run campaigns. And the realest of the real GMs run campaigns they write themselves. In the introduction to this new series, I’m going to tell you what you need to know about campaigns if you’re going to build and run one of your very own.
Let’s appropriate us some culture! Let’s use a 1500-year old Korean narrative style to plot a better pretend elf game!
The biggest obstacle to starting a homebrew campaign is having to build a world. And the biggest obstacle to running a good game is actually building the world. You’re better off just not worldbuilding.
A campaign bible is a powerful tool any GM can use to run a better campaign. As long as they don’t f$%& it up by trying to do it right.
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.
For the first time in three years, I – Angry – am running an actual, real-life, regular campaign. And it’ll provide a great example of how to cobble together a campaign you don’t have time to plan or run in a system you haven’t used in years. At least, my Patrons think it will.
It’s time to finally talk about world building and setting creation. Which means it’s time for the obligatory, overly long semantically discussion about the definition of the thing I’m talking about. Enjoy.
A well-build mythology can drive stories and create a fantastic world. Unfortunately, D&D doesn’t provide such a mythology. But you can make your own if you understand thematic conflict.
Mysteries are like pancakes: solving one is satisfying, but solving a whole stack is even better. But when it comes to stacking mysteries into a delicious mystery campaign, it’s easy to f$&% it up.
Sometimes, you just get tired of taking notes and you just want to show up and have a fun adventure. And then another. And another. Enter: The Adventure of the Week Campaign. Which has nothing to do with meatballs. Except when it does.
No type of campaign is more iconic than the Epic Quest Campaign, especially the Save the World Campaign. Well, unless you count Dungeon Delve Campaigns. And Adventure of the Week Campaigns. But shut up. We’re talking about Epic Quest and Save the World Campaigns.
Start as you mean to go on. It’s good advice for writers and it’s good advice for GMs. Except when it isn’t. But it is. But it might not be.
There are infinite ways to fill that blank piece of paper that is your campaign plan. Here’s about four of them. We’ll cover the other infinity-minus-four in future articles.
Encounters, adventures, and campaigns all start off life the same way. How do you turn one into the other and back again? Well, it’s like putting it in a good training bra.
Starting a new campaign isn’t just about building a world, coming up with some story details, and telling the players what characters to make. It involves resolving dilemmas and making hard choices.
How do you start a campaign? Well, that all depends on what you mean by “start.” There’s lots of ways to start a campaign. Let’s start by talking about how you start starting a campaign. Preplanning and premises.