How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Five: A Living World of S$&% to Do
In the fifth and first post-final lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you how to populate your world with stuff to do and how to help your players find it all.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Four: Prepping After the Fact
In the fourth and final lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you how to prep for each and every AOWG session… after you’ve finished running it.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Three: Presenting An Explorable World of Adventure (Part 2)
In the second half of the third lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you how to blow smoke at your players’ faces and call it exploration.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Three: Presenting An Explorable World of Adventure (Part 1)
In the first half of the third lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you what it means to explore a world and also what the single most important list in your bag is.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Two: What to Bring With You
In the second lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I reveal what’s in my gaming bag whenever I show up to run a session of my open world game.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson One: Three Pillars
In this, the first of four lessons about how to run your own open-world game just like Angry, you’ll learn why your brain is just too damaged to run a good open-world game. Again.
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 to Play an Angry Open-World Game
I figured out to run exactly the sort of open world game I wanted to run. The perfect game for my players. I just forgot to tell them that.
How Chrono Trigger Saves the World (Repost)
Save the World campaigns are pretty divisive. Mostly because GMs always screw them up. Want an example of a great Save the World TTRPG campaign? Look no further than Chrono Trigger, a Super Nintendo game from the 90s.
How Chrono Trigger Saves the World
Save the World campaigns are pretty divisive. Mostly because GMs always screw them up. Want an example of a great Save the World TTRPG campaign? Look no further than Chrono Trigger, a Super Nintendo game from the 90s.
My World Has a Sky… And Yours Should Too
Weather, lunar phases, dates, and seasons? Why keep track of that crap in your game? Well, there’s several reasons, but only one that matters.
How to Homebrew: Clickbait Worldbuilding
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.
The Rest of the World of D&D According to Rosewater… According to Angry
Remember last year when I decided to apply Mark Rosewater’s definition of what makes a game a game to D&D? And I got halfway through and then collapsed into a full-bore rant about D&D’s design? Well, I’m back to provide the other half and then collapse into another full-bore rant. Wheeee!
We Gotta Save; We Gotta Save the World: Epic Quest Campaigns
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.
Breaking the Jell-O Mold: Open Adventure Design
Open adventures are woefully misunderstood. Many GMs think they are a panacea for all of your gaming ills. But they aren’t a balm for everything, they require careful implementation, and they aren’t an excuse to skip having a structure.
But I Digress… Structure
Time for a little digression on the three kinds of Structure. Just don’t expect a useful lesson.
Ask Angry December 2023 Mailbag
I took a break from my holiday travels to answer some reader-submitted questions. Merry Christmas.
Maybe You Just Don’t GET Attrition
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.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: What’s in a Campaign
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.
Lets Build Baby’s First Dungeon (Part 1 of 2)
Because of the way it was written, this article doesn’t have a Long, Rambling Introduction™. The whole thing was kind of written like a Long, Rambling Introduction™. It’s pretty stream of consciousness. A mix of me explaining s$&% and thinking through s$&% and showing you the results. I didn’t outline it. I just started writing.…
Navigating the Gamerspace
Come along with me on a rambling journey regarding training requirements in RPGs, whether it’s okay to make a world that doesn’t level up with the players, and how to make the campaign you want to play. Sort of.
What it Means to Know How to Play D&D
Why doesn’t anyone know how to play D&D? And why does anyone think they can teach someone else how to play a game they don’t know how to play? And should I fix the problem? Or am I just full of bulls$%&?
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.
Ask Angry July Mailbag Lightning Round
It’s time to open the Ask Angry mailbag again. But, just for funsies, let’s see how many questions I can answer without exceeding too much my normal allotment of word count.
The Quicksand Incident and A Tale of Two Angrys
All it took was one word from one image from one hastily scribbled list in last week’s article to find out that you’ve all learned nothing from me in the last twelve years. That word was quicksand.
Ask Angry: Run Away, Run Away
In this week’s Ask Angry, Brendan asks Angry how to get the PCs to run away from monsters so that he can run a sandbox game without any structure. And I tell him how to build a better campaign instead.
Ask Angry April 2024 Mailbag
To celebrate my emerging from the disaster that resulting from letting my supporters pick the topic, I’m going to answer a bunch of questions sent in by readers. There’s no way that can go wrong.
Character Arcs for Reals
To bring the Character Arc-Pocalypse to a close, today I’m writing about Character Arcs. For real this time.
The Personal Character Quest Plus One Campaign
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.
You Meant to Ask About Personal Character Quests
This isn’t a Feature about incorporating Character Arcs into tabletop roleplaying games. That would be interesting. This is a boring-ass Feature about players picking their own stupid character quests. Which is a terrible idea.