I know people are really down on New Year’s resolutions. I’ve heard every last f$&%ing argument too. I know calendars are totally arbitrary and there’s no difference between December 31 and January 1. And I know almost every human being on Earth breaks their resolutions by January 15. I’ve even seen that CGP Grey video about themes, so please don’t send it. In short, I completely understand that there is zero value in setting aside a specific date to take stock of your life. There’s no point in examining the good and the bad over the past year. Nothing to be gained from identifying the stuff in your life worth a little gratitude and definitely no reason to acknowledge there are things you’re not happy about. No good comes from asking yourself what you could personally do differently to change the things you’re not happy about. And, in the end, you’re just going to fail, so why even bother setting specific, actionable goals.

The real reason people hate resolutions is that to make a New Year’s resolution, you have to accept responsibility for the state of your own life and admit that it’s on you to change things. But that’s only the beginning. Because then, you discover how hard it is to actually change things about yourself. So it’s a lot easier to blame the idea of resolutions. And then look for something easier. Something nonspecific, nonactionable, and nonmeasurable. Like setting a f$&%ing theme.

You’ve probably noticed that I actually do think New Year’s resolutions are valuable. Every change—every improvement—begins with a conscious choice. And calling attention to a specific date helps because most people don’t stop to examine their lives on their own. They need a call to action. Like flipping a page on the calendar.

While every change begins with a choice, though, there’s no magic in the choice itself. The choice is just the first step. It’s a hard step, sure, but it’s also the easiest of a whole series of hard steps. You need to make a good choice. A smart choice. And you need to keep making the choice every day. You need to wake up every day and make the choice all over again. And when you miss the mark, you have to wake up the next day and make the choice to start over. All over again. And that’s not something everyone can do.

But it is something that anyone can do.

Resolutions are important and valuable. But they’re not magic. They’re the start of a promise to yourself. And whether you make good on that promise depends entirely on you.

Why the hell am I talking about this? I’m talking about this because, in years past, I’ve taken a post or two in December or January to reflect on the season, the holidays, and the turning of the year. To take stock of my life as a gamer. And as a gaming professional. Whatever the hell that means. Last December and January, for example, I talked about my big plans for 2020 and about the major issues I’d be working to overcome.

And then 2020.

Except f$&% that. I know people are really down on 2020. And that might be totally fair. But it’s also totally useless. Yes, a lot of s&%$ went down, and yes, a lot of that s$&% was beyond our control. But the world at large is always beyond our control. All we can ever do is deal with the s$&% that comes our way. And it took me nine f$&%ing months to remember that. I started 2020 in a strong place. But when everything went to s$&%, I went to s$&% with it. The Tiny-Angry household dealt with a lot of the same crap as every other household in 2020. Well, more than some households and less than others. But it ain’t a contest. Everyone deals with crap. That other people deal with different kinds and amounts of crap doesn’t change the crap you have to deal with or the fact that you have to deal with it. Somehow.

Tiny and I illustrate that perfectly. She went through five job changes beyond her control this year, spent some time unemployed, and had her academic studies completely borked. But she took every hit and kept fighting. And she did as well this year as any human could have done under the circumstances. Better than most, in fact. She ended this year better off than when she started it. Me? I let myself be a victim of circumstances for the better part of the year. I only realized how far I’d fallen—mostly in terms of my personal physical and mental health—a few months ago. And by the time I started clawing my way back out of the pit, the best I could do was try and end the year close to where I’d started it.

But I don’t want to talk about my personal life. Professionally—insofar as I have a profession and not a f$&%ing blog and this particular article isn’t helping make that case—professionally, once I did decide to stop sinking and start clawing, I managed to turn some stuff around. Truth be told, I’ve undergone more professional growth in the back half of 2020 than I have since 2017 when I published Game Angry. I’ve changed my entire writing process. I’m not writing drafts, proofing them, and vomiting them onto my site anymore. I have an actual drafting, revision, and editing process now. And lots of you have noticed. Thanks for the kind words. And because of that, my release schedule is pretty regular now. More regular than it’s been in years. Maybe ever. Holidays don’t count.

And then there’s that module that was supposed to show up in spring of 2018. It’s finally been designed, written, revised, and sent off to the editor. Of course, that’s not what I wanted. I wanted it to be done by now. I wanted the PDF to be available by Christmas. But there just weren’t enough hours left in the year by the time I woke the f$&% up. And, while I could have rushed it, I decided to do an extra revision to make sure I was delivering a quality product. And since I’d resolved to finish the module before I threw time into any other long-term projects, I didn’t deliver on AngryCraft this month. But that’s still on the docket. Delayed but not forgotten.

And that’s why I think New Year’s resolutions are important. Sure, my 2019 goals and resolutions didn’t pan out. And I spent a lot of time wallowing and feeling powerless and lost. But I did eventually sit up and take stock and say, “there’s always something you can do; what thing can I do?” And I found a thing. Several things. I didn’t quite get everything where I wanted it to be, but I got it somewhere. Incidentally, the same thing happened with my physical and mental health. I made some good things happen for myself once I acknowledge my power to do something and resolved to do it. Not everything I wanted to do. But, in some ways, I’m better off today than I was at the start of 2020. And not a whole lot of people can say that.

But this ain’t life advice. I don’t do life advice. I do gaming advice. And sometimes freelance-authoring-and-game-design-professionaling advice. This is why I’m going to do something I’ve done a few times in the past and post my gaming resolutions for 2021. For all the world to see. Because sharing your goals with as many people as possible actually helps you achieve them. Seriously.

And that’s why I want you to think about your gaming goals and resolutions for 2021. Post about them in the comments even. Don’t just read my goals and nod and say, “that Angry sure is pushing himself, I hope things work out for him.” I’m just using myself as an example. Are you happy with your gaming life in 2020? Do you wish it was better? Fine. Look around, figure out what’s wrong, figure out what’s within your power to change—there is always something you can change, even if it’s you—and then resolve to change it. And then, you know, actually make the f$&%ing change. Or die trying.

Maybe not die. You get the picture.

Resolution #1: Game More

30 months ago, when I launched the Game Angry Kickstarter, I put all my personal gaming on hold. I was extremely busy and I’d just moved to a new city. Six months later, I started running games again, off-and-on, but it was scattershot. Nothing took. I was having a hard time finding a social circle. I hated gaming online. And I still do, frankly. I ran games haphazardly for the next year, stuff came and stuff went, and eventually, I just stopped gaming altogether.

Thing is, I didn’t think that was a big deal. I have other hobbies. Gaming didn’t have to be one of them. And I’d been gaming pretty steadily for over thirty years by that point. So taking some time off was okay. See, even though I’m very passionate about gaming, I’m not one of those people who has to cram gaming into everything. You know who I mean. The people who make every holiday and get-together a gaming activity, the people who have to gamify everything just to make it worth doing, the people who can’t talk about anything that isn’t gaming. So I could live without gaming as a hobby.

But I went through a few rough patches this year. I had a few contentious and controversial interactions with the community. I mean, some of that’s just par for the content creator course; there’s always an undercurrent of a$&holes being a$&holes and you’ve got to thicken your skin enough to cope with it if you want to stay in the game. But when it flairs up, it can really take its toll. Especially when you’re not at your best. In the past, when that sort of s$&% has happened, I’ve always been able to fall back on my love of gaming. And on the great gaming community that surrounds me. Because my fans and supporters are some of the best gamers I’ve ever known in my life. I’m very lucky there.

But my love of gaming wasn’t there when I needed it. I wasn’t gaming. And because I wasn’t gaming, I was struggling to create content. And I wasn’t interacting with my community regularly about gaming. Because I wasn’t gaming. And I wasn’t spending time with my gaming friends. Because I wasn’t gaming.

And that was almost the end of me and Angry Games, Inc.

My first resolution for 2021, therefore, is to get back to gaming. To game more. And I’m already taking steps. I’ve run a couple of one-shots for my closest gaming friends over the last month. And I’ve got a new, for-fun campaign starting in January with those folks. We’re going back to what’s probably my favorite edition of D&D ever. Good ole 3.5. No. Not Pathfinder. Official, core rules Dungeons & Dragons third edition point five. Homebrew. And I’m sure I’ll have a lot of fun tales to tell about starting campaigns and writing adventures again. Notice how that content dropped off as my gaming dropped off?

Aside from that for-fun, personal game, I also want to run more one-shots and other gaming events for my loyal supporters and dedicated fans. Those people are the heart and soul of The Angry Community. They kept me going when things got rough. They made sure that this year wasn’t the end of Angry Games, Inc. Once springtime hits and my personal game is firmly established and I feel like I’m back in the gaming groove, I’ll start organizing online gaming events, maybe even one-shot games, for those special folks.

And then, once summer rolls around—whatever the state of the world—I will start running live, meatspace games too. I don’t have a solid plan there yet. But I’ve got some time before the summer. And I’m only putting it off that long to make sure my other Game More plans are in place by then. Not for any other reason. I’d start it tomorrow if I didn’t have other priorities to handle first.

And that’s resolution one. More gaming. I need passion to fill my sails.

Resolution #2: Game Better

I stopped gaming regularly a year ago for a lot of reasons. And most of those reasons haven’t gone anywhere. So it’d be pretty f$&%ing stupid of me to think things are going to be any different now just because I miss gaming. If I don’t do something to make things different, I’m just going to crash and burn again.

One of the big things that killed my gaming fun was when my fun games turned into work games. Two examples come to mind. First, there was this ostensibly simple, adventure-of-the-week style, D&D 5E game that I utterly destroyed with house rules and mods and hacks. I had something like 50-pages of house rules before I finally choked the life out of that campaign. Part of the problem was that I was using my personal game to test content for my feature articles. And part of it was that, well, I actually don’t really like D&D 5E very much. But that’s not entirely 5E’s fault. Sure, it has problems. I can say that objectively. But I’ve been running, playing, and analyzing the motherloving f$&% out of 5E since before it was released. And I’ve come to see it as a broken, janky-a$& mess that it’s my job to unjank. And now I can’t see it any other way even if that’s partly unfair.

So, I couldn’t run 5E without seeing every wobbly bit and every wart and trying to fix them. And once I had a good fix, I had to write about it. And thus, my for-fun game became part of my day-job.

Now, I’ll keep making 5E content. That’s my job. But I can’t let my job wreck my for-fun hobby. So, I’m rolling back the edition on my personal game. I’m sure some of you will want to know why I’m still playing any edition of D&D given that there’s so many other games out there and Blades in the Motherf$&%ing Dark exists. Or why I’m wasting myself in swords-and-sorcery, fantasy bulls$%& instead of your favorite genre. And I’ve already set up a special filter in my ask.angry@angry.games inbox to catch all those questions and store them away next to all the ones about why I ban gnomes, sorcerers, and druids in my home games. For safekeeping.

The second example involved an aborted, half-a$&ed alpha playtest of a certain game engine. Man, did I ever f$&% that up.

My point is that if I want to game for fun, I’ve got to put up some boundaries between my fun games and my work games. Like, big-a$& border walls with barbed wire fencing. No playtesting Angry content in my fun games. I have enough gamers that are desperate to playtest anything I s$&% out that I don’t need to break my home games with it. And I’ve got enough content that’s already been table-tested enough to write a half-years’ worth of hacking articles about.

Beyond that, I’ve also got to find ways to run games I’m comfortable with. I hate running online games. It’s a sucky option compared to real-life games. But that’s what I’ve got right now and my best gaming friends are pretty far away. They’re worth gaming online for. In previous online games, I found myself wasting too much of my limited prep time d$&%ing around with boring-a$& tool-related s$&%. You know what mean. Importing battle maps into the VTT du jour, setting up macros and tokens, all that bulls$&%. And that ain’t how I want to spend my time. Besides, I’m the kind of guy who pulls a lot out of his a$& at the gaming table. I’m not saying I don’t plan ahead. I do. Planning is just smart. But the sort of planning I do isn’t conducive to running a game in whatever the new hotness of virtual tabletop bulls$&% is today. Is it Foundry? Don’t answer. I don’t care.

See, my plans are mostly scrawled notes and scribbled monster stats and stick-and-line dungeon maps. I invent battlefields and pull encounters together on the fly. Which is why I’m just happier with a blank battlemat and a wet-erase marker in my hand.

Besides, online games are intolerably, insufferably sllllllllllllllloooooooooowwwwwww. It takes forever to even get someone to roll a simple f$&%ing ability check. I can’t stand the glacial pace. I can’t cover half as much gaming ground in one session over the Interweb as I can at a physical table. But once we dropped all the electronic bulls$&%, we started making up some ground.

I’m done trying to adapt to VTTs and their flash-in-the-pan bulls$&% gimmick features that do nothing for a game that’s better than what I can do with a few scraps of my paper and my own voice. But I do have to adapt better to online communication. It’s hard when all you have is a voice. In running my recent one-shots, I’ve rediscovered that I don’t communicate well online. There’s a rhythm to it. A protocol. And I’ve never really gotten “it.” But I need to get “it.” And I need to get my players on board with “it.” There’s a lot of clumsiness in our communication between people talking over each other and long, dead silences where everyone’s afraid to start talking lest they talk over each other.

You’ll know when I feel like I’ve gotten a handle on this s$&% because I’ll probably write an article about it. Because, while I can’t make my fun games into work, I can write at work about my fun games. That’s totally fine.

Resolution #3: Work Better

Now, I did get myself into a better place workwise this year. I’m pretty happy with my current workflow and release schedule. Before, my time management was piss-poor. I’d let s$&% stack up at the end of the month and push everything out at once. I was always playing catch up. Everything was urgent. Now, I spend almost twice as much time as I used to on each article. But because the work’s spread out and balanced, and because I don’t always feel like I’m behind schedule, I have a lot more time to work on other things.

For the last few months, that extra time’s gone into The Fall of Silverpine Watch, my module, but once that project’s truly finished, I can spread myself out evenly between more things. And that’ll let me put more work into things before I start writing about them.

See, a lot of the stuff I write about isn’t finalized until I write about it. I get an idea, play with it at the game table a little, tinker with it, test it out, adjust it, and eventually get it feeling right. And once it feels right, it’s time for me to write about it. But just because I can run something that feels right, that doesn’t mean it’s a polished piece of work that’s ready to spread its legs and fly. It’s still the same jury-rigged piece of crap I was playing with at the table. Half the rules were in my head and I kept changing s$&% on the fly.

For little s$%& like the Angry Companion system, that meant I was finalizing the design while I was writing the article. And sure, that lets you see the design process in action. But it means you have to sit through me spinning my wheels a lot while I try to figure out just what the f$&% the end result is supposed to look like. For big s$&% like AngryCraft, that means I’m writing for months and months about the idea without knowing what it’ll look like when I’m done.

Now, I like thinking through things and I like writing about the process of design. That’s because I’m not actually a game designer. I’ve been teaching myself how to design games and run better games for ten years by writing about it. And I’ve evolved a lot. But that approach leaves me with some pretty damned bloated projects. I don’t think anyone would complain if my articles were a wee bit shorter. And if they got to the point a bit quicker. Don’t worry, I’m not going to drop the Angry voice. That s$&%’s fun. Besides, that’s my voice, not Angry’s. And I’ll always focus more on the how and why than the mechanics and the rules themselves. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but teach a man engineering and he can design a food replicator. Or something like that.

My point is, I want to spin my wheels less. And that means giving s$&% more time in the oven before I start writing about it. The Angry Companion system needed just two articles. One to explain the theory and design and one to describe the finished project. And that’s how it should be. I’ve been spinning my wheels for weeks about downtime and town exploration because the system still needs some work. And AngryCraft has really overstayed it’s welcome. Now that I have a reliable workflow and know how to manage my time, I can stick both of those things back in the oven and pull them out when they’re done.

The other problem is that I don’t finish s$&%. By that, I mean that I start lots of projects and write for weeks or months or years about them, but I never get to the f$&%ing money shot. And by that, I also mean that I don’t polish the things I do finish. AngryCraft and the Megadungeon are great examples of neverending projects. The Angry Companion system is an example of an unpolished project. Wouldn’t it have been nice, for example, if the Companion system included a fancy, downloadable PDF of the rules and tables? Especially if it included a few more companions of different kinds? Hell, wouldn’t it have been nice if the article was presented in such a way that you could print it out and add it to your rules binder as it was? I built a nice birdhouse, but I didn’t sand down the edges or paint the thing. And that would have made a lot of difference.

In the coming year, I need to take all that extra time I’ve found by being more efficient and use it to design stuff behind the scenes and to polish and spitshine things before I put them out there. And before I start any new projects, I need to tie up my loose ends. AngryCraft, Town Exploration, and the AABC’s of Adventure Building all need to get finished. And I have to figure out how to get started on the Megadungeon again before I have to redo all the spreadsheets for 6th Edition. I’ll probably be doing a lot of background work on the Megadungeon before I start writing again, but I’ll at least keep you posted.

Lots of designers and companies blow off preplanning and polishing. I get that. That s$&% ain’t fun. That’s why I don’t do much of it. By the time you’re polishing something, you’re done with it. You’re ready to move on to the next project. It’s tedious work. But it’s vital work. See, you can’t just keep getting sucked into new projects every time a new whim strikes you. Passion might fill your sails, but a steady, persistent hand on the tiller keeps the ship on course.

Resolution #4: Experience More

Remember when I said I’m not the kind of gamer that forces gaming into every part of his life? Well, I don’t try to make everything about gaming, but gaming has definitely revealed a lot of other interests for me. Take The GM Word of the Week podcast. I don’t write the scripts anymore, but that was my brainchild. I started it because gaming made me curious about everything.

And, by the way, Brian and I did not have any sort of falling out. He took over writing the show with my blessings after I left of my own accord. And we’re still friends. But I digress…

The way I see it, there’s two kinds of gamers. There’s gamers who run games instead of having real experiences and there’s gamers who seek out real experiences because they run games. And I used to be that second sort of gamer. I’d go on wilderness hikes and I took an orienteering class just to find out what navigating the wilds was actually like. I’d visit museums so I could see real weapons and real armor and real Greek artifacts and real, transplanted Egyptian temples and real minerals and gems. I joined my high school fencing team initially out of an interest in dueling. And so on. There’s so many things a gamer can do to get some real gaming experiences. Take an archery class. Visit a village restoration or historical site. Tour an old ship. Ride a horse. Milk a cow. Go to a ranch. Go to a zoo. Shoot a gun. Not at the zoo. Or spend a day in a university library poring over real atlases and survey maps. The possibilities for real experiences driven by your gaming passions are endless.

Not to judge, but these days, even just having a casual, social interaction with people without electronics between you is a rare and special experience for gamers. And that’s not just because of any unspecified viruses of totally unknown origin. Gaming should be your gateway into the wider world, not just your escape from it.

Sure, some of that stuff costs money. I ain’t exactly rich myself. But it costs surprisingly little to get out and do some of that stuff. There’s wilderness preserves and national parks all over. And clubs and organizations for everything. Mostly, it just takes time, research, and willpower.

There’s an old adage: “write what you know.” You can take that as an admonishment to only write about things with which you have personal experiences, but that’s pretty damned limiting. Instead, take it as an invitation to get to know more. Want to write about something? Fine. Go out and learn about it first. In a real way. Partly because it vastly improves your writing—or adventure building—and partly because it’s inspiring. When you dig into something completely new to you, you discover all sorts of facets and challenges and possibilities you’d never considered before. After you do some research about mills and discover grain dust explosions are a thing, you have an exciting new possibility to spring on your players.

Even before 2020, I was becoming a real homebody. I wasn’t going out as much. I wasn’t seeking out new and interesting experiences. And that meant I was atrophying as a creator, as a gamer, and as a person. So, whatever the state of the world, I’ve got to get the hell out of the apartment and into the world. I’ve made a little list of some new things I’d like to try in 2021 and there’s lots of other possibilities around here. I’ve got shooting ranges, archery ranges, and an indoor rock climbing wall within a few miles of me. There’s parks and farms and zoos nearby. Historical sites. And there’s a bunch of historical re-enactment and historical martial arts groups here in Wisconsin. Which, incidentally, is the birthplace of D&D. It’s shameful I haven’t checked any of it out yet.

Resolution #5: The Angry RPG

A month ago, I spilled a date in my Patrons-only Discord server. There’s a lot of speculation as to whether that date was a joke or whether it was serious. Or whether it was both for that matter. And I’m not going to spoil everyone’s speculatory fun by publishing an official timeline or anything. But I will say this: if that date is for real, then things need to shift into high gear this year. And considering Tiny’s graduating college this year and it’s nearly time for us to plan the next step in our relationship, I’ve got to s$&% or get off this particular pot pretty soon.

This is a personal, private resolution. I’m not ready to make any public promises beyond the one I maybe made about a date approximately 23 months from now which might have been a joke. But if it’s not going to be a joke, then it’s got to start not being a joke right now. Well. January 1 anyway.

But those are my gaming resolutions. What are yours?