Every once in a while — usually when I’m out of ideas and need to crap out some quick content — I open up my big ole mailbag and answer some reader questions. If you want your question considered for use in a future Ask Angry column, send it to ask.angry@angry.games. Keep it short and simple, tell me what to call you, and give me explicit permission to call you that.
And don’t send anything urgent. I wont to get to do another of these until April at the earliest.
Queen asks…
In your article about your GMing Credo, your first rule was “I am a Dungeon Master and nothing else.” You correctly noted this meant [nothing] to us and said you could write a full article about it. Could you? Pretty please?
No.
I ain’t gonna write that article. It’d be overwrought crap. But I will explain myself. At least, I’ll explain what I meant when I said what I said.
Partly, it’s a genre and setting thing. I love fantasy adventure. Romantic, anachro-medieval European fantasy adventure. There’s a lot to love about it. A lot of the values romanticized in the genre made me the man I am today. Or at least the model I strive to live up to.
As Jason “Jay” Derris once said, “I didn’t spend all those years playing Dungeons & Dragons without learning a thing or two about courage.”
But mostly, it’s about how I see TTRPGs and what TTRPGs are about.
TTRPGs aren’t collaborative storytelling experiences. The GM isn’t there to provide a stage or backdrop or sandbox or toybox. The GM is a game designer. The GM can design games full of detailed characters and brimming with dramatic emotions, but the GM’s still designing games. The dungeon symbolizes that tenet because a dungeon is just about the gamiest thing you can get in D&D.
TTRPGs are about characters undertaking quests. They’re about heroes leaving the safety of the civilized world to conquer a dangerous, chaotic world full of monsters. To face challenges only they can face and come back richer and better for the experience. All else — factional infighting, court intrigues, YA romantic bullshit — that’s all secondary background crap. If it exists at all.
People are going to read too much into this and lose their damned minds. They’ll think I’m saying TTRPGs are ipsy facty dungeon crawls and nothing else counts as real roleplaying gaming. But people are stupid.
My games aren’t just endless strings of dungeon crawls. The PCs live rich lives in detailed worlds. But those lives involve leaving civilization, plunging into the underworld with purpose, and coming back transformed. Over and over.
Side note: I wrote that crap eight years ago. In rereading, I was surprised to see how much of it I still believe — given I’ve gone through some drastic changes of late — and how much it informs the True Game Mastery series I’ve just started.
In fact, there are only two — and precisely two — personal beliefs on that list I no longer believe. See if you can guess which ones I’d dump if I were writing that list today. Post a comment with your guess.
Someone Who Doesn’t Get What “Give Me Explicit Permission to Use Your Name” Means asks…
A while back, you explained how you deliver information about monsters to your players using gargoyles as an example. Do you ever gate monster information behind knowledge checks and do you ever give more information based on higher check results?
Are you talking about the sample narration I provided in How I Roll: The Angry Manual of Style?
That wasn’t about die rolls, but rather about weaving exposition into the narration. Because your players should never have to ask what their characters know or use bullshit non-actions — “I try to recall what I know about the creatures” — and your game shouldn’t grind to a halt as your players struggle to figure out how to share the information they have and no one should utter the idiotic word metagaming.
How you decide what exactly the characters know; that’s up to you. Me? I use Knowledge skill checks all the time. Especially when I’m running Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5. Also known as D&D Best. And I do provide more information for better results.
I know the DC necessary to identify the creature and recall basic information about it. If the player’s check exceeds that DC by five or ten, I provide more detailed, more useful information.
And before you ask, no, I don’t prepare tables in advance. I just wing this crap. I’m a Game Master, not a video game.
My point was I don’t wait for the players to ask for such checks. The moment a character’s background Knowledge might give the players an edge, I ask for a roll. Or, more often, roll it myself behind the screen. And I don’t describe or narrate jack squat until I know what the characters’ know about whatever’s happening. That way, my narration includes the information the characters know.
Fortunately, I’ve got a True Game Mastery lesson on exactly this in the chamber and ready to shoot off in your face.
BC asks…
Way back when, in your articles about Flight to Elturel, you said you always name your adventures and campaigns. Do you tell your players the name? What’s the benefit of doing so?
Yes, I do name my campaigns and adventures. I name everything I write or design. A thing must have a name before I work on it. I don’t know if there’s any benefit to it — I suspect there is — but I know I can’t work on a thing that doesn’t have a name. That’s just how I am.
Also, I’m really bad at saving files and keeping files organized. So naming a thing — and numbering it and putting it in the right place — forces me to save stuff in a way that enables me to find it again.
I give my players the names of the campaigns they’re playing in, but I usually don’t share adventure names. I don’t purposely hide them; they just don’t come up. Sometimes, I’ll say something like, “next week is the final session of The Forsaken Floatilla; I’m looking forward to killing you all” but that’s just idle conversation.
I don’t know if there’s any benefit to sharing the names or not sharing them, but, again, I suspect there is a benefit to sharing a campaign name and I suspect it’s to do with building excitement and engagement and selling pitches.
As a side note: people do lots of things without being able to explain the benefits. And most of the time, the benefits they think they’re getting are made up. Nearly everything every human brain does — something like 90% of all choices — are automatic habits that the brain rationalizes after the fact. The brain’s complicated — especially the creative, intuitive parts — and it’s good at recognizing when things work even if the conscious brain sucks at explaining it.
Another Nameless Questioner Who Can’t Follow Simple Instructions asks…
When using a campaign setting book, what information from it do you need to start a campaign? Do you have to memorize the entire book?
Holy motherloving crap, no!
If memorizing setting books were necessary, no human GM would ever run a campaign in a published setting. No one memorizes 300-page textbooks full of useless, boring-ass expositional fluff. Because that’s what’s in there. Boring-ass expositional fluff.
First, the minute you start running a game in Golarion — or whatever — the setting ceases to be Paizo’s Golarion and becomes Nameless Questioner Who Can’t Follow Simple Instructions’ Golarion. The setting’s yours. You don’t have to get it right. You can do anything you want to it. And being true to the setting is a dumb, impossible goal because it’s you — the GM running the game — that determines whether the game’s any good. The setting has almost nothing to do with it.
That said, read the setting book once through. Mostly. At the very least, skim the whole book and read the most interesting parts. Don’t try to memorize anything. Don’t take detailed notes. Just let your creative brain soak the setting in. It will. Even if you don’t know it’s happening.
As you’re reading — or skimming — do take mental note of anything to which you say, “man, I want to use that” or “I want my game to feature that location” or whatever. Put little sticky note flags in the book. When you’re done, you’ll have a shortlist of the setting’s most interesting elements, locales, characters, factions, and other random crap.
Ultimately, you want to identify a way to start your game. A town or kingdom and an idea for a first adventure. This ain’t any different from starting a homebrew campaign. The whole, wide campaign world doesn’t matter. All that matters is where the PCs start and what they’re doing in session one.
Reread the stuff you flagged carefully. And this time, take some notes. Note specific elements, characters, and points of interest around which to build your first adventure. And then build the first adventure and run the hell out of it.
Peter asks…
Your latest article made me think: how much is actually assumed that the Game Master is capable of that is washed in most instructionals? The mechanics enable the PCs to be developed/played but the GM should be the one to make the actual decisions.
TTRPGs are like this: players get to decide what their characters do given the situation the GM describes. And that’s all they get to decide. The GM decides how those actions play out and what happens next. The GM decides what situations come up. And the GM decides what characters the players are allowed to build. The GM is the Master of the Game.
The rules are tools. The GM can — and should — use those tools to determine how the game plays out, but the GM can ignore them or change them or eliminate them. If the GM wants to take the dice out of the game and decide for himself how every single action works out, he can. And if he thinks that’s the best way to run a game, he should do just that.
There are good reasons to use the rules as written whenever possible, mind you. But no GM is required to do so.
I think RPG books make a giant-ass mistake in even speaking to players, let alone inviting them to play with the game’s rules instead of playing with the world the GM presents. The players can — and should — understand how most actions get resolved and what their stats mean. They can’t make good, strategic decisions otherwise. But modern games have too many player-facing rules. And they let the players tinker with too many rules.
For example, players should never, ever be allowed to decide anything based purely on a die roll. “You may decide to apply this bonus after the die is rolled” is bullshit.
Modern game instructions are afraid to tell players that GMs are in charge and that’s how it’s supposed to be. And how it works best. And that leads to spoiled, entitled, selfish, bratty players GMs don’t want to run games for.
There’s no need to protect players from bad GMs — nor any need to protect GMs from bad players — because there has always been a simple failsafe that protects everyone from a crappy experience. It’s that no human being can be forced to play a game they don’t want to play and no human being can be forced to play with someone they don’t want to play with.
If I don’t want you at my table, you don’t get to play my game. If you don’t want to play my game, I can’t make you play. That means, if GMs and players want to play together, they’ve got to negotiate the terms under which they’ll play. But it also means players and GMs alike can always say, “that’s a deal-breaker; I’m out.”
And that’s something kids used to learn in pre-school.
Jerry asks…
While you have been quite liberal with your opinions about the various iterations of D&D — as well as a few other D&D-adjacent TTRPGs — I don’t recall any comments on your part about the Old School Revival (OSR) TTRPGs. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
Enough clear, concise answers. It’s time for a rambling, unfocused speech. Hold on to your butts.
First, I have zero valid opinions about OSR TTRPGs. I don’t form opinions of game systems until I’ve played or run them for a minimum of three sessions. And I don’t form good opinions until my tenth or twelfth session. And I should just stop typing here. But I won’t.
I have read through several OSR TTRPG rulebooks. Mostly stuff that does more than just file the serial numbers off the oldest editions of D&D. And that’s because I’m a connoisseur of game mechanics and I’m always looking for new ideas. And I have been looking for a new fantasy adventure TTRPG to try out. So I’ve read stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game, Adventurer Conqueror King, Worlds Without Number, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Five Torches Deep, and, most recently, Castles & Crusades. And I am starting up a C&C campaign soon so I’ll have more to say about that in the future.
I’m not purposely avoiding OSR games mind you. Or non-D&D games. Really, the biggest problem is my lack of time. Since this crap became my day job, I’ve ironically got way less time to play games. And also, I have to spend more free time not gaming because all gaming feels a little bit like work these days. With my gaming time thus limited, I end up back behind the D&D screen a lot because — despite my complaints about various editions — D&D is the only game that’s like D&D. And even at its worst, I still like D&D.
Modern D&D.
Thing is, I started with D&D back in the late eighties. So BECMI and AD&D 2E were my games. And I know the OSR community considers those iterations to be “the places where it all went wrong.” Point is, I don’t have much romantic nostalgia for proper OSR fare. And without that, I’m simply left considering OSR games on their merits as TTRPGs.
And most OSR games just don’t grab me on their merits.
I believe — in the core of my GMing being — in the art of game design. And in the GM as game designer. And that includes both mechanical design and scenario design. A well-designed game is a beautiful thing that brings together all the best that gameplay and narrative experiences have to offer.
Lots of OSR games reject the trappings of modern game design. They lean heavily on the idea that the GM is the only mechanic a TTRPG really needs. And many of them reject design elegance and intuitive mechanical toolsets. And that, by the way, is what keeps me from going back to BECMI or AD&D 2E despite my nostalgia. Those games got a lot right — and Mentzer was a genius about presenting information and converting newbies into game designer GMs — but they’re janky, kludgy mechanical messes. And that’s only because the principles of tabletop game design were still evolving. And they still are.
Many OSR games also reject the idea of GM as designer of curated gameplay and narrative experiences. And the OSR movement has become steeped in the idea that there’s a certain proper kind of OSR. It’s one in which the GM builds a sandbox and presents it, as is, for the players to explore. I’m not saying there’s no place in TTRPGs for that kind of game. Of course, there is. But I reject the notion that that’s the ideal rather than a highly specialized kind of game that appeals to a specialized group of players.
Worlds Without Number, for example, drove me away with its introduction. The book started with a long speech about how WWN was meant for sandbox play and while I could use it for other things, I shouldn’t and I was wrong, but I could be forgiven. So, back onto the shelf went WWN.
I think that attitude sells really short what a True Game Master is capable of. It’s very similar to the modern D&D attitude that the GM is there to build a stage on which the players get to show off their original, amazing fanfic characters and play out their personal dramas without the GM’s interference.
The point is, I have yet to find the OSR TTRPG that gives me what I want. I want modern mechanics, well-designed, intuitive, and elegant. And I want meat. I like tactical combat play. Most players do. And, within reason, I want proper game balance tools that let GMs create rewarding challenge progressions without needing a Ph.D. in Game and Scenario Design. I want a game that enables — nay empowers — a GM to design good scenarios. Ones that allow the players the agency they want — and deserve from a TTRPG — without sacrificing the tenets of gameplay progression, pacing, narrative design, and all the other crap that makes for good games and good stories.
Right now, D&D — post-2000 D&D or Pathfinder — is still the closest I can get to any of that crap in a solidly designed package. And I think that’s one of the reasons why D&D and Pathfinder sell so well. They actually do come closest to providing most GMs and most players a good experience. That’s why my for-fun game of choice remains D&D v.3.5. And why Castles & Crusades is the OSR game that did manage to turn my pretty little head. Because it strikes me as AD&D Second Point Fifth Edition. And I only checked it out because I’ve come to deeply respect Troll Lord Games’ stance regarding the place of designers and publishers in the gaming community and its approach to the OGL Crapshow.
In the end, though, I probably won’t be truly happy until I’ve just built my own damned game.
Regarding the two credos that Angry no longer believes in, I suspect numbers 11 & 18.
“In the end, though, I probably won’t be truly happy until I’ve just built my own damned game.”
Neither will I. You perfectly describe what I’ve striven for in my games, and what I have looked for in a system. I’m too busy surviving to build a whole system, but given the right system, I think I’m still capable of creating a pretty cool campaign…
I’m gonna go with 11 and 17 for the two you no longer believe. I’m probably wrong, but let’s find out.
I definitely think 11 – I Will Not Take a Character’s Freedom Away Unless the Player Agrees, is on the chopping block. If you have trust, then there should be trust that if you take away agency without asking, that it is in service of the game, and a certain experience, and that you won’t totally destroy their agency entirely.
And then for the second I think 18 – Players Should Know All The Options their Characters Have, because that is impossible, and not necessary. As a GM you provide the world, and their view of it, which may include options and possibilities given they didn’t know but they or their characters should… but you shouldn’t try and make sure they have all the options because some options should rely on the players engaging with the world, and discovering for themselves what options were there all along.
To be clear, the reasons being why I think you would have dropped them, not as laws about why they shouldn’t be that.
My bet on the obsolete Credo rules: 17 and 23.
17 is in odds with previous hard rules you’ve got on the list, such as that The rules belong to you (#8), and that you Own the game (#2). And those are things I think you’ve come to embrace even more lately.
23 because I feel you’ve moved towards expecting or at least encouraging and rewarding players who actually pay attention to the world and use that information to their advantage. I’m 99% sure you no longer believe in that rule.
I’d be surprised if it’s anything else, but looking forward to the reveal nonetheless.
9 and 16. 15 changed my game and handling characters; if that’s it, I might be crushed.
Angry’s Creed doesn’t have to be your Creed. “People change. Credos change. Your Credo is not sacrosanct.” If those credos still work for you- if those promises to yourself and your players makes your games better- they’re still valid. For you.
First I’d say 11, because I believe you stated on numerous occasions that when a PC turns evil / does too many evil things, you take them away from player control.
On the second one, I’d guess 18. I think that while solving game problems is mostly about judging which option is the best to choose, actually thinking of / noticing that option in the first place is part of the challenge, too.
Or, as another commentator has already pointed out: not being shown/told all options encourages players to really think about their characters’ given situation in the game world and deducting options from that consideration.
As to the Two Things Angry No Longer Believes, I agree with a couple others that #18 is a suspect since it seems kind of impossible. Certainly you don’t want to deliberately obscure character options, and the scene description needs to be clear enough to make options obvious to the character obvious to the player, but generating creative solutions is the player’s business.
For the second obsolete belief, I’m going to guess #4. I’m not saying you’re not a stand-up kind of guy, but the expanded version / explanation below the list stipulates this antecedent: “If someone claims to be offended…”, and I’m guessing your present self might draw narrower boundaries around when you feel obliged to apologize. Or I could be totally off base.
I’m going to say 4 and 11.
Tough, because my sense is it’s mostly a nuance thing, but I like playing the guessing game and the GM Credo remains one of my favorite articles.
My guesses would be #1 and #11. Your answer to Queen explains what you meant by #1, but I think your willingness to be a “game master” has expanded even if the idea of “the dungeon” is still important. And I agree with Aaron that #11 doesn’t appear to jive with your willingness to take over an evil character, although maybe “don’t be” is covered by the agreed upon confines of the game.
Hope you reveal the answers at some point!
Taking control over a PC for a certain moment or length of time is not the same as just removing said PC from the game altogether, which is what historically Angry’s been suggesting he does to characters that turn evil.
In How to Corrupt a Warlock the point is that the character can become a villain npc, so I reason that they aren’t just deleted from the game in that case.
That’s like saying “the point is for the enemies to kill the PCs, so presumably they come back from the dead.”
“For example, players should never, ever be allowed to decide anything based purely on a die roll. “You may decide to apply this bonus after the die is rolled” is bullshit.”
Thinking of options this applies too: Smite, bardic inspiration, great weapon fighting (I know that’s auto but angry called it out once as having no good narrative on the reroll), flash of genius. I wonder if certain reactions fall into that category too like shield, uncanny dodge, and cutting words that depend on players knowing the die roll to decide whether to use it.
Yes. They’re all bullshit.
Glad to hear it, I’ve only run and played 5e and take these kinds of abilities as the norm. Can’t wait to get ahold of Thin N’ Crispy to get a fresh perspective.
Is part of the reason for ” “You may decide to apply this bonus after the die is rolled” is bullshit” that the way things like Luck are implemented is, that they have no inworld explanation and are purley mechanical? Like from the order of things. You roll a die, don’t like the result and use your special ability to change that result. It is like a short time travel back in time to redo the Action from a mechanical viewpoint that is not supported by the ingame World (except maybe for time magic shenanigans from Exandria)? So a disconnect from the rules and the ingame world, which kills the momentum of the game (do I use Luck now?) but also weakens the suspension of disbelief and takes the players a little bit out of the game world?
(Sorry for my English, I’m not a native speaker)
I address this in my own comment but I think that there’s a question here about whether the differences in performance and situation represented by the die roll are things that you can see and hear about the performance. For example, a bad singing check represents things like being off key, a guitar string breaking, coughing in the middle of the song- so you are, in some sense, aware that the performance of the check is sub par before you have even really begun it.
Luck is odd because I can understand how as a DM I would choose to represent the mechanic of Luck in the description- something like a crossbow shot that goes wide, misses entirely, cuts the rope holding up the chandelier and drops it on the enemy for the exact same amount of damage. But the actual Luck feat makes it really unclear how luck works in the setting because the things we call luck in real life are not normally split second things about being just a millimeter in the right direction. If your character is lucky because they have a supernatural power to call on the spirits of Luck or the God(dess) of Fortune then it makes total sense to me that you could use it the way the mechanic describes as an in character decision.
I get how some of those are weird cause they have no good narrative explanation, but several of them seem fine? For instance, what’s wrong with the shield reaction? The wizard sees an attack that’s about to hit them and then they quickly cast a ward to block it. What’s bullshit about that? That they were able to tell that the attack was about to hit them? Tracking and blocking attacks is a thing sword fighters do in real life, seeing a sword heading toward your chest and then quickly deflecting it with a blade or spell doesn’t seem immersion breaking to me.
The narrative problem with shield in 5e is that if the attack hits too well, you can decide not to cast it. it’s not “oh no they’re going to hit me.” it’s “let me calculate if adding +5 to my AC will prevent the hit”
Whether or not that narrative problem exists is entirely on the DM. The player can only know that the attack hits too well if the DM announces what they rolled, which the DM doesn’t need to do as part of adjudication. Instead of asking the player “does a 19 hit?” they can ask “what’s your AC?” Or they can keep everyone’s ACs written down and say “that attack will hit, do you want to cast Shield?”
Incorrect. The spell is a reaction that is triggered on a hit. The player must know the character is successfully hit before they are allowed to cast the spell. They literally cannot cast shield as a reaction unless an attack hits. Which means the player decides to cast a defensive measure AFTER the attack’s result is determined but before it is applied. That is not a decision the character in the world can make, by definition, but is only a decision that can be made by an outside observer with the power to stop time at the exact moment of a hit, see that it is a hit, and choose for the character to spend a resource to negate the hit.
That is precisely the disconnect being highlighted. Decisions that can only be made by players because they are rolling dice and playing with math. To make it an in-world decision requires retconning, hand-waving, or making excuses for the mechanics.
How is that any more of narrative problem than knowing it will miss? If I see a knife already an inch from my throat I know I won’t be able to block it in time.
Because spell casting is more involved than dodging. If the hit is already so certain that a split-second dodge won’t save you, you don’t have time to do something more complex. The spell dating has to start before the hit is that certain but a wizard can only cast the spell after the hit is known to be certain. A decision must be made after an effect that changes the effects cause. The choice ripples backwards through time, creating a retroactive continuity. Which is not how cause and effect or human decisions work. You can make any number of excuses for it, but the rules are clear: after the attack has already hit, you may choose to cast a spell that, if successful, undoes the hit. No matter how you cake it narratively or what excuses you try to make in the fiction, the RULES describe the NARRATIVELY IMPOSSIBLE.
“Because spell casting is more involved than dodging.” It doesn’t have to be. The fact that the casting time is a reaction indicates its incredibly quick to cast. With a thought and a quick flick of a finger a wizard can bring up that ward as quickly as a fighter can rise their shield. I can see why that might not jive with how you want magic to work in your games though.
You’re ignoring the part you don’t want to deal with.
In the RULES, the spell REQUIRES the attack to already have been determined to be a hit before the spell can be cast. That is what triggers the wizard’s ability to cast the spell. However, the spell can then change the already-determined result. Which means, the outcome has changed after it has been determined. That’s explicit what the rules say.
The NARRATIVE cannot match that. Some explanation must be supplied to explain how even though the rules require the effect to precede the cause, the story plays out differently. For example, the spellcaster reacts in the split second before or whatever. That’s the narrative problem. The NARRATIVE and the MECHANICS cannot match.
You may not think it’s a big deal, you may be perfectly happy with whatever explanation you come up with, you may have a certain view that makes it okay, but the MECHANICS and the NARRATIVE cannot describe the same set of circumstances and the NARRATIVE explanation must be modified to accommodate the MECHANICS.
We are now talking in circles. If you don’t agree that the problem is a problem, that is fine. But proposing further narrative explanations or suggesting a narrative can be found to make it okay is not addressing the problem as it’s been stated. We’re going to have to agree to disagree and move on.
Fair enough.
I think that there’s an interesting problem with the level of association/ disassociation in the mechanics of a die roll here. Like, we spend a lot of time rating things in real life on 4 to 10 point scales, and that seems like something you can intuitively do if you have understanding in a domain.
So if a performance is poor, in real life I normally have some level of intuition on how poor my performance is. I have an idea, when I’m looking for my car keys, on the difference between “I’ve carefully and thoroughly searched the coffee table, the keys are not here.” and “I can feel my breath rising and my heart beat starting to speed up and I’m already late and where are the growlix growlix keys!” And so I know, to some extent, what I roll on the d20 of my search check.
Can a skilled adventurer with a lot of experience with combat tell the difference between “This shot that is being thrown at me is so completely off the mark it couldn’t hurt me even if the sword was magic” (rolling less than a 5) and “This shot is aimed straight between my eyes and I’m badly out of position.” (rolling over a 15)? Or is this kind of performance detail actually contained in the roll modifier, and the roll represents something else? Because if the roll is meant to represent the quality of the attempt, and the quality of the attempt is discernable, then knowing whether it’s a good or bad attempt is something your character should actually be able to react to.
I’m guessing #16 is one of them. Over time, I’ve seen several clarifications of metagamaing, as well as it being treated as a word that is overused and taboo when it may have a place at times (or people become too fixated on ensuring metagaming *doesn’t* happen). I’m going to also say #14, but I can be easily persuaded against it.
I see #11 for many peoples’ picks, but player agency has always been one of the main things protected in the articles on this site, even recently.
I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on C&C, Angry, so I do hope you write some articles to review it in the wake of your new campaign. I’ve been reading through their ruleset and I like a lot of what I’m seeing, but I’d like to hear your more experienced, sage, and obviously correct take on the system since I am but a humble 5e scrub.
My guesses are:
#10, which includes “I will never fudge dice.” The rest of the rule, about never giving them a victory they haven’t earned, still holds, but you’ve admitted that you do fudge dice.
#17. Letting a player veto an ambiguous death. I suspect that the idea of telling a player “yeah, your character totally should have died,” and then not killing them is something you would find in violation of being “fair and consistent”.
>”While you have been quite liberal with your opinions about the various iterations of D&D …”
The proofread aloud was a DELIGHT! Thanks, Angry.
#18 and maybe #14. Close followers are #16 and #1
Agreed, I have no nostalgia for the OSR games and tactical combat is fun. I have been reading a lot of rule books lately looking for any interesting game mechanics and while I have no interest in running a Worlds Without Number game, the rulebook does have a few interesting things in it worth reading.
The Encumbrance rules look simple enough that even my dumb players should be able to handle it, I’m thinking of stealing it for my next D&D campaign. And the Arts and Effort system is really interesting, a massive improvement to 5E’s cantrips.
Plus, the GM section is probably the best I’ve seen in a rulebook. The advice on building a campaign setting is excellent, especially the sections on communities, courts and ruins. Just skimming through this section inspired multiple adventure ideas I’d never considered before. And all of it system neutral. I intend to reference the Worlds Without Number book frequently while designing adventures for my 5E campaigns going forward.
I too am a connoisseur of game mechanics, and while I certainly do not play any of them enough to form valid meaningful opinions, I do enjoy the hundreds of different approaches, and little sparks of creativity found in all kinds of different game systems. I use them to find little inspirations of “Wow, I’d like to include that in my game” as much, or even more, than I do from setting sourcebooks.
Yay, I finally know! It’s nice to be back on AskAngry, and what a great article it was: not only did I get my answer, but I got 2. I also wondered what you thought of Old School games for a while, so that’s nice to know. I’m curious about what the word “romantic” means, in the context of defining the genre. Is it simply a way to say “idealistic” or is it inspired by ATWC’s famous blog post on romantic fantasy?
As for what’s changed in the Credo, I see a lot of hypotheses here. Though number 1 could have changed after the OGL thing, and 17 might not be your style anymore, my bets are on number 3 and 22. 22 because you seem to use timers and scene clocks that sometimes make taking a break impossible; 3 because it seems now you have less time for gaming, more options for players (having made many friends and countless patrons ready to play), so I suspect you’re more selective of who you choose to spend time with at the table. After all, someone could abide by your rules and still not be your type of person. So those are my bets. Although a small part of me fears it’s number 4 which has gone out of the windows…
I’m aware that now you have C&C to try and little more, as well as (I assume) tons of recommendations from your discord, but considering the requirements you stated for your game I’d mention 2 you probably would like: Level up advanced 5th edition is… basically DnD 5E with serial numbers filed off, so content for that game would be compatible with DnD. Then there’s Shadow of the Demon Lord: a cursory search reveals you were interested in trying it out in 2017, but that campaign ended up using Pathfinder. It is about fantasy adventures, it uses a D20 + modifiers for most things and it has a mechanic similar to Advantage&Disad. (boons and banes) that allows you to stack them in a simple but balanced way. You might enjoy it. Though C&C also perfectly fits your requirements.
Last thing: being (physically) able to walk away from a table does NOT protect everyone from a bad experience. If someone insults you in a bar you can leave, but your mood might still be soured. A more extreme example: people in emotionally ab*sive relationships could technically “just leave”, but it’s simplistic to reduce everything to that, as anyone with a passing knowledge of them could tell you.
BRB catching up with your article on visualization!
I never claimed you can avoid bad experiences or prevent hurt feelings. You can’t. Not without isolating yourself from all other human beings. That’s the price of social interaction and it’s wrongheaded to try. In fact, going through your gaming life with the mistaken beliefs that you can avoid hurt feelings with enough preparation, that ending up with hurt feelings mean something went wrong, or that you have the right to never end up feeling bad makes you brittle an unable to cope with the reality of gaming with other humans. The fact is, you must train yourself to cope with such things because you cannot control anything other than yourself.
Simple doesn’t mean easy. Yes, it is very hard, but in the end, “just leaving” is the only power any human has.
Also, please do not compare your experiences as the game table to being stuck in am abusive relationship. Not try to extend my advice beyond to such things.
I’m curious if the “on the shelf WWN went” comment was tongue in cheek, or if you really stopped reading it at that point?
I have to say that I was attracted to WWN because I was looking to start an open world campaign, so it seemed to suit my tastes a lot.
As a system though it doesn’t really have to be played as a sandbox, only the book gives a lot of useful tools for doing exactly that.
Not really. There were things in there I wanted to check out. But it did place itself out of consideration for the game I was starting because it was a non-sandbox game. As a general rule, until I have played a system for ten-to-twelve sessions, no matter what I think I know, I trust everything the designer says as true. I run the rules mostly as written. And if a designer tells me a game is meant for a certain style of play, then I assume they know what they’re talking about. And when you’re skimming through a half-dozen systems looking for the one that’s a good fit, that introduction is really important because it tells you whether to keep reading or look somewhere else.
Speaking of OSRs, have you ever checked out the Low Fantasy Gaming RPG? I recognized some of the same arguments you made against magic becoming mundane in modern RPGs in the mechanics and theme of that game. I also found the Exploit mechanics interesting since they promote improvising during combat without getting bogged down.