Last month, I warned all y’all that I wasn’t doing another Ask Angry thing for a while and suggested you might want to hold off asking me questions. Especially urgent questions.

Based on the deluge of e-mails I’m still receiving, you all suck at following instructions. Not that I didn’t already know that considering the number of you that can’t handle simple things like, “keep it short, stupid” and “explicitly tell me what to call you, dumbass.”

So, another month, another mailbag.

And if you want your question answered in a future column — at least for as long as I keep doing this crap — e-mail ask.angry@angry.games. Remember to keep it short, stupid, and to explicitly tell me what to call you.

Dumbass.

Let’s start with someone who can follow simple instructions.

Saria asks…

My players like to engage in witty banter with their foes during combat, which I am all for when it makes sense, but I struggle to keep up with the banter and tracking combat at the same time. Do you have any advice for how I can work on this?

Thank you, Saria, for showing basic-ass reading comprehension skills. In a better world, that wouldn’t be praiseworthy, but here we are. Have a cookie for doing absolutely nothing exceptional.

Anyway…

I love me some good back-and-forth banter with the baddies in battle. There’s nothing better than combatants launching in character and tonally appropriate insults — note the emphasized words — across the field like arrows. You’re probably being kind and charitable calling your players witty though. After all, they’re players and players aren’t. But I’ll let it slide.

Even if the heroes are just heroically ganking a momma bear whose territory they invaded or something, it’s great for the foes to snarl and growl and get their hackles up. It brings the monsters to life and makes even simple fights seem tense, dynamic, and emotionally engaging. If that bear growls and snaps and rears up, it’ll always make the players a little nervous even if, by power level, they’ve got it dead to rights.

In fact, as bonkers as this sounds, running well-designed, tactical, strategic combat challenges without growling at the players and flipping them off gets you less engagement than a totally straightforward, simple-ass fight in a bare room you play to the hilt. And that’s true even if the players don’t play along. Trust me.

But, as you note, managing combat is hard and this is just one more thing to manage. So what’s a GM to do?

First, remember that this shit is an integral part of running the game. It’s part of your job. It’s not optional. And that means it’s part of the standard Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle. When Adam says, “Ardrick lunges at the orc with his longsword, yelling, ‘your mother wears sensible shoes appropriate for tending home and hearth,'”, that whole thing is his action. That’s what you’re resolving. When it’s time to Describe the outcome, you’ve got to describe the hit — or miss — and apply the damage and describe how the orc responds to the insult.

That’s a lot. So, second, you’ve got to slow the hell down. If you’re overwhelmed by all you’ve got to do during combat, take it one step at a time. This is precisely why a well-practiced Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle is so vital.

First, parse the player’s action. “I attack the orc and insult his mother,” is the action declaration. Make sure you hear — and repeat — the whole thing. “Ardrick,” you say, “attacks the orc with his longsword while pontificating on the orc’s questionable parentage.”

Next, resolve the mechanical bits. Call for attack rolls, check the results against the stats, record the mechanical results, tick off the damage modified by whatever conditions are relevant, and apply the attack’s rider effects. As you make each note, recognize you’re building a list of shit to Describe. Did it hit? Was it a decisive blow or a graze? Did it miss? Did it almost miss? Why? Is the orc dodgy? Armored? Does it have a shield? Magical protection? Is the orc bleeding now? And so on.

Take your time to resolve and record each and every little bit. You ain’t racing anyone and you won’t get good at this by rushing yourself and skipping steps.

Finally, Describe the result. The whole result. Work your way first through all that mechanical shit and, second, describe how the orc responds to the insult. “The orc tries to interpose his shield and partially deflects the blow. His shoulder is grazed. The orc laughs, ‘At least my mother taught me how to use a sword. A pity dogs can’t hold swords or your mother would have taught you better.'”

Meanwhile, when you’re Describing your own creatures’ actions — because, remember, Game Masters don’t Declare actions; all NPC actions are part of one big Describe that goes from the end of one player’s action to the start of the next player’s but don’t worry if you don’t grok that because it ain’t important — meanwhile, when Describing your own creatures’ actions, don’t leave out describing how they’re acting. This is where creatures snarl and growl or hurl insults of their own. Or even communicate amongst themselves. This is totally a thing they should do even if your players are too stupid to do so themselves during combat.

What do you do when players banter out of turn? What do you do when a player suddenly hurls some shade in the middle of a monster’s turn? You just treat that like any other Interrupting action. Remember, when a player speaks in character, they’re actually saying, “My character says aloud the following sentence: ‘Suck it, greenskin.'” That’s an action and it’s your job to Determine and Describe the result. “The orc makes a gesture that is essentially the equivalent of an upraised middle finger.”

That said, you can’t let this shit get out of control. A little banter goes a long way, but players will keep going endlessly as long as you keep responding. So don’t be afraid to say, “… and now your turn is over” to forestall a response until an action or two gets resolved. Something like, “The crimson dragonborn responds by calling you an honorless pig, but before you can respond, Cabe… does what? Chris, it’s Cabe’s turn.”

Those cut-off statements really help you keep a scene moving. They’re not just for banter.

It takes practice to get this crap right, though. Lots of practice. And that means taking it slow until you’re good at it. If you only get through a few encounters a session rather than, say, six, remember there’s always a next session and good Game Mastering is about quality and not quantity.

There’s a difference between pacing your game right and getting through as much as you can at every session. The difference is one gets you a shitty game. But at least it gets you a lot of shitty game.

Mendel asks…

What is the value of tropes in TTRPGs? Why is it okay to start in a tavern? Why are we always rescuing princesses and slaying dragons? And should GMs subvert tropes more than they lean into them?

Holy crap on a cracker, I love this question. Thanks, Mendel. I’m so glad you e-mailed me instead of just burying this question in some forgotten corner of my supporter Discord chat for me to overlook completely. I mean, as much as I love waylaying the Discord channels to deliver speeches, I just can’t play with ideas — and swear about them — there like I can here. Even the thousand short words I give mailbag questions are so much more than I can fling into Discord off the cuff.

I’m a Trope Cheerleader. I’m all for them, Even the ones that Internet dumbasses sneer at as problematic like evil orcs and princess rescues. And, as I’ve noted before, I always start my campaigns in taverns. Always.

Of course, this lands me at odds with most of my fellow online Game Masters. And not just the shrieking, perpetually offended ones. Most GMs worry too damned much about originality and they’re so far up their own asses about deconstruction and subversion that they can lick their own — nonfunctioning — brains.

If originality and deconstruction are so great, why do all the post-modern shit remakes of great stories just keep failing? Especially when compared to the original. Luke Skywalker is still the toy to buy. No one’s buying Ren Palpatine or whatever that insipid cretin’s name was. And how did that last Indiana Jones movie do? Did the latest Marvels even come out? It did? Wow? That was gone like a fart in the wind, huh?

To get why tropes have value, you have to know why stories have value. And games. Because games are just a way of creating experiences to tell stories about later. They’re a kind of interactive story creation. Well, it’s more complicated than that. Games serve the same purposes as stories, but games do other things too. The point is that games and stories have similar payoffs. If you don’t believe me, listen to a fan describe the climactic play from last week’s football game or last month’s League of Legends tournament. It’s all caked in the language of stories.

Games leave us with stories when they’re done.

That ain’t the same as saying that a game is about telling a story. That’s horseshit. Jordan Love and Aaron Jones don’t charge on the field thinking about whether fumbling a handoff makes a better story because, you know, failure is more interesting. Faker and Chovy don’t tell their teams, “Dudes, let’s totally overcommit to bot so we can set ourselves up for a great third-act reversal!” They play their games and the stories emerge. And you can bet your ass they’re telling and retelling the same stories in the locker room the fans are the next day.

Humans use stories and games to learn and grow, to pass on skills and experiential wisdom, and to practice life lessons. Whether it’s about survival strategies, social relationships, or the moral glue that holds society together, every story — and every game — has something to teach. Every story explores something.

Now, some stories teach shitty lessons. As do some games. Some teach useless lessons. Or worthless lessons. Or no lessons at all. And while those games and stories might be entertaining, they quickly fade from conscious memory. Those are the stories no one quotes. The games no one replays. The forgotten ones. The ones whose tie-in toys get dumped in landfills.

Other stories resonate in deep, fundamental ways. They’re the stories people tell and retell. Or the games people play over and over. They feel good. Or they feel important. And that’s because they reflect… something. Something true or real or valuable. Even if the story seems silly on the surface — even if it’s about voodoo sharks terrorizing tourist towns or a bunch of comedians starting a ghost extermination business — there’s something there that sings to people. For all that modern gamers shit all over Tolkien, there are reasons so many people still read and love Tolkien and why producers think slapping a Tolkien adaptation on screen will put butts in seats.

What’s that got to do with tropes? Tropes are basically just story chunks. Bits and pieces of stories. And some such chunks resonate deeply with people in the same way the larger stories do. There are reasons why orcs and dragons are monsters and why we’re always rescuing princesses. And that reason ain’t a sexist lesson about women as objects. Rather, it’s a lesson about what it takes to be worthy of an adult relationship. Or what to look for in an adult relationship. If you want to grow up, become an adult, partner with someone in a fulfilling relationship, and build the next generation, you have to slay the dragon first. And if you want to find a good partner, find someone willing to slay the dragon.

Tropes are tried and tested story elements. They’re the ones people go back to. The ones that resonate. Despite the efforts of the subverters and the deconstructors, the tropes are what people want. Because they reflect deep truths. And the subverters and the deconstructors reject them for all sorts of reasons. Some just don’t see why the old stories are so valuable. Some hate the old stories because they hate the world and themselves. Some are too narrow-minded to think beyond their own — often invented — problems. Some hate the lessons old stories teach because there are a lot of cruel lessons in life and they wish it weren’t so. Some don’t like what they see when you hold a mirror up to them. And some have just gotten it into their heads that true creativity is about building from whole cloth. That it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you’re the first to say it.

That ain’t to say stories and tropes shouldn’t evolve. That’s idiotic. Tropes evolve. Tropes die. New tropes appear. It’s an organic process. There are all sorts of literary tropes we’ve just forgotten and there are new tropes emerging all the time. That’s because our stories reflect our world and reflect ourselves. But you can’t force this shit. You can’t say, “This is a trope that should die.” You can’t kill a trope that resonates because tropes only resonate because they reflect truth. And you can’t say, “This is a lesson people should learn.” If the lesson doesn’t resonate, it’s probably not a good lesson. The evolution of tropes — and stories — happens beyond the will and power of creators.

So use the tropes that feel good to use. Use them because they feel right. And if they don’t feel right, don’t use them. That’s all. Don’t purposely use them. Don’t subvert them or destroy them. If you just do what feels right and good, you’ll probably end up being tropey because tropes feel right and good.

I joke that I purposely start all my campaigns in taverns purely to stick it to the trope-haters. And to prove I can run a better game that’s tropes all the way down than the most original post-modern Game Masters can conjure from pure creativity. But, really, I do it because it feels right. The chance meeting in a tavern feels contrived, sure, but a story that starts with a chance meeting is a story that could have started with anyone. It just happened to start with you. You’re nobody special, just someone passing on the road, but by putting yourself out there and taking action, you can make yourself someone special. Isn’t that amazing? And it’s all just by chance. Or is it? Maybe it’s not. Maybe a greater power did put in this room at this time with these people. But does it matter? Whether by fate or fortune, you’re here, and you chose to talk to that stranger and team up with the peasant girl with the stolen sword and the mysterious elf diplomat and the refugee dwarf and the wandering abbot. Maybe a hero is just someone who lives their life assuming they’re always in the right place at the right time and asks themselves what they’re meant to do there and then.

But what do I know? I just run tropey, cliched, Tolkien-ripoff crap.

George asks…

How do you handle languages in your games? What do you think would be an ideal language system?

Congratulations George, you are the first — and probably only — recipient of a 2024 Angry Award for Totally Just Getting to the Fucking Point. The moment I saw your e-mail, before I read one single word, I knew I was answering it. It could have been about dragonboobs or underwater potion-chugging for all the shits I gave because, by God Almighty, is that a thing of beauty. Clear, concise, and complete, and it doesn’t even break 20 words.

I… I’m sorry… I promised myself I wouldn’t cry…

Okay, I’m better now.

Languages are weird, right? They’re there and every player has to deal with them from the get-go because, well, you gotta pick a half-dozen languages for your character to speak. It sure seems like they should be important, doesn’t it? And then, they’re just kinda… not. They just fade away like a fart in the wind or a Disney Star Wars movie. And even if you try to do anything with them, they’re just sort of clunky.

It’s a giant pain in the ass in a long-term campaign if the players can’t communicate with each other. We’ve all been in that one group where someone wants to play a kenku or a thri-kreen or a heretic whose tongue got ripped out or a wookie or an astromech droid or… someone who can’t just properly talk to their fellows. For a while, it’s fun watching them try to communicate through pantomime or through one-liner quotes from pop-fiction that totally fit the tone of the campaign or by passing notes to the one player whose character understands — but can’t speak — Shyriiwook. But that shit loses its luster fast. Really fast. It’s just one of those things that’s fun until the campaign hits its fourth session. Then, it’s just a pain in the ass.

Of course, that’s excepting obnoxious Performance Players who never get tired of holding up the game for fifteen fucking minutes of hilarious charades in every fucking social interaction while being totally oblivious to the fact that every other person at the table is fantasizing about digging out their kidney-spleens with a dull spork.

Anyway, that’s why Common was invented. The Common Tongue. And it’s why Game Masters only make the mistake of letting someone play a character who can’t speak Common one time. The player’s characters must be able to speak freely among themselves.

So, what about non-player characters? Surely language has some use when the players gabble away with the creatures of the world. Well, it does. But it’s a clunky, clumsy place. And it’s kinda boring.

In theory, languages tell you who can communicate with whom. If an elf NPC only speaks High Elfish, then only the PCs that also speak High Elfish can understand — and be understood by — that NPC. But how does that work at the table? Passing notes or exchanging private, typed messages is clumsy and unnatural and slow. That’s true whether you’re playing online or off-. You’ve got to talk it out. And that means saying, “You three whose characters don’t speak High Elfish? Just sit quietly and look like you’ve got no idea what’s going on.” And, to be clear, this ain’t me saying anything about metagaming. I’m not wringing my hands and saying, “What’s to be done about players hearing things their characters can’t know?” That ain’t a problem. I’m just pointing out that the language thing is clumsy and dull.

A big part of it’s just that language is binary. And that was true even before WotC’s dumbass designers rolled a steamroller over the skill system so every skill was a binary matter of, “Either you know it or you don’t.” Language in D&D — and in most RPGs — has always come down to, “Either you speak the language with perfect fluency and communicate with its speakers or you don’t and you can’t. Full stop.”

So, what do I do about this shit? Nothing. I handle language how everyone handles language. I ignore it until I decide that, for this one particular encounter, it matters. Then I forget it again. It’s the Star Trek Universal Translator Approach. Unless this episode has an orc yelling, “Darmok and Jagrad at Talagra,” it just doesn’t matter. And that’s because, well, given the system, there’s not much else to do with it. Apart from providing an occasional barrier to communication, language is a highly situational tool. It’s the sort of thing players pull out when two characters need to communicate without anyone else understanding them. So, when the encounter isn’t, “How do you communicate without talking” language is basically just a shared secret code.

But what would I do with it? How would I make language more interesting if I were, say, designing a tabletop RPG of my very own right now? The thing is, I do have something. I’m just not sure I want it floating around. But… what the hell? You, George, did get yourself an Angry Award and you deserve a prize. So here’s how I’m thinking about the problem. In vague, broad, general terms.

For it to matter, language has to be a barrier even when it’s not. That is, even when people speak the same language, the language they’re speaking and how well they speak it can still affect the efficiency and effectiveness of their communication.

First, you have to get away from this binary either you speak it or you don’t bullshit. Which, frankly, is something you need to get away from with all the skills, but that’s a whole other rant. So every character must be rated for Fluency in each language they speak.

Now, Fluency — if it’s anything less than perfect — should be an issue whenever the character’s mouth — or ears — are open. But rolling dice every time anyone says or hears anything would be an effing nightmare. And you don’t want to force people to speak in broken sentences when they’re speaking anything but their native tongue or anything like that. That’s definitely one of those, “hilarious for three sessions and then awful for the rest of forever” things.

Fluency matters when there are already stakes. When there’s a social conflict that warrants rolling dice, Fluency modifies the die roll. Regardless of who is rolling the check, the worst Fluency modifier from among all the participants is the one you use. If you’ve got a native speaker talking to someone with -2 Fluency, all the interaction rolls suffer that -2 penalty. When the non-native is talking, their inability to speak clearly is getting in the way. When the native is speaking, the non-native’s inability to understand is still limiting communication.

Note these numbers are just random examples. They aren’t meant to be taken as precise mechanics.

But that’s not all. Because there’s language and then there’s language. In my now-retired Angryverse setting, for example, I distinguished between three categories of language: True Languages, Pidgins, and Cants. True Languages are languages as you think of them. They included Dwarvish, High Elfish, any of the numerous human cultural languages, Orcish, Draconic, and so on. Pidgins are mixed languages that evolved to facilitate communication between disparate cultures and races. Trade Common is a Pidgin Language. It’s a mix of several human languages with a bit of Dwarvish and Low Elfish thrown in. Low Elfish is another Pidgin Language, It’s basically a stripped-down kind of Elfish that doesn’t take decades and exceptional elfin auditory sensitivity to master. Cants are specialized professional and sub-cultural languages. Thief’s Cant, for example, or the idiomatic slang language halflings speak amongst themselves called Half Cant. Druidic is a Cant and Trail Signs are a written Cant.

The kind of language limits the level of Fluency anyone can achieve. Or, at least, the Fluency modifier. If you’re communicating in a Cant, the Fluency modifier is never better than -2. However well you know the Cant, it’s not suited for communication beyond passing and receiving messages. Once you try to resolve an actual social conflict — one that demands die rolls — the language’s limits get in the way. However well you know the Cant, it’s still limiting you. Pidgins never allow a Fluency modifier greater than 0. Assuming you’re a top-notch speaker of Trade Common, the language won’t get in the way of your doing business, but it’s also not helping you. Meanwhile, True Languages allow for Fluency modifiers up to +2. Two communicators speaking the same True Language benefit from the extra communicational bandwidth that a True Language allows.

For practical, gameplay purposes, if people speak Common most of the time, the rules don’t have anything to say one way or the other. That’s the default state, so it’s the unmodified state. But if you have the opportunity to bandy words with someone in a True Language you both speak well, you get a bonus for taking it. Of course, you might be forced to exclude your friends from the conversation. It’s a tradeoff. And while you can use Cants to pass messages without issue, it’s not good for conflict resolution or negotiation. Unless it’s your only option — you and your thieving counterpart share no languages — it’s not how you want to do business when it matters.

Outside of social conflicts though, language is still binary. If the ranger knows Orcish at -2, he can still understand basically what the orcs are saying to each other and he can shout insults easily enough and he can ask where the bathroom is. It’s only when he gets into an actual debate that his passing familiarity with the language makes life difficult. Which is as it should be. I’m fine with rangers knowing enough to grasp what orcs are saying, but I am not fine with every character being a perfectly fluent polyglot. And this shit means that negotiating with orcs who don’t speak Common is always a tense situation.

Now, this is an original character recolor, so don’t steal plz. But, if you want to have fun with it at your home table, go to town. Just keep in mind, that I’m only giving you the broad strokes right now. There’s more to this shit that I’m not ready to share.

And the only reason I’m sharing anything is because you made me cry.