It’s Ask Angry time. I’m opening my mailbag and answering reader-submitted questions.

Want your question answered? Send it to ask.angry@angry.games. Make sure you give me clear permission to call you whatever you want to be called and also get to the frigging point. I get dozens upon dozens of these dumbass questions so you’ve got about three seconds to catch my eye. And nothing catches my eye like something I can read — in its entirety — in three seconds.

Surface Dweller writes…

Please give me your advice about how to run the best possible campaign within severe time constraints. Specifically, one gaming night every two weeks, two-and-a-half hours each time.

Wow! That is tight. But I guess you’ve got to take what you can get. I don’t envy you those time restrictions. Outside of one-shot games at conventions, I wouldn’t put up with that shit.

First, you must have the right mindset. Your gaming minutes are rare, so they’re super-valuable. Every gaming second you’ve got is a treasure. It can’t be wasted. And your players must be on board with that. This means you’re gonna have to crack the whip and your players might grumble a bit. But they will thank you for it. While they might balk at you squeezing every last drop of gaming goodness out of every second at the table, it means more gaming for them.

Second, you have to know exactly what makes your campaign fun. What’s the selling point? What is it about TTRPGs in general that keep you and your players at the table? Is it exploration? Tactical combat? World interaction? Problem-solving? Answer honestly, I won’t judge. Actually, I will judge, but as I can’t hear your answer and you can’t hear my judgment, it won’t matter.

Really think about this. As in set aside some time to work out what keeps you and everyone else in the zone. Make a list of scenes and situations from your last few sessions that got the best reactions and got your players all jazzed up and that you really enjoyed writing. Be as vague or specific as you gotta be. Don’t try to cake this in game-designy academical language. The list’s for you and no one else. You don’t have to impress anyone, you just have to understand yourself.

Mindset? Check. Core engagements? Check.

Now look seriously at your game. If anything is taking up game time that’s not on your list of selling points, you need to minimize it, move it off the table, or excise it completely.

For instance, do you do your bookkeeping, equipment buying, and up-leveling at the table? Stop it. That’s shit the players can do away from the table. They’ve got two weeks between sessions to do their homework so make them do it.

Same’s true of exposition crap. You can share worldlore and explain quests between sessions via e-mail, Discord, or group text message. Give the players all the information they need before the session starts — where they’re going, what they’re doing, and how much they’re getting paid for it — so you can start the game with actual game. Yeah, that cuts out some of the fun interaction and world exploration and town immersion and it’s better to do that shit a the table if you can, but you can’t, so don’t.

And absolutely always send out a recap of the last session twenty-four hours before the session starts. But do start each session by asking everyone to briefly re-introduce their characters and share one neat detail about their character from the last session. That’s worth wasting table time on. It helps the players transition into the game.

Even shit that serves useful game purposes is worth minimizing. Wilderness travel? Random encounters? Cut them. Assume your party never gets lost and never runs into travel trouble. Unless you’re running a survival simulation. Then keep them. And don’t confuse that crap for exploration and discovery. Wilderness and discovery work just as well by letting the party fast travel around and pausing their fast travel with interesting thingies on the horizon.

On your way to the dungeon, after three days of travel, you see smoke from a campfire on the horizon or a dead body on the road or a set of massive claw-prints crossing your path or whatever. Do you continue on to the dungeon or check out that thingy?

These are just examples. The goal is to distill your game down to its essential elements — whatever they are — so you can spend as much of your limited table on the good stuff and limit everything that isn’t the good stuff. I ain’t saying those other not-good-stuff things ain’t important. They are. There are good reasons to take your time and include everything TTRPGs have to offer — you’re definitely giving up some of the experience for taking shit out — but you literally don’t have the time for it all.

I also recommend — everyone prepare to have your minds friggin’ blown — I also recommend you cut out Experience Points and hand the characters a level whenever they accomplish a major goal, finish an adventure, or resolve a major plot point. And that should happen every session at low levels, every second session at middling levels, and every third session at high levels. With some wiggle room obviously.

You absolutely must keep your players focused and attentive. Given your sessions run the length of an average feature movie, everyone should be able to stay in the game with one short break in the middle to freshen beverages and visit the potty. Don’t let the players bring distractions to the table; don’t incorporate meals. I wouldn’t even bother with snacks if it were me, but if you must have snacks, set them out before the session starts and freshen them at break time.

Finally, set a hard start time and make it clear you expect everyone in their chairs and ready to play when the clock strikes that time. They shouldn’t be walking through the door — or turning on their computer — at the start time, they should be waiting for you to set the scene and invite the first action.

I have a hardass philosophy because my gaming time is valuable and I know I can find players with less limited schedules if I want them. I ain’t at my best when I’ve only got five hours a month to work with. That’s less than a third of the time I normally work with each month. If I’m going to put up with that kind of constraint, I’m using every fucking minute of game time I have. Otherwise, I’m finding other players.

Good luck, Surface Dweller.

Wyleltd writes…

I have read your arguments for why you should always start a campaign at first level, and I agree with your conclusions. I think that reasoning could, in theory, apply to any new character, but, unfortunately, there’s a bit of a hitch in long-running games where high-level threats could easily make a floor mat of first level characters. How do you think a new character should be introduced to a campaign where other characters have already leveled up several times?

Your attempt at a joke name didn’t work because of the way I word my headers so I just abbreviated it. Aren’t you glad you tried to be clever instead of just giving me a nice, normal, easy-to-type-and-to-read-aloud name or online moniker or whatever? Nice job, dumbass.

Seriously: why do y’all refuse to do this shit the easy way. Just type, “Call me whatever” so I can write, “So-and-So Asks…” and occasionally drop your name in the text as if I’m talking to you in my familiar, conversational — and confrontational — way and so I also have a written record that you gave me permission to use your name so I can’t later be accused of doxxing you under some bullshit, tyrannical, European Union data sharing law or something?

Also, I don’t draw conclusions; I state facts. Saying you agree with me is like saying you agree that the sky is blue or that light travels 186,000 miles in a second through a vacuum or that Jeremy Crawford is an over-promoted hack. Simple, objective facts all.

That said, I agree with your conclusion based on my facts. It’s ideal to start any new character at first level. Doesn’t matter whether the character’s new because the campaign’s new or because the player got their old character killed or because the player’s new to the table. Every character should start their adventuring career at first level.

That’s a fact.

But modern tabletop roleplaying games often make that shit impossible. Take Dungeons & Dragons. Because it uses its Hit Point and damage progressions to differentiate low- and high-level creatures, one hit from a critter just a few levels too powerful for a newbie player-character is enough to paste them. And there’s no fixing that.

This is one of those cases where your system of choice might force you to settle for a less-than-ideal solution.

If you’re using my brilliant Tier-Based Leveling-and-Challenge Structure for D&D — which I frankly think every game with an extreme power progression should feature — then you’ve got an easy alternative. You can just start every new PC at the lowest level of the party’s current tier of play.

The real problem’s that D&D — and Pathfinder and many other systems — doesn’t really tell you how to start new PCs off. It leaves you to pick your new PC policy for yourself. And most GMs don’t think about that until they find themselves having to deal with it. It’s definitely worth picking your approach in advance and adding that to your House Rules.

Your policy’s probably gonna have a lot to do with how you handle level advancement. If you’re like most GMs and keep all your player-characters at the same level and experience point total — or if you keep them in lockstep with milestone leveling — then every new PC should start in sync with the current party. Anything else is just kind of dickish.

Phil writes…

Dear Ask Angry,

Please call me Phil.

When calling for a die roll, is it better to lower the DC, or to give the player a bonus based on circumstances surrounding the roll? Should one tell their players what they are doing?

Thank you for your time.

Phil

And that’s all Phil wrote! That’s Phil’s entire damned e-mail! Why the motherloving fuck can’t you all manage that? It’s so simple!

Phil, I love you. In a totally platonic, non-threatening, no-restraining-order-needed kind-of-way, I love you.

Thank you.

Also, great question, Phil. Though answering it’s going to get me some shit from all those GMs who demand solid, concrete rules and bright lines and who think that GM Judgment is a design flaw rather than a feature.

Let me answer the second part first because it’s the easy part. Unless you’re hiding the die roll for some reason — and there are lots of good reasons why you might, as you well know — you should tell the players what modifiers you’re imposing on the die roll and why. That’s just good game mastering.

Now… what’s the difference between modifying a die roll and modifying a DC? Mathematically, there ain’t one. Which just goes to prove that you can’t understand games with math. Because they feel really different.

First, though, let’s talk about how GMs — and game systems — set DCs. Because there are a few different philosophies here and how you handle modifiers has a lot to do with how you set DCs.

Some GMs like to set DCs based on how likely success would be if conditions were perfect. In ages of old, the D&D rulebooks heavily supported that approach. There were tables in the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook v3.5, for example, for setting Climb check DCs that told you the base DC for climbing a particular kind of surface and then listed modifiers to that DC based on whether it was slippery or whether there was an anchored rope or a corner wall to brace against or whatever. And the whole system was consistent with that approach. Hell, that’s how Armor Class works when you think about it. Attacking a man-sized target has a base DC of 10 and that DC is modified by the target’s size, evasiveness, and armor. And that ain’t by accident. The concept of Difficulty Class was derived from the concept of Armor Class. I shit you not. D&D had AC long before it had any DCs. And AC came from naval wargames. But that’s a story for another time.

The alternative’s just to set a unique DC for every task in total isolation. There’s no such thing as a standard climb. Climbing a slippery, jagged rock face with an anchored rope carries a DC of 15 because that’s the right DC for that specific situation. Foraging for food while traveling at a slow pace through a lush forest is DC 5 because that’s the right DC. No attempt is made to separate the ideal task from the circumstances under which it’s attempted.

As I said, this is a philosophical thing. And most GMs don’t think about it, but rather just follow whatever the game seems to do. This is tricky because modern D&D is extremely inconsistent about it. And it’s very subtly inconsistent. Some DCs in the rules are clearly based on the set the DC for the ideal task and modify it approach while others are based on the idea that every action’s unique and needs a unique DC.

The former is good, by the way, if you like rules that spell everything out and lots of tables and lots of math. The latter is good if you just want to run your game like a reasonable human person. You can probably guess which I prefer.

If you take the former approach — Platonic DCs with modifiers — then you have to develop an approach for separating the things that modify the DC from things that modify the die roll. Because, as I said, the two have very different gamefeels. DC modifiers are usually invisible to the players. They’re behind the screen. Meanwhile, players know about every dice modifier and thus, they feel like rewards and punishments. Or gimmes and slaps.

The best approach then is to modify the DC based on external factors. Ice and frost covering a climbing wall, for example, or darkness in the room being searched, or wind and rain on the battlefield affecting ranged attacks. Such factors would affect literally anyone taking the action. And they’re factors the players would know about based on your narrative descriptions and should consider when picking their actions.

Meanwhile, anything that comes from the character is best represented with a modifier. If the character’s using climbing tools or focusing their search on just the right spot or invoking a feat that lets them take careful aim before attacking, modify the die roll. Those things come from choices the player made, abilities the character possesses, or resources the character used.

This approach ain’t perfect, but roleplaying games are too open-ended for perfect approaches and bright lines. For example, lighting a torch to dispel the darkness is technically a player-made decision, but I’d still just offset the DC increase for bad lighting than apply a Let There Be Light modifier to the die roll. It’s important to note that you don’t have to nail this shit perfectly every time. Your game ain’t gonna break because you imposed a cover penalty to an attack roll instead of a cover bonus to Armor Class.

What is important though is not applying the same modifier twice. Don’t adjust the DC based on the lighting conditions and then grant a player a bonus for lighting a torch. But that seems pretty frigging obvious to me.

And this highlights one of the big advantages of setting a unique DC for every situation based on the whole situation. You know, aside from the advantage that it makes you a better Game Master who runs smoother games. The Holistic DC approach prevents you from worrying about where to put the modifier. Every favorable or unfavorable thing that might affect the success applies a modifier to the die roll. And that reinforces to the players that their choices affect their odds of success. Forcing a player to suck up a penalty for poor lighting conditions tells that player to take control of the situation by lighting a torch and giving themselves every chance to succeed.

And that’s definitely a lesson I want to teach my players.

Secundus writes…

I’ve read your articles The Joy of Secrets and What Does Detect Magic Detect. The first article posits that a core engagement of TTRPGs in the long term is learning about them, and you should avoid, for example, overusing custom monsters for that reason. The latter argues that given a question that isn’t obvious from the rules, you should go with the more natural explanation. Is there a difference between, for example, making ghosts immune to nonmagical weapons and letting Detect Magic detect overt magical phenomena such as dragonfire?

Let me admit here that I got lazy. At first, I wasn’t sure what the hell you were asking, Secundus. I knew I wanted to help you because you signed off your e-mail as a reader who feels that he majorly misread one of your articles and I felt like I owed you an answer. Especially because it didn’t seem like you were misreading anything. But I couldn’t, for the life of me, see the contradiction between those two articles or figure out what the hell either had to do with your example about ghosts and dragonfire.

But rather than e-mailing you, I just started drafting a reply. And halfway through — as you’ll see — it clicked. I understood what was going on.

Your summations are sparse, but they ain’t wrong. There was more to The Joy of Secrets than the mere argument that people shouldn’t use custom monsters, but the gist of it was just that Game Masters should use as much of the game’s published and extant content as possible. That way, players can get familiar with the game’s content over time, even when they play at different tables, and they can also discuss them in the larger gaming community.

But there is something important you left out of your short summary of What Does Detect Magic Detect. And that’s that the designers fucked up. When they used the word magical in their game mechanics, they gave it a meaning that’s totally unnatural and non-intuitive. Thus, neither Game Masters nor players can use the natural meaning of the word magical to deduce anything about the world in which the game takes place.

To every normal, reasonable human, a dragon is a magical being and its ability to breathe raw elemental fury is similarly magical. Why? Because dragons and their breath weapons are impossible by any normal, reasonable, human understanding of physics, chemistry, and biology. And note that I’m talking about normal, reasonable, human people here. I ain’t talking about the tortured bullshit arguments nerds use to prove this shit could be totally realistic so they can win fights online. That ain’t reasonable or intuitive. It’s nerd dick-waving. It’s Rick and Morty fandom kind of crap.

So there are these spells called detect magic and dispel magic and there are these magical dragons who can breathe magical fire and magical lightning and any reasonable human person would assume they should interact with each other. But nope. They don’t. Why? Because that’s not what the rules say.

But, if you follow my advice to overrule the stupid crappy design that led to magical meaning two different things, you’re preventing your players from using their knowledge in the wider community. And the same is possible whenever the Game Master overrules something for the sake of building a natural, intuitive, consistent world.

Fair enough…

But that ain’t a contradiction, it’s a conflict. There are two things, both desirable, and choosing one means giving up the other. You can’t have both. And that’s just how life is.

So, in this case, you can do things by the book and let your players share a common understanding of the game with the larger community or you can override the books to fix the designer’s clumsy dumbassery so your players can naturally and intuitively draw conclusions about how the world and their abilities work rather than having to pick over and memorize fiddly, technical, mechanical terms that don’t make a lick of actual, logical sense.

Which do you choose? Which is better? Which do you want more>

There’s no right answer. No universal. It’s down to your personal priorities and values and the system you’re running and the kinds of games you run and the kinds of players at your table and cetera and cetera and cetera. Someone steeped in the Pathfinder community who runs a lot of organized play games at conventions and game stores will have a different answer from someone whose been running the same homebrew game for the same players for a decade and doesn’t plan on stopping.

Everything I’ve ever written is eventually going to end up conflicting with something else I’ve written. That’s because every choice you make as a Game Master is a trade-off. Every. Choice. And the balance you strike between all the different ideals that add up to a great game? That’s what makes you a different Game Master from everyone else. That’s what GMing Style actually means. And that’s what makes running different games for different audiences different too.

So, take heart. You didn’t misunderstand anything I said.

You just misunderstood how life works.

Some Dumbass Who Can’t Follow Instructions writes…

In last month’s mailbag, you said that most people the word “murderhobo” don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t think I know the meaning you’re alluding to, could you please tell me about it?

All right, Dumbass, let me explain the etymology of murderhobo and how the Internet ruined it the same way it ruins everything, even though it’s probably a waste of time considering your piss-poor reading comprehension skills. But maybe someone else will enjoy it while you marvel at the strange shapes and spin your scroll wheel uselessly just to listen to the whirring noise.

Murderhobo is a contraction of murderous and hobo. I’m gonna assume y’all know what murderous means — except you, dumbass — and I’m sure many of you think you know what a hobo is, but I want to make sure you’ve got it right. Most people lump hobo in with bum, tramp, and homeless personage, but they ain’t really synonyms.

Hobo is an American slang term for one who traveled from town to town, with no permanent home, taking on odd jobs to support themselves. A hobo is a migrant or itinerant worker. The term originated in the late 1800s and there are several different theories as to its etymology, none of which matter.

The phrase murderous hobo was first used to describe roleplaying game adventurers in a 2007 forum post on RPG.net. Someone posted a thread in which they asked folks to suggest a better term than adventurer for an independent contractor that “travels around doing ‘what needs to be done’.” After several serious replies, poster Sage Genesis suggested — with tongue firmly in cheek and smiling emoji firmly appended — murderous hobo.

It was a brilliant — if snarkily satirical — answer. In most adventure games, the player-characters definitely qualify as hobos. They travel from town to town, doing whatever jobs they can to fill their stomachs and their purses. And in most tabletop roleplaying games — especially the fantasy ones — most of the jobs adventurers get hired to do involve killing something.

Thus murderous hobo or murderhobo is a perfectly apt synonym for fantasy adventurer. At least, it used to be. But then the Internet turned it into just another thing for online Game Masters to piss and moan about. Because we sure don’t have enough of that.

It started when people used it as a pejorative for players who preferred the combat parts of the game to the other parts. Which, as you know, is absolutely wrong and cannot be tolerated. And then it became a way of complaining about players who refused to let anything hostile or dangerous live. They’d never let a goblin flee from battle and they’d never sneak past a sneaking owlbear. Gradually, it came to refer to the sorts of sociopathic behavior Snazzy alluded to in his e-mail: players who refuse to engage with the world and kill every living thing they meet just because they can.

And I’m kind of pissed off about this whole thing. Why? Well, it’s not just that the word got ruined. It’s that the original meaning of murderhobo was a clever way of poking fun at one of the absurdities at the heart of most fantasy adventure games’ core assumptions. A good-natured jab at a bit of silliness in something we all love. And I’m totally down for that kind of thing. It’s healthy to laugh at yourself and the things you love because there’s always some silliness to be found in each and you can’t take this shit too seriously. And now, it’s just a word people fling at each other the way monkeys fling shit.

Yay, gamers!