I know you’re all expecting the third and final installment in my two-part-plus-interquel treasure thing, but you’ll have to wait until next week. Like those crappy, store-bought, pre-made Christmas cookies that are never f$&%ing done when the package says they will be, the article needs a little more time in the oven.

So, instead of delicious, treasure-filled cookies, you get me playing sweary Santa Claus. I’m going to read your letters and then head out to the reindeer stalls with a big shovel to fill your stocking. That’s right, it’s Ask Angry Mailbag time.

Do you want me to crap all over one of your questions? Send it to ask.angry@angry.games. But, for f$&%’s sake, keep it brief. If I can’t tell at a glance whether it’s worth an answer, it won’t be. And tell me what to call you. In the first f$&%ing line. Just start with “call me [name].” Why is it so f$&%ing hard for people to get this s$&% right?

Incidentally, if you’re not happy with the sack of reindeer crap I dump on your particular question today — if you’re one of the unlucky correspondents whose e-mail I chose to answer — stay ‘till the end. Because there’s actually a reason why I put these three e-mails together. There’s a unifying theme and an important message.

So…

Shirley asks…

I’m annoyed with the way D&D treats its economy. Especially with magic items and potions. The game provides only vague price ranges. It’s like the designers said, “f$&% it, just let the DMs figure this s$&% out for themselves.” Have you ever tried to fix the D&D economy?

First, let me say that while I do edit these questions for brevity — especially in this case because Shirley decided to cake her simple, one-sentence question in a rant to let me know in no uncertain terms how angry she was with Crawford et al for wronging her personally with their crappy design — let me say that while I do edit these questions for brevity and clarity, I don’t change the essential tone. Shirley’s tone is pissed off.

And Shirley needs to calm the f$&% down.

First, no Shirley, I have never tried to fix the economy in D&D. That would be like trying to fix the engine on a bicycle. Because — as I’ve said probably fifty f%$&ing times now — there is no economy in D&D.

I’m not just being petty and semantic here. This is an important thing you GMs need to crowbar into your overly thick craniums. D&D does not have an economy. Prices in D&D are based on nothing. And that’s as it should be. I recently read this whole, long post from someone who added a whole supply-and-demand-based economic system to D&D. It was long. It was complicated. It was pointless. It was ill-conceived. Because buying and selling s$&% in D&D is not now nor has it ever been nor will it ever be nor should it be about supply-and-demand or market forces or cost-basis or wealth.

The only time it makes an iota sense to build an economic system like that is when you’re building one of those massively multiplayer things with a free market for the umpteen bajillion players to trade their loot. Or when you’re making a game that is literally an economic simulation.

But I ain’t talking about that s$&%. And neither are you.

At best — and D&D 5E is not an example of best here — at best, the money and equipment system in a TTRPG is an advancement system. It’s a way of earning points and swapping them for upgrades or tools or enhancements or whatever. In this case, the points are money. And the upgrades and tools and enhancements are fire swords and crystal shields and lightning blast spell scrolls. Or even temporary boosts like blessings of Ydria and berserker juice. Whatever. Of course, sometimes you’ve got to spend money to recover your character, resupply, or dispel curses and whatnot. Which basically amounts to an advancement penalty. The more efficiently you play, the more money you get to keep at the end of the adventure.

At worst — here’s where we talk about D&D 5E — money’s just a point system. A way of measuring success. In How I Handle Treasure, I showed you all how players still like to find money and count it and pile it up. Even if the money isn’t useful for anything. People like to earn points and keep score.

Either way, there’s no economy there. How much money the PCs trip over and what they can buy with it? It’s all arbitrary. Or, at least, it’s all based on the same sorts of game design decisions that shape how many encounters and sessions players should play before they level up.

Of course, for consistency, the numbers shouldn’t be ridiculous. After all, the numbers do represent s$&% in the world. There is an illusion of a functioning economy. But, frankly, GMs have ridiculous standards for this s$&%. They forget that most adventurers buy and sell s$&% no normal person buys and sells in any kind of volume. Most people aren’t buying weapons and armor. They’re not selling gems and golden icons. They aren’t bartering over rare spell components. And adventurers aren’t buying thatch and animal feed and linen.

Moreover, GMs forget that the fantasy world isn’t really based on a cash-and-carry model with standardized prices. There’s no Faerunian Consumer Price Index. Merchants can — and do — charge every person who comes into their shop a different price. And, outside of big cities and the wealthiest of shops, most traders would rather barter for the staples of life than get a pile of money. So, when the rich, armored mercenary comes calling for some fancy armor and wants to pay with a bunch of ancient gold coins, the blacksmith’s going to pull a price out of his hairy, dwarven a$&. And it’ll be a high price.

Money and buying-and-selling are game mechanics. They serve game mechanical purposes. Even that s$&% where small villages can’t afford expensive treasures and don’t have high-end goods to sell? That’s not about inflation or money velocity. It’s about progression. It’s about the game saying, “okay kids, you’ve outgrown Podunk. Time to move on to Capital City.” It’s about dilemmas like, “you can’t upgrade your gear without spending a week on the road.”

With that economy bulls$&% settled, let’s talk about the problem with magic item prices.

Let me start with a basic fact that seems to have escaped everyone’s notice but mine. I assume it’s because I’m the only one who can read:

The designers of D&D do not want player-characters buying and selling magic items.

They just don’t. It’s not a thing they wanted in D&D. And, frankly, that’s how D&D has been for f$&%ing ever. Sure, 3rd Edition ended up with it. But that was a consequence of trying to build a really solid, systematic equipment progression into the game and to allow for item crafting. And D&D 4E dropped the crafting but ran with the equipment progression. But with 5E, we’re back to old-school s$&%. You want magic items, go find them. And the GM will decide what you find.

Why do you think the magic items are hidden in the DMG? Why do you think the rules for buying and selling magic items are hidden in the DMG? And labeled optional? Why do you think they’re so involved so that buying or selling a single item is a f$%&ing chore? Because magic items aren’t sellable, buyable goods. They’re magic f$&%ing items. They can be bought and sold. But rarely. And it’s a tricky process.

That’s why the designers didn’t put a solid price list in the game. It’s unnecessary. Except, also, there is a pretty firm list of prices right on DMG 130. And there’s a little random table of events to modify the price that also makes selling a magic item a little story. Otherwise, they figured the small minority of GMs who’d actually get their panties in a bunch over this s$&% could invent a number between two other numbers without going into an apoplectic fit of rage. I mean, holy f$&%. How hard is it to pick a number between 101 and 500?

376!

There. I did it.

My point is this: calm the f$&% down. The D&D designers didn’t fail you. They didn’t screw you. The game isn’t broken. It’s based on assumptions and you’re running on the wrong assumptions. Equipment and money’s not about economy. Magic items aren’t meant for buying and selling. If you don’t like those assumptions, well, play a different game. Or wait for someone to write a different game. Or get out a pen and a notebook and start designing. Hell, if I were writing an RPG, I’d handle this s$&% differently. I’d start with different assumptions. And I’d want a nice equipment progression in my game with some amount of upgrade-buying-for-cash. But I’m past the point of trying to crowbar one into D&D. D&D doesn’t want it. And it can’t handle it. Not this edition anyway.

But either way, I’m sure as hell not wasting my time building an economic system.

Phoenix asks…

You’ve talked a lot about Metroidvania-style games and their gating mechanics that block progress until certain items or abilities are found. In my experience, clever players can trivially bypass any gating mechanic I come up with using the right spells and items. Even at low levels. And they end up blundering into late-game areas too early. When I try to prevent that, I end up with unnatural and contrived gates. I’m probably doing something wrong. How can I design gates that will keep the party on the critical path without being heavy-handed or railroady?

Want to design gates that’ll keep the party on the critical path? Ones the players won’t mind and won’t struggle to bypass? Just quit running TTRPGs and design video games instead. Video games are great. The players can’t do anything you don’t program in. And they treat any limitations as design conventions and don’t get so pissed off about heavy-handed railroading.

TTRPGs are about freedom and agency. If the players bypass a gate with a cunning plan or crazy caper, they’re engaging with the primary reason to play RPGs. And you should celebrate that s$&%. If you don’t like the idea that any gate you invent can be broken by clever-enough players, you shouldn’t be a GM. If you feel like sequence breaking is cheating, you can’t handle player agency.

Now, maybe you’re worried that the players will sequence break their way into a situation they can’t deal with. Maybe they’ll get themselves killed forcing their way through a half-dozen gates and find themselves in a deadly staring contest with a beholder. Well, that’s agency too. Sometimes there’s a reason for all the locked doors and warning signs. Adventuring’s dangerous.

You can’t have freedom and safety at the same time. Risk is the price of exercising freedom.

Adjust your attitude to start. Accept the players will break some of your gates. And some players are natural gate-breakers. Also, accept that some characters are going to get eaten by pit fiends.

Thing is, the Metroidvania design bulls$&% works even if the players break the gates. It has to do with the way Metroidvania-style exploration engages players. The way it keys off discovery, the expansion of explorable spaces, recontextualization, and all sorts of other fancy-sounding, bulls$&% words game designers fling around to make themselves feel smarter than mere players.

It’s like this. If you’re playing a Metroidvania game in-sequence — you know, keeping to the critical path and not breaking down the gates — if you’re playing in sequence, you start with an unknown space full of possibilities. You expand into the space and eventually find the boundaries. But you also find other unknown spaces full of possibilities beyond those boundaries. Eventually, you find a way to bypass one of the boundaries. And you feel good. You pass the boundary and start expanding into a new space.

If you’re sequence-breaking, though — if you’re finding clever ways to pass the boundaries without making the discoveries you’re supposed to make — you still start with an unknown space full of possibility. And you still expand into the space and find the boundaries. And you still find ways past the boundaries into new spaces. And you still feel good. It’s just that you don’t feel good because of your thorough exploration and clever understanding of the space. Instead, you feel good because of your clever problem-solving and mastery of the world’s systems.

Of course, when you’re sequence breaking, you’ll eventually find the tools that were supposed to get you past the gates. And when you do, you get an extra shot of smug cleverness. You get to feel smart all over again.

Oh! I bet this is how we were supposed to get through that door. But we broke the rules and got through early. Aren’t we just clever f$&%ers?

And if you do blunder into a boss fight you’re not ready for, you don’t blame the world or the GM. You blame yourself. You know the price of sequence breaking.

Meanwhile, when you’re playing in-sequence you still get to feel smart. It’s just a different kind of smart. As I said, it’s about mastering the space. And less obvious key-and-lock-matchups also help. I mean, after you encounter a massive, stone door with narrow, barred windows, you’re probably looking for a key. But if you find a cloak of gaseous form and realize you can seep through the window, you feel smart all the same. Even if that’s the way the designer intended the door to be opened all along.

Well-designed gates feel like sequence breaks even when they’re not.

I suspect you’ve got some hyperbole going in your e-mail. I don’t believe that low-level players can trivially bypass any gate with a few spells and items. And if that’s not hyperbole, you’re probably letting your players get away with too much. Nothing should be trivial. Even breaking down a door shouldn’t be trivial.

Maybe you do just suck at designing gates. I don’t know. It’s hard to say.

But it’s also hard to tell people how to build good gates. There’s an infinite number of ways to build a good gate. It’s all down to creative cleverness. And there’s no formula for assessing the goodness of a gate. That said, maybe look at the tools in the game — spells, magical items, whatever — and look for both the constraints and the one-off uses. And instead of trying to build gates that confound the tools, build gates that use the tools in unconventional ways. Like, for example, the bypass for a locked door isn’t a key, but a short-range teleport. And then, figure out why the obvious key isn’t the right key. Maybe the door’s not actually locked. It’s barred. Or barricaded. Or it’s not really a door. It’s a window. If you do that s$&%, you’ll end up with gates that are harder to bypass but aren’t contrived.

But I still think you’ve got to lighten up. You can’t keep the players on a critical path if they want off of it. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. In fact, trying is probably what makes it fun for your players. They probably like breaking the gates. Good for them. That’s roleplaying games. Just keep going the way you’re going, let them break down the gates, and occasionally kill them for it.

Collin asks…

The Monster Manual claims you can swap any spell on an NPC’s spell list for any other spell of the same level and class without impacting the CR. In my experience, that’s a blatant lie. How can I accurately assess the encounter difficulty when I customize an NPC’s spell loadout?

Here we go again. Notice the emotional undercurrent in these questions? “D&D is broken! The designers screwed up! The rules lied!” That’s one of the reasons I chose the questions I did. Even Phoenix, above, has this sad, Eeyore-like sense of self-defeat. “I’m probably screwing everything up. My game is bad.”

This is why the unifying theme here is “calm the f$&% down.”

So, D&D lied to you, huh, Collin? Well, it didn’t. I’ll get to that. But let’s pretend, right now, that I accept your premise. D&D lied about setting CRs. Well, no f$&%ing s$&%. Welcome to the adult table. Took you long enough to get here.

CR is a lie. But it’s not a blatant, flagrant, awful, malicious lie. It’s an open lie. It’s a lie the designers have to tell. It’s a lie most GMs will never notice. And it’s a lie that any GM should immediately forgive when they do notice it because if they just sit down and think about it for one single second, they’ll realize they already knew it was a lie. In short, it’s a lie that hurts no one that’s not in a position to already know better.

Most GMs don’t f$&% around with stats. They don’t customize s$&%. They run s$&% out of the book. And it mostly works out okay. And because D&D is so f$&%ing forgiving, even when it doesn’t work out okay, it doesn’t not work okay in a way that makes for a bad game.

When you do start customizing s$&%, though, you discover CR isn’t quite what you think it is. And that there’s no way it possibly could be what you want it to be.

CR’s a vague measure at best. It can’t possibly be accurate. Because it’s based entirely on the mathematical monster statistics. There’s no regard for external factors. It’s also based on probability and therefore has a built-in counterfactual. When you build an encounter of a given difficulty and then run that encounter, the best you might know is the odds of it killing one or more members of a reasonably capable party. If the encounter does actually kill a PC, you’ll never know if the difficulty assessment was wrong or if that one-on-ten chance just happened to happen this time around.

People are stupid about probabilities. Especially people who think they’re not. Especially GMs who think they’re not. There’s dice in the game. Which means anything can go to hell with just a few unlucky rolls. So, CR cannot predict actual outcomes. It can only predict the probability of an outcome. And anything less than certainty can still turn out wrong. And you can’t blame the probabilities.

You included a specific example in your e-mail. Let me quote that verbatim and show you just what I mean about both random factors and probable outcomes.

For one example, swapping command on an Orc Eye of Gruumsh to cure wounds allowed him and his chief (with good positioning) to almost murder an entire party of 4th level PCs.

What’s that parenthetical remark there? Good positioning. What’s that? Is that an admission that there was s$&% affecting the outcome other than math and dice? Like, strategy? Battlefield layout? How the f$&% could CR possibly account for strategic play? Or terrain? It can’t. You know CR is, at best, an incomplete measure of encounter difficulty.

And what’s that word there? Almost? The orcs almost murdered a party? Almost murder doesn’t count. The outcome was still not murder. The Monster Manual doesn’t make any promises about almost murder. The only thing it promises, and I quote MM 9 here, is:

An appropriately equipped and well-rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths.

Sounds like it wasn’t wrong if all you got was an almost murder. I mean, maybe when you say almost murdered, you mean “two of four PCs died” or something like that. But, frankly, you were asking for it. Because you misused the tools.

First, your example distinctly notes at least two orcs in the fight. An Orc Eye of Gruumsh and its chief. Which I assume is an Orc War Chief as described on MM 246. The explanation of CR in the Monster Manual though only promises that if you pit four, well-rested and well-equipped PCs against a single monster of their CR, no one’s going to die. With an implied “probably” because the game uses dice. More than one monster means you’re already outside the scope of CR.

But there is a way for assessing the difficulty of a fight with multiple monsters. It’s described on DMG 82. And it says that an encounter with an Orc Eye of Gruumsh and an Orc War Chief is a deadly encounter for a party of four 4th level PCs and close to deadly for a party of five. I did the math.

Maybe before you claim the book lied, the first thing’s to make sure you know what the book actually says. And the second thing’s to check your math. But…

Putting aside the hyperbolic tone and your poor math skills, you’ve also got the wrong expectations here. The minute you start customizing, all the systems in the book are going to break down. And your brain should know that. It’s inexcusable that it doesn’t. I mean, hell, the DMG is pretty wishy-washy about its promises for customizing monsters. It’s full of vagueries and hedges and reminds you to tread carefully.

You should be smart enough to recognize — without the book telling you explicitly — that there’s no possible way to build a mathematical system for assessing accurately the difficulty of a combat encounter in a free form game like D&D with a random number generator for a heart. And you do know it. Because you admitted position was a factor. If you try to customize the game thinking it’ll all work perfectly, you deserve an accidental TPK. At least, you need one to teach you a lesson about realistic expectations.

How do I handle this s$%&? I don’t. I don’t sweat it much. I wrote a whole article about how I don’t even try to balance CR precisely anymore. I go for “close enough with some wobble.” That’s the essence of my tier-based approach. This is why I swap spells around without a second thought.

And if s$&% goes bad — if a fight goes against the players — well, the game’s free-form enough that I expect them to find a solution. To pull out a win. Or escape. Or surrender. Or, failing that, die.

That said, I don’t actually swap spell loadouts anymore. Because…

Dino asks…

How do you handle high-level NPC spellcasters with all their spell slots and high-powered spells?

This question ain’t part of the loose theme I’m building and which I’ll wrap up in a second. I only included it because it’s a super short, super sweet question and because it ties directly into the last answer. I can polish it off in a few hundred words easily.

How do I handle NPC spell lists? High level and otherwise? I kinda don’t, really. There’s no good reason to give an NPC an extensive spell list. If the NPC’s an enemy the players are going to fight, it’s got a life span of three to five rounds. It doesn’t need more spells than it can cast in that time. And most spellcasters tend to unload one or two big, whammy spells and then settle into spamming lower-level spells or cantrips to mop up.

What I do is translate one or two whammy spells into action entries on the stat block and give them Recharge 5 – 6 if I want them to come out a couple of times or Recharge Short or Long Rest if I want them to be a thing just once.

Finger of Death (Recharge Short or Long Rest). One creature within 60 feet must make a DC 16 Constitution saving throw, taking 61 (7d8 + 30) necrotic damage on a failed save or half as much on a successful one. Humanoid creatures killed by this attack rise as zombies under the caster’s control at the start of its next turn.

Then, I add one or two lower-level abilities or cantrips the same way with no Recharge needed.

Mel’s Acid Arrow. Ranged Spell Attack: +6 to hit, range 90 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (4d4) acid damage, and the target takes 5 (2d4) acid damage at the end of its next turn. Miss: 5 (2d4) acid damage.

And if the NPC spellcaster ain’t going to face the PCs on the battlefield, I just let him cast whatever spells make sense as often as makes sense. I don’t sweat what spell’s he’s got in his book or how many slots or anything like that.

Keep Calm and Game On

The three questions I chose — Dino’s doesn’t count — for this Ask Angry column all have two things in common. First, there’s this emotional tone to them. Shirley and Collin feel betrayed and lied to and cheated by their games. Phoenix just feels like something’s going wrong. But second, there’s some crazy expectations in each that RPGs just can’t fulfill. At least, they can’t fulfill them and still be RPGs.

For all their mechanical and statistical trappings, for all their rules and systems, RPGs only work because of the GM’s willingness to run with whatever the players do and to figure out the best way to handle it. All the rules are guidelines. Even the ones that seem absolute. Even the ability check and hit point rules. They’re just tools the GM must choose to use whenever the players say, “we do this.”

That’s what a roleplaying game is about. GMs present situations. Any situations they can imagine. Players respond. In any way they can imagine responding. GMs determine outcomes. That’s it. That’s roleplaying games. There’s guidelines for what kinds of situations to present and how to stat up this or that thing or what stuff to make available where. I’m not dismissing any of that s$&%. They’re all useful. When you actually understand them. And use them right. And don’t expect too much out of them. But you’re always going to have to fill in the blanks.

There’s no way to price magical items. Sorry. It’s arbitrary. One set of numbers is as good as another. Rarity’s there to ensure PCs don’t end up with game-breaking s$&%. Attunement exists to rein the PCs in if they do end up with too much stuff and if they try to exploit certain items. With those failsafes in place, the rest of the s$&% doesn’t matter. Which is good. Because most magical items are impossible to compare. I mean, how the hell can you say that an immovable rod is worth precisely three times as much as a helm of telepathy. That’s ludicrous on the face of it. And it’d be wildly inaccurate at any given table anyway. PCs that spend all their time in town interacting with NPCs? They’d value that helm a lot more than a sticky stick. But dungeon delvers whose only interactions with other sentients is to kill them and take their stuff? “F$%& that helm. Give us that immovable rod so we can barricade a door or anchor a rope or something.”

Same with spells. Get away from the raw damage spells and it’s all incomparable. Situational. Context-sensitive. You can arrange the spells into rough bands of game-breakingness — what we call levels — but that’s about all you can do. Which is going to be the bigger game-changer in a fight? Counterspell or protection from energy? Depends on whether you’re facing an elemental or a wizard, doesn’t it? Mix in strategy, tactics, terrain, and the merciless whims of the dice and there’s just no way to compare any of this s$&%.

RPGs are messy. They’re imprecise. They’re unpredictable. They’re crazy and chaotic. That’s what makes them special. Beautiful. And that’s why they have GMs. Because only a human brain can process this sort of s$&%. A brain capable of judgment calls and quick, best guesses. A brain that knows what’s important and what’s not and recognizes that what’s important changes from moment to moment. A brain that can pull a number out of its a$& when it needs to.

That’s why you’ve got to relax. Don’t get mad when the game expects you to invent a good-enough number in a range for something that’s not important. And don’t try to automate that s$&% with rules and math either. Don’t try to design things the players can’t break. Because the players are supposed to break s$%&. Customize all you want but accept that customizing s$&% will always lead you to terra incognita. Unmapped territory. Things are going to go wrong. Because it’s a game. And games go wrong. And people make wrong choices. And adventurers die. And new adventurers come along.

You can’t have the freedom of a roleplaying game without giving up precision, accuracy, and predictability. There’s no formula for freedom. It’s always risky.

And freedom comes with responsibility. As a GM, you’ve got to put in a lot of hard work to make this s$&% happen. The rules can’t do it for you. And even if you do everything right, it can still all go wrong. And you’ve got to own that too. Just like the players have to own it when their stupid decisions and unlucky die rolls get their characters killed.

GMs try to run everything by the book. They’re desperate to do everything right. That’s why people keep e-mailing me and Tweeting at Crawford — no matter how many awful, piss-poor answers that guy s$&%s out — and posting in GM advice forums. But the stories gamers tell — the ones they remember — aren’t the ones where things went by the book.

Think about that.

Holy crap. I’ve definitely put too much rum in my nog.

Merry F$&%ing Christmas.