It’s been a long week fraught with delays. And you know what that means. That means it’s time for me to phone this s$&% in. That’s right, I’m opening the mailbag and letting you guys write half the article this week.

Incidentally, if you want to submit a question for a future Ask Angry column, e-mail it to ask.angry@angry.games. Remember to tell me in no uncertain terms what you want to be called. And remember to keep it brief. Like, ask the f$&%ing question and then shut up. I don’t need context. I don’t need background. And if I do need it, I’ll ask for it. I mean, if you send me a question, I’ll have your e-mail address. I’ll be able to clarify if I need to. Which I won’t. I get a lot of these questions every f$&%ing week. I can afford to delete anything that goes on for more than three or four lines.

Here’s a tip: after you write your question, add a little tl;dr at the end where you summarize your question. And then delete everything before the tl;dr and just send that.

That said, awwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy we go…

Bezzrul asks…

Maybe I’m just lazy, but it looks like it would be more work that is feasible to make an adventure like The Fall of Silverpine Watch every few weeks. How would you regularly generate an adventure of this quality for your table?

Now, this technically ain’t an Ask Angry question. Each month, see, I do this hour-long live chat thing on Discord for my Patreon supporters. The upcoming chat will be all about the design of that module I published, The Fall of Silverpine Watch, and I asked my supporters to send me their questions so I could address them. But this question’s one whose answer I don’t want to hide behind the Patreon paywall, as it were.

So, how would I regularly churn out an adventure on par with FoSW for my table of regular hapless victims? Well, the short answer is “I wouldn’t.” Except the short answer is also, “I do and it’s not as hard as it seems.” Except the short answer is also, “it depends on what you mean by ‘adventure.’ And ‘quality.’”

See, this is one of those things where the answer hinges on your assumptions.

First, understand that when it comes to the quality of anything — anything gaming, anyway, because I don’t do life advice — when it comes to the quality of anything, there’s always a cost-benefit equation to consider. Is the work you’re putting in worth what you’re getting out of it. And so, you’ve got to be careful comparing the work you’re willing to do for your private little basement game to the work someone’s done for publication.

Assuming you’re working efficiently — and that’s a big-a$& assumption; most GMs waste their prep time on stupid, useless bulls$&% that does them no good — assuming you’re working efficiently, there’s a direct relationship between the amount of work you put into your game and the quality of the game you produce. To a point. I have to say that or else some f$&%wit’s going to remind about things like ‘overdesign’ and ‘diminishing returns.’ Probably a lazy f$&%wit who wants to save their pride and defend their lazy, lackadaisical approach to game prep.

If you want a publication-quality adventure, you have to put in publication-level work. Lots of hours. And you also have to spend a lot of time honing your design chops so you’re capable of that level of design. That takes a lot of effort. Is it really worth putting that effort into a drunken game around the kitchen table with your buds who just want to slay some always-evil orcs and repossess their ill-gotten gold? Probably not.

Look, I’m not saying your home game is a joke. I’m not saying you should throw out any old piece of crap because your players — any players — are too stupid to notice or care about the quality of the game. I’m saying that this is just a hobby. It’s a thing you do — we all do — for funsies. How many hours a week do you really want to devote to it? Because it takes a lot of hours to produce a publication-quality adventure.

Moreover, how much does the adventure’s quality really affect your weekly game? Do you need a publication-quality adventure or can you have the same amount of fun running something that’s merely good enough? The big secret’s that the adventure matters a hell of a lot less than the GM running it. A reasonably good GM — not even a great GM — can run a really fun game with any piece-of-crap module. I know. I ran WotC official modules at conventions and game stores for years and always came away with top marks from my players. So to speak. Meanwhile, a lousy GM with a crappy attitude can ruin Ravenloft without even trying. The original Ravenloft. The good one.

That’s why I wouldn’t try to write something on par with FoSW — or any published module — for my players every three weeks. I put the work I did into FoSW because I was writing it for everyplayer and anyplayer. Not just for my players. And for everyGM and anyGM. Not just for me. So, it had to be thorough and well-designed and tight. Moreover, I wrote it to teach people who had no idea how to play or run games how to play or run games. So, it had to be approachable and clear and there were all sorts of other constraints too. Oh, and I got paid. The people who supported the Game Angry Kickstarter bought that module for all of you. FoSW demanded a lot of hours and I could afford to put those hours in. Cost-benefit.

This brings me around to my third short answer. “It depends on what you mean by ‘adventure.’ And ‘quality.'” It’s easy to forget that there’s a difference between an adventure and a module. When you talk about FoSW’s quality, are you referring to the sequence of encounters and the mystery story and all the crap the comprises the play experience? Or are you referring to the hundred-and-a-bit pages of text and handouts and maps and the carefully worded, edited lore and all the introductory and explanatory crap and the pre-generated characters and all those custom versions of the easy-to-find-in-the-core-Monster-Manual baddies?

When you run your own game at your own table with your own players, you don’t need all the crap that filled out FoSW’s page count. You only need whatever you need so that you can run the damned thing. If I were running FoSW for my players, for instance, I’d have a few pages of line-drawn maps and a half-dozen pages of scribbled notes in incomprehensible shorthand. Maybe I’d type up some handouts. It probably wouldn’t fill twenty pages. All the rest would be in my head. Or I’d invent it at the table.

Now, I can’t tell you what you need to run an adventure like this. The bare minimum. But I’m sure you know. And if you don’t know, find out. Find out exactly how little you need to run a good game. It’s probably a hell of a lot of less than you think it is. Knowing what you actually need at the table to run an adventure? That’s a massively important part of designing your own adventures. Because that’s what lets you design efficiently. It keeps you from wasting valuable prep time on s$&% you don’t need and ensures you’ll always have what you do need.

On top of that, the more you push yourself to run games with slightly less than the minimum, the better you’ll get at it. I always have GMs whining about how they can’t remember all the details they need to and how they need to organize their complex notes in this or that weird software tool. And the reason they need all that s$&% is that they use all that s$&%. Your memory is a muscle. Not literally; don’t f$&%ing comment. Your memory is a muscle. So is your ability to improvise. If you don’t use them, you lose them. That’s why I force myself to remember so many details. And why I handwrite everything. Handwriting has been scientifically proven to improve retention and recall. My memory for game and world details is phenomenal thanks to thirty-five years of using my f$&%ing memory. I just wish I could remember my father’s birthday.

The point is a lot of the hours that went into Fall of Silverpine Watch weren’t spent designing the adventure. They were spent writing all the s$&% up. Writing it up for all the people who’d ever want to run it, whatever their level of experience and skill and however much they needed in front of them to run a game. When you design an adventure you intend to run for your players, you only have to design an adventure you can run for your players. And you only have to design as much as you actually need to run the game. Maybe less.

And that brings me neatly around to my second short answer, “it’s not as hard as it seems.” I don’t want to ruin the magic for any of you, but The Fall of Silverpine Watch actually isn’t a particularly spectacular adventure. If you strip away all the tutorial crap and all the fluff, it’s a twenty-ish room dungeon with six combat encounters, three investigation encounters, three obstacle encounters, and a handful of hidden treasures. The dungeon’s one-third empty space, one-third combat, and one-third non-combat miscellany.

Now, look, I’m not saying the adventure’s not carefully assembled. This isn’t some humble brag bulls$&% where I claim my genius is easy to emulate. The module was designed very deliberately and with great care. It was designed to teach people who’d never played or run D&D how to play or run an open-ended game of fantasy exploration and adventure. It was designed to give clueless players every opportunity to win on their own terms. And the s$&% I spent the most brain juice on is probably s$&% most players and GMs wouldn’t even consciously notice. I could do a whole thing answering questions about the module no one would think to ask. Questions like, “why is there a locked door in the first room” and “why is the final, optional boss waiting in the first room” and “why is the entrance on the second floor of the tower” and “why does the keep consist of two towers anyway?” And that’s just s$&% that comes up in the first f$&%ing encounter.

But all of that crap? That’s not crap you need to worry about at your game table. In the end, I assembled all the pieces very carefully to accomplish something very specific, but the pieces themselves are just a half-dozen encounters on a twenty-room map with a few clues and obstacles scattered around. Hell, the optional mystery practically solves itself if the players read all the papers lying around. And there’s a reason for that, even.

Point is that any GM can put together six combat encounters in a couple of hours. Especially if they just use the zombies and stirges and ghosts in the Monster Manual which are, in fact, perfectly fine. The backstory and the mystery? Another hour. The map? An hour if the GM doesn’t get bogged down prettifying it with useless electronic tools. So, that’s a month of adventure from four hours of work. About an hour a week. Perfectly doable.

So, there’s three different answers to the same question. Pick whichever you want. Mix them and match them. Trade them with your friends. Try to collect them all.

Chris vdB asks…

It’s easy to make positive changes to improve my game for a session or two. But, after a few weeks, most of the changes lie forgotten by the wayside. How can I make permanent, positive changes? How can I make them stick?

I’ve got to warn you, Mr. Visual Database, that this sounds suspiciously like you’re asking for life advice. So I’ve got to start with my standard disclaimer. Everything I tell you applies exclusively to changing your gaming habits. It ain’t life advice. Even if it sounds like the sort of thing that’d help you make any positive change in your life, it’s not. Don’t use this advice for anything other than games about pretend elves.

What you’ve called out is a pretty standard pattern. It happens to everyone. Every GM. Whenever they try to change anything. About their game. It’s the standard New Year’s Resolution cycle. When it comes to gaming resolutions. And it happens because change is hard. Really f$&%ing hard. People — GMing people — are driven by their habits. Doesn’t matter if the habits are good or bad. Doesn’t matter whether you know they’re bad. Doesn’t matter whether you want to change or not. Most of the s$&% your brain does, it does on autopilot. And the more you do the same thing, the more stuck you become on autopilot.

But once in a while, you realize something’s wrong. There’s a shortcoming. A problem. An unfulfilled desire. In your pretend elf game. You acknowledge the problem and you decide it’s time for a change. And then you imagine how much better things will be once you make the change. And that optimistic excitement about the better future you can imagine? That gives you this little burst of energy that helps you overcome your habitual inertia.

Problem is, it doesn’t last. It never does. Habitual inertia is really, really strong. And there’s usually a reason why you started doing things the wrong way in the first place. Or at least, there’s a reason to keep doing things the wrong way. It’s easier. It’s more comfortable. It’s more familiar. It works well enough. And there’s probably also a reason why you’re not doing things the right way. It’s harder. It’s unfamiliar. You’re not good at it so it doesn’t feel good. Whatever.

Here’s the point. From the moment you decide to change your life — your gaming life — there’s an inexorable pull back to the old way of doing things. And the excitement that comes from the better life you imagine? It doesn’t last as long as it takes for the change to show real, positive results. Change never happens fast enough. And there’s always setbacks and mistakes along the way. And your brain is ready to use all that stuff — the slow change, the setbacks, and the mistakes — as proof that the old way of doing things was just fine.

Most people think the process works like this: first, you decide to change; then, you make the change; then, everything is wonderful. In reality, the process works like this: first, you decide to change; then, you decide to change again the next day; then, you decide to change again and again; then you keep deciding over and over again to make the change for however long it takes; and then, someday, the change sticks. Maybe.

The decision to change your habits — your gaming habits — is a decision you have to keep making every day. It’s not a decision you make just once. And that’s where willpower and discipline and conscientiousness come in. Except for one little problem.

Most people — GMing people — don’t have willpower or discipline or conscientiousness. It just doesn’t come installed in most factory-standard human beings. Who run games. Willpower’s kind of a myth.

Okay, it’s not totally a myth. It exists. Everyone — every gamer — has a little tank of willpower inside them. But it’s not an infinite resource. And you can burn through it really quickly. If you’re in the store buying snacks for your game and someone cuts in line, it can take a goodly amount of your willpower reserve not to tear out that a$&hole’s aorta. Trust me. So, by the time your game actually starts, the tank’s almost empty.

After you get past that initial period of optimistic hope that you’re actually going to change things this time, all you’ve got to stop yourself from sliding back into your easy, safe, familiar old habits is that little tank of willpower. And one bad day can drain that tank. So, you slip up. You backslide. Habitual inertia takes over. And your brain immediately takes that as evidence that your whole idea about changing was stupid anyway. “See,” says your brain, “this is what happens when you try to change. Just go back to doing things the safe, easy way which worked perfectly fine all those years.” Which means the next time you have to decide to change all over again — because you have to decide to change every gaming day — your habitual inertia is that much stronger.

People don’t get this. No one tells you this s$%&. People tell you willpower is a thing and you can just dig down and find more of it whenever you have to. And thus, people — gamers — get stuck in the cycle of trying and failing to change and then trying again. Only, this time, they’ll try harder. They’ll really, really mean it this time. And that’ll make all the difference.

It never does.

You can’t rely on willpower to make your changes stick. You don’t have an endless supply of willpower. You don’t even have as much as you think you have. And on the days when you need your willpower the most? Those are usually the days when it’s tapped out. Which is why you need it in the first place.

First, when you decide to make a positive change in your gaming life, you’ve got to acknowledge that you’re going to have to keep making that decision every day maybe forever. That’s the price of change. Second, you’ve got to find ways to make that decision — and the related change — as easy as possible. Third, you’ve got to find ways to make it as hard as possible to fall back to your old habits. Your old gaming habits.

There’s a million, billion ways to do this s$&%. There’s books, there’s YouTube channels, there’s self-help gurus. And they all have tips and tricks and techniques. Ways to make the change easy. And ways to fling insurmountable obstacles between you and backsliding. The problem is you’ve got to find the right set of tricks. The ones that work for you. Find some tricks, implement them for a little while, keep the ones that work, replace the ones that don’t. Keep fiddling, Keep experimenting.

One thing I’ve had success with — when it comes to changing my gaming habits and no other habits — is Affirming and Reaffirming my Commitment to Change. When I decide to make a change, I distill my reason for the change down to one sentence and I write it down. On a piece of paper. With a pen. Because writing s$&% down gets it into your brain faster and harder than typing it or saying it. Then, I write down the exact change I’m going to make. Then, before each game, I read my little piece of paper out loud to myself. Or I write it down again. Whatever. Basically, before every game, I remind myself what change I want to make and why. And I find doing so gives me a little jolt of that same initial optimistic hope that got me through the first few sessions after making the change.

But that alone won’t do it. That’s why I said you’ve got to hunt down all the tricks you can and try them out. There’s tricks like setting out your gym gaming clothes well in advance of the game. Or like putting your alarm clock rulebooks on the far side of the room so it’s easier to trust your judgment than it is to get up and walk over and look something up. Or like telling everyone you know your commitment to quitting smoking gaming… wrongly… whatever… so that you’ve got social pressure and potential shame pushing against your habitual inertia.

Essentially, to make a positive change — in your gaming habits — you’ve got to identify what you want to change and why. Then, you’ve got to recommit to that change before every game. Make the same decision over and over. Then, make the change as easy and painless as possible while also making your old habits as painful and difficult as possible. Mix and match all sorts of enablers and obstacles. And be patient. Give them a chance to work. And if you do all that?

Well, you’re still going to f$&% up. Everyone does. Every gamer does. Because gamers are human. Mostly. And when you f$&% up, you have to maintain just the right amount of accountability. You can’t be too hard on yourself, because if you heap too much negative emotion on yourself, you’ll keep feeling. And your brain wants to heap negative emotion on you. That’s how it’ll trick you into doing things the old way again. Meanwhile, if you lighten up too much, if you never hold yourself accountable, you’ll keep failing. Guilt and frustration are necessary to counteract your habitual inertia. So, whenever you f$&% up, you have to be willing to forgive yourself, but you also have to promise yourself not to let it happen again. And when it does happen again, you can’t forgive yourself until you can also explain what you’re actually going to do differently to prevent a third f$&% up. “Fine, you’re sorry, but you were sorry last time too. What’s your plan for not having to be sorry a third time?” You gotta say that to yourself.

And trying really hard? Really, really meaning it? That ain’t a plan. Unless you’re planning to fail. At running good games.

That’s how you get a change to stick. A gaming change. And if, after reading all that s$&%, you’re thinking, “man, that’s totally not worth it at all; that’s a huge amount of work for a game about pretend elves,” well, now you know why so few people actually change. Why so few GMs actually change the way they run games.

Good luck.

Mendelbean asks…

In a recent live chat, you mentioned that you use some applications to block Discord and other distractions while you’re working. Which apps are you using to stay productive?

This question also didn’t come from my e-mail inbox. It came from a loyal Angry Patreon supporter and Discord community member. But it’s a perfect case-in-point follow-up thing to my answer to the Database guy above.

So, I was talking about my workday in a recent Discord live chat. I do all my Angry work from home, obviously. And working from home — as many, many people have recently learned — takes a f$&%-ton of discipline and willpower and conscientiousness. So does self-employment. Being your own boss. Doing both? Hoody-f$&%ing-hoo is that a recipe for disaster.

I’ve struggled a lot with my productivity and discipline as I’ve transitioned over the last few years from Angry-moonlighter-with-a-full-time-day-job to full-time-Anger-with-occasional-side-work. Especially because my life keeps drastically changing. New cities, new states, new living situations, new schedules, new people in my life, new schedules for the new people in my life, global f$&%ing health disasters, and so on. And for a while, I was relying on bulls%$& like discipline and willpower and conscientiousness to keep me on track. Which are, as I explained above, stupid things you can’t actually rely on.

Last year, I had the big epiphany I explained above. That trying really hard and really, really meaning it this time weren’t actually plans. So, I started teaching myself all about productivity and discipline. I did all sorts of research, talked to therapists, read books, and even started documenting my own day and experimenting on myself. And, ultimately, I created the Angry Day. Basically, it’s a structured workday that aligned with my natural habits and inclinations and enabled me to work a normal, adult, full-time workweek while being my own boss and working from home. And be efficient about it.

One thing I learned, for example, is that I can bang out between 1,500 and 2,500 words an hour in the morning, but can only produce about half that in the afternoon. Why? Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. What I do know is that the morning is earmarked for creative writing tasks and my workday starts at 7:30 to give me as much time before lunch as possible to write as many words as possible. In the end, stuff like that let me figure out which things to do when during my workday.

So, I explained all this s$&% in my monthly chat and people complimented me for my amazing discipline and conscientiousness. And I laughed my a$& off. Because I am terribly undisciplined and very easily distracted. Hence, I’d found all sorts of tricks to make my work routine easy to follow and painful to break. And I mentioned that I used some software tools to keep me from distracting myself with Discord and other productivity sinks on the Internet.

I just never told anyone which tools I was using.

First, I use this Windows application called FocusMe. I found it because I was looking for a Pomodoro timer. But it turned out to be so much more.

If you’re not familiar, the Pomodoro Technique is a productivity trick. It involves breaking your work down into 25-minute chunks with regular short breaks and occasional longer breaks. I started using the technique when I had some nerve problems in my back because it forced me to get up and stretch regularly. But I discovered that when I used the technique properly — and eventually a modified version of it — it enhanced my productivity greatly. It’s a lot more powerful than it seems like it should be. If you use it right. The problem is, I’m terrible at it. I ignore breaks. I work right through them. And then forget to set the timer again. And, besides, I’m easily distracted.

FocusMe has a Pomodoro function built-in. When the timer’s running, it’ll keep you from accessing any distracting apps or websites you specify using either a whitelist or a blacklist. And when it’s time for a break, FocusMe blanks out your screen so you can’t ignore it. But there’s lots of other ways to use it too. You don’t have to use it as a Pomodoro timer. You can set it to follow a schedule or just turn it on when you need to block yourself from distractions. You can tell it to enforce breaks or not. You can even tell it to demand you type in a bunch of random characters to turn it off or pause it. It’s powerful and versatile. And it’s been a game-changer for me. I’ve structured my whole Angry Day around a modified Pomodoro Technique using FocusMe.

Mostly. Still have to make the choice to activate it every day.

I had a problem with it though. To control your access to websites, FocusMe needs a browser plugin extension thing installed. And I use an off-brand web browser. An open-source derivative of an open-source derivative of a real, actual browser. And FocusMe’s extension doesn’t work with it. But I discovered a browser plugin called BlockSite. And BlockSite’s exactly what it sounds like. You set up either a whitelist or a blacklist, set a schedule or turn it on or whatever, and it keeps you from visiting distracting sites. It’s also quite versatile. It can even block different categories of sites like social media and pornography so you don’t have to set up your own lists.

Both apps have free versions, but the functionality and customizability of both are limited. And I’m not actually sure which features are restricted. I’m paying for premium licenses for both. Each is about eight bucks American per month and I consider them well worth the price. Paying $16 a month is a hell of a lot easier than relying on discipline and willpower and conscientiousness. And a hell of a lot more effective. That module? The Fall of Silverpine Watch? I’d probably still be explaining delays if I hadn’t discovered those two little apps a few months ago.

So check them both out. But only to improve your gaming productivity. Don’t use them for anything else. Especially not for remotely working at your totally-not-gaming-related regular-f$&%ing-job. Because I’m not a f$&%ing life coach and I’m not here to help you live better. I’m just a lazy, undisciplined game mastering a$&hole on the Internet. And that’s all I’m qualified to be.