Little change in plans this week. As should be clear from the title of this article. You’re going to have to wait another week for the conclusion of Baby’s First Dungeon. Sorry. It ain’t the dungeon planning that’s slowing it down. It’s all the graphics I need to show you how to draw a crappy-a$& map. But don’t worry. It is coming. And it’ll be highly disappointing. I almost guarantee it.

Meanwhile, I’m doing an Ask Angry Mailbag today. That’s where I answer questions submitted by readers like you with my standard blend of abrasion, condescension, and loquaciousness. If you want to submit a question for abuse, send it to ask.angry@angry.games. Remember to be brief. Because if I glance at the e-mail and think, “no way I’m reading that entire paragraph,” I’m just gonna delete it. And tell me what to call you.

Wilkolak asks…

How do you use monsters with the False Appearance trait? I don’t want them to feel like GOTCHA! screwjobs. But I’m afraid that if I telegraph them too much, I’ll give everything away. What should I do?

What a timely f$&%ing question! Because each month, I publish these little ten- to fifteen-page piles of game content — mechanics, maps, monsters, and lore — as a way of thanking my most loyal and generous Patreon supporters. I just put out the October Theme Pack: Creepy Crawlies. And in it, there were a few monsters that presented a False Appearance.

You know what else is a weird-a$& coincidence? The guy I pay to proofread those Theme Packs? He calls himself Wilkolak too.

It’s a funny thing, life, isn’t it? Well, the parts that aren’t misery and pain anyway.

But I digress…

Okay, False Appearance. For those not in the know, let me explain. Some of the monsters in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual have this trait called False Appearance. If that monster’s sitting still, it doesn’t look like a monster at all. It looks like something else. Mimics look like treasure chests, living statues look like statues, and oozes look like puddles of water. Even if you can see the thing, you can’t tell that it’s a creature. Because it looks like whatever it looks like.

How do you run this at the table? It’s simple. When the players encounter a mimic, you don’t tell them they see a mimic. You tell them they see a treasure chest. Or a statue. Or a pool of water. Whatever. And then, when the treasure chest starts beating the motherloving f$&% out of the rogue or the puddle of blood swallows the fighter and starts draining his vital essence, you laugh your a$& off. GOTCHA!

It’s one of the true joys of GMing. And GMing doesn’t have enough true joys.

Let’s talk about this GOTCHA! thing. A GOTCHA! is a terrible, catastrophic surprise that no one could have seen coming. I don’t mean it’s just a surprise. I mean it’s a surprise that, even after it’s revealed, it still doesn’t make any sense. If the players sit down at the corner table in a tavern and the table’s a mimic and it starts pummeling the crap out of them? That’s a GOTCHA! It’s not just, “surprise, there’s a mimic,” it’s “surprise there’s a mimic in a place no one would ever expect a mimic.” In a dungeon though? Anyone with a brain expects monsters, traps, and ambushes in a dungeon. No one expects unguarded treasure and safe spaces. And if they do, they’re dumb and deserve to die. That’s evolution.

Ambushes? Surprises? There’s nothing wrong with them. In fact, they’re good things. Sometimes, the game presents a challenge in the form of an unforeseen disaster the players have to react to. They get caught off guard, suffer a setback, and then have to recover and think on their feet to save their a$&es. If a puddle of water turns out to be an ooze and it pounds the front rank with acid pseudopods in the surprise round, the party’s got to scramble to recover from that disaster. It’s not like they’re dead. Maybe the fighter’s dead if you rolled a lucky crit. That’s how life is in the dungeon. But beyond that, it’s just a terrible, challenging situation like any other challenging situation.

The False Appearance trait literally says, “do not telegraph this monster.” It says, “lie to the players because what they see isn’t what there is.” That’s how you run it. If you don’t like that — because you’re a pussy GM — don’t use those monsters.

At worst, though, each of these monsters only surprises a party once. At least, once a dungeon. After an innocuous puddle of water tries to kill you, you become very suspicious of all other bodies of water. You start literally testing the water every time you encounter more. That’s also part of the challenge. What does the party do at the next puddle? Do they waste spell slots attacking it? Move up close and take a swing? How much time do they spend arguing about whether this is the puddle that’s going to do them in? And if they want to know if this puddle is an ooze, they’re going to have to figure out how to test it. It’s not your problem. You just respond to whatever they do.

And when they’re too afraid to wade through a shallow pond to get to the treasure on the tiny island, that’s delightful s$&%.

Point is, it’s okay to have a GOTCHA! They’re not always bad. And context is everything. The point is, after the GOTCHA! gets ‘em, they should say something like, “okay, so there’s oozes in this dungeon and we probably shouldn’t be too surprised by that. Let’s treat all the water like it’s going to kill us, okay?” And then they move on. Will some players piss and moan about being caught by surprise? Will they whine about how they should get an automatic die roll to never stumble into trouble? Probably. But that’s just because they don’t like to lose and they don’t like to feel like they’re in danger. But it’s not your job to do what players like. Your job’s to put them at risk and cost them resources. Some they see coming. Some they see coming if they pay careful attention. And some they can’t see coming until it’s too late.

So just relax and run things the way you’re supposed to.

Azmodean asks…

I like published settings with rich, detailed histories. Like Eberron. But my players won’t read the sourcebooks. Consequently, they don’t really understand the setting. How do I handle my players’ lack of knowledge of the world their characters inhabit without just constantly dumping exposition on them?

I’ve answered this question three f$&%ing times at this point. I don’t mean I’ve answered three different people. I mean I’ve written three, different two-thousand-word answers to this question and then deleted them. The problem’s really that there’s two different issues to address. And I feel like there’s an entire article in one of those issues.

Anyway, whatever this fourth draft looks like? That’s what I’m going with. Revised and proofed, of course. But what you get is what you get. For now. Sorry if it sucks.

There’s two ways to run a game vis-à-vis setting. And this is true for published settings and default settings and homebrew settings. This ain’t just about Eberron or whatever. First, you can use the setting as a backdrop. Basically, the major setting details are there but they don’t figure too heavily into the game and you’re kind of casual and handwavey about it.

If I ran a game and used the Star Wars universe as a backdrop, I’d have the Jedi and the Empire and the Rebels and the major alien races everyone knows from the movies and as long as people understood that the Empire was an evil space tyranny and the Rebels were trying to destroy it and the Jedi were ancient sword-wielding space wizards worshipping a defunct religion, they’d be able to play just fine. I’d probably even invent my own planets and species and my own little story in some corner of the Galaxy about a rebel cell opposing a specific Imperial admiral or something.

You can also run a game steeped in the setting. That is, you and your players commit fully to living in that setting. As it’s written. It ain’t just about the big details, but also about the nitpicky little things. You’d bring in the stuff only hardcore fans know about and you’d build complex plots based on those details. Plots that rely on an understanding of the setting. It ain’t just about playing with the setting, it’s about living in the setting.

When you’re passionate about a setting, you want to play a game steeped in that setting. It’s not enough to play Rebels against the Empire with some funny-looking characters. If the player playing the Rodian doesn’t understand that Rodians are naturally clannish and violent due to their evolution on a harsh, jungle homeworld, that they were impoverished by the Clone Wars, seemingly betrayed by the Republic and then the Separatists and then the Empire and so on? Well, then it doesn’t really feel like the player’s playing a Rodian. Just a funny-looking stink-lizard with a blaster pistol.

Problem is, if everyone at the table isn’t equally passionate about the setting, you can’t run a game steeped in the setting. You just can’t. You can try to force the players to read the sourcebooks, you can explain as many of the details as you want, but they ain’t going to internalize them because the passion just ain’t there. And the more you try to force the passion, the more probably you’re going to frustrate them. Or at least bore the s$&% out of them.

Long story short, if the players aren’t so interested in the setting that they’re willing to read the source materials and internalize them, there ain’t a lot you can do. And that might be the problem here. You’re passionate about some setting or another and the players aren’t. They just want to play D&D. Or Rebels against the Empire with Space Wizards.

All of that said, it is sometimes possible to impart some investment and passion in a setting. Slowly. Over time. In fact, that’s the only way to impart investment in a setting. Slowly. Over time. And any GM who’s ever run a homebrew world they really love has gone through precisely this same s$&%.

First, dial down the passion a notch. You’ve got it, they don’t. Accept it. The players just ain’t that into the setting. This means you’ve got to start by running with the setting as a backdrop. Incorporate whatever details you want from the setting, but don’t expect the players to ever have more than a minimal, surface understanding of those details. So, set a low bar. Start simple.

When you’re passionate about a setting, you usually try to do too much in every session and every adventure and every campaign. You try to include everything. Which sets a very high bar for the players before the stories start to make sense. And you spend all your time explaining all the details. So, when you design your campaign and when you write an adventure and when you plan a session, pick just one or two setting-specific details you want to highlight. Factions, historical events, locations, NPCs, unique geographical features, whatever.

Once you’ve fingered the big details you want to use, figure out the minimum the players need to know to start that adventure or session. And then, figure out the minimum the players need to know to finish that adventure or session. Then, take those details and try to work as many of them directly into the narrative as possible. Whatever you can’t work in becomes exposition. S$&% you explain to the players directly. And you want as little of that as possible.

Let’s say, for example, I’m running my introductory Eberron adventure. I decide my adventure’s about House Kenneth recovering Spellforges and the Sadlands. There’s a noble from House Kenneth. There’s a ruined House Kenneth enclave on the edge of the Sadlands. He wants to secure the Spellforge there.

I might be getting a few of the details wrong here. I don’t know much about Eberron. Because it sucks and I can’t be bothered to care.

At the start of the adventure, the players really just need to know there’s a wealthy and powerful noble house called House Kenneth so that when a scion from House Kenneth shows up and offers them a job, they know that he can pay and that House Kenneth is good people to work for. The scion can explain about the Spellforges, but all he’s got to explain is they’re magical 3D printers that make magic items but only House Kenneth can use them so they’re not worth stealing and selling to anyone else. The players also have to know that the Sadlands are a nuclear wasteland polluted with crazy-a$& magic thanks to its being nuked in World War One.

Along the way, you can work other setting details into the adventure. Like, the players don’t need to know the specifics about the Sadlands and what kind of crazy magic s&%$ happens there. They’ll figure it out by adventuring. And maybe, along the way, they encounter a crashed airship and a crazed elemental so you can reveal airships powered by elementals are a thing in the world. Carl de Kenneth can say, “oh, a crashed skyship! This one’s an older model, not as nice as the one I rode in just yesterday. Stay back, though. They’re powered by elementals which tend to get cranky if they escape and… wait, what’s that swooshing noise?”

That’s called weaving the setting into the narrative. Or, if you prefer pithy cliches, it’s called “showing, not telling.”

Point is, start simple. Use the setting as a backdrop. And instead of trying to force your players to share your passion, use your passion to show off the best parts of the setting. Bring them into the game in ways anyone can appreciate. And then invite the players to learn more about the s$&% they’re interested in. If the players seem to like Carl de Kenneth and magical artisanship, use House Kenneth alongside other details in future adventures. Like, maybe, send them with de Kenneth to retrieve dragonshards that feel from the sky so they can learn about dragonshards and how they fall from the sky because Khyber the dragon died up there or something. I don’t know. This s$&%’s bananas.

Temper your expectations. Run a game the players are willing to invest in. No more. If you want them to invest more heavily, you’ve got an uphill battle. Draw them in slowly. Gradually. One little detail at a time. And accept it probably won’t work and they’re never going to care as much about the setting as you do. And also accept they’re going to get details wrong. Suck it up.

Or, just dump them and find some die-hard, hardcore Eberron fans to run a game for. They exist. And it’ll probably be a nightmare. Because they always know the setting better than you and they’re fully prepared to point out every little thing you get wrong.

Be careful what you wish for. Trust me.

Max asks…

When you compared the traditional approach of awarding XP with the milestone approach, you assumed a D&D-style advancement system. But, in some games, players can spend their earned XP directly to buy stat increases and new abilities instead of just leveling up at specific thresholds. What are the upsides and downsides of such systems? How do those systems affect XP as a motivational tool for players?

You know what’s funny? When someone manages to keep their question brief but still bogs it down under the weight of unnecessary crap. Case in point, your question Max. “You once wrote an article comparing two different ways of handing out XP. What’s your opinion on systems where you get to use your XP to buy stat boosts instead of leveling up?”

Why did you even mention that previous article? It has absolutely nothing to do with advancement systems. Did you just want to remind me that I’ve talked about other things in the past? No s$&%. I’ve been writing articles for twelve years. It would have made as much sense for you to say, “you once wrote an article about why 5E should just drop alignment altogether. What do you think about using XP to buy stats and abilities instead of leveling up?”

I can see why you made the mistake though. On a surface level, those two things — XP award systems and advancement systems — seem related. But they’re not. They’re distinct and separate. On the one hand, you have different ways of handing out XP. You’ve got the one approach wherein the GM can’t be a$&ed to do elementary-school-level math because it’s too f$&%ing hard for them so they just tell their players, “you’ll take whatever XP I want to give you whenever I want to give it to you because I’m the GM and I said so.” And you have the other approach wherein the GM evaluates the players’ in-game actions and successes based on some stated and reasonably objective guidelines and gives the players the XP they’ve actually earned.

On the other hand, you’ve got the different things the players can do with the XP they get. However they get it. They can watch it pile up and when it ticks over a certain number, there’s a flash of light and a little fanfare and some table in the rulebook tells them all the changes to make to their character sheet. Or they can pick and choose from giant-a$& lists of skills, abilities, quirks, and perks and buy whatever they can afford with whatever XP they earn whenever they earn it.

There’s no reason you can’t mix and match here. The GM can hand out arbitrary XP by fiat which the players can then spend on specific abilities. Savage Worlds is kind of that like that with its XP Per Session approach. Or the GM can hand out challenge-based XP on a per-encounter basis and the players can spend that. Or, under either system, they can watch their XP tick up to the next milestone.

For the most part, XP’s motivational properties are the same regardless of the advancement system. Though context is super-important. As you’ll see. But let’s look at the two advancement systems you mentioned. I’mma call them Point Buy and Level Up. Just to keep s$&% simple. And so I don’t have to come up with comical ways to describe each system every time.

Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages.

Point Buy obviously gives the players more control over character advancement. No s$&%, right? But the implications there are usually underappreciated. Because lots of different playstyles benefit from that kind of customization. Creative players get to express their creativity through advancement. Strategic players get to play with different mechanical options. Players can discover interesting combinations and synergies and create really mechanically unique characters. Beyond that, under Point Buy, characters can actually evolve through play. If a game event exposes a character to a new skill or feat, they’ve got a way to capitalize on that. If a player finds their character doesn’t suit their playstyle as much as they hoped, they can tweak the character rather than throw it away and start again. Or do that ridiculous, reality-breaking retraining bulls$&%. Point is, the character can evolve based on in-game events. So, the creatives, the strategists, and the fantasy role-players all benefit.

But Point Buy’s not without its problems. First, there’s balance issues. If you want to build a highly balanced, highly polished game that pretty much works regardless of what the players do — and D&D actually does pull that off — willy-nilly Point Buy’s hard to deal with. D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder offered a high degree of customization through feats and multiclassing and prestige classes. And that led to a lot of so-called “overpowered characters” and “broken combos” and “exploits” and s$&% like that. I’m not saying customization always leads to a broken game. Nor am I saying the brokenness issue is nearly as big as people make it out to be. All I’m saying is if your goal is to create a game that provides predictable outcomes regardless of the players’ choices — which is really what the balanced game thing is actually about — then Point Buy can make your life hard.

Second, though, advancement under Point Buy is more involved. The players have to think more and put in more effort when it’s time to advance the character. Level Up systems make it easy to advance. Just increase a few numbers, add a new ability, and pick one of three new options. Done and done. Point Buy advancement makes you think. And think hard. And if often makes you choose between incomparables. Things that can’t be objectively — or even quantitatively — compared. I mean, would you rather have more hit points or a better lockpicking skill? Which is worth more?

It comes down to the balance between depth, complexity, and approachability. Point Buy provides a deeper play experience — there’s more options, more combinations, more ways to play the game — but it’s also more complex. That means it takes more time to learn and more effort to play. Mental effort, but effort nonetheless. That means the game’s less approachable.

Level Up is a very approachable system. It’s easy to understand. It requires little effort. And it’s also easier to balance. The designers can control what combinations of abilities can find their way onto the same character sheet. But it offers less depth overall. There’s much fewer opportunities for customization. And for the character to change over time.

Point Buy’s more complex. It takes more effort to understand and it involves sometimes difficult choices. Moreover, there’s a greater risk that some combination of abilities will disrupt gameplay in some unexpected way. A player can purposely or accidentally make a character that trivializes some aspect of the game’s challenge. Or a player can accidentally make the game really hard to play with a particularly weak combination of abilities. But the trade-off is a much greater feeling of depth and characters can change over time and in response to in-game events.

None of that’s opinion. Those are the hard facts on which opinions must be based. If you disagree with any of the above, you’re just provably wrong. What follows now is my opinion. If you disagree with that, well, you’re still wrong. I just can’t prove it and I don’t care to try.

Of the two, Point Buy is absolutely the better option for tabletop role-playing games. Hands down. Inarguably, it suits TTRPGS better than Level Up. Here’s why. A TTRPG is about the players making choices, taking actions, and then dealing with the consequences. It’s ultimately just a protracted “what if…?” scenario. “What would you do if you were this person and found yourself in this situation?” “I’d do this.” “Okay, so what would you do if you did that and the outcome was this?”

Dungeon World puts it very succinctly, if somewhat pithily. “You play to see what happens.”

If the character cannot evolve mechanically — and D&D has really doubled down on the Level Up system at this point such that you pretty much just build the character at 1st level you’re going to play forever — if the character can’t evolve mechanically, then you’re removing a hugely important aspect of the “what if…?” scenario. That is, “how does the character evolve based on the game’s events?”

That’s the deciding factor for me. Everything else is of secondary importance compared to the fact that Point Buy allows the character to grow as the game is played whereas Level Up dictates how the character grows based on a very limited number of choices, most of which are made before play starts.

That doesn’t mean Point Buy is the right choice though. The truth is, TTRPGs must be approachable. All else being equal, approachability wins. The approachable game will always have more fans. I know some idiots whine that “D&D is only popular because it’s the most well-known RPG!” But that’s half circular reasoning and half retarded. Once upon a time, people said “people only love MySpace because it’s the most well-known.” The top of the industry can always fall. D&D’s on top for a reason. And a lot of that reason is approachability.

You can make Point Buy very approachable. In fact, it can be more approachable if you do it right. Lots of Point Buy games do it wrong. Because you have to make big, sweeping decisions and spend a lot of points at the start of the game to build a character. You know, you start with 100 advancement points and then spend them on your initial abilities and skills and perks and twerks and all that crap. And then you gain 10 more every session to spend on more abilities and skills and s$&%. That initial character generation is a nightmare. Point Buy systems should take all those decisions and spread them out over the life of the character.

It’d also be more approachable if people could opt out of Point Buy. Or, at least, abstain. Consider this. Imagine there’s a video game with a bunch of talents to unlock and perks to buy as you play. At the start of the game, you pick an archetype. Knight, thief, fire wizard, healer, edgelord demon necromancer, whatever. Whenever you open the talent tree or the perk list, there’s a highlighted option. A next talent or a next perk. With a simple button press, you can buy that talent or perk. Or you can browse and buy something else. Anything else. Basically, the game’s saying, “if you want to be a knight the way we define a knight, here’s the next talent to choose.” You can take whatever talent you want, but you can also just say, “okay, I’ll take the default and be a knight.”

Funnily enough, that idea — for psychology reasons I’m not going to go into right now — would probably increase the likelihood of players customizing their characters.

Point is, with the right design, you can make Point Buy approachable and manageable.

As for the balance issue? That’s not insurmountable either. First, D&D presents itself as a mathematically balanced system. But we all know that’s a lie. D&D’s encounter balance is usually “this will work and it won’t kill any of the PCs,” but more often than not, you can get a better play experience if you color a little outside the game balance lines. Really, it’s just there to make it easy for GMs to make okay adventures. And to assuage their fear of building encounters that’ll ruin the game. It’s more about comfort and ease of use than it is an actual, useful system. Dispensing with the lie and adding some loose wobble to the game balance would do a lot of good. It’d make Point Buy a lot less of a balance issue.

But, beyond that, one thing you might notice about Point Buy systems as compared to Level Up systems is that the power curve is just smaller. Shallower. High-level characters in Point Buy games aren’t nearly as powerful as high-level characters in Level Up games. In D&D, 20th level characters aren’t even playing the same game as 1st level characters. It’s a pretty extreme power curve. But the funny thing is that it also totally doesn’t matter. Very few players play through all twenty levels of advancement in D&D. Most play six-month campaigns and barely get into double-digit levels. And lots of players these days skip to 3rd level when they start a new game. Then, too, because of the rigorous mechanical game balance a 20th level character is just as equal to the challenges it faces as a 1st level character is. We call that the treadmill. The baddies level up just as quickly as the goodies so everyone stays equal all the time. So, D&D’s got a high power curve. But no one really uses the whole thing. And it doesn’t matter anyway.

The hardest problem that Point Buy systems have to overcome before they’ll compare to Level Up systems is that incremental advancement doesn’t feel as cool. When you gain a level after three sessions of play and then get a bunch of hit points and a new spell and a feat, that feels big. It’s a milestone. A huge dopamine hit. Meanwhile, spending a few points after today’s session to bump your lockpicking skill and then spending a few points next time on an extra hit point and then a few more on a sword move the weak after? It’s not the same.

Between their approachability and the big-deal feeling of gaining levels, Level Up systems just feel better at the table. And that’s always going to be the deciding factor. The game feel. Level Up is actually the right choice for Dungeons & Dragons. I think Point Buy is better for TTRPGs, but I can’t deny Level Up’s just a good way for D&D to go. A Point Buy system can beat it, but’ll have to be implemented really well.

That said, these days the fight for broad acceptance of a Point Buy advancement system might not be that hard. The popularity of talent trees and mechanical customization in even non-RPG video games these days? That proves Point Buy’s got legs. And also suggests a solution. Because a talent tress is kind of a hybrid between a Point Buy and a Level Up system. Some kind of hybrid might be the best answer. Especially in fantasy adventure games where character archetypes are a huge part of the experience. Because Level Up systems and archetypal characters really do go hand-in-glove.

All of that said, if I were making an RPG, I’d be doing my damndest to incorporate as many Point Buy elements into my advancement system as I can make approachable and satisfying and fun. Because I really do think Point Buy is the system for TTRPG advancement. It fits thematically into what TTRPGs are supposed to be about.

Anyway, that was a lot of rambling. I’m not sure if any of that was what you were looking for. Regardless, hopefully, I did make one thing clear:

There’s no one right way to handle character advancement — there’s upsides and downsides to every approach — but Milestone XP Awards are always wrong.