It’s Ask Angry time again!

Once a month, I select one or two or more questions sent in by readers to answer with my characteristic mix of sarcasm, hyperbole, insults, and brilliant correctitude.

Want a shot at being one of my future Ask Angry victims? Just send your question to ask.angry@angry.games. Remember to cut to the chase — I get bored quickly reading anything not written by me — and tell me clearly what I should call you.

George asks…

Would you recommend players secretly roll death saving throws or for the GM to secretly roll their death saving throws?

George, your question jumped right to the top of the stack. Good for you. Apart from the fact that it’s easy to answer, it also perfectly demonstrates how to properly ask me a question.

For you viewers at home, I trimmed two short sentences from that e-mail. The first was a sentence giving me permission to call George George. The second came at the end, and it was just a short, pleasant little token of appreciation. That’s it. Three sentences and one perfect e-mail.

You can call me Ishmael. What are three good uses for a whale carcass? Thanks for your time.

Why the motherloving fuck is that so hard for people?

Anyway…

George, I absolutely, categorically, emphatically recommend that Death Saving Throws be kept secret from the table at large. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you don’t demand Death Saving Throws be made secretly, you’re willfully running a shit game. Unless and until someone actually interacts with the possible corpse, no one should know its current mortality status. Personally, I count checking aliveness incidental to any other interaction with the fallen friend. If you run over to your downed ally — or enemy — and crouch beside them intent on casting cure wounds or pouring a potion of healing down their gullet or rooting through their pockets for gems and loose change, you are told whether they’re still breathing or not.

If you discover they’re dead, you don’t have to follow through with the action. I don’t force people to waste spell slots or potions on corpses. That’s stupid. But you also can’t get up and run back into the fight. At best, I’ll let you take another, different action with the corpse or yourself or both. You can switch, for example, from casting cure wounds to looting the body, or you can cast the spell on yourself instead of your ex-friend, but otherwise, you’ve lost the action. That’s the risk of playing medic in the heat of battle. The risk of not playing medic in the heat of battle is that people die you could have saved.

Thus, apart from the above making good, logical sense, it prevents all sorts of horseshit where players game dice rolls and negative hit point counts to decide whether to help an ally or not. That’s horrible for gameplay. When someone goes down, it needs to feel like an urgent emergency and present the players with a set of nothing but bad choices. Visible die rolls, calculable probabilities, and countable negative hit points — as existed in previous editions — turn a downed ally into a math problem. Math is the opposite of tension, tactics, and actual frigging roleplaying.

Personally, I don’t give a crap who actually rolls the Death Saving Throws. As long as it’s secret, I’m happy, and I’ve got enough to do when I’m running a combat to track the quickness — yes, quickness — the quickness of a character whose player was too stupid to keep them conscious. Besides, I find it actually makes the potential corpse’s player’s butt pucker more to know how close to death they are while their allies ignore them and it definitely makes for some fun after-game conversations.

That said, if I discover a player can’t be trusted to maintain a poker face about this shit, I will take away their privilege to roll to keep their own character alive. Of course, I can’t be assed to track that shit myself either. So, while I will definitely roll dice at the appropriate time behind the screen, I’m not going to look at or track the results. I’ll just declare the character alive or dead as strikes my fancy.

Thank you again for the question.

Kind Regards,
Angry

Maddog asks…

Hey, I need a hot take on alignment. I have no idea how to ask a fucking question. I’m not even sure what a question is. I did not end any of the four sentences in this eighty-word e-mail with a question mark, and, while four sentences doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s important to note my last sentence is going to be an inexpertly stitched-together Frankenstein’s monster of random clauses that technically do not form a single, complete, coherent thought. The closest I come to asking a question is that first sentence, “Hey, I need a hot take on alignment,” which at least invites a response, but comprises only 10% of the entire e-mail. Less if you count the greeting. The rest of this e-mail, literally 90%, is my giving you my hot take on alignment. I don’t know why I assumed you’d give a shit what I think of alignment — I may be missing key brain lobes — but sharing it did allow me to identify myself as a dumbass part of the whole alignment problem. But, again, I clearly have some kind of brain damage. As a final note, I cannot be assed to say “thank you,” or add any sort of complimentary close like, “sincerely,” or “kind regards,” or even “crapfully crap.”

Thanks, Maddog, for your question. Oh, wait, there wasn’t one.

That said, because I’ve been asked about this in the past, I am going to address Maddog’s above question.

Yes, Maddog’s question has been edited. Those are not actually the words he wrote. They do present what I feel is a fair and accurate summary of his message, but only the first sentence is a direct quote. Some of you have struggled in the past to recognize when I’ve decided to paraphrase an e-mail such as Maddogs, so I did want to take a moment to make that clear.

I actually don’t usually edit the e-mails I receive. I will sometimes correct small, typographical errors as I type them into the body of my article — I never copy and paste them — and I do cut off polite greetings, complimentary closes, and other brief pleasantries that are the hallmark of civilized human communication. I will also sometimes make slight corrections to game terms and even occasionally change the tense or grammatical person in a pronoun or adjective, but that’s mostly just for readability. For the most part, I let the text pass verbatim and will even let non-typographical errors stand unless I feel my readers might not understand clearly what’s being said. That is something I try to be cognizant of because I have non-native English-speaking readers and because non-native English-speakers submit questions. When I do have to rewrite something for clarity, I never give someone shit over that. It’s one of those things I’m not allowed to make fun of.

Yes, I actually do have rules.

All of that said, I do pass my articles through an automated spelling and grammar check before doing my own proofread, and it does sometimes make some minor corrections to the quoted e-mails.

In absolutely every case, my goal is to communicate as clearly as possible for the benefit of my readers while being as true to the sender’s original intent as possible. I try not to change anything, but sometimes I have to make minor tweaks, and sometimes, as in Maddog’s case, I feel that a full rewrite actually helps the sender’s original intent to shine through the pile of words they managed to bang out of their keyboard.

Thank you for the question, Maddog. I hope my response helps.

Mucco asks…

Do you think it would be a good idea for a roleplaying game system to tie a PC’s personality traits to specific abilities? For example, an Angry PC can take a specific Threaten action whereas a Suave PC can do a Charm action. Other characters may not try those things, or may not be as effective, unless they spec into it during progression.

I’m very tempted to vomit 300 more words of context and explanation, but I’ll spare you.

This is an example of an e-mail I didn’t edit, except to replace two abbreviations with the words they stand for. That last line? That was all Mucco. And let’s all give Mucco a hand. He was tempted to not follow my explicit guidelines, but then he did follow them. What a frigging hero, am I right?

Seriously, Mucco, next time stop just one sentence sooner and I won’t be filled with the urge to beat you bloody with my Pathfinder 2nd Edition Core Rulebook. At four pounds and eight ounces, it’s the heaviest rulebook I own — beating out the Hackmaster 5th Edition Player’s Handbook by just four ounces — and beating someone bloody with it is just about the only thing the PF2E rulebook is good for. I’m sure as shit not going to play or run that nightmare.

Anyway…

It’s probably for the best that you didn’t append a trecenary of further explanation as it would just hurt more when I ripped it all to shreds because, unfortunately, I have to respond with a polite but firm, “No, sir, I don’t like it.”

I absolutely don’t believe in limiting the players’ and characters’ actions unless the action in question would actually be impossible for anyone without the proper training, talent, or traits to reasonably attempt. Or if success would be so wildly improbable that, for all practical purposes, it’s functionally impossible.

Put another way, any character can attempt any action unless I can reason out a good, solid reason why that character would be incapable of attempting the action with some measurable chance of success if the fictional world were a real place and the character were a real person in it. I consider that one of the foundational conceits of roleplaying games. “If you can imagine it’s possible, you can try it.”

Of course, there are actions that are either impossible for an untrained rando to attempt without some measure of talent, training, or skill or where success is so unlikely it doesn’t even approach the sort of probabilities that dice can measure. For example, no clueless character can even attempt to forge a sword in a smithy.

Basic social interactions, though, just don’t fall into that category. Threatening and charming people is something anyone can try with a reasonable chance of success. People with the right mix of traits and practice and formal training — you can be trained in communication, interrogation, persuasion, assertiveness, and cetera — people with the right mix of traits and practice and training can expect more frequent successes, but none of those things are impossible or so unlikely to work without training and talent that they should be forbidden. And, frankly, the way we use the term personality trait in gaming is pretty inconsistent, and some of your pairings are illogical. Angry people aren’t actually better or more successful at coercion. They can be scary, and scary sometimes works to make people act, but it’s also very unpredictable and often backfires. The most effective threats come from calm, collected, composed people. Likewise, suaveness is a combination of social skills and personality traits. It encompasses personality traits like composure and confidence, but it also involves learned social awareness, etiquette, tone, and body language.

Honestly, social interactions are really horrible things to build mechanics around because most people don’t understand where traits end and training begins, and we don’t think of social skills as things we train because they’re mostly learned experientially and practiced constantly, day-in and day-out.

Obviously, I’m not opposed to giving someone a bonus for certain social actions based on talents, traits, and training, but this is where it’s important to understand how rules convey meanings to players on a subconscious level. When you give a penalty to someone who lacks the right trait, you’re saying, “You shouldn’t try this unless you know what you’re doing. It’s a long shot.” When you give a bonus to someone who has the right trait, you’re saying, “Anyone can try this, but some people are just better at it.” Sometimes, the former is right, sometimes the latter is right. Sometimes you actually do want to tell the halfling, “Don’t rely on your physical strength because you’re a fucking halfling.” But if you don’t want to stop people from feeling like an action is a possibility, don’t penalize it.

All of that said, I also really hate the idea of personality traits in roleplaying games. I don’t like asking players to set personality traits or write them down, and I sure as hell don’t want mechanics tied to them. In roleplaying games, a character’s personality — like a real person’s personality — is emergent and malleable. Asking players to commit to a personality before they start playing the character — even if the commitment is merely implied — hurts their ability to roleplay. I know some of you out there are going to tell me that you actually roleplay better if you know more about your character before you start playing, but I’ve had enough of you dumbasses at my table to know you’re wrong. What you’re good at is performance. You’re shit at actual roleplaying and you don’t even know what roleplaying means. I run roleplaying games; I ain’t directing a high school production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Waterdeep.

Thus, I’m sorry to say, Mucco, that there’s nothing in your pamphlet I’m willing to pay for.

Magnus asks…

When trying a new roleplaying game system, how do you decide which parts of the rules — such as “combat rules” or “negotiation rules” — to eventually reveal to the players?

Thank you, Magnus, for another clear, concise question with explicit permission to call you Magnus — omitted — and a friendly complementary closing — also omitted. Thanks also for not filling 90% of your e-mail with your own crappy and inconsistent opinions and for not asking me to pat you on the head and give you a cookie for following my basic published rules. You are truly awesome. As such, when I beat you over the head, I will use the lightest, softest roleplaying game rulebook I own. That would be Panty Explosion Perfect. It weighs in at just over three ounces, has some delightful anime girls on the cover, and has surprisingly little tentacle porn given the title.

Seriously… it isn’t what it sounds like and it has a very unique friend-and-rival based action adjudication system. It’s just magical schoolgirl anime shit. It’s not sexual at all. The title is a joke the creator later said he regretted.

Anyway…

First, let’s admit that it doesn’t matter worth a damn what rules you reveal to the players; they’re not going to learn them, and you shouldn’t expect them to. Smart Game Masters recognize that. Smart Game Masters know that players are only responsible for showing up and playing the game. Other Game Masters can argue the point all they want; all that proves is they’re not smart.

Besides, all it does is set them up for disappointment. You can demand whatever you want of your players; they’re just going to do whatever the hell they want anyway.

Honestly, it’s really a failing of modern roleplaying games that Game Masters think players have to learn anything to play roleplaying games. Back in the old days, we used to tell new players, “You don’t have to know any of the rules. Just tell me what you do and I’ll handle it,” and when we said it, we meant it.

Now, obviously, I am being hyperbolic, and it drives me absolutely frigging bonkers that I have to point that out. Yes, there are some things players do have to learn, and they eventually learn those things by playing the game. Players have to understand, for example, how to track hit points and that you’re dead when you have zero of them and they have to know how to manage a few resources like spell slots or mana points or whatever. But, again, they can learn that playing. Which makes it really easy to decide what to reveal to the players when you’re teaching the game.

Start running the game, and when something comes up, teach the players about it.

That doesn’t require any decisions at all. You don’t have to pore over the rules making a list of what’s player facing and what’s not. You just start running a game and, when combat starts and you find yourself having to ask your players to make an Action Check, explain what the hell an Action Check is and how to do it. “When a combat breaks out — like it just did — we use an Action Check to determine the combat phase in which you get to take the first of your two actions. Here’s how to do that…” Then, at the start of the next fight, do a reminder. Something like, “Okay, make Action Checks. Remember, that’s a d20 Control Die plus the listed Action Die as a Situation Die and compare the total result to your Action Check scores to determine whether you act in the Marginal, Ordinary, Good, or Amazing phases, remember?” After a few fights, they’ll have it down.

Of course, the reason to explain most shit like that is just so you can eventually say, “Roll an Action Check,” and get results. It’s not like the players have any choices to make about rolling Action Checks. Or Initiative. They just need to generate a result and know that a high result means they’re going earlier.

See, roleplaying games are supposed to make intuitive sense and the players really shouldn’t have to do much more than declare actions most of the time and then follow your instructions. They really don’t need the mechanics. Players don’t, for example, need to know the precise procedure for determining when a character drowns. They just need to know that if they’re underwater, they’ve got about a minute, maybe ninety seconds tops, before they inhale a lungful of water and pass out. Then, in less than five minutes, their brain dies. That’s just how shit works.

Most modern games — even D&D and even the D&D edition you hate — have intuitive names for attributes, skills, talents, traits or whatever and are based on a universal action resolution system. That means if the players know how to make a check in the general case, they know all the rules they need to know to play the vast majority of the game and reasonably assess their relative odds of success even without knowing the target numbers. That’s not how it worked in the old days. In the old days, roleplaying games had ten thousand different kinds of die rolls and odds tables for every damned thing and no one could remember which die was used for reaction rolls and which one was used for surprise and which one was used to bend bars and lift gates.

The thing many modern games do to fuck that up — at least the mainline games — is to focus on encapsulated character powers and exceptions-based design so every player’s character sheet is the equivalent of a Magic: the Gathering deck, but that shit doesn’t count in this discussion. First, that’s because absolutely every ability can be printed on the character sheet or be found in the players’ deck of power cards. Second, that’s because literally everything that exists on the character sheet is, by basic frigging definition, player facing. And, third, it’s because that shit isn’t actually rules.

Meanwhile, if you hand a new player a character sheet and all their spells and abilities aren’t spelled out in easy-to-read language, you suck as a Game Master. That’s a you problem.

When you get away from the mainline games into the area of indie games made by people who are so far up themselves that I have been asked by my brand manager not to finish this sentence…

When you get away from the mainline games, that’s where you find assloads of abstraction, needlessly complex core mechanics, pointless over-restriction of player actions, or a pile of mechanical minigames that require the players to push dice or points or tokens around instead of just declaring actions for their imaginary characters to take in the fictional world. Frankly, at this point in my career, I don’t need to waste my time with look at my clever mechanics horseshit like that.

In the end, it’s all down to empowering the players to play the game effectively and make good choices. If you can play and win just by declaring sensible actions and letting the Game Master resolve them, there are no player-facing mechanics. If the players have to manage resources, expend points, or make specific abstract choices at specific times, the players need to know enough to make those choices reasonably well, but only just enough, and you should be able to cover that shit as and when it comes up. If you can’t, your system is a trainwreck. Throw it out.

Personally, I think the discussion we should be having isn’t about teaching the players the rules, but rather about teaching the Game Masters and the players how to model game situations using the rules and how to interact with the world properly. Yes, we all know the rules of Persuasion checks, but point me to one Game Master or player who knows how to use those rules to model a social interaction the way a social interaction should work. That’s the real gap in the rules.

But that is a rant for another day.

Speaking of rants for another day…

Did any of you seriously expect me to do an alignment hot take in 2025? Who the fuck is still even having that conversation? There are no hot takes left. They’re not even lukewarm. They aren’t even Burger King chicken sandwich left under a 40-watt heat lamp warm. Did you not get the memo, Maddog? Alignment is dead and everyone knows it. Hack game designers and awful players and shit Game Masters like you, Maddog, killed it. Yes, I know it’s still in the book, but it’s just a shriveled little appendix hanging off the system. Actually, it’s not even that. Appendixes actually serve a biological function. Alignment officially stopped being functional in D&D at 11:59 PM on June 5, 2008. Your little rant — the one I didn’t deign to reprint — about how clever you are to reject it? That’s what literally everyone says.

Except me, of course. I guess, actually, I do have a hot take. Alignment was unjustly murdered, and I blame all of you. Every last one of you. Gygax and the grognards ruined it. Perkins and Crawford and the modern fanfic gamers ruined it too. So did you, Maddog. Yeah, I saw what you said, and you fucked it up.

But my hot take — my axiomatically correct view — it’s not worth sharing. First, because it won’t change anything. Alignment’s dead. Second, because absolutely every last one of you would hate me for it and you’d all feel like you’d have to make your opinions known.

And if there is one thing I have endeavored to make as clear as crystal, it’s that I don’t actually give a single, solitary crap about any opinion other than my own correct ones. I really wish you’d all remember that.