False Starts and Dirty Lies: Starting a Campaign Wrong
Start as you mean to go on. It’s good advice for writers and it’s good advice for GMs. Except when it isn’t. But it is. But it might not be.
How NOT to Teach Newbies D&D
If you give a newbie a game, he’s going to want to a campaign. If you give the newbie a campaign, you’ll be stuck with a terrible player for life. Don’t make that mistake.
Fanservice BS: A Thing About Mimics or Whatever
The problem with letting your fans pick the topic is that they don’t have to actually worry about whether the topic they pick actually has a useful article in it. What do they care? They don’t have to write this crap. So here’s a post about mimics or whatever.
It’s Not The Size of Your Campaign: Scope and Scale and Safe Havens
There are infinite ways to fill that blank piece of paper that is your campaign plan. Here’s about four of them. We’ll cover the other infinity-minus-four in future articles.
How to XP Good
Why don’t people understand why character advancement is important? Why don’t people see the value of point-based character advancement? Why is it so hard to handle XP right? Well, when even Mike Mearls can’t get it right, there’s no hope for you. At least, there wasn’t. Until I came along to tell you How to XP Good.
Training Bra Plotting: How to Plan a Campaign (Or Adventure)
Encounters, adventures, and campaigns all start off life the same way. How do you turn one into the other and back again? Well, it’s like putting it in a good training bra.
Ask Angry: Three Questions about Stuff
It’s time for a quick run through the ole Ask Angry e-mail pile. Oh, hey, look, I have dozens and dozens of questions. Let me answer a couple. Heck, I’ll answer a few! Because I’m just that great a guy.
Fanservice BS: Making Race and Culture Matter in RPGs
In this month’s Fanservice BS, I look at how to make race and culture actually matter. Whatever the hell that means.
Running Your Most Horrible D&D Adventure Ever
Running a horror adventure in D&D is a terrible idea. But if you absolutely MUST and I can’t stop you, at least I can keep you from f$&%ing it up too badly.
This, That, or Other (Part 1): Why Design the Problem and the Solutions?
It’s not enough to create open-ended obstacles in your game and hope your players will come up with some clever way to defeat them. Never create a problem without creating several solutions.
Crafting Herbcraft (Part 2): Practical Herbology
It’s all well and good to think through a whole bunch of conceptual bulls$&% when you’re designing a new rules system. But there comes a time when you have to sit down and actual write the rules themselves. So lets give that some thought.
Fanservice BS: I Hate Ability Scores (In D&D 5E)
It’s time for my first ever Fanservice BS, wherein I post the rant my Patreon supporters wanted to hear. Today’s topic: why I hate ability scores in D&D 5E.
Crafting Herbcraft (Part 1): Conceptual Herbology
Creating new rules isn’t as simple as coming up with a fun idea for a system and then making it. There’s a whole thing in the middle where you actually spend a bunch of time working out how not to accidentally make a turd. Too bad WotC didn’t know about that step when it came to their crafting rules.
Herbcraft in D&D 5E
Surprise! Here’s a preview of an upcoming article. It’s a set of rules I built for crafting nonmagical herbal items in D&D 5E using the herbalism kit (and proficiency therewith). Feel free to check out the rules and then come back soon to find out how and why they were created.
30 Days of RPG a Day in One Day
After four years of missing it, I decided to participate in David Chapman’s #RPGaDay blog carnival discussion thing. And, because I’m me, I decided to do the entire thing in one day at the last minute. Enjoy.
The Session Zero Blitz (Part One of One): How to Even Session Zero
A good campaign starts with a good Session Zero. But how do you even Session Zero? In the third part of this one-part series, I’ll tell you.
The Session Zero Blitz (Part Preface): Engage!
The secret goal of every Session Zero is to evaluate the players at your table and figure out what the hell they actually want from you. Fortunately, players aren’t that complicated and there’s an easy way to classify them. But it’s not the system you think.
The Session Zero Blitz (Part Zero): What The Hell is Session Zero For?
Every campaign can benefit from a well-run Session Zero. How do you run a good Session Zero? I can’t tell you that until I tell you what a Session Zero is actually for.
Hide and Seek: Read this Article (Optional)
Is there any value to hidden content in D&D? Not just optional content, but actual, concealed, hard to find, totally missable content? Of course there is.
Wishing and S$%&ing: Campaign Startup Dilemmas
Starting a new campaign isn’t just about building a world, coming up with some story details, and telling the players what characters to make. It involves resolving dilemmas and making hard choices.
Hide and Seek: Traps
There’s lots of things GMs might hide in their adventures. For example, traps. But how does D&D handle traps? Why does D&D suck at handling traps? And how should it handle traps?
Conflicted and Misaligned: Storytelling, Conflicts, and Morality
Conflict lies at the heart of every story. And when we think of conflict, we think of the struggle between good and evil. Especially in D&D. But what if I told you that good and evil aren’t in conflict at all? And that D&D alignment is complete and utter gibberish that never made any sense?
Megadungeon Monday: More Exit Mapping and Psychological Trickery (Part 2)
A well-designed, well-paced adventure hangs on the exit map. And designing a good exit map is more about incentives and psychological tricks than it is about walls and doors.
Angry Information Management (Part 2): Facts, Implications, and Distractions
Information in your game can take many forms. Any by many, I mean three. It can three forms. And this article is all about them. And a whole bunch of other stuff.
Angry Information Management (Part 1): The Role of Information
As a GM, apart from not killing idiot players who deserve it, your primary job is to communicate information. And that means you have to be able to manage information.
Tick Tock: The Weird Clock Speed of D&D
It’s time for a random pile of bulls$&% from the brain of the Angry GM. Today’s steamer is about clock speeds, decision points, why D&D runs at two different speeds, and how the designers of RPGs really need to figure that s$&% out better. Don’t worry, this has nothing to do with Time Pools.
Megadungeon Monday: Exit Mapping and Psychological Trickery (Part 1)
A well-designed, well-paced adventure hangs on the exit map. And designing a good exit map is more about incentives and psychological tricks than it is about walls and doors.
Exploration RULES!
Before we can build any rules modules, we have to have a solid framework for those modules. Using the previously published core rules tweaks and the time pool – both of which desperately need some revision and correction and clarification, we’re going to build a master module for exploration. We’re also going to discuss exactly what the hell a “master module for exploration” is.
Megadungeon Monday: Maps for Design, Maps for Presentation
Maps aren’t just maps. Maps are tools for organizing and presenting information. As a prelude to building an exit map, we’re going to organize our information and figure out just what maps our megadungeon needs and who they’re for. Also, we’ll do some mapping.
Through a Glass Darkly: IC, OOC, and the Myth of Player/Character Seperation
Let’s talk about the mythical distinction between players and characters. Players are characters. Characters are players. And once you accept that, it’s a lot easier to run a fun game. Warning: this gets ranty.