Momentum: Building Victory
Today, I teach you about the second of a pair of complementary gameplay dynamics vital to making winnable — and losable — adventures that feel great to play.
What Do You Do When You Lose the Plot (Part II)
This is the second part of a personal story about how I lost the plot in my current campaign and how you can to. That still has nothing to do with plots and outlines and stories and everything to do with totally burning yourself out.
What Do You Do When You Lose the Plot (Part I)
I want to tell you a two-part story about what’s going on with my AD&D 2E campaign because I’ve lost the plot and the campaign feels doomed and I have to fix it and I’m hoping that by telling you this story, I’ll help you launch a campaign you’re excited to run and then fix it when it inexplicably goes to shit for no obvious reason. If you’re one of the players, don’t panic; I’m being hyperbolic. Mostly. Kind of.
Ask Angry February 2025: Agency, Scenario Design, and Fudging Dice
Ask Angry is back by popular demand and part of my new, ongoing content creation plan? What plan? It doesn’t matter. What matters is some dumbass accused me of saying things I didn’t about Agency and now I have to set the record straight for all y’all.
Office Hours: Is Attrition Inertia?
A quick — well, quick for me — aside about whether you can count on D&D’s Attrition Dynamic for all the gameplay Inertia you need.
Angry’s Five Rules for Amazing Adventure Design
A bit of a chance of pace today since I’ve got some new eyeballs on my work. I’m taking a break from the really heavy game-design theory to give five principles that form the foundation for good adventure building Scenario Design. Then it’s back to the overwrought heavy crap.
Inertia: Fighting Failure
Winter break is over and it’s time to talk about True Scenario Design again. Today, I’m introducing the first in a pair of complementary game design forces, Inertia and Momentum, that separate the real True Scenario Designers from the Mere Adventure Builders.
True Mechanical Managery: Character Replacement Policies II
Here’s the follow-up lesson about Character Replacement Policies. Except it’s totally not about that at all. It’s actually about how life sucks and you can’t win. At Game Mastering, anyway.
True Mechanical Managery: Character Replacement Policies I
Another lesson in True Mechanical Managery. This one’s about setting a policy for creating new characters in the middle of the game to replace dead characters, retired characters, or to let new players join the game.
Deconstructing Your Game
Here’s a little Christmas rant for Mendel and all of the rest of my fans who want to know how you can deconstruct and subvert like the true master of fantasy literature, George R.R. Martin, the greatest fantasy author of all time who is better than Tolkien in every way. Merry Christmas, losers.
What Do Players Know Anyway?
In our ongoing discussion about Scenarios players can win and lose, we need to talk about how players often see Goals different from Scenario Designers and why that’s not true and you’re stupid for thinking it is.
Gaming in Fits and Starts
Now that you know what Winning and Losing are, actually, correctly, and for reals, I can tell you how gameplay is both continuous and discrete and what the Quest Structure really, truly is.
Quality Wins and Losses
Last time, I told all y’all you need a more complete, more nuanced understanding of the concepts of Winning and Losing. This time, I’ll give you that understanding. Because I’m awesome.
Win, Lose, or Draw
It’s time to start a whole new True Scenario Designery module. This one’s not about Winning and Losing, but that’s where we’re starting, and boy is that a messy place to start.
True Mechanical Managery: When Death Comes Calling II
It’s time to finish the lesson on Character Death Policies by telling you how to write your own damned policy and not telling you to just steal mine.
A Campaign Managery Digression: Changing Character Faces
We’re taking a short, one-lesson break from the syllabus to talk about your Character Switching Policy and also to talk about making your decisions based on actual frigging reality.
A Scenario Design Interlude: Why Are We Here?
Let’s take a moment here to consider, again, why we’re doing this whole True Scenario Designery thing. Because, listen maties, there be rough waters ahead.
True Mechanical Managery: When Death Comes Calling I
Today, I’m continuing the discussion about game mechanics that wreck campaigns unless you’ve got a plan for them before they come up. Today’s mechanic: Character Death.
Scenario Design That Makes a Statement
Let’s see if I can’t help tie together the last three lessons of random, conceptual, game design bullshit by showing you how a True Scenario Designer comes up with a Design Statement.
Professor Angry’s Office Hours: You Ain’t a Behavioral Engineer
It’s time I have a little bit of an intervention because, frankly, some of y’all are starting to scare me with your approach to this whole True Campaign Managery thing.
True Mechanical Managery: Experience and Advancement Systems II
In this follow-up on Experience and Advancement Systems, I teach you how True Campaign Managers actually evaluate such systems and set a policy that works for their campaign. It’s easier — and harder — than you might think.
The Second Story
How do you breathe life into a campaign world? It’s a question with a thousand, rambling answers. Here’s one of them.
True Mechanical Managery: Experience and Advancement Systems I
When True Campaign Managers decide how to practically implement their game system’s Experience and Advancement System, they’ve got to know what the system’s for and what’s at stake if they implement it wrong. That’s what this half-a-lesson is all about.
A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Play by Post Gaming
The title is a lie. I’m the complete idiot and this feature will not help anyone run a good Play by Post game. I’m just giving a very long, rambling, overly detailed response to a very simple question I had no business answering. Really… don’t read this.
True Mechanical Managery
It’s time to set up a new True Campaign Managery lesson module. Over the next several lessons, I plan to teach you how to properly manage your game’s mechanics. But first, I’ve got to teach you what that means.
Sportsmanship for Complete Asshats
There’s this argument that rages all over the internet about whether it’s offensive for players to suggest to others what they should do and whether it’s okay for players to bring suboptimal characters to the team and I want to explain why everyone’s wrong and you’re all asshats.
What Makes a Challenge
In this last of three parts, I wrap up my introduction to basic, conceptual game design. Now, maybe we can move on to actually designing a Scenario or something. That is if you dunderheads actually grok this crap.
You Don’t Need to Run an Open-World Game
Last time, I told you why you shouldn’t try to run an open-world campaign based on your favorite open-world video game and that you can’t. This time I’m telling you why you don’t have to.
Stop Trying to Make Open-World Games
Every time a new open-world video game comes out — or gets updated with DLC — I get inundated with emails claiming that game finally did open-world gaming right and how we should model all our TTRPG campaigns every on it. Please stop.
The Anatomy of a Game
It’s time for the second in this three-part whirlwind tour of what True Scenario Designers know about what makes games games. And this really is all about what makes games games.