Ask Angry August Mailbag

It’s mailbag time. This month, I discuss Old School Hack, wilderness encounters, encouraging your players to do things they don’t like, and adding warfare to your D&D campaign.

The Game You SHOULD Run

It’s bulls$&% time. And that means complaining about my correspondents again. This time, I’m complaining about how no one understands how to make decisions anymore.

AngryCraft: What’s in an Item

It’s that time of the month: it’s time to make incremental progress on AngryCraft. This time, I define all of the different kind of things you’d make stuff out of.

Sending Players to the Bench

Ideally, your game will have a perfect one-to-one ratio of players to characters. But sometimes the characters split up or a player skips a game or someone gets killed. What do you do then?

Ask Angry July Mailbag

Time to open up the ole mailbag again. This time, I’m talking about how to let your players play two parties, expounding on game balance, telling people how to help their depressed GMs, and explaining why I totally suck and how I’m going to fix it.

Angry’s Two-Note Player-Character

There’s a better way to role-play. A more genuine, more engaging way. You just have to start playing your character before you know anything about them. Sounds crazy, I know. But let me explain…

Angry’s Two-Note NPC

How can you possibly populate an entire world with relatable NPCs and role-playing them effectively? You can’t. Because you suck. But here’s how you can fake it.

Kobold Draft Picks

Homebrew adventures work so much better with custom-designed monsters. So let’s design some kobolds for my kobold adventure.

An Angry Shower Scene

Come into my shower. Lather up. Rinse off. And let your bored brain do a bunch of heavy lifting to make your adventure and scene design easier.

You Can Quit Encounters Anytime You Want

Why can’t you run a complex, engaging encounter with nothing but a paragraph of prose description and a copy of the PHB handy? Because you’re a system junkie, that’s why.

Recognizing Non-Humans for What they Aren’t

What makes a NPC likable? I don’t know. But I do know what makes an NPC seem like an actual human thing worthy of human feelings. We call that relatability and this whole article is how to pull that off.

…But You Can’t Make Them Care

People have been asking me for years to teach them how to create and run games that their players actually emotionally give a crap about. And I’ve been avoiding answering for years. But now I’m ready to tell you how to make players care.

How to Run an Online Game… If You Must

Have you been forced to abandon real-world gaming due to current global events? Have no fear, Angry is here to tell you to run an online game. Just in time for the global lockdown to lift. You’re welcome.

Update to the Update

A quick update. Still not dead. Been working. Here’s the stuff that’s coming.

What D&D 5E Does Right

Yes, you read the title right. I’m actually going to be positive for once and talk about some of the good design choices in D&D 5E. This is what happens when you get really drunk on the day your next article is due.

How to Homebrew: Clickbait Worldbuilding

The biggest obstacle to starting a homebrew campaign is having to build a world. And the biggest obstacle to running a good game is actually building the world. You’re better off just not worldbuilding.

The Great Magic Item Analysis: How to Price an Item

It’s time for the AngryCraft Great Magic Item Analysis. Well, it’s time for the first part. The boring one with all the math. But, when it’s done, we’ll know exactly how to set a magic item’s price.

The Whatever Stat

Systems and rules are nice, but tools are better. So here’s a simple tool that you can use to do whatever you need to do. Really.

Designing with a Strong D (And Also the Return of Crafting)

Most amateur and professional game designs try to jump from the feeling they want something to evoke right into mechanical game design. And that’s a mistake. Because, to design a good system, you need a big, strong D. As the Angry GM demonstrates by talking about the return of his magic item crafting system!

How to Run a Biblical Campaign

A campaign bible is a powerful tool any GM can use to run a better campaign. As long as they don’t f$%& it up by trying to do it right.