The Infamous Angry Riddle Contest

Once upon a time, six years ago, I ran a contest on my website. And people were furious. As a fun bit of bonus content, here’s the story and the logic puzzle that infuriated my budding fanbase.

Don’t Roll the Dice When You Can Hide Them Instead

We play games because we don’t know how they are going to turn out. And games use several tricks to keep us from knowing the outcome. The problem is GMs only ever use one of those tricks. And it’s the worst one.

The Italian Campaign: On Shape and Glue

Designing a campaign is like ordering dinner at The Olive Garden. Except for the parts that aren’t like that at all. Which is most of the parts. Anyway, let’s talk about campaign structures, about the Shape of your game and the Glue that holds it together.

Tweaking the Core of D&D 5E

Before we can build new modes of play, we need to admit that the core rules of D&D 5E have a few oddities and are lacking in a few things we’re going to need. So let’s get out our tweaking tools and tinker with the core.

Do We Really Need More Rules: Modes of Play in D&D

I can’t help how my brain works. I get distracted from solving problems by solving totally different problems. But before I invent more goddamned game mechanics, it’s worth questioning whether I should.

Ask Angry: Why Doesn’t Speed Affect CR in D&D 5E?

Managrimm asks: Why doesn’t a monster’s speed factor into it’s CR? The aggressive trait raises your offensive CR. It seems like ranged attackers with a speed of 60’ are more dangerous than ones with a speed of 15’.

Becoming a Hack

I don’t have time to evaluate every monster, class, and rule that everyone sends me. And I don’t have time to help you build every monster, class, and rule that you want me to. But I DO have time to teach you how to build and evaluate your own creations for yourself. Welcome to my new series on Becoming a Hack.

Villains and Characters: Villains AS Characters

Villains are stories, but they are also people. And that means they have personality traits and fears and hopes and dreams and interactions, right? Well, if you want a good game, you don’t want too much of that crap.

Winning RPGs: You People Made Me Do This

I wanted to write about NPCs, but so many people argued about whether RPGs were winnable and whether they needed goals that I had to explain to everyone why they are and they do. And then I had to explain why Fiasco isn’t an RPG.

The Death of the Gygax: Why Rules Exist

Just because someone wrote something, that doesn’t mean they know anything about it. Gygax is no more trustworthy about RPGs than anyone else. Especially when it comes to the importance of rules.

Villains and Plots: The Villain AS Plot

When is an NPC not an NPC? When it’s a villain. Because villains are more than mere NPCs. Because villains create plots. And I don’t mean evil schemes. I mean stories.

Metaphor: What’s the Meta-FOR?

There’s a difference between a game’s mechanics and its metaphor. But that doesn’t mean the two are separate. Or even separable. But it does mean you can empower yourself to create one by understanding the other.

GMing For Love or Money

Should a GM get paid to run games? That’s the latest ridiculous internet argument I got to witness. But, believe it or not, it’s actually worth weighing in on. At least, I think it is. So here I go.

Antagonizing Your PCs

While not every NPC is a monster, every monster is an NPC. And that’s what this is all about. NPC antagonists. The violent and the non-violent. We’re talking enemies today.

Ask Angry: Cleaning Out the E-Mail Edition

As we gear up for the holiday season, it’s a good time to look back. Specifically, it’s time to look back through the old Angry e-mail and answer some more reader questions. Here’s some questions about illusionist villains, elven aging, and running solo adventures.

Getting There is Half the Fun

They say that the journey is its own reward and that getting there is half the fun. Yeah? Well, not in D&D. Overland travel in D&D sucks. But here I come to unsuck it. Or to help you just get rid of it altogether. Either way is fine. Just pick one.

Resistance is Futile: Assimilating Your NPCS (Into Factions)

People like to make a big thing out of factions, guilds, collectives, churches, cults, and organizations. But they don’t need to be complicated at all. In fact, they are remarkably simple. You just need a little lesson from Star Trek. You know, before it got crappy.

Ask Angry: How to Write a One-Shot

What’s a one-shot adventure? What’s a single-session adventure? And how is writing them different from writing any other adventure? In this Ask Angry, I answer those questions and also reference The Last Starfighter!

Nothing Here But Worthless Gold!

Like Quark closely examining Morn’s hidden stash in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Who Mourns for Morn, if you look too closely at the treasure system in D&D, you’ll find someone has extracted all of the value and there’s nothing left but worthless gold.

Who’s Driving This Adventure Anyway

Few Game Masters think to ask who is meant to drive the plot in the adventure they are writing. Which is a shame, because there are lots of ways an adventure can be driven. And by lots, I mean two. There are two ways. And understanding them can help make your adventure writing easier.

Ask Angry: Stealing Agency

This week, I ponder the question of when it’s okay to take control of a character away from a player thanks to a question from a reader with a really dumb name.

Ask Angry: Simultaneous Actions and Downtime Activities

This week, I tackle two different questions related by the theme of, umm, players doing things. Yeah. First, how to handle two players going at the same time in combat. Second, how to handle players doing things between adventures.

Ask Angry: Run Away, Run Away

In this week’s Ask Angry, Brendan asks Angry how to get the PCs to run away from monsters so that he can run a sandbox game without any structure. And I tell him how to build a better campaign instead.

Ask Angry: Let’s Make an Honor System!

Once again, we’re digging into the massive well of Ask Angry questions to see if we can’t squeeze 5,000 words out of an interesting question. This week, let’s write an honor system for D&D!