A chronological listing of every post The Angry GM has ever… posted.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you looking to run better games in the New Year? Do you need ten New Years Resolutions to fail at in 2017? Then look no further. I have ten resolutions I guarantee are unlike any others you’ve seen from OTHER crappy gaming blogs.
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.
I’m feeling reflective. Let’s reflect on some design elements from D&D 4E that definitely shouldn’t have been left out of 5E that can definitely make you a better monster builder.
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.
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.
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!
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.
The hardest thing any GM has to do is come up with stuff on the fly. Especially when that stuff needs mechanical rules behind it. Fortunately, you have this Marvelous Mechanical Miscellany for Ad Hoc Adjudication and Improvisational Invention.
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.
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.
Sanity mechanics? What are they? How do they work? Are they even necessary? Can we make them better? Let’s Ask Angry!
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.
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.
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!
Let’s answer some more reader questions this week! How do you build a calendar for your game? How do you keep a “save the world” plot arc from consuming your entire campaign?
It started as a simple question about how to juggle two plot lines. It became an entire treatise on building campaigns with multiple plot arcs. This article is the first ever article under the category “How to Build a F$&%ing Campaign.”
What do you do when your players force you to turn a nameless, faceless nobody into an actual NPC? What do you do when they don’t even start with a nameless, faceless nobody? How do you make NPCs out of nothing?
This article is about basic probability, dice, and statistics in D&D and other RPGs. I love this s$&% and I think it’s important and useful to understand. So, let’s use math to answer some questions about dice rolling in RPGs. Or not. Next week, I’m back to talking about NPCs, so you can skip this one if you want.
Everyone knows that the easiest way to start an adventure is to just have some damned NPC show up and tell the PCs what to do and how to do it. After all, that’s what MMORPGS do and it works for them. So why not do the same in D&D? Because Quest Givers can be so much more than expository text. Don’t waste that potential.
It’s time for yet another Ask Angry blitz! And the first two questions I answer are a little bit of site news. And then I answer real questions. Yay!
Tagalongs: NPCs that join the party. They are often derided, frequently misunderstood, and rarely used well. Because people are dumba$&es. Which is sad because Tagalongs are a GREAT Tool for your GMing Toolbox!
Well, it happened again. Another week on Twitter, another fight about why metagaming is bulls&$%. But what is metagaming? And why is it a waste of time to worry about it? Well, I’ll f$&%ing tell you.