A chronological listing of every post The Angry GM has ever… posted.
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.
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.
The topic so nice, I wrote about it twice. This is the follow up to that first lesson about yelling at your friends for their crappy attendance to your pretend elf game.
In this True Campaign Managery lesson, I talk about the single most fun aspect of Game Mastering: yelling at your friends about showing up on time and punishing them for ghosting you. Whee!
Let’s end June on a low note. I’ve pulled five questions from my Ask Angry mailbag and I’m gonna answer at least four of them.
It’s time for the first of three hodgepodges of game design concepts that together make a sort-of foundation for this whole True Scenario Design thing.
The Scenario Design cat is out of the bag and clawing up the furniture. Which means it’s time for a real True Scenario Designery introduction. And this is it.
“If the players can do it, so can the monsters.” Is that really true? Is it good Game Mastering? Good Game Design? Spoiler: No.
I’ve made a terrible decision. But I can’t tell you what it is until I defend my stance on worlds that level with the characters and get you to sing the game design anthem with me.
Someone once asked me, “Is game balance worth a damn?” I don’t remember who or why or when, but I remember the question. And now I’m gonna rant an answer.
True Campaign Managery lesson time! Again. In this lesson, I’m going to teach all y’all how to host a meeting. Any meeting at all. Including game sessions. Which are meetings.
In the second of two office-hours discussions, I rant about what it means to actually exercise good judgment and how it’s got nothing to do with building checklists or worrying about hypotheticals.
We need to have a frank, open, and difficult discussions about why I keep calling Game Consent Surveys horseshit. Or rather, I need to explain and you need to shut up and listen.
In this True Campaign Managery lesson, I explore the idea of a Session Zero and whether it’s worth hosting one? Spoiler alert: usually no.
To celebrate my emerging from the disaster that resulting from letting my supporters pick the topic, I’m going to answer a bunch of questions sent in by readers. There’s no way that can go wrong.
To bring the Character Arc-Pocalypse to a close, today I’m writing about Character Arcs. For real this time.
Let’s keep the Not-Character-Arc Momentum going. Here’s my super secret recipe for executing an absolutely terrible Personal Character Quest Campaign in the least terrible way possible.
This isn’t a Feature about incorporating Character Arcs into tabletop roleplaying games. That would be interesting. This is a boring-ass Feature about players picking their own stupid character quests. Which is a terrible idea.
Now that you’ve decided to start a campaign and ignore your players’ input — you master of selfishness you — it’s time to start having visions.
Time for a little digression on the three kinds of Structure. Just don’t expect a useful lesson.
You can’t run a campaign without starting a campaign. And you can’t start a campaign without making ten thousand choices. And of all those choices, it’s the second one that’ll get you.
In the first in an official series of supporter-requested Features, I’ll tell you why your players don’t suck at tracking inventory and how to fix that.
You can’t manage a social gaming club that provides your friends with hours of fun unless you’re willing to be a selfish prick. Trust me; if there’s one thing I know, it’s being a selfish prick.
Thanks to a courageous remark by a Frienemy in my Discord server, I finally have my New Year’s Post. And to show my respect and gratitude, I shall now proceed to piss all over that remark.
Thanks to Frienemy-for-Life Mendel, I get to cancel myself by talking about what “always evil” means, how it’s different for orcs and devils, and why both are good for the game. Whee!
I warned you that I’d be putting this column on hold, but you all didn’t listen. You kept e-mailing me. Fortunately, I lied. So it’s Mailbag time.
All I wanted to do was clarify myself. I didn’t mean to end up rambling about what playstyles mean and where they come from and whether it’s time to add another letter to our favorite playstyle acronym.
I took a break from my holiday travels to answer some reader-submitted questions. Merry Christmas.
In another article I absolutely don’t want to write, I explain why not being able to boss your players around isn’t a lack of Game Mastering skill, it’s a personality defect. That should go over big.
It’s time for the long, lost, missing Encounter resolution lesson: how to resolve stealth actions and infiltration scenes. And after you read it, you’ll totally understand why I tried to cut it from the roster. Dumbasses.