Y’All Mind If I Rant About Doors?
No, characters do not break down doors and every time you let your players say they do, you ruin my game design. Stop it.
The Hacking Problem
I ran a crappy encounter and rather than accept the blame, I’m going to blame not just the system, but the fundemental underlying fabric of all roleplaying gaming ever. And I’m not even going to solve the problem. Happy Thanksgiving.
Order Matters: Guided Nonlinearity and Closed Openness
When it comes to gameplay experiences, order matters. What comes first, what comes next, it’s literally a game changer. So what’s a conscientious adventure maker to do when roleplaying game is all about letting players explore any way they want?
The Lost Adventuring Day (Part I): Merely Building an Adventure Day
The new…ish D&D DMG is actually a pretty good resource for adventure building tips, except for omitting one thing everyone stupidly hated because they were stupid. Let’s talk about The Adventure Day and what it really means.
How Well Do You Know Your PCs?
How much of your prep time should you spend before the start of a campaign reviewing the players’ characters? How much time should you spend before each session reviewing their Reactions and Bonus Actions? I’m willing to bet the correct answer is, “More than you do.”
More Shapey Goodness
Before I move on from Scenario Shape, let’s talk a bit about we might apply these ideas to detailed Encounter building. When we actually get to that. Someday.
Two Things I Hate About Virtual Tabletops (And One Thing I Love)
Time for me to be a cranky old grognard and yell about modern technology again. Except, actually, that’s not what I’m going to do at all. I mean, I am going to yell, and I am going to be cranky, but it won’t be what you think.
Ask Angry: The RP and The G and Mere Adventure Buildery
Yes, another Ask Angry, but it contains an important apology I must deliver to all of my Mere Adventure Builders before I write you an article about designing adventures around days and rests and things.
Ask Angry: Passive Knowledge and Other Examples of Passive Play
It’s time for me to answer a question from my Ask Angry mailbag. This one is about the proper and correct use of Passive Checks for Intelligence-based skills in D&D. Regardless of what the rules might say.
When Is a Scenario Not a Scenario?
I lied. Everything isn’t a Scenario. Also, Santa isn’t real. But Scenario Design is as real as Christmas and it’s just as magical.
Ask Angry: Player-Facing Rules, Death Saves, and Nothing About Alignment
In this Ask Angry Mailbag, I address several important topics, such as when I edit people’s messages, which books in my collection are the lightest, and whether I care about my readers opinions. I also answer at least a few questions I was actually asked.
Fixing Initiative Because I Want To (Part II): Angry’s Recovery Time Initiative System
Remember that long-ass rant I posted about why I thought it was worth rewriting the turn order and initiative system in modern D&D even if you didn’t? Well, guess what? I went and did it.
Fixing Initiative Because I Want To (Part I): The Ugly Rant
Yes, I know Initiative doesn’t matter but, like, what if it did matter? It really should? Whose fault is it that it doesn’t? How can I fix it? More importantly, who can I scream at about it?
How Shape Shapes Scenarios
Now that you’ve learned how to break a scenario design into hierarchical levels, I can show you how to spot — and plan — a scenario’s shape. And what that means. And why its good.
The Campaign Manager’s Guide to Conflict Resolution: Part I
I may have put True Campaign Managery on hold, but I’m still delivering on my promise to teach you how to resolve table conflicts like a True Campaign Manager. Settle in; it’s a long ride.
When to Stop Narrating
In this throwback to my classic Up Your GMing Level style advice, I provide a simple… ish way to adjudicate and narrate protracted, time-consuming actions that don’t need a bunch of moment-by-moment gameplay.
Structure All the Way Down
More True Scenario Design and more on structure. Actually, the real structure discussion starts here. Last time, I breathlessly yelled about what makes good structure good and bad structure suck. Now I’m actually going to show you structure. I’ll even outline a crappy adventure you can finish for your own use if you suck at tone and genre.
Real Game Masters Run Half-Baked Adventures
Let’s celebrate the start of the year’s back nine with an inspiring and uplifting message about how you misunderstood everything I said about everything about whether or not you suck and you suck for that. Or, to say it another way, let’s talk about real, human Game Masters balance good design with practical prep and polish.
Struction: An Introduction to Structure
It’s time to open a new chapter in our True Scenario Designery journey. So let’s talk about how scenario structure is like the beams and masts that hold up a confection shaped like an animated porifera. You heard me.
What “One-Shot” Means and Why I Hate You
This is a nasty, ugly, mean-spirited rant but lots of you need to hear it. Let me tell you what the word “one-shot” actually means and why you’re an asshole if you fight about it.
Scenario Design on a Need to Know Basis
Much as I really want to move on from the End the Goblins scenario design example, people keep asking really important questions that deserve good answers. So today’s lesson is how the final design of End the Goblins might provide the players with the information they need to win it.. And how little information that actually is.
Ask Angry: Making Players Like Your World
In this Ask Angry installment, I tell Randall — and all of you — how to make your world a nice place players want to be nice to. Unless they’re assholes.
Post-Play Pre-Prep Prep
Basic game mastering tricks anyone can use? Promises of brevity broken? Alliterative potty jokes? Sounds like classic Angry.
Open-Endedness, Open Challenges, and Hat Theory
This rambling rant covers a lot of ground about the many hats a Game Master has to wear and why you shouldn’t worry about worry about open-endedness or creativity when you’re writing adventures. Seriously.
Challenge Or Goal?
In this informal little digression from the main True Scenario Designery lessons, I’ll help you suss out the difference between goals and challenges. Because, as some of my supporters are about to learn, they’re easy to confuse.
Just Shut Up About Min-Maxing (Part II): No, Seriously, Shut Up
This is the rant about why Game Masters need to shut up about Min-Maxing I didn’t publish two weeks ago.
Ask Angry: Too Many Players and Meaningful Apocalypse Games
It’s mailbag time. Two questions this month: how to run an open-world game for too many people with too-short sessions and whether PbtA games can provided meaningful experiences.
Just Shut Up About Min-Maxing (Part I): Understanding Player Motivations
This is not a rant about why Game Masters need to shut up about Min-Maxing. This is the lesson about player motivation that threatened to eat that rant. The rant is coming soon.
Momentous and Inertial Adventure Design
I promised you a big honking example of how to design an adventure with goals, challenge, momentum, and inertia in mind. This is it.
Ask Angry April 2025 Mailbag: On the Investigation Skill and Making Interesting Mechanics
In this month’s Ask Angry, I explain the rigors of using the Investigate skill to give players information without ruining mysteries and rant about how mechanics are never actually interesting.