A chronological listing of every post The Angry GM has ever… posted.
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 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 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Basic game mastering tricks anyone can use? Promises of brevity broken? Alliterative potty jokes? Sounds like classic Angry.
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.
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.
This is the rant about why Game Masters need to shut up about Min-Maxing I didn’t publish two weeks ago.
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.
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.
I promised you a big honking example of how to design an adventure with goals, challenge, momentum, and inertia in mind. This is it.
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.
It’s exactly what it says on the tin.
It’s that Ask Angry time of the month. Today, I answer a totally polite, reasonable question about player instruction with absolutely unwarranted levels of insults and abuse. Enjoy.