A chronological listing of every post The Angry GM has ever… posted.
You couldn’t leave me alone about it, could you? Fine, I’ll tell you why I chose D&D 3.5 over Pathfinder and why I banned monks and hate gnomes. And why I can’t give you an answer you’ll like. And how to think for yourself.
I’m in the midst of starting a new campaign. So it’s a good time to look at how to start a new campaign. Especially when you don’t have the time to do a full Session Zero.
It’s time for my occasionally annual New Year’s resolution type post.
It’s a Christmas miracle. I opened up some letters to Angry for my December mailbag and they were all good. No one ended up on the naughty list.
Let’s not talk about role-playing games today. Let’s talk about other games and how they might help us design role-playing game downtime systems. And why that’s a terrible thing to talk about.
Before I can show you how I present towns, I have to talk about what players can do in towns. And before I can talk about what players can do in towns, I have to talk ABOUT what players can do in towns. That’ll make sense when you read the article. But the article’s about downtime activities.
After recording an interviewing with Nick at the Brewmaster’s show and trying to test a new way of building D&D towns, I decided I needed to bulls$&% for 5,000 words about the concept of exploration.
It’s that time again. Time for me to phone it in by answering reader questions. This month, I’m talking about advancement systems, hidden mechanics, and not talking about World of Darkness.
A long time ago, I tried to write a blog post about how to run good mysteries in D&D. But then, I got distracted and became The Angry GM. Ten years later, D&D has become even worse for running mysteries and I need to fix it to finish my latest project. But this isn’t about mysteries. It’s about using proficiencies right in 5E.
Once upon a time, D&D allowed players to lead fellowships, attract merry men, and even just hire some temps from the Henchman’s Local #246. I miss those days and I’ve brought them back.
Once upon a time, D&D allowed players to lead fellowships, attract merry men, and even just hire some temps from the Henchman’s Local #246. I miss those days and I’m bringing them back.
Wherein I—a guy who has never turned an adventure into a module—tells everyone else how to turn adventures into modules. Using information hierarchies.
In this month’s Ask Angry Mailbag, the Angry GM answers a question about how to distribute magical items when creating D&D adventures. And nothing else.
You never know what you don’t know until you try to do it. I didn’t know, for example, that adventure modules really suck at presenting GMs with the information they need until I tried to write one of my own.
Trying to clear my desk before I head off for my writer’s retreat. Found these three, short topics scribbled on bits of paper and hacked them into a crappy three-for-one article about setting DCs, using passive checks properly, and instructing players.
Let’s see if I can piss off even more people in this follow-up to my article on resolving social actions by telling people they’re using Insight wrong.
When it comes to designing a dungeon map, there’s more than one way to skin a kobold. The key is picking the right way to flay.
Looking for a comprehensive guide to running a great social interaction encounter? Well, this article isn’t it. But it is the preamble to it in which you get a comprehensive guide to resolving social actions.
It’s mailbag time. This month, I discuss Old School Hack, wilderness encounters, encouraging your players to do things they don’t like, and adding warfare to your D&D campaign.
It’s bulls$&% time. And that means complaining about my correspondents again. This time, I’m complaining about how no one understands how to make decisions anymore.
It’s that time of the month: it’s time to make incremental progress on AngryCraft. This time, I define all of the different kind of things you’d make stuff out of.
Ideally, your game will have a perfect one-to-one ratio of players to characters. But sometimes the characters split up or a player skips a game or someone gets killed. What do you do then?
Time to open up the ole mailbag again. This time, I’m talking about how to let your players play two parties, expounding on game balance, telling people how to help their depressed GMs, and explaining why I totally suck and how I’m going to fix it.
There’s a better way to role-play. A more genuine, more engaging way. You just have to start playing your character before you know anything about them. Sounds crazy, I know. But let me explain…
How can you possibly populate an entire world with relatable NPCs and role-playing them effectively? You can’t. Because you suck. But here’s how you can fake it.
Homebrew adventures work so much better with custom-designed monsters. So let’s design some kobolds for my kobold adventure.
Time to dip into the ole mailbag and answer some more reader questions. This time, I’m talking about dynamic chases, money systems, and spellcasting monsters.
Time for my monthly pile of bulls$&%. If you’ll indulge me. I’d like to discuss what makes meaningful things meaningful.
Come into my shower. Lather up. Rinse off. And let your bored brain do a bunch of heavy lifting to make your adventure and scene design easier.
In the long awaited next-but-definitely-not-last part of the AngryCraft series, I come up with a way to describe every item in the DMG in just 20 words.