Want to learn how to run your first game? Bring your GM skills to the next level? Build an adventure? Start a campaign? Start here to learn everything The Angry GM has to teach you about running and creating games.
After many long years of refusing, I’m finally revealing the truth: just how do you take good game session notes. The answer isn’t what you think and you’re not going to like it. Which is pretty much standard for me.
Experienced Game Master suck at learning new TTRPG systems. But then, game publishers suck at teaching new TTRPG systems. It’s a match made in hell. Fortunately, Angry is here to help.
With this new, ongoing series of lessons, I — the Angry GM — intend to teach you everything you need to know to keep a Campaign alive until you grant it the sweet mercy of death.
It’s time to wrap up this whole How to Run a Game Like a True Game Master thing by explaining how to Determine and Describe the Outcome of Social Actions in Social Encounters. And how to portray non-player characters properly.
As I didn’t die in a fiery conflagration, I owe you a real lesson on the Art of the Cutaway. Here it is. Maybe next time, I’ll get lucky.
Time for a brief aside to answer a question from Aspiring True Game Master Sloth about managing the Action Queue when parties split themselves between scenes or tasks and an introduction to an art you already know.
It’s time for the actual, practical advice portion of the “resolving action scenes” lesson. And you did not read that title wrong. Because the first practical thing you’ve got to learn is that True Game Masters declare their players’ social actions for them. I shit you not.
Now that I’ve wasted thousands of words and several hours laying the groundwork for portraying NPCs, it’s time for me to lay the groundwork for resolving social encounters. Or rather, social conflicts. Because there’s still no such thing as a social encounter.
Let’s continue the discussion from last week and explore how Game Masters don’t roleplay. Ever.
Put your books and syllabusi away, kids. We need to settle some things before we go any further. It’s time you either believe me or you get out. Because you can’t run an NPC if you don’t believe everything I’ve said so far. And you can run social and stealth scenes without NPCs.
I promised you a long-ass, comprehensive example of a fully narrated battle. So here it is. Enjoy.
It’s time for yet another lesson in resolving Encounters wherein I apply the same shit I’ve already taught you something like ten times to a specific in-game situation and claim I’m teaching you something new. This times, it’s traps and hazards.
In the second of two True Game Mastery lessons about resolving Combat, I spend half the lesson teaching you how to use what you already know better. And then I teach you something new.
In the first of two True Game Mastery lessons about resolving combat, I teach you nothing. Because I already taught you everything you need to know to start combat right. You just don’t know it yet.
True Game Mastery requires balance. True Game Masters know they can’t impose strict and arbitrary turn-and-time-based limits on their characters actions, but neither can they allow totally temporal anarchy. How do they manage complex strings of actions from multiple characters then? I’ll show you.
This is the start of a series of True Game Mastery lessons about running different kinds of Encounters. Except it’s not. Because Encounters aren’t what you think they are.
As I made a mess of that last True Game Mastery lesson on Problematic Actions — given the feedback anyway — I’m holding a special study session to answer your questions and clarify my points.
Action adjudication is pretty straightforward. Except when it’s not. And when a tricky action comes along, Mere Game Executors are stuck executing the game’s pre-programmed code like robots while True Game Masters follow the Three Laws of Game Mastering NonRobotics.
It’s tough to know when to call for a die roll and when not to. And no matter what anyone’s told you — including me — there’s no substitute for good, mature, adult judgment. So throw away your checklists and simple rules and trust your gut.
True Game Masters know that nothing breaks a roleplaying game’s flow quite as much as the game’s rules do. So they take a methodical approach to keeping the rules in their place.
A True Game Master paces the game with smooth narration, flowing seamlessly from scene to scene and moment to moment. Unfortunately, a TTRPG is a dialogue, not a monologue, and eventually the players get to kill the pace by talking.
Narration: the art of telling your players what’s what and who’s where. If you find yourself muddling to provide good Scene-Setting Narration, maybe it’s not your skills that are the problem, maybe it’s your lifestyle. Seriously.
True Game Masters take Ownership and Build investment. And those concepts are so vital to Game Mastering that I’m never going to mention them again. And what I do mention won’t make sense. Because GMing is nonsense.
I can’t teach you to be a True Game Master — yes, that’s my plan; I love doing the impossible — I can’t teach you to be a True Game Master without telling you what it means to master Game Mastering.
Save the World campaigns are pretty divisive. Mostly because GMs always screw them up. Want an example of a great Save the World TTRPG campaign? Look no further than Chrono Trigger, a Super Nintendo game from the 90s.
The New Year is a good time for reflection. Searching the past for the clues that’ll help you find a better future. So, this New Year, Angry invites you to think about why you even do this whole game mastering thing.
Save the World campaigns are pretty divisive. Mostly because GMs always screw them up. Want an example of a great Save the World TTRPG campaign? Look no further than Chrono Trigger, a Super Nintendo game from the 90s.
Weather, lunar phases, dates, and seasons? Why keep track of that crap in your game? Well, there’s several reasons, but only one that matters.
Sometimes, a GM has to fit an entire gaming experience in a single, limited time slot. And a GM has to do some ugly, ugly things to make that happen.
It turns out that it’s actually important for players to periodically describe their characters to the group. Unfortunately, players suck at everything. Especially describing characters. Fortunately, I wrote a script you can force them to follow.