Ten Campaigns with Crazy Continuities You Should Never Ever Run
I dared myself to come up with ten campaign ideas that don’t rely on strict party-and-character continuity. And I have met that dare.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Making Premises
So you think you’re ready to start a homebrew campaign, huh? Well, you definitely are. Because it’s not as hard as you think. It’s all about making premises. And keeping them.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: What’s in a Campaign
Real GMs run campaigns. And the realest of the real GMs run campaigns they write themselves. In the introduction to this new series, I’m going to tell you what you need to know about campaigns if you’re going to build and run one of your very own.
Specific Beats General: Streamlining Action Adjudication
As promised, a break from the treasure talk to analyze automated action adjudication through “general approaches.”
Silver and Gold: How I Handle Treasure at the Table
Since you all asked, here’s an article about How I Handle Treasure — especially art objects — in D&D. Which isn’t how “you” should do it. I’ll tell you How You Should Handle Treasure later.
Plotting Murder and Other Crimes
The topic for today is mysteries. Not mystery adventures. Mysteries. Yeah, I know that sounds like a bunch of semantical bulls$&%. But it’s not. There’s a difference between designing a dragon — you know, making a stat block — and writing an adventure about slaying a dragon. You never thought about that, did you? Thing…
Lets Build Baby’s First Dungeon (Part 2 of 2)
Two weeks ago, I started building what I called Baby’s First Dungeon. I didn’t call it that because it was meant for newbie players, but because I was showing newbie homebrewer GMs how to scratch-build their own dungeon adventures. If you haven’t read that first article yet, go back and read it now. Because this…
Lets Build Baby’s First Dungeon (Part 1 of 2)
Because of the way it was written, this article doesn’t have a Long, Rambling Introduction™. The whole thing was kind of written like a Long, Rambling Introduction™. It’s pretty stream of consciousness. A mix of me explaining s$&% and thinking through s$&% and showing you the results. I didn’t outline it. I just started writing.…
How to Wilderness Right
You wait patiently for one week. Then, on the morning of Wednesday, October 13, an Angry article appears! It reveals Angry’s Secret Step-by-Step-ish Wilderness Travel Adjudication System! And that’s the problem with real life. You’ve got to actually wait through the passage of time. No time for a Long, Rambling Introduction™ today, though. We’ve got…
As the Game Turns
Basic RPG turn order. It’s easy when the actions are easy. But when the actions are big and complex, it’s still easy. You just have to know how to handle arbitrary s$&%.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Five: A Living World of S$&% to Do
In the fifth and first post-final lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you how to populate your world with stuff to do and how to help your players find it all.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Four: Prepping After the Fact
In the fourth and final lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you how to prep for each and every AOWG session… after you’ve finished running it.
Like Players Do
I promised I’d write a whole article about that Player Do List thing. So here it… isn’t. Because I can’t. But I wrote you a better article about something that’s related to Play Do Lists but it’s also way better. Not that you’ll think so.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Three: Presenting An Explorable World of Adventure (Part 2)
In the second half of the third lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you how to blow smoke at your players’ faces and call it exploration.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Three: Presenting An Explorable World of Adventure (Part 1)
In the first half of the third lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I tell you what it means to explore a world and also what the single most important list in your bag is.
Exploring by the Rules
Today’s lesson about how you all break your games and then ask me to fix them. Specifically, it’s about how all the little, fiddly rules that don’t seem to do anything are actually the key to interesting, meaningful, fun gameplay.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson Two: What to Bring With You
In the second lesson about Angry Open-World Gaming, I reveal what’s in my gaming bag whenever I show up to run a session of my open world game.
How to Run An Angry Open-World Game, Lesson One: Three Pillars
In this, the first of four lessons about how to run your own open-world game just like Angry, you’ll learn why your brain is just too damaged to run a good open-world game. Again.
How to Run an Angry Open-World Game, Part I: You Can’t
Let’s talk about this Angry Open World Game thing. We all knew this was coming. You knew it. I knew it. The moment I said, “I could tell you all how I’m running my open-world campaign, but I know you’re not really interested,” you knew I was playing “dance for your article.” And you should…
How to Play an Angry Open-World Game
I figured out to run exactly the sort of open world game I wanted to run. The perfect game for my players. I just forgot to tell them that.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Dice
It’s time for me to answer the same basic GMing question I’ve been answering differently every few years for the last twelve: when should you resort to using the rules and the dice to resolve things.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Conflict But Were Afraid I’d Punch You for Asking About
It’s time for the first real article about Narrative Theory for GMs. The topic is conflict in traditional narratives and in RPGs.
On Being a (Game) Master Storyteller
Now that I’ve confused all of y’all thoroughly about plot structure, let’s start a new series on narrative theory for game masters. That can’t possibly go wrong.
Plot Architecture 101
In the SECOND part of my TWO part so far series on plotting a campaign, I explain what plot structure is and why it’s useful. You know, before I do any crazy s$&% like trying to tell you about Korean narrative structures and their applicability in exploration-based campaigns.
Build a Better Campaign by Exploiting the East
Let’s appropriate us some culture! Let’s use a 1500-year old Korean narrative style to plot a better pretend elf game!
The Road Trip to Adventure
All you need to start a campaign is a bunch of a characters and a first adventure, right? That’s what I said. But if you’re going to start a campaign with an ongoing plot, that’s not true is it. Yes. It is. Come on a road trip with the Tiny GM and I and I’ll show you how.
Ringing in the New Game
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.
Investigative Resolution
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.
Obligatory Pun Title: Offering Insight Into the Insight Skill
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.
How to Skin a Dungeon in Four Easy Steps
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.