Town Mode: What Happens in Town Mode
It’s time to explore Town Mode once again. But before you waste too much time on this s$&%, you might want to know why it’s actually worth it.
Town Mode Lesson 1: Town with a Capital T
On the heels of Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign, it’s time for a new masterclass. This one about building, running, and playing in town. Or rather Town.
Why Are There So Many People in the Angryverse?
After posting several Angry Table Tales — well, two — I’ve been asked by numerous people — well, two — why there are so many NPCs in the Angryverse. Here’s my answer.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Keeping it Going
It’s time to finish this Simple Homebrew Campaign thing. At least, it’s time for me to finish it. Your work has only just begun.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Building a Next Adventure
And now, it’s time to build your player’s next adventure. And then, it’ll be time to build their next next adventure. And so on. Forever.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Mapping a Region
You’ve built an adventure and a town. Now all you’ve got to do is map the world around it. Simple, right? Actually, it is.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Building Town
Now that you’ve started your Simple Homebrew Campaign and you’ve got your players distracted with an adventure, it’s time to start building the world around them. First step: make a town. Or rather, make Town.
Let Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Your Cast of Characters
Time for the fourth article containing the third which explains the second step in the Simple Homebrew Campaign startup process: how to sit your players down and squeeze them until playable characters come out. And how to stop them from ruining the simplicity of your Simple Homebrew Campaign.
How You Handle Your Dice Bag
I don’t have a Long, Rambling Introduction™ today. Sorry. I considered several rants that might fit here. I thought about pissing and moaning about modern dice designs and dice accessories like dice towers and dice trays and how the people who use that s$&% need to die in a fire. I also thought about whining,…
Let Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Your First Adventure
Sit down and shut up. Class is back in session. Time for the second real lesson in this whole simple, homebrew campaign thing. Or maybe the third. Or the fourth. I’ve lost track. I probably shouldn’t count the bulls$&% introduction wherein it took me 5000 words just to define the word campaign — and I…
Ten Campaigns with Crazy Continuities You Should Never Ever Run
I dared myself to come up with ten campaign ideas that don’t rely on strict party-and-character continuity. And I have met that dare.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Making Premises
So you think you’re ready to start a homebrew campaign, huh? Well, you definitely are. Because it’s not as hard as you think. It’s all about making premises. And keeping them.
Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: What’s in a Campaign
Real GMs run campaigns. And the realest of the real GMs run campaigns they write themselves. In the introduction to this new series, I’m going to tell you what you need to know about campaigns if you’re going to build and run one of your very own.
Specific Beats General: Streamlining Action Adjudication
As promised, a break from the treasure talk to analyze automated action adjudication through “general approaches.”
Silver and Gold: How I Handle Treasure at the Table
Since you all asked, here’s an article about How I Handle Treasure — especially art objects — in D&D. Which isn’t how “you” should do it. I’ll tell you How You Should Handle Treasure later.
Plotting Murder and Other Crimes
The topic for today is mysteries. Not mystery adventures. Mysteries. Yeah, I know that sounds like a bunch of semantical bulls$&%. 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.