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.
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.
How you start your game determines how it goes. And that doesn’t just affect you, it affects your players. Fortunately, Angry’s got a startup script you can install in your GM brain.
I’ve been pushing GMs to turn all the bookkeeping and character maintenance crap in D&D into a game of its own. Or rather, into a part of the game at the table. But many GMs have raised a question: what if their players don’t want to do that crap.
So, how does one go about turning a warlock — or any PC — to the Dark Side? In what will likely prove to be the most divisive and controversial post I’ve ever written, I’ll tell you…
Do you want your players to think strategically, act tactically, and play as a team? Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is I can help. The bad news is you’ve got some hard work to do.
If there’s one thing people ask me a lot, it’s how to get their players to. So, I’m going to teach you a great trick for getting your players to. You’re just not going to like it.
It’s time to explore Town Mode once again. But before you waste too much time on this s$&%, you might want to know why it’s actually worth it.
On the heels of Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign, it’s time for a new masterclass. This one about building, running, and playing in town. Or rather Town.
After posting several Angry Table Tales — well, two — I’ve been asked by numerous people — well, two — why there are so many NPCs in the Angryverse. Here’s my answer.
It’s time to finish this Simple Homebrew Campaign thing. At least, it’s time for me to finish it. Your work has only just begun.
And now, it’s time to build your player’s next adventure. And then, it’ll be time to build their next next adventure. And so on. Forever.
You’ve built an adventure and a town. Now all you’ve got to do is map the world around it. Simple, right? Actually, it is.
Now that you’ve started your Simple Homebrew Campaign and you’ve got your players distracted with an adventure, it’s time to start building the world around them. First step: make a town. Or rather, make Town.
Time for the fourth article containing the third which explains the second step in the Simple Homebrew Campaign startup process: how to sit your players down and squeeze them until playable characters come out. And how to stop them from ruining the simplicity of your Simple Homebrew Campaign.
I don’t have a Long, Rambling Introduction™ today. Sorry. I considered several rants that might fit here. I thought about pissing and moaning about modern dice designs and dice accessories like dice towers and dice trays and how the people who use that s$&% need to die in a fire. I also thought about whining,…
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$&% introduction wherein it took me 5000 words just to define the word campaign — and I…
I dared myself to come up with ten campaign ideas that don’t rely on strict party-and-character continuity. And I have met that dare.
So you think you’re ready to start a homebrew campaign, huh? Well, you definitely are. Because it’s not as hard as you think. It’s all about making premises. And keeping them.
Real GMs run campaigns. And the realest of the real GMs run campaigns they write themselves. In the introduction to this new series, I’m going to tell you what you need to know about campaigns if you’re going to build and run one of your very own.
As promised, a break from the treasure talk to analyze automated action adjudication through “general approaches.”
Since you all asked, here’s an article about How I Handle Treasure — especially art objects — in D&D. Which isn’t how “you” should do it. I’ll tell you How You Should Handle Treasure later.
The topic for today is mysteries. Not mystery adventures. Mysteries. Yeah, I know that sounds like a bunch of semantical bulls$&%. 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…
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…
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.…
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…
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$&%.