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.
You’re Not Ready to Manage Social Interaction Like a Motherf$&%ing Anything
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.
Sending Players to the Bench
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?
Angry’s Two-Note NPC
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.
Kobold Draft Picks
Homebrew adventures work so much better with custom-designed monsters. So let’s design some kobolds for my kobold adventure.
An Angry Shower Scene
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.
Two Other Things You Never Heard of to Make Encounters Not Suck
If you want to break your addiction to encounter rules and mechanics, there’s just two things you need to learn. Two things I should have taught you years ago. Sorry.
You Can Quit Encounters Anytime You Want
Why can’t you run a complex, engaging encounter with nothing but a paragraph of prose description and a copy of the PHB handy? Because you’re a system junkie, that’s why.
Mr. Angry’s Wild Ride: Outlining an Angry Adventure
All right, you asked for it. Let’s use the Amazing Adventure Building Checklist to actually build an amazing adventure. First step is steps one through five. It makes sense in context.
What it Means to Design an Adventure the Angry Way
Before I use my amazing checklist to show you how to design an adventure the Angry Way, I have to explain what the Angry Way is and why it’s so much better than the Crap Way.
Recognizing Non-Humans for What they Aren’t
What makes a NPC likable? I don’t know. But I do know what makes an NPC seem like an actual human thing worthy of human feelings. We call that relatability and this whole article is how to pull that off.