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.
…But You Can’t Make Them Care
People have been asking me for years to teach them how to create and run games that their players actually emotionally give a crap about. And I’ve been avoiding answering for years. But now I’m ready to tell you how to make players care.
How to Run an Online Game… If You Must
Have you been forced to abandon real-world gaming due to current global events? Have no fear, Angry is here to tell you to run an online game. Just in time for the global lockdown to lift. You’re welcome.
Angry’s Double Impossible Adventure Building Checklist
I’ve been dared to do the impossible: write a simple, adventure-building checklist AND keep it short. Can I pull it off? Do bears s$&% on the Pope?
How to Homebrew: Clickbait Worldbuilding
The biggest obstacle to starting a homebrew campaign is having to build a world. And the biggest obstacle to running a good game is actually building the world. You’re better off just not worldbuilding.
How to Run a Biblical Campaign
A campaign bible is a powerful tool any GM can use to run a better campaign. As long as they don’t f$%& it up by trying to do it right.
The Game Must Go On: When Procrastination Wrecks Your Gaming Life
Do you cancel too many games? Do you put off working on too many projects? Do you find yourself falling behind in your gaming obligations? Well, I sure as hell did. And what helped me might help you too.
Fighting With Your Voice (Part 1… Maybe?)
I hate when people misuse my teachings to ruin things. Like maps. It’s okay to have nice maps. Even if you’re a mapaholic. But you should know how not to use a map. Especially in combat. You need to learn how to run a battle without a grid.
The Angry GM’s GameholeCon Seminars
A couple of weeks ago, I delivered a pair of seminars at GameholeCon VII in Madison, Wisconsin. And I recorded the things so I could eventually get them posted over on YouTube on a brand new Angry Games YouTube channel. Which I have now more or less done. Actually less. There were some issues.
Lost Player Skills: Calling
Maybe this is just me being an angry, 40-something, gen x grognard, but gamers today have lost touch with some essential skills. Skills that those fancy core books USED TO teach you. Like mapping. And calling. Which is what this one is about: calling.
Lost Player Skills: Mapping
Maybe this is just me being an angry, 40-something, gen x grognard, but gamers today have lost touch with some essential skills. Skills that those fancy core books USED TO teach you. Like mapping. And calling. But this one’s about mapping.
Flight to Elturel: An Object Lesson in Adventure Design: Designing Part 2 (Part 3)
Finishing my look at how I designed the first adventure of my new campaign, I describe how I designed the second scene of Flight to Elturel as a moving parts adventure full of humanity and conflict and s$&%.
What Makes Exploration Exploration?
Everyone wants exploration in their game and everyone tries to put it there, but almost no one gets it to feel right. Probably because no one can even define exploration. Until now.
The Power of Editing
If you’re having trouble handling wilderness travel, maybe the problem is you forgot how to use narration and action adjudication to pace your game. Just like every other average GM out there.
Flight to Elturel: An Object Lesson in Adventure Design: Designing Part 1 (Part 2)
Continuing my look at how I designed the first adventure of my new campaign, I describe how I designed the first scene of Flight to Elturel and the three encounters that made it up.
Does Ammunition Really Matter Matter Matter?
GMs tend to make a lot of bad decisions for good reasons. One bad decision a lot of GMs make has to do with tracking ammunition. Or not tracking ammunition.
Between Adventure and Encounter
The D&D Level Editor that is the DMG would have you believe that an Adventure is just a string of Encounters that maybe all get placed on a map. But there’s something between Adventure and Encounter that good game designers use to great effect. And even though you’re probably not a good game designer, you can use it too.
The Road to Elturel: An Object Lesson in Adventure Design (Part 1)
Recently, I actually got to run a game! And that means I got to write an adventure! And since we’re talking about adventure design right now, I can use that adventure as an object lesson in adventure design.
Coping with Loss
Table-top RPG adventure designers can learn a lot from video games. But one thing they can’t learn from video games is how to cope with loss. That is, how to make loss and failure part of the game.
Hashtag Adventure Goals
Without a goal, a game isn’t a game. And since D&D is a game without goals, that means it’s your job as an adventure designing GM, to set a goal.
Dice: Beautiful and Terrible as the Dawn (Whatever THAT Means)
If you want to understand Angry’s All-Encompassing Action Adjudication Axiom, it’s important that you know why we even dice. And why dice suck.
Good Ingredients Make Good Adventures
How is an adventure like a cake? Both of them are delicious baked goods that I love to eat, except for the adventure. But they are alike in that they need the right ingredients to be any good. And this adventure is all about cakes, adventures, and ingredients. Except it’s not really about cakes. I wish I had some cake.
Plan Hard, Work Hard, Play Hard
Much as I would love to sit here and describe the various elements of a homebrew adventure, you’re not ready for that crap yet. You don’t even know how to plan, I can’t tell you what to plan.
Being In-Flex-Able
I WAS going to rant about ability scores. But I accidentally ended up giving good advice about being inflexible for the good of the game. Sorry.
Gambling on Action
What if it turned out that everything I ever taught you about action adjudication was wrong? And that there was an entirely different way of looking at actions in role-playing games? Well, don’t worry. Nothing I told you was wrong. But there is another way of looking at actions. And sometimes, everything I told you is wrong. Sometimes, you’re not resolving an action, you’re taking a gamble.
So You Want to Brew an Adventure?
People keep asking me to revisit adventure building. And to make it clear and useful. Maybe spell out a nice, simple process. Fine. Let’s talk about building your own adventures from scratch. Again. Only better.