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.
Dear Players: There’s a Better Way to Play
This isn’t for you GMs to read; it’s for you to print and hand to your players. That way, they can declare actions and play the game in a way that actually let’s you, you know, run a good game. Just let me talk to them. I’ll be nice.
Barking at Your Players: Advanced Combat Narration
There’s more to narrating combat than just flowery prose. Actually, there’s less. Combat needs less narration, more emotion, and more information.
Drawing an Unnecessary Map of Nothing At All
The first thing every GM does when they decide to create their own setting is to start drawing a map. And there’s no reason for that. Except one reason. Which is why that’s the first thing I did for my Pathfinder campaign.
Sitting Through Character Generation with Angry
With a crappy, generic pitch sold to my players, it was time to let them generate their characters. The problem was, they couldn’t do it on their own and I had to be involved. Ugh.
A Very Special Adventure
One of my least favorite holiday traditions is the one wherein I get bombarded with requests to explain how to write a good a holiday adventure. Or at least outline one. And I can’t fight it anymore.
More Like Session Negative Ten
What do you do when you’ve got nothing? Figure out how to make nothing sound like something, send it out, and deal with the fallout later. And that’s exactly what I did when my Session Zero for my new campaign fell apart.
Who Plays Vanilla WoW Anymore: Angry Starts a Campaign
For the first time in three years, I – Angry – am running an actual, real-life, regular campaign. And it’ll provide a great example of how to cobble together a campaign you don’t have time to plan or run in a system you haven’t used in years. At least, my Patrons think it will.
Welcome to Corneria: Establishing without Expositing
Every settlement in an RPG has its own tone. It’s own flavor. At least, it should. If you want it to be good. But how do you convey that tone without just telling the players what it is?
Setting Your Campaign Up to Succeed
It’s time to finally talk about world building and setting creation. Which means it’s time for the obligatory, overly long semantically discussion about the definition of the thing I’m talking about. Enjoy.
Conflicted Beliefs: Fluffy Story Bulls$&%
You asked for it. You wanted the fluffy, story bulls$&% to go along with the useful, systematic mythology-building thing I already posted. Here it is.
Conflicted Beliefs: Building a Perfect Five God Mythology for D&D
A well-build mythology can drive stories and create a fantastic world. Unfortunately, D&D doesn’t provide such a mythology. But you can make your own if you understand thematic conflict.
An Angry Guide to Practical Cartography
People keep asking me how to draw good maps. Well, I can’t teach you how to draw pretty maps, but I can teach you how to draw useful maps. The trick is to stop trying to draw maps and start presenting information instead.
Ideological Wars: Themes, Conflict, and RPG Settings
You can get a lot of mileage out of themes. Especially when you set up some thematic conflicts. You just have to know what themes are and how to set up their conflicts. And why “good versus evil” doesn’t count as a conflict.
Narrative Structure for Advanced Morons
Having developed a nice list of story turning points in previous articles, it’s time to turn our attention to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and see what additional turning points he’s got to offer. And to see if there’s anything MORE IMPORTANT people overlook when talking about Campbell. Hint: there is.
Narrative Structure for REAL Morons
This article EVENTUALLY builds a basic narrative structure for gamers. But first, it has to spend a time on some remedial lessons. Apparently, some things didn’t sink in the first time I discussed narrative structure.
Narrative Structure for Morons
The only thing worse than a GM with no sense of narrative structure is one who just learned some new form of narrative structure in school. This is an open letter to GMs obsessed with the three-act structure, the five-room dungeon, and Joseph Motherf$%&ing Campbell to PLEASE STOP E-MAILING ME.
Parfaits Ain’t Easy: Peeling the Onion Campaigns
Mysteries are like pancakes: solving one is satisfying, but solving a whole stack is even better. But when it comes to stacking mysteries into a delicious mystery campaign, it’s easy to f$&% it up.
Don’t Bring Me Solutions, Bring Me Problems
There’s a difference between a puzzle and a problem. And most GMs don’t understand the difference. That’s a shame because most GMs who think they want puzzles in their game actually want problems. And problems work better.
Puzzles Suck
I’m sick of dealing with questions about how to implement puzzles properly from GMs who insist that puzzles just suck. So, it’s time for me to act. By writing 5,000 words about it and then walking away.
These Are the Voyages: Adventure of the Week Campaigns
Sometimes, you just get tired of taking notes and you just want to show up and have a fun adventure. And then another. And another. Enter: The Adventure of the Week Campaign. Which has nothing to do with meatballs. Except when it does.
We Gotta Save; We Gotta Save the World: Epic Quest Campaigns
No type of campaign is more iconic than the Epic Quest Campaign, especially the Save the World Campaign. Well, unless you count Dungeon Delve Campaigns. And Adventure of the Week Campaigns. But shut up. We’re talking about Epic Quest and Save the World Campaigns.
From Zero to Pitch in 24 Hours
It’s time to look ahead to new beginnings. Specifically, the beginning of my new campaign. And since I went through all of the trouble of running a Session Zero and writing a Pitch, I thought I’d let you see exactly how I developed MY upcoming campaign. Merry F$%&ing Christmas or whatever.
False Starts and Dirty Lies: Starting a Campaign Wrong
Start as you mean to go on. It’s good advice for writers and it’s good advice for GMs. Except when it isn’t. But it is. But it might not be.
How NOT to Teach Newbies D&D
If you give a newbie a game, he’s going to want to a campaign. If you give the newbie a campaign, you’ll be stuck with a terrible player for life. Don’t make that mistake.
It’s Not The Size of Your Campaign: Scope and Scale and Safe Havens
There are infinite ways to fill that blank piece of paper that is your campaign plan. Here’s about four of them. We’ll cover the other infinity-minus-four in future articles.
How to XP Good
Why don’t people understand why character advancement is important? Why don’t people see the value of point-based character advancement? Why is it so hard to handle XP right? Well, when even Mike Mearls can’t get it right, there’s no hope for you. At least, there wasn’t. Until I came along to tell you How to XP Good.
Training Bra Plotting: How to Plan a Campaign (Or Adventure)
Encounters, adventures, and campaigns all start off life the same way. How do you turn one into the other and back again? Well, it’s like putting it in a good training bra.