Systematic InterACTION!
A long, long time ago, I promised to teach you a cool, simple system for designing and running social interaction encounters. Well, today’s the day. And it’s only a few years late!
From Tiny Acorns: Branching Adventure Design
Branching adventures are the most common types of adventures. And that’s good, because they are often the BEST adventures. Let me teach you how to do them right. As a bonus, I’ll empower you with bottlenecks and ballooning pyramids. Just don’t think about trees.
Traps Suck
Traps suck in D&D. They just do. Which is a shame, because everyone feels like they have to use them. So, if you must have traps, here’s how to make them suck less. BONUS: As a result of a poop, you also get a proposed experimental way to change the rules.
Breaking the Jell-O Mold: Open Adventure Design
Open adventures are woefully misunderstood. Many GMs think they are a panacea for all of your gaming ills. But they aren’t a balm for everything, they require careful implementation, and they aren’t an excuse to skip having a structure.
Jumping the Screen: How to Run Your First RPG Session
Do you have a little voice in the back of your head saying “okay, playing these RPG things is fun and all, but I really want the screen. I want to run games. How do I run games?” Well, this article is for you. This is how to give yourself the best chance to succeed at running your first session of D&D or Pathfinder or Star Wars or whatever.
Coloring Inside the Lines: Linear Adventure Design
Linear adventures are woefully misunderstood. They seem simple to design, but they aren’t. And they seem like they should suck, but they don’t. Stop calling them simple. Stop calling them railroady. Maybe YOU’RE simple and railroady!
How to Manage Combat Like a Motherf$&%ing Dolphin
Want to run a fast-paced, exciting combat? It comes down to two things. First, learn how to track initiative. Second, learn about dolphins. Yeah, you heard me.
The Shape of Adventure
Did you know adventures come in different shapes? It’s true! And, if you’re going to make your own adventures, you’ve got to get them in shape!
The Third Lesson: Costly Opportunities and Harsh Realities
There are three vital lessons that every GM has to figure out. And figure out sooner rather than later. How to adjudicate actions. How to narrate the game. And the harsh reality that there’s no such thing as making the best decision “for the game.” And also the harsh reality that being a GM pretty much sucks.
Attack of the Genericons: Challenge, Difficulty, and Monster Building
If you’re going to build your own monsters – or even if you you’re just going to run a game – you have to understand what challenge is and how it infuses every game experience. And you also have to understand how it got built into monster design systems. I THOUGHT I’d already covered this, but apparently, we need to really unpack it. So settle in.
Monster Building 202: The D&D Monster Monster Building Lab Practicum
Last week, i dissected the hell out of the D&D Monster Manual and Dungeon Masters Guide to tell you everything you’d ever need to know about how monsters work. This week, we’re going to assemble our own creations! And we’re going to populate the temple of a mad monkey god too. Because why not?
Monster Building 202 Supplement: Monster Building with Angry
This is a supplement to the Monster Building 202 course. Go read that first. Then come back here. It’s a chat between The Angry GM and Twitter frienenmy @Maialideth about how to create a hobgoblin warcaster.
Monster Building 201: The D&D Monster Dissection Lab
It’s like they always say, you have to cut up a lot of bunnies before you learn enough to make a bunny of your own. So welcome to the D&D Monster Dissection Lab. We’re going to cut up a lot of creatures and see how they work. And that’s going to help us make our own creatures.
Monster Building 101: It’s Alive, IT’S ALIVE!
Custom monster building is one of the most useful and versatile tools in the D&D and Pathfinder GM’s toolbox. And notice that I didn’t say “reskinning” or “reflavoring.” Real custom monster building takes effort. And it’s totally worth it. But if you can’t make the effort, don’t f$%&ing bother.
Backfilling the Backstory
If you ask most GMs what the most important part of an adventure is, they’re going to tell you that it’s the backstory. And they’re wrong. Backstory is one of the least important parts of the adventure. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore it completely. It’s just a matter of doing it right.
Painting a Happy Little Scene
When you’re writing an adventure, you need interconnected scenes to get the heroes from the beginning to the end. Now, maybe you think you know what scenes are because you’ve already read previous articles in which a certain Angry genius explained them. But that doesn’t mean you know how to build them. So let’s talk about scene construction.
How to Motivate a Bunch of Lying Liars
Every hero needs a motivation. Though you wouldn’t know it by watching movies like Guardians of the Galaxy. Or listening to the lying liars who sit at your table pretending to be role-players. Doesn’t matter. When YOU write an adventure, you damned well better figure out how to motivate the characters. AND the players.
Let’s Start at the Very End
The hills are alive with the sound of Anger! Angry advice about how to start building adventures by figuring out the ending that is!
How to Talk to Players: The Art of Narration
There comes a certain time in every GM’s life when he starts to notice changes. Suddenly, he starts to take an interest in those strange creatures sitting across the table from him. Or her. Whatever. They are players. And their ways can be strange, mysterious, and vexing. And they can make a GM feel all sorts of strange emotions: nervousness, fear, frustration, and violent rage. But, no matter how strange and confusing, no GM can live without players. So, eventually, every GM has to figure out how to talk to players.
Usually about five seconds into the first game session.
Scenes: The LEGO bricks of Adventure!
If you want to be a Master Adventure Builder, you’ve got to know your way around your LEGO bricks. By which I mean scenes. That’s the gimmick of this article. I explain scenes as an adventure building concept and then use a bunch of references to LEGO sets and pieces using obtuse LEGO jargon to show off how I’m better than you at BOTH game mastering AND LEGO. I also talk about Not-Straulia and raptor-puppies. It’s weird being in my head.
Every Adventure’s a Dungeon
Structure is the glue that holds your adventure together and every adventure needs a good structure. Fortunately, it turns out there’s only ONE actual structure. I’ll prove it through the magic of Commodore 64 adventure games and tentacles!
What the Actual F$&% is an Adventure Anyway?
You can’t learn how to build adventures until you know what an adventure actually is. So sit down, Daniel-san, and listen to your Angry-senpai as I explain how encounter is like cracking an orc’s skull and watching it bleed. While holding the Triforce. I s$&% you not.
The Angry Guide to Kickass Combats (Part 3): Let’s Make Some F&%$ing Fights Already!
In the final part of The Angry Guide to Kicka$& Combats, let’s actually build some combats? How about four different combats? Just to show you how it’s done.
The Angry Guide to Kicka$& Combats (Part 2): Battlefields and BattleFEELS
In Part 2 of the Angry Guide to Kicka$& Combats, learn the ABCs of Combat design, which are not as easy to remember as you might think.
The Angry Guide to A$&kicking Combats (Part 1): Picking Your Enemies
The first part of The Angry Guide to Kicka$&% Combats is here! In this article, you’ll learn about what monsters actually are and what combats actually are and why there is no such thing as a combat encounter.
Three Shocking Things You Won’t Believe About D&D Combat
In this preamble to The Angry Guide to Kicka$& Combat, we’re going to tell you a few things you never knew about combat and debunk a few things everyone thinks they know about combat.
Everything I Need to Know, I Learned on Zebes
Today, I dispense a few tips for building exploration into your game inspired by my favorite f$&%ing video game series ever.
Help! My Players are Talking to Things!
What do you do when your players actually decide to talk to things? How do you handle social interaction? The same way you handle every other f$&%ing action. But if you need more detail than that, read this article.
How to Build F$&%ing Awesome Encounters!
Finally, after thousands and thousands of words, I actually build a f$&%ing encounter. Here’s how to actually put together a good encounter.
Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck
Once you know how to resolve actions, the next thing you need to figure out is how to stick those actions together into something accomplishes a goal. And that brings us to: the encounter.