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 all thank the Angry Discord community for dancing their f$&%ing legs off for this one. Because it almost didn’t happen.

This article’s been rough. I started outlining it the moment I dropped that How to Play in an Angry Open World because I knew I’d have to write it. And I thought I knew what I’d be writing. But then, the feedback started pouring in. And the feedback surprised the hell out of me. See, I expected to hear a bunch of people saying, “yes, we are interested, please write that article, Angry.” That’s how “dance for your article” works. But I didn’t expect all the f$&%ing emotion.

See, this particular article seems to have gotten some of you really excited. Which has led to messages like, “please tell me how to do this; this is a game I’d love to run.” Which is nice to hear. But I’ve also gotten a lot of really sad messages. Messages like, “I wish I could run something like this, but I’d never be able to pull it off.” Or like, “I wish I was a good enough GM to run a game like this.” Or “I wish D&D games really were like this; I’d probably actually enjoy running games.”

I s$&% you not. A lot of people seem to think that what I’m running is impossible. Or that it’s impossible for them. And a lot of people have come out of the woodwork to tell me how unhappy they are running their games. In fact, ever since I wrote that thing about role-playing, I’ve been hearing from a lot of unhappy GMing campers.

The thing is that I was already pretty much dreading writing this article. The follow-up. The “How to Run an Angry Open World Game of Your Very Own.” I knew it would be a big letdown. Because mostly, I’m not doing anything special. In fact, I’m doing a lot less than I usually do when I run a game. That was one of my goals, remember? I wanted to do this s$&% with as little prep-work as possible. The few special things I am doing are all conceptual, structural, and presentational things. There’s no formulas or systems or mechanics or anything. And that’s mostly what people seem to want from me.

And that’s why all the defeatist responses caught me by surprise. I mean, while it’s obvious there are some tricky issues with running an open-world game like the one I described, I can’t imagine anything that looks totally impossible. Or even particularly skill-dependent. That is to say, I didn’t imagine that there were any apparent issues with running an open-world game that’d require a master-level game master. I mean, I know some people are nervous about improvisation and an open-world game is going to require some degree of improvisation, but there’s a difference between a tough skill and an impossible one. Isn’t there?

So, I did what I always do whenever I’m confused by what everyone’s saying. I started talking to people. Over the last week, I’ve had numerous small, private conversations with assorted GMs and at least five major discussions about my open-world game. And in that time, I’ve discarded and rewritten my outline for this article three times. Not to mention the two full drafts and one partial draft I’ve thrown away. That’s why this article is coming in at the eleventh hour. And those of you who saw the conversation that I reference below in real-time will know just how eleventh that hour actually is.

See, it was those conversations — especially the last one, the one I specifically call out below — that helped me see that I am doing something special with my game. Something different from lots of GMs. But it has nothing to do with mechanics or structure or planning or note-taking. It has nothing to do with the quality of my ideas or my skills as a GM. It’s all about mindset. It’s all about perception. It’s about how you see your game and yourself.

So, You Liked That Open World Thing, Huh?

In my last article, I shared both the design goals for my current, personal, for-fun game and the instructions I gave my players so they’d know how to play it. And holy f$&% did I strike a nerve. Turns out that lots of you want to know how to actually run the damned thing. Good news! It’s not as hard as you think. Actually, it’s pretty easy. As games go, it’s one of the least demanding games I’ve ever run. And the special tricks and techniques you need to pull it off are pretty easy to explain.

But here’s the bad news: you can’t do it. See, in talking to all y’all — or at least a lot of you — I’ve discovered you’ve got some issues. Deep-seated GM brain issues. I’m sorry to say it like that. But it’s true. See, a lot of you reached out to me for advice after I wrote that article. I was ready for that. I wasn’t ready for the number of defeated, depressed, stressed, and frustrated GMs I’d be hearing from though. Which seems crazy to me. Because gaming’s supposed to be fun. And I also wasn’t ready for how many of you seem to think that you’re just fundamentally incapable of running this kind of game. Because you lack the skills. The expertise.

It’s not your skills, though. It’s your attitude. It’s your perceptions. But I’ll get to that.

This is the first of a three-part series of articles that’ll tell you how I’m running Angry’s Open World Game — AOWG, I’m calling it to save my typing fingers — and hopefully show you how you can run an AOWG of your very own. If that’s what you want to do. And that’s all it’s going to do. It won’t argue that the Angry Open World is the best method for running games or the best way to run an open-world game. It won’t argue that every game should be an AOWG. And it won’t argue that such games will work for every group.

If you want to run an Angry Open World Game of your very own, these three articles will tell you how. If you don’t want to do that, well, these articles won’t do much for you. Except they might. Because I’ve discovered that lots of you seem pretty stressed and frustrated and strung out about your games. And when I started asking people what they thought were the obstacles keeping them from running an AOWG, I found a lot of stressful, frustrating, stringing-out attitudes toward running games in general. And while it’s entirely possible to run a traditional D&D campaign — or any RPG campaign — with those attitudes, they are absolutely toxic to the AOWG model. You literally cannot run an open-world game my way if you don’t think a little bit like me.

Thus, the first two parts of this series are going to be all about attitude and mindset and perception. And even if you don’t want to run an Angry Open World Game, they might help you run better games. Or, at least, be more comfortable running the game you’re running.

That said, this is still just a set of instructions for running an AOWG. So, I’m not going to waste a lot of time trying to convince people that my attitude’s the right attitude. I’m just going to make a bunch of unproved assertions about the right way to tend to your GMing brain.

If you want to disagree with anything I say, remember this: not only am I running an AOWG successfully — for the moment anyway; it could all fall apart tomorrow — not only am I running an AOWG, I’m also really happy running it. And to me, running exactly the game I want to run and being really happy doing it? That’s the best proof I can imagine that I’m doing something right. And if you’re not running exactly the game you want to run and not having a great time doing it, maybe that’s a sign that I know what I’m talking about and you’ve still got something to learn.

My players are also having a pretty good time, so that counts for something.

Also, in the interest of completely full, fair disclosure, just know that the campaign’s still fairly new. I’m only in my seventh session. And it is a work in progress. Some kinks still need ironing out. But they’re pretty minor. Which is not to say the whole game might not fall apart tomorrow. And if it does, don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it so you can say that you were right and I was wrong.

Let Me Tell You About My Game

I’m going to start with a story about a story about my game. See, I was casually describing the latest AOWG session in a quiet, secret corner of my Discord server to some of my loyal Patreon supporters. And one such loyal supporter asked me a perfect question. Because, in answering the question and discussing the answer, and then in answering more questions, I discovered the perfect place to start explaining how to run an Angry Open World Game.

I just wish it hadn’t happened like six f$&%ing hours before I had to post this article. Anyway…

I mentioned above that a lot of GMs seem absolutely f$&%ing perplexed by this whole AOWG. Like, too many people seem to think it’s either totally impossible to run an open-world game like I described or it’s prohibitively difficult or that it requires some kind of galaxy-level GMing brain. Interestingly, though, I suspect that no one who started running games before the year 2000 has any problem believing it. And I’ve been trying to work out just where the disconnect lies.

And it was this particular conversation that gave me the starting point. Everything else fell into place. Particularly because this conversation involved a word that I absolutely f$&%ing hate. It’s the worst, most useless word in every GM’s lexicon. The word is “interesting.”

The reason you think that it’s impossible to run the kind of game I’m running is that you think it’s your job to run a good game. A fun game. A fair game. An interesting game. Consequently, you hold every idea you have, every encounter you run, every decision you make up to ridiculously high standards of quality. Consequently consequently, you have no confidence in your ability to run a good game.

Let that sink in for a moment. Really let it sink in. Because I’m betting a lot of you are in there somewhere. Do you hold your decisions and encounters and stories to very high standards? Do you challenge everything you come up with it? Do you demand that it’s fair? Balanced? Challenging? Fun? Interesting? And do you ever feel like you just can’t come up with ideas that are fair enough? Balanced enough? Challenging enough? Fun enough? Interesting enough? Occasionally? Frequently? Often? Always?

Be honest. If not with me, at least be honest with yourself.

And now, let me shock the hell out of you by telling you that the problem’s not your lack of confidence. It’s not your ridiculous standards. The problem’s that you think it’s your job to make the game interesting. To make it good. To make it fun. That’s just not true. Well, it’s not completely untrue. But it’s way more untrue than you think it is.

And now, that story about my game.

Does This Sound Interesting to You?

Here’s the situation as of the end of the last AOWG session.

The party was on their way to do some tomb raiding. See, they got invited to a feast by a lord. And they learned it’s customary for guests of the lord to bring a gift “for the lord or his table.” Customary, but not required. Basically, if the party wanted to show their respect, they could present the lord with a gift. The more thought and effort went into the gift, the more they’d garner the lord’s respect. Since they had a day and a half to kill before the festival — and that wasn’t enough time to pursue the major goal they were working on — they decided to curry the lord’s favor. Especially because they figured on staying awhile in town and buttering up the local lord could make their stay a lot more comfortable.

They found out the lord comes from an old, proud warrior heritage and also that he likes antique weapons and armor. They also found out that the ancient peoples of the region used to bury their warlords and heroes in burial caves in the hills near town. They even got a lead on a specific hill that had three unplundered tombs in it. So, they figured on taking the day-and-a-half before the festival to open some old tombs and find a bronze battleax or something to give the lord.

So far, so good.

But on their way to the hills, they ran into some blink dogs wandering around the landscape. The party’s wizard recognized the blink dogs as blink dogs and identified them as intelligent, good-aligned critters who spend their days hunting down evil creatures. Thus, the party’s paladin and cleric decided to make peace with the blink dogs instead of skinning them. Despite the language barrier — because blink dogs speak their own doggy language — the party managed to avoid a fight. Huzzah. But then, the blink dogs, figuring they could trust the party, led the party — Lassie style — off across the landscape. The party followed. They found an old, burned-out shell of a farmhouse and signs that someone was camping in it. There followed a little bit of a misunderstanding, though, and the party’s stalwart paladin and cleric decided to make a frontal assault. Unfortunately, that meant charging across 1000 feet of open ground. And that was when they discovered that the ruin’s inhabitants included at least one twitchy archer. They started taking fire from somewhere in the ruin before they could get close enough to really assess things.

The situation turned against them quickly after that. The blink dog begrudgingly joined the charge. Once the party started taking fire, the blink dog darted ahead and teleported into the ruin to disable the archer. And one round later, the blink teleported back out, pretty badly injured. The party elected to retreat back to the cover of a wooded hill. The blink dog fled completely.

Now, the party’s in this copse of trees near a ruined farmhouse they’ve failed to assault. They’ve traveled at least an hour out of their way and don’t know quite where they are. They only have so much time before the festival. They’ve taken a few hits and burned a few spells. And in D&D 3.5, those aren’t trivial resources that just come back after a little nap and there’s no limitless cantrips to hold a spellcaster over between bedtimes. So, next session, they’ve got to decide what to do. Try again to deal with the farmhouse? Try to find their way back on course to the hill tombs? Head back to town? Might they get lost? Will they have enough time now to plunder the tombs and find a present for the lord? Will they have to give up that goal? Or should they hand the lord the extremely valuable ancient masterwork composite short bow they found a few sessions ago? What will they do? Who knows? I sure as hell don’t.

Anyway, I shared this story with my Discordians and one of them asked me how I’d handled the “charging the archer in the ruin” encounter. See, he agreed that charging 1000 feet across open ground at even a single archer would be scary as hell. But he also didn’t see how the game’s mechanics would do that justice.

I’ll spare you a verbatim transcript. Suffice to say that, after I cleared up the misunderstanding about which edition of D&D I was running, I demonstrated my rules-lawyering skills by rattling off the by-the-book way I handled that situation under the D&D 3.5 rules. For an encore, I also demonstrated the by-the-book way of handling it in D&D 5E. The details don’t matter. What matters is that I handled the situation exactly the way the book said I should. And I would have done so no matter what system I was running. If I was running Fate, I would have handled it the Fate way. And then I would have hung myself.

The interesting thing, though, is that my Discordian chum was worried that the encounter might not have been sufficiently challenging to count. Or sufficiently interesting to warrant the game time. Or that I might have invented a whole bunch of mechanics to make the situation work as a proper encounter. Basically, he wanted to know how I’d made the encounter good enough to play.

The reality is that I didn’t even think twice about whether it was sufficiently challenging or sufficiently interesting or whatever. In fact, the players kind of caught me by surprise. I was really blindsided by the charge. I didn’t see anything in the scene that warranted an immediate frontal assault. There wasn’t even an enemy present. Just smoke from a campfire and a burned-out shell of a building.

Moreover, I didn’t even know this encounter was coming. They ran into the blink dogs because I randomly determined they’d have an encounter in their second hour of travel. And the blink dogs were the random encounter I rolled. And I had the brilliant idea that if the party befriended the blink dogs, the evil-hating puppies would lead the party to a nearby monster lair in the hopes the PCs would help clear it out. There’s five monster lairs in that region on my list. One is a burnt farmhouse with a camp inside it. I mean, the odds of my even being ready for any of this s$%& were astronomical. Let alone the odds of me actually expecting 50% of the party to charge across an open field to attack a campfire.

By the time the paladin drew his sword and started his screaming charge, I was just racing to keep up. I didn’t even have time to worry about whether the charge or the encounter would be interesting. Let alone invent a bunch of new mechanics to make it so.

That said, I knew it’d be interesting. And it sure as hell was.

Eventually, the Discord discussion turned to the topic of what I’d have done if the party had approached the bandits. If they’d tried to talk to them. And who the bandits even were. What their story was.

And for the purposes of this discussion, I’m just going to pretend there’s bandits in the farmhouse. Because my players might be reading this and they haven’t actually gotten inside yet and I don’t want to ruin any more fun surprises that might net me a TPK.

Anyway, the truth is I have absolutely no idea what I would have done if the party had tried to approach the bandits. If they’d tried to strike up a conversation. And I don’t know who the bandits are. At least, for the purposes of this conversation, I don’t. Because “bandit” was literally just a random word on a list of random things that the party might trip over if they went wandering. Or if blink dogs decided they were friendly enough to go on a monster hunt together with. And that did not go over well at all, let me tell you. My Discordians wanted to know how I knew the bandits would be interesting enough? How I’d come up with a good story for those bandits? Some of them even suggested stories.

But I was like, “but what if they’re just bandits. Just brigands. Robbers. Criminals. They rob travelers, live out in the wilderness, raid outlying farms, whatever.”

But where would that lead? And what did the brigands have? What made it worth fighting them?

And I was like, “well, that’s what random treasure tables are for.”

As for where that would lead, I said “I’d make a note that the PCs killed the bandits here. And maybe, if the PCs met some farmer later, he’d casually mention that they’d been having problems with bandits lately. At least until last week. Then, suddenly, nothing. Weird, huh?”

But that’s not important. What’s important is the idea that the bandits, their treasure, their story, and even the mechanics of the encounter itself, they all have to meet some minimum set of standards that make them “good enough to happen in the game.” Otherwise, the game won’t be challenging enough or fair enough or interesting enough or fun enough.

Whatever Happens is an Adventure

I know some of you are pretty disappointed to learn that there might be this camp of “just bandits” in my game with a pile of random treasure. You’re probably even a little pissed off. After all that build-up I gave my open-world game, it’s just random encounters and plain, ordinary 1st-level warriors with random equipment? That’s not interesting. That’s just crap.

First of all, there is more to it than that. And I don’t appreciate that f$&%ing attitude.
But second, go back to that story I told you. The one about the PCs who had a few days to kill before a festival and decided to raid a tomb for an ancient weapon to curry the local lord’s favor? But on the way, they met these blink dogs and befriended them and followed them to a ruined farmhouse? And they tried to assault it and got repelled by a mysterious archer? And now they’re in the clutch with dwindling time and resources, lost in the wilderness, and they have to decide what’s a priority? Did that story suddenly become less interesting because the bandits are just bandits? No. Of course it f&%$ing didn’t. Because it’s not the bandits or the farmhouse or the charge that made the game interesting. The game would have been just as interesting if the blink dogs had led them to a ghoul pit at the edge of an ancient battlefield. Or if they hadn’t run into blink dogs but a group of bandits coming back from a raid. Or if they hadn’t run into anything and instead reached the hill with the tombs.

Consider this too. Let’s say the party takes the farmhouse and there’s just a bunch of bandit nobodies with some random loot. And let’s say the random loot roll is really crappy. Is that disappointing? Yes. I’m not saying it’s not. But what happens the next time the party’s on its way somewhere and some random, good-aligned something wants their help? Will the paladin and the cleric now have to contend with the rogue and the wizard saying, “yeah, but remember the bandits? And that stupid charge? And how it cost us the lord’s respect and a chance to party at the festival? And all we got was a handful of fantasy quid?” Won’t that be interesting?

What happens if the treasure’s really cool? Like there’s some inexplicable magic item in there and the bandits didn’t even know what they had. What happens the next time the party runs into some good-aligned something looking for help and the rogue and the wizard are like “not this s$&% again. Do we have to stop what we’re doing every time someone begs us for help?” And the cleric and the paladin can say, “remember the bandits? You weren’t complaining when you got those bracers of armor or the boots of elvenkind.”

Either way, whatever happens, someone’s going to say, “but wait, remember the bandits?” And isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that fun?

I don’t try to make interesting, fun things happen. I mean, sure, sometimes I do. But mostly, I don’t. Not intentionally. I just make things happen. And when things happen and the players interact with those things and with each other and when those things interact with other things, that’s interesting. That’s fun. And if something comes along that isn’t as interesting or as fun as the other stuff, well, it’ll pass. And something interesting and fun will come along.

I mean, in the end, this all started with a perfectly normal D&D adventure: “go plunder that tomb for its treasure.” And it got interrupted by a perfectly normal random encounter: “1d3 blink dogs.” And that sounds boring as hell when I put it like that. But we — my players and I — are all really f$&%ing excited to see what happens next.

The point is that I know that interesting and fun don’t come from me. They come from the game. I can add some extra interesting and fun. But if I don’t go out of my way to add interesting and fun, if I just throw in some ordinary ole D&D, the interesting and fun will happen anyway. I trust the interesting and the fun to show up. Even if it’s just a few moments of interesting fun diversion and some random treasure on the way to the dungeon.

Standards Kill Creativity

I’m discovering that lots of GMs have these standards for every last little thing in their game. Fights must be challenging enough. Balanced enough. Characters and locations must be interesting enough. Stories must be deep enough. Encounters must complex enough. Everything must be good enough. And that means that they spend a lot of their time shooting their own ideas down. When it comes time to create something — especially when they have to do it on the fly — they end up killing lots of potentially interesting, potentially exciting, potentially fun, perfectly normal things. And if you do that long enough, eventually, you’re not using a pump shotgun anymore. Eventually, you’ve got a machine gun. Or worse, an automated turret. Eventually, you don’t even see the idea slaughter. You just sit at the other end of the killing field waiting for a good idea to emerge. But nothing does. And you don’t know why. So, you conclude you suck at being creative.

Meanwhile, you become tremendously stressed and frustrated. Nothing’s emerging from your creativity dovecote anymore. And what does manage to struggle its way out doesn’t seem good enough. Trying to write adventures and encounters becomes painful. Torturous. And the idea of improvising anything at the table seems impossible. After all, if you can’t even come up with a good idea for a single encounter when you have all the time in the world, how can you pull an entire storyline out of your a$& on demand at the game table?

And so, running a game like the AOWG seems impossible. Because you know there’s got to be some improv in there. You know at some point you’ve got to do something you ain’t prepared for. You’re going to have to craft something from some random table into a work of f$&%ing art.

I’ve been there, okay? This attitude all but killed gaming for me for years. And it’s probably why I’m having so much fun now with this impossible-to-run game. Which, frankly, is the way I used to run games long, long ago. But that’s a whole other story. I got into the habit of holding everything I put in my games to ridiculous standards of interesting and challenging and balanced and deep and all that crap. And I couldn’t lighten up. I couldn’t have fun with whatever happened at my table. Be happy with whatever game emerged from the play experience.

I forgot that it’s not me that makes my game interesting or fun. The game does that. I just write or run the game. It’s fun when we play it out. It’s interesting when we play it out. It’s the dynamics of play that make the game fun. It’s not the pieces themselves, but how they fit together into the larger whole. Something which only emerges as you play. Especially when you’re running an open-world game. Hell, that’s the s$&% that actually makes open-world gaming fun.

If you want to run your own Angry Open World Game, you have to give up your standards. You have to learn to be okay with whatever happens at the table. You have to trust the fun and the interesting to show up. They will. And you have to get rid of that sign at the queuing line of your creative brain space that says, “you must be at least this interesting to ride my game.”

The irony is that, when you apply standards to your creative ideas, all you do is pinch off the flow. If you only let the very best ideas come out, you’re rarely going to get anything because your best ideas are rare. In the meanwhile, you get stressed and strained because nothing’s coming. And when you’re stressed and strained, your creative mind contracts. Good ideas become rarer and rarer as you become more and more frustrated. Eventually, nothing comes out at all.

On the other hand, if you let your ideas flow, you always have an idea ready. They may not be the best ideas, but they usually turn out pretty good once you put them into play. They’re perfectly fine. You have fun. You lighten up. You put less pressure on yourself. So, the ideas flow more freely. And the ideas get better. You become more creative. And happier with the game you’ve got.

The point is this: if you want to run a good Angry Open World Game, you have to be good with whatever game you run. Whatever happens, happens. Whatever you come up with is good enough. Because, trust me, it actually is.

Think about it. Of all the complaints you’ve heard people level against their GMs — against all the railroaders and tyrants and killer GMs and spotlight hogs and against all the DMPCs and all the stingy misers and all the monty haulers and every other bad GM ever — have you ever heard anyone complain about a GM solely because their ideas weren’t great. How many people have ever said, “yeah, my GM is totally fair and really knows his stuff and keeps the game running and gives us plenty of agency and all that s$&%. I just wish his characters and stories were better. Because man, are they just dullsville.” I’m not saying it never happens. But it’s pretty damned rare. And isn’t that interesting?

What I’m Not Saying

Before I sign off and promise another important lesson in the next part of this series — one that explains why I don’t use my own companion rules — before I sign off, I want to make sure you’re not hearing the wrong thing in all of this.

I am not saying there’s no such thing as bad, boring ideas and badly run encounters. Yes, there are. But they are as rare as great ideas. The worst ideas are just as rare as the best ideas. And any halfway decent game can survive the rare bad idea that gets through.

I’m not saying you can’t make a good game better with good ideas. Of course you can. But great ideas don’t make a great game and a great game can come from just about anything. The quality of the ideas and the quality of the game aren’t correlated as closely as you think they are.

I’m not saying you should literally just act at random and do whatever s$&% pops out of your head without thinking. That’d be awful. You have to use your f$&%ing brain. Don’t stop using your brain.

I’m not saying you should never plan or prepare anything. That you should just come to every game session with a blank piece of paper and wing it. There’s value in preparation.

What I’m saying is just that you should lighten the f$&% up and be okay with whatever happens. With whatever game you run. Don’t try to make it anything but what it is. Especially if you want to do this open-world thing.

As a great man who didn’t want to be a statue once will have said in a different timeline that I’m pretty sure was erased: “don’t try to run a great game, just run a game. And let the players make up their own minds.”

And players are idiots. They’re easy to please.