Okay, kids, buckle up. This update’s going to be a bit long-ish. I’m gonna do my best to get to the point, but I’m also going to frontload the concrete stuff and backload the bulls$&%. If you just want to know when the next article’s coming and what it’ll be about, you don’t have to read everything. The deeper you go, the less concrete dates and promises there’ll be and the more explanations and feelings and vague plans you’ll find in their stead.

Cool?

November and December Content

I missed a posting deadline. I was supposed to release an Early Access feature article for supporters on November 9. I didn’t and I’m sorry. That means there won’t be a General Access feature for the rest of the world on November 16. And, again, I’m sorry.

There will be an Early Access feature on November 16 and it will move into General Access the following week on November 23. There won’t be a Proofreadaloud for that one, unfortunately. Thereafter, there will be a new feature every Wednesday until year’s end. And I will be doing Proofreadalouds again.

Additionally, there will be an extra Early Access feature on November 21 to make up for the missed one. And that one will go to General Access on November 28.

Look, if you just want to see how this s$&% looks, here’s a content calendar.

Content Calendar: November and December, 2022

Production Code	Tentative Title	Early Access	General Release
F1101	Losing Versus Failing in D&D	November 16, 2022	November 23, 2022
F1102	Using Calendars, Weather, and Celestial Mechanics to Ground Players in Your World	November 21, 2022	November 28, 2022
F1103	How Chrono Trigger Reveals its Campaign (And How You Should Too)	November 23, 2022	November 30, 2022
F1104	What Examples of Play Can't Teach and Designers Don't Know	November 30, 2022	December 7, 2022
F1201	Why Fumbles are Better than Crits and Why You Need Them	December 7, 2022	December 14, 2022
F1202	How to Build an X Encounter (For Any Given Value of X)	December 14, 2022	December 21, 2022
F1203	The Five Best and Worst Things About D&D v.3.5	December 21, 2022	December 28, 2022
F1204	The Five Best and Worst Things About D&D 5E	December 28, 2022	December 30, 2022

November and December Live Chats

Are you a supporter with Discord access and do you want to mark the upcoming Live Chats on your calendar? Mark November 22 at 8:00 PM EDT and December 20 at 8:00 PM EDT.

Recordings will be posted for supporters within 72 hours of the actual chat.

Event Calendar: November and December, 2022

Production Code	Event	Date	Time (EDT)
LC1122	Angry's Mostly Monthly Live Chat: November 2022	November 22, 2022	8:00 PM
		November 25, 2022	12:00 PM
LC1222	Angry's Mostly Monthly Live Chat: A Very Angry Christmas	December 20, 2022	8:00 PM

Bonus Content

Are you a supporter who’s been waiting absolutely f$&%ing forever for some juicy bonus content? Theme Packs or whatever? I’m sorry you’ve been waiting for so long. I made a promise there and I didn’t make good on it. And I kept promising it even as I fell further behind.

The Theme Packs aren’t cancelled. I intend to make more. I have outlines and plans and I like making them. They’re fun. People like them. They’ve been disrupted by a combination of ongoing health problems, poor time management, and that thing where I plan really big and try to do way too much all in one go. You know how it be.

In the meanwhile, by way of apology for the long delay, I’ve got a little Christmas present I’m working on. Sometime after Christmas, probably right around the New Year, I’m going to send out a short actual adventure module. It’s one of two I’ve got planned for publication in the coming months. Both will be free to Frenemy Tier supporters in addition to all future Theme Packs.

Those modules and all future Theme Packs will also eventually be available in the Angry Games store. But not until well after supporters have gotten the chance to enjoy them as previous promised.

November 25, 2022

I have this date circled on my calendar. A supporter-exclusive announcement will get posted sometime on that date. Might want to check in.

Town Mode

Town Mode isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. Still in active design. And even in something that occasionally looks like playtesting if you squint at it. Sort of.

Thing is, Town Mode got complicated. And the first bits of Town Mode will start appearing in January. They just won’t be labeled as such. And you might not even recognize them.

The whole Town Mode story is complicated. And it’s part of a bigger story. One that I’ll tell — sort of — under the next heading below. But, to summarize the story, it’s like this: when I first started writing about Town Mode — because one of the problems with the s$&% I’m going to explain below is that I never really design things; I just write about designing them — when I first started writing about Town Mode, I thought that I could pull off what I wanted to pull off — to fold the bookkeeping and between-adventure crap into the play at the table and to use it to let the players interact with the civilized parts of the game world — when I first started writing about Town Mode, I thought I could pull off what I wanted to pull off just by organizing s$&% properly. That I wouldn’t need rules, systems, structures, or tools.

But the more I looked at the primordial Town Mode sliming its way across my own games, the more I realized that I was doing a lot of f$&%ing with the game engine behind the scenes. F$&%ing with it in a loose, on-the-fly, a$&-pulling kind of way. But without f$&%ing with the game engine, Town Mode wasn’t going to work.

Long story short: Town Mode needs a mechanical framework. Not a big one. Just a bunch of little rules and mechanics that D&D lacks. Or at least, rules and mechanics that suck in D&D. I’m not talking big s$&% here; not like an entire combat engine. Just little bits and pieces. Better ways to handle haggling or exploring and mapping civilized spaces.

Tools. It needs mechanical tools.

The problem is I also realized I’m not the kind of guy who can pull this s$&% off.

Angry’s Existential Crisis

This is the big thing. The thing that puts everything else into perspective. That gives it all context.

After a decade as a Gaming Blogger, I’m not happy with my work anymore. And that’s because I’m not doing this s$&% right. And while I’ve grown a lot over the years — and my writing style and workflow have definitely moved toward something that might be called professional in some circles — I haven’t really evolved. And Town Mode helped me see that.

I should have seen it sooner. Because there’s a lot of symptoms. Some you’ve called me on and some only I can see and only when I’m looking in the mirror. Some of them are ongoing, persistent problems in my work. Some are just annoying but easily ignored little bugaboos.

And I can sum them up like this: I’m a Blogger. I write a Blog.

I don’t actually want to go through this whole thing again. To go through all the introspection and analysis. And I don’t want to have a lot of conversations about this s$&%. In the past couple of months, I’ve talked to — and more importantly listened to — a lot of readers, fans, and friends. I’ve had extensive conversations with members of secret Inner Circle. And I’ve absorbed every piece of critical feedback I received. Turned it over in my head, looked at it from every angle, really confronted it.

Lots of the things a lot of you have complained about — totally fairly and correctly — arise from how I think about my work as The Angry GM. Everything from abandoned projects to the archive that’s impossible to dig through no matter how I organize it. None of the issues arise from laziness or a lack of passion. None of them are due to some essential nature I possess as a starter and not a finisher or any other bulls$&% like that. Because that s$&% — which I once claimed — is bulls$&%.

Really, it’s all down to the fact that I work like a Blogger. That I am always focused on the next thing. The next article. The next series. The next Theme Pack. The next deadline. I don’t really worry about much other than “what am I writing next?” I write an entry and then I move on to the next.

Now, I ain’t saying that Bloggers can’t be good at planning and tying things together and working on long-form projects. I’m just using Blogging as a simple shorthand for a way of thinking about things. And I’m simplifying s$&% here. Because it’s complicated. I could write several thousand words on the difference between being a Blogger, a Content Creator, a Design Blogger, and a Designer. But none of that s$%& matters.

What matters is I don’t want to be a Blogger anymore. Because Bloggers don’t do finished content. They don’t keep the momentum up on a big project for months. They can write about designing things, but they never publish finished designs along with short analysis of why and how the design is the way it is.

And that’s what I want to do.

There’s reasons people come to TheAngryGM.com. Why they still come here after all these years. There’s things I’m good at. I’m good at breaking down complex things — like GMing — and distilling them into simple concepts and then turning them into instructions people can follow. I’m good at critically analyzing both game mechanics and narratives and then building new mechanics and narratives based on that analysis. I’m good at polishing the complexity out of a system so it’s usable and approachable and easy to incorporate into any game. I’m good at teaching. And I’m good at building tools.

I ain’t going to stop doing that s$&%. And I ain’t going to stop writing long-form articles. I’m a writer. Writing’s what I do. Though I could probably write a few fewer words every week. And I’ll probably gradually start peppering in more multimedia content in the long term.

But I want to change how I work. And what I work on. And I also want to create a new, approachable entry point for new readers while still offering existing readers and supporters fresh takes on GMing. And fresh mechanical tools. I want to get back to what I’m good at. Get back to basics. But I also want to evolve. To deliver that s$%& in a more polished, professional, thoughtful, and planned out way.

That starts with the New Year. I’ve already been building the long-term strategy. I’ve got the first three months of 2023 mapped out so that s$&% fits together without the need for artificial series. I’ll be re-exploring some essential GMing ideas with new spins, new perspectives, and new techniques. Thus creating a great place for new readers to start working through the archive. An evergreen entry point.

And interspersed throughout, a collection of mechanical tools for handling the civilized parts of the game world. A Town Mode Toolbox, if you will.

Truth is, one of the reasons I’m still a little behind on things after two months of playing catchup — apart from external bulls$%& which will always be a part of my life and which, if I wasn’t always working on just the next thing, I’d be able to weather — one of the reasons I’m still a little behind is because I’ve started giving over a portion of every workday to Future S$&%. Because I’ve learned that’s how you do it. No matter how close or how looming that next deadline, if you don’t block off some time to work on next month or next quarter or next year, all you’ll ever end up doing is chasing deadlines.

And that’s the essence of Blogging. And I don’t want to be a Blogger anymore; I want to be Debbie.

Or something like that.