I’m back. Yes, I actually decided to come back. Thanks for tolerating my absence.

I’ve given things a lot of thought over the last two weeks. I’ve thought about how I’ve done things in the past and how I want to do things in the future. About the conflicts I’ve had over the past few weeks and those over the past several years. About who I am as a person and who I want to be as a content creator.

I’ve summed up everything below. What follows is my official stance on various issues.

If you’re reading this on my site at TheAngryGM.com, this is the last time you’ll probably read anything like this. All future updates of this type will be posted only on Patreon.com and many will be limited to patrons only.

Comments are disabled on this post at TheAngryGM.com because nothing below is open to discussion. If you’re a patron and want to comment at Patreon.com, please feel free, but know that I’m pretty firm on this stuff. And if you have to withdraw your support over anything I say below, just do it quietly. Don’t make a scene. Just open the door and use it. Good bye.

Comments will be turned back on for all future posts at TheAngryGM.com, but they will be moderated and curated as explained below.

If you just want to know about future content and don’t give a s$&% about any of the interaction, discussion, or community crap, just read the next few sections. There will be a helpful message telling you when it’s safe to stop reading. And you’ll never have to worry about any of this crap ever again.

Feature Articles

Feature articles will be released for Patrons every Friday unless there’s five Fridays a month. Then I get to pick one Friday to take off. Any one I want.

Those same feature articles will be released to the general public on this site on the following Wednesday.

I will try to keep Patrons in the loop about what articles I’m working on and when, but I am not making any firm promises about what articles will be released when or which series will come out. I will create and write what I want to create and write. While I will consider feedback from Patrons and feedback posted in TheAngryGM.com’s comment section, ultimately, I’ll create what I want to create when I want to create it.

In the coming year, I am going to focus less on big, ambitious series and work more on smaller, self-contained, one-shot updates. That will lessen the chance that I will start and then never finish a series. But see below.

Ongoing Series

I have three ongoing series right now – AngryCraft, Let’s Build an Adventure, and Engaging NPCs – and one series on hiatus – the Megadungeon. Based on poll results, feedback, discussions, and comments, the Engaging NPC series just ain’t landing with people. I am going to take the various topics I intended to discuss in that series and see if I can rejigger them into one-shot articles, but I’m not going to rush on that. AngryCraft is a highly divisive project. Some people love it, some people hate it. In equal numbers. I want to finish it, but to finish it the way I’ve been doing it will take a lot of articles. So, I’m going to finish the AngryCraft system quietly on my own initiative and then present it in whatever form I consider “finished” in one or two articles. You likely won’t see the finished results until December. But you will see them – whatever they are – before the end of the year. The Let’s Build an Adventure Series is popular, but it takes a lot of work. It’ll get wrapped up over the next couple of months and likely entail two articles a month, but see below where I talk about the Learn to Play Module for why you won’t see an entry on it for a couple of weeks.

The Megadungeon is an extremely popular series and it was offered as a carrot to attract Patreon supporters. Once my desk is cleared of current issues – in January – I will look at how I can continue, reboot, or revive the series.

The Learn to Play Module

The Learn to Play Module – entitled The Fall of Silverpine Watch – is in progress. And coming along okay. The issues of turning an adventure design into a finished module – especially when it’s a tutorial module – will be discussed in two upcoming articles. At this point, the draft of the entire module is almost complete. Like, a couple of days from done. Wednesday’s article will say the same thing, but remember that Wednesday’s article was written two days ago. The module will have to be revised, rewritten, and polished completely, which will take about seven to ten days. And then it has to go visit an editor while I work on the final layout design and cartography. I do not have an exact date for when all of these things will be done. But it is on the order of a few weeks. Not months or years. You’ll probably be able to download the complete, finished PDF in three to four weeks. Best I can do. Every minute that is not spent creating content for the site is going into the module right now. I will update my Patrons weekly about the status of the module. And everyone will get some previews of it in the next two articles.

FoSW is my current top priority. While I will continue to fulfill my weekly obligation to publish content, all bigger projects – specifically the ongoing series I mentioned above – will be on the back burner. Once the revised text is in the editor’s hands, I will shift the time I’m using on the FoSW into finishing AngryCraft in the background and working on the Adventure Building tutorial series. But until then, I will be focusing on one-shot and shorter content.

Updates and News

Going forward, updates like this will be posted on Patreon only and may be visible only to patrons. The only thing that will be posted on TheAngryGM.com will be articles and content and short, specific announcements about public events, cancellations, or site updates. If you just want to read my weekly articles, enjoy. If you want to know what I’m planning and what’s going on with me behind the scenes, become a patron.

If you are only here for the articles and gaming content and don’t give a s$&% about feedback, comments, offenses given and taken, community interactions, my personal life, or any of that other bulls$&%, you can get off here. The rest of the stuff is for the vocal people who have opinions about such things and want me to know about them. 

Comments

Starting with my next article, you will be able to comment on my posts once again. To comment on my site, you must be a registered subscriber. Some comments will be held for moderation and will take up to 24 hours to show up on the site. I will continue to read every comment posted on my site, whether it is held for moderation or not. Whether I delete it or not.

Since some have asked – a registered user is not a Patreon supporter. You just need to set up a user name on TheAngryGM.com. If you’re there, look over at the right hand side of site and you’ll see a list of links to log in, register, and access my RSS feeds. Make a user name there and then log in to comment.

I will remove comments that I feel detract from the discussion, that attempt to start discussions too far from the point of the article, that are – in my subjective opinion – mean spirited or toxic or otherwise unworthy of my site, that disregard specific remarks in my article about things that aren’t open for discussion, or that quibble over pointless nothing. I will not delete comments solely because they disagree with me. I never have. And anyone who claims otherwise is lying.

Here’s the deal: my comment section is an extension of my site. It’s mine. I own it. My name is on it. My site is meant to provide useful advice for GMs and adventure designers, to offer optional rules and system improvements, and to offer the occasional deep dive into game design principles. It’s also meant to be satirically funny. Darkly funny. Funny in the way an over-the-top asshole being an over-the-top asshole is. If a comment comes along that doesn’t – in my opinion – fit that, I do not have to host it. I will never deny your right to have an opinion or post it wherever you want – I am a firm believer in free speech – but I own this site and everything on it is MY speech. Even YOUR comment. Which means I get editorial control. And the people reading this site are MY audience. I don’t have to share YOUR comment with them. They’re here for me. The interesting discussion in the comment section is gravy. And some people really like that gravy. But only because I sift all of the crap out of the gravy.

And, by the way, there’s only room in this satire for one asshole. And, as noted, it’s MY site.

If you don’t like that policy and you don’t like the idea of me arbitrarily exercising control over what I host on MY site with MY name in the header read by an audience I spent a decade building, feel free to complain about it SOMEWHERE ELSE. Because, and I say this with all due respect, I don’t actually give a single, solitary crap.

Offensive Content

I am who I am. I am a content creator and I write about role-playing games. But I am also a human being with strong personal beliefs and opinions. My sense of morality, integrity, and responsibility are as much a part of my brand as my faux swearing and my brilliant gaming advice. I know. My supporters constantly tell me how much they value that. Unfortunately, that comes with a price. And that price is that I have a strong sense of morality and strong personal opinions about things. And that stuff leaks into my writing.

I also have to live with the online gaming community at large. I have to accept that the community exists and they have feelings and opinions about how stuff should be done and what’s right and wrong. Sometimes I agree with the community at large. Sometimes I don’t. And sometimes, I think the bullshit that occupies their time is completely moronic drivel. Sometimes, it damages the community. And I have no problem saying so when I see it. I often take potshots at games, designers, and stupid community outrage.

I am not going to stop doing either of those things. Because I am who I am and I like who I am. And because I know I am a good person. Not the best. No one is perfect. I have flaws and I work on confronting them every day, but I am secure with who I am. And if who I am offends you, your choices are to live with it or walk away. And those are your only choices. Offense doesn’t impress me. I get offended all the time. And I don’t ask anyone to care.

Sometimes, I will take a joke too far. Sometimes I will read something I wrote and – because I know what I was thinking when I wrote it – I will remove it. Or change it. Sometimes, someone else will prompt me to reread something I wrote. But in the end, any edit I make to my work is an edit I chose to make. And if I don’t choose to make an edit, it’s because I am perfectly comfortable with something I’ve said. That I will face my maker on judgement day and say, “yep, I sure did say that; it’s who I am.”

I tolerate a lot of different opinions. My community is full of people I vehemently disagree with. And there are people in my community – and supporting me – who vehemently disagree with me. There are people whose choices I regard as frankly immoral. And there are people who regard my choices the same way. That, kids, is called tolerance. Real tolerance. If you have a condition on tolerance, you don’t know what tolerance is. And you have no place in my community.

Tolerance means I accept your right to disagree with me. I accept your right to hate me. To judge me. For any reason you want. I can’t stop you anyway. The idea that you can control other people’s thoughts is ludicrous. So disagree away. Hate away. Judge away. My advice, my game content, it works whether you hate me or not. But, I don’t have to listen to you. Or like you. Or host your disagreement or read it. Or accept your money. I can delete it. And block you. And never share a table with you, personally. But I will never come after you. Or try to destroy you. I will never try to take your job away or starve your family or destroy you. The worst thing I will ever do to you is walk away from you. And not do business with you. And I respect your right to walk away from me. And not to do business with me. I will never chase you or force my engagement on you.

But if any of you ever come at me or the people I love again, if any of you ever again try to destroy me or interfere with my business, I will not walk away. I will give you your war. And I will win or die trying. And better people than you have already tried to destroy me. It’s been a long decade.

And if any of that offends you, or anything I’ve said in the past or anything I’ve said in the future offends you, well, then I know I’m doing something right. Because if you’re not offending someone, you’re not challenging anyone.

Feedback

I take feedback very seriously. But I’ve started taking it too seriously. I read and carefully consider every piece of feedback I receive. And I read it all charitably. I assume every piece of feedback is given in good faith and that any given person might know things I don’t. At least until I’ve read through to the end and been proven wrong. But that doesn’t mean I agree with every piece of feedback. The truth of the matter is that I wouldn’t have been able to build the audience I have over the past twelve years if I didn’t know what I was doing. And I know roughly how big my audience is and how engaged they are and what they respond to. It’s not like I don’t have metrics. Such as they are.

If you want to discuss the ideas I post – even disagree with them or argue about them – I’m all for that. That’s the sort of discussion I want to see. If you want to tell me what you think of what I’m doing, what you like and what you don’t, what you want more of and what isn’t useful to you, I’m all for that too. I’ll take it under advisement. But ultimately, I’m going to go with my own judgment. It’s my name on the site after all.

If you have opinions beyond that – about how I live my life or what you think of me as a person or who I associate with or how I take care of my physical or mental health – I will disregard that crap. When I want your advice about how I live my life, I will ask for it. And until I ask for it – and give you enough information to offer it – you will keep it to yourself. Or it will be deleted. And if you persist, you will find yourself removed from the community. It’s offensive, it’s condescending, it’s belittling, and I don’t have to take it. Clean your own room before you wander into mine and start organizing.

Do you think it’s hypocritical that my articles sometimes include non-life advice when I’m saying that? Well who cares? I sure don’t.

In general, feedback from patrons posted on my posts, updates, and articles on Patreon will be given my stronger consideration that general chatter on the site. And going forward, when my Patrons offer feedback, I will do my damnedest to respond.

Transparency

I’ve made it a point in the past to tell all of you absolutely everything about what’s going on with me. To share my struggles, trials, and tribulations. I’ve done that partly because I think my patrons deserve to know what I’m up to and partly because I hope that sharing my experiences will help other people cope with theirs. Because, despite the chaos I’ve been through in the past three years, everything I’ve faced in my life is a totally normal problem thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people have also faced. Or will also face. I’m not special.

That said, going forward, I’m probably going to be a little less transparent. I will still update my Patrons about what to expect and if I fail to live up to a promise, I will tell them why. But I will keep the details of my personal life a little more private. Because those details have led to people feeling like they can offer me advice and help. And because some intolerant shits in the past have taken advantage of that information to come after me while some vile shits have tried to manipulate me into giving them their way. A very small number of shits, but they are shits nonetheless. And they are not representative of my community at large.

So, while I will keep my supporters in the loop, it’s going to be a murkier and more opaque loop. And hope you can all respect that. Because I think this public figure needs to be a little less public going forward.