Designing a campaign is like ordering dinner at The Olive Garden. Except for the parts that aren’t like that at all. Which is most of the parts. Anyway, let’s talk about campaign structures, about the Shape of your game and the Glue that holds it together.
As Henry VIII once basically said, “I’M POPE NOW!” That’s right. Welcome to my church. Now, let’s get dogmatic about campaigns, settings, and adventure paths.
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.
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.
What to expect when you’re expecting. Articles and content. From Angry. On this site. In March.
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.
Playing RPGs is exciting. Being creative is exciting. You know what isn’t exciting? Absorbing information someone else created. That sucks.
If you get over the bulls$&% notion that planning a plot is somehow railroading, you’ll discover just how powerful plot threads are as tools for designing adventures and campaigns. In this article, we’ll discuss the basics of plot points and how to build simple and complex adventures around them.
The first part of The Angry Guide to Kicka$&% 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.
In this True Campaign Managery, I explore the idea of a Session Zero and whether it’s worth hosting one? Spoiler alert: usually no.
To bring the Character Arc-Pocalypse to a close, today I’m writing about Character Arcs. For real this time.
This isn’t a Feature about incorporating Character Arcs into tabletop roleplaying games. That would be interesting. This is a boring-ass Feature about players picking their own stupid character quests. Which is a terrible idea.
Time for a little digression on the three kinds of Structure. Just don’t expect a useful lesson.
You can’t run a campaign without starting a campaign. And you can’t start a campaign without making ten thousand choices. And of all those choices, it’s the second one that’ll get you.
In the first in an official series of supporter-requested Features, I’ll tell you why your players don’t suck at tracking inventory and how to fix that.
Thanks to a courageous remark by a Frienemy in my Discord server, I finally have my New Year’s Post. And to show my respect and gratitude, I shall now proceed to piss all over that remark.
I warned you that I’d be putting this column on hold, but you all didn’t listen. You kept e-mailing me. Fortunately, I lied. So it’s Mailbag time.
I took a break from my holiday travels to answer some reader-submitted questions. Merry Christmas.
Another month is over. And as I look to the fresh hell of yet another new page on the calendar, I consign myself to the stale hell of responding to reader-submitted questions.
After many long years of refusing, I’m finally revealing the truth: just how do you take good game session notes. The answer isn’t what you think and you’re not going to like it. Which is pretty much standard for me.
Experienced Game Master suck at learning new TTRPG systems. But then, game publishers suck at teaching new TTRPG systems. It’s a match made in hell. Fortunately, Angry is here to help.
In this very special Ask Angry episode, I explore the view from the other side of the screen. What can a player do when their GM goes to The Angry GM for advice.
It’s time to wrap up this whole How to Run a Game Like a True Game Master thing by explaining how to Determine and Describe the Outcome of Social Actions in Social Encounters. And how to portray non-player characters properly.
Time for a brief aside to answer a question from Aspiring True Game Master Sloth about managing the Action Queue when parties split themselves between scenes or tasks and an introduction to an art you already know.
It’s time to dig back into the Font of Frustration that is The Ask Angry Mailbag! Why the hell can’t people follow basic instructions?
Put your books and syllabusi away, kids. We need to settle some things before we go any further. It’s time you either believe me or you get out. Because you can’t run an NPC if you don’t believe everything I’ve said so far. And you can run social and stealth scenes without NPCs.
Now that I’ve explained Macrochallenges — whether you understood them or not — I can finally defend a choice I made years ago that many of you still haven’t forgiving: why I stopped calling Non-Encounters Scenes.
Once again, The Angry GM digs into his mailbag and, with his characteristic patience and charity, answers some reader-submitted questions.
I really effed up that Attrition Macrochallenge thing, didn’t I? Don’t think so? Well, all the questions and comments I’m dealing with certainly say I did. So let me try that shit again.
It’s Random Bullshit time. Today, I’m bullshitting about challenge, difficulty, stupid game masters, and why attrition is the most brilliant mechanic ever invented.