Game First or Group First

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.

A Campaign Manager’s Guide to Selfishness

You can’t manage a social gaming club that provides your friends with hours of fun unless you’re willing to be a selfish prick. Trust me; if there’s one thing I know, it’s being a selfish prick.

Ask Angry January 2024 Mailbag

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.

G N S… P?

All I wanted to do was clarify myself. I didn’t mean to end up rambling about what playstyles mean and where they come from and whether it’s time to add another letter to our favorite playstyle acronym.

Why You Can’t Interrupt Your Players

In another article I absolutely don’t want to write, I explain why not being able to boss your players around isn’t a lack of Game Mastering skill, it’s a personality defect. That should go over big.

Tactical Infiltration Action

It’s time for the long, lost, missing Encounter resolution lesson: how to resolve stealth actions and infiltration scenes. And after you read it, you’ll totally understand why I tried to cut it from the roster. Dumbasses.

Ask Angry November 2023 Mailbag

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.

Ask Angry October 2023 Mailbag

Another month, another monthly Ask Angry mailbag, and another batch of people who can’t just ask a simple, straightforward question without treating me like a moron.

Resolving Social Actions

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.

Ask Angry September 2023 Mailbag

To end the month, let’s open the gift that keeps on giving — or keeps threatening to give me an aneurism — the Ask Angry mailbag.

Mastering the Thousand Cuts

As I didn’t die in a fiery conflagration, I owe you a real lesson on the Art of the Cutaway. Here it is. Maybe next time, I’ll get lucky.

Declaring Your Players’ Social Actions

It’s time for the actual, practical advice portion of the “resolving action scenes” lesson. And you did not read that title wrong. Because the first practical thing you’ve got to learn is that True Game Masters declare their players’ social actions for them. I shit you not.

Illusions are Bullshit… But Actually They’re Not

Sometimes, all it takes is one remark to set me off. And this time, I saw one remark about how to handle illusions. I didn’t read the actual remark or the hours of discussion around it, but I have opinions nonetheless.

Resolving Social Interactions: Social Conflict Not Really Defined

Now that I’ve wasted thousands of words and several hours laying the groundwork for portraying NPCs, it’s time for me to lay the groundwork for resolving social encounters. Or rather, social conflicts. Because there’s still no such thing as a social encounter.

Ask Angry July 2023 Mailbag

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?

Professor Angry’s Office Hours: How Players Play

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.

… and Scene

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.

Ask Angry June 2023 Mailbag

It’s time once again to dig into the well of stupid that never runs dry. Yes, it’s mailbag time again.

Stop Hacking… Mic Drop

In today’s ranty bullshit screed, I declare myself the winner of three different arguments about Hacking.

It’s a Trap!

It’s time for yet another lesson in resolving Encounters wherein I apply the same shit I’ve already taught you something like ten times to a specific in-game situation and claim I’m teaching you something new. This times, it’s traps and hazards.

Oh, No! More Macrochallenge Bullshit

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.

How to Manage Combat Like a True Game Master

In the second of two True Game Mastery lessons about resolving Combat, I spend half the lesson teaching you how to use what you already know better. And then I teach you something new.

Roll Initiative!

In the first of two True Game Mastery lessons about resolving combat, I teach you nothing. Because I already taught you everything you need to know to start combat right. You just don’t know it yet.

Everyone Doing Everything All At Once

True Game Mastery requires balance. True Game Masters know they can’t impose strict and arbitrary turn-and-time-based limits on their characters actions, but neither can they allow totally temporal anarchy. How do they manage complex strings of actions from multiple characters then? I’ll show you.

Definitely Not the Last Word on Dice Swing

Ever since I dropped a side remark about how the swinginess of the d20 was a bullshit nonissue, I’ve heard from literally severals of people asking me to expand. So I expanded. Holy crap did I ever expand.

How to Run Encounters… NOT!

This is the start of a series of True Game Mastery lessons about running different kinds of Encounters. Except it’s not. Because Encounters aren’t what you think they are.