I haven’t done one of these in a while. That ain’t good; I need to fix that. I guess I am technically fixing it by posting this, but only if I make it a habit.

So, let’s do a monthly update and release schedule, and then let’s do our damndest to make it a habit and stick to it.

I want to cover a lot of ground, so I’m going to take this at a brisk pace. Or, at least, I’m going to try to. Except for one laugh we’re all gonna have. But first…

Game Angry: How to RPG the Angry Way On Sale for Christmas

A few years ago, I wrote the definitive work on becoming a roleplaying gamer, running your first game, and then running more better games. It’s called Game Angry: How to RPG the Angry Way and there’s a module I put out at the same time you can download for free and run as your first game. Because the gift of gaming and a consignment to forever Game Master is the greatest thing you can give, the book’s on sale until Christmas, both the physical and electronic versions.

You can learn more about the book and the module at the Game Angry: How to RPG the Angry Way page on this site and buy it at the Angry Games, Inc. storefront.

Unfortunately, I cannot ship physical copies outside the United States at this time.

Let’s Laugh At Stupid AI

I’m in a hurry, but this shit’s too funny not to share.

Let me start by admitting that I sometimes use an AI assistant I’ve dubbed my robot buddy. I even have a professional account. That ain’t the funny part.

Let me now reassure all y’all that I absolutely never use my robot buddy to write, draft, or even outline content. I also don’t use it to make art, except for very personal, home use. I do sometimes let my robot buddy help me prepare handouts and visuals for my personal home roleplaying games, for example, and I have let it make funny art for memetic purposes. I write my own content. My work may be crap, but it’s also 100% pure Angry, with no additives or fillers. When I need art, I pay an artist. I will never, ever put my name on something I didn’t create by myself.

Besides, AI sucks at creative tasks.

Mostly, my robot buddy helps with web searches, research, project planning, and technical issues. It’s mostly just a very sarcastic, glorified search engine.

Due to my robot buddy helping me upgrade my computer a few months ago, I no longer have access to a lot of the software I used to use. That includes the software I used in the past to make calendars and schedules and shit. So, I asked robot buddy to help. I wanted it to recommend an application or service. Instead, it said, “You don’t need an application or service. I can totally make you a calendar for your update. Just tell me the month, the year, everything you want on it, and how to classify everything for color-coding purposes, and I’ll pop it right out for you.”

Now, I was dubious. I know what I can trust my robot buddy to do and what I can’t. My robot buddy, though, seems to have a very aggressive Dunning-Kruger plugin installed. A calendar is pretty easy, though, as long as my robot buddy works with a spreadsheet or a table in a document. But then, my robot buddy fired up his Brownian Noise-to-Data image generator, and I knew I was in for a rough ride.

And so, I give you The Angry GM’s December 2025 Content Calendar, according to his robot buddy…

I think you’re all going to enjoy learning how to suild a teetful dungeson.

Also, to everyone who celebrates, I hope you have a Merry Christmas Eve, a Merry Christtmas Day, a Merry Christmas Eve, a Merry Christmas Day, and a Merry Craristmas Eve.

I hate when we have an early Easter and five Craristmases in the same year.

And, not to leave my Jewish readers out, I hope you have a Happy Inithunah.

Personal Update: I Screwed Up and I’m Fixing It and I’m Fixing Everything

I am not going to drag this out…

I got really confused in November and screwed up big. The wrong number of Features got posted, I charged for the wrong things on Patreon, Proofreadalouds got lost, and Early Access Features never moved to General Access. Fortunately, none of this ended up with people getting overcharged on Patreon, so there’s no issue any of you need to worry about, but the month of November became a giant joojooflop situation — look it up — and I don’t even know. I’m sorry. That has never happened before and it won’t happen again.

To even shit out, I’ve got five Features planned and in the works for this month. You’ll see below.

Meanwhile, many of you know I’ve been fighting an ongoing barrage of personal, physical, and mental health issues throughout the year. It’s all been seriously affecting the quality and reliability of my work and has led to frozen projects and broken promises too many times. My recovery has been sporadic and slow.

Last month, in a moment of pure this shit isn’t working anymore, and I can’t live like this, I took a very long, very ugly inventory of my personal life. Then, in a massive attempt to speedrun unfucking a life, I spent the better part of three weeks fighting with medical practitioners, insurance companies, banks, government agencies, and property managers to resolve every source of stress and instability I’ve been ignoring. I could not face the idea of throwing another calendar in the trash with nothing to show for it.

And, you know what? It fucking worked. Kind of. I have a health recovery and rehabilitation plan, reduced stress levels, and renewed financial stability. For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like my life is built on rotten ice and that I’m one wrong step from breaking through and drowning in the icy depths.

Now it’s time to do the same professionally. As if this bullshit deserves to be called a profession. This month is going to be a struggle. Especially the next two weeks. But if I pull off what I have planned, or even get three-quarters of the way there, I’ll be stable. I’ll have breathing room. I won’t be great, but I will be functional.

Which, all things considered, ain’t a bad way to start a new year.

That said, I don’t have answers for everything yet. I’m still stabilizing the month-to-month. Long-term projects are going to need their own inventory and planning. But I’ve started that work as well.

The Angry GM’s Real December 2025 Content and Event Calendar

So, here it is. Here’s the big plan for the month…

Now, let’s talk about some of the stuff that’s on it.

The Content Plan and Workflow Goal

First, my goal remains what it has been for a while now. I want to release an Early Access Feature on my site and distribute it via Patreon and Subscribestar to my financial supporters every Wednesday, regardless of how many Wednesdays actually land in a month. I want to then move that Feature to the main page for General Access the following Tuesday.

I’m going to need a little catch-up to get there, and I need to work around some inconvenient holidays.

You can see the release plan. I’ve got two articles about narrating better, an adventure design thing, a discussion about screwing your players through gameplay, and a rant about the wilderness. I want to get all five out, and I’m working aggressively to do that. If I only hit four, though, I’m counting it as a victory. The key is to be in a position where I’m publishing once a week again.

Also, note I’m not putting out articles on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, so those will hit on Tuesdays and not Wednesdays. But the Craristmas season is always a little disruptive.

Meanwhile, I have a metric asston of Early Access features that I totally failed to move to the front page for General Access. So I’ll just be plowing stuff onto the front page every Tuesday and Thursday, except for Craristmas Day, until the backlog’s cleared and everything’s synced.

Proofreadaloud Recordings and Live Broadcasts

I read every one of my Features out loud for proofreading purposes. For a while now, I’ve been recording those proofreadalouds and distributing them to my financial supporters as bonus content. They’re utterly awful, but I’m told that’s part of their charm. Whatever. Moreover, I’ve actually started broadcasting the recording sessions on Discord, so supporters with Discord access can listen and laugh together live and then sometimes get treated to an impromptu, crappy live chat thing afterwards.

Because I’ve been so behind, I haven’t maintained a regular schedule for those recordings. I usually don’t even announce them more than an hour or two in advance. I don’t want to do that anymore. My goals, thus, are fourfold, and don’t I sound like an elf questgiver? Who says thus and fourfold these days? Seriously.

That, by the way, is the kind of self-deprecation I fill my proofreadalouds with. I can’t help it.

Anyway…

Anyway, I’ve got four goals for the Proofreadalouds. First, I want to publish the Proofreadaloud recordings at the same time that I publish the Early Access Feature. That means I can’t keep doing shit at the last minute. Second, I want to schedule the live Discord Proofreadaloud recordings in advance so people know when they’re happening. Third, I want the live Discord Proofreadaloud recordings to happen mostly on the same day at the same time every week, inasmuch as my schedule allows that kind of crap. And, fourth, I want to stop doing Proofreadalouds and start doing Readalouds. I’m not going to drop my flubs, jokes, distractions, asides, and self-jibes; I just don’t want to be rewriting, revising, and correcting the Feature while I do it.

That’s why, on the content calendar, the Proofreadaloud recordings are already scheduled and why, as the month goes on, they drift further and further from the Early Access Feature publications and eventually settle on Fridays at 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Daylight Normal Time.

The first couple of recordings this month might be tight. Consider that schedule tentative. I have to give myself some room to fuck up. But by the end of the month, you should be able to rely on that schedule.

Mostly Monthly Live Chats

I used to host live chats mostly every month for Discord members and distribute the recordings for all my supporters. It was a chance to catch up, share plans, interact, share neat ideas and future plans, answer questions, abuse people, and babble about whatever random topic I felt like yammering about. I had fun, others claimed to have fun, it was fun. I’ve done a few since, but they’ve been pretty depressing. Mostly tearful apologies about how much I suck at everything and how I owe all y’all better. Which I do.

It’s been too damned long since I did a proper Live Chat. A fun one about gaming and future plans and questions and abuse and shit. I already announced it on Tuesday. Now, all the rest of y’all know. Tuesday, December 9 at 7:30 Eastern Daylight Standard New York Time.

There’s a thread if you want to propose topics or ask questions for answering in advance.

Meanwhile, I’m going to make it a point to schedule the next Live Chat at the end of each previous Live Chat, and my target’s going to be the second Tuesday of every month as a general plan.

The Secret Stash and Bonus Content

My high-tier supporters used to have access to a thing called The Secret Stash. It was just a dumping ground of maps, monsters, adventures, rules, and documents I’d made for my own games. I periodically threw new crap in there as I made it for personal use. But then, my home games started to drop off. Then, there was a nasty hosting issue and a technical disaster that destroyed the Secret Stash forever. For a while, I kept doling out bonus content without the Stash, then I compiled chunks of bonus content into Theme packs, but gradually, the bonus content thing faded, and The Secret Stash was gone.

The Theme Packs, by the way, are still available at my shop for free download. They’re pretty good.

I’d intended to replace the bonus content promise with Project Slapdash in various ways and, while that project is still in active development and I will make good on the promises I’ve made to Frienemy tier supporters to give them a free roleplaying game engine as and when it’s done and playtesting materials as and when they’re ready, the timeline for that whole project has been totally nuked over the last eighteen months.

That said, Project Slapdash didn’t get ruined. If anything, it’s grown into something way more than I originally promised, and I still intend to give it away to my Frienemies in thanks for their generous support. But those of you supporting me at the Frienemy tier deserve more than future promises for your generosity.

Thanks to the efforts of several diligent followers who had copies of lots of my stuff stuffed in filing cabinets and between couch cushions, I have recovered almost everything that once resided in The Secret Stash. For now, until I resolve a hosting issue, I’m going to use SubscribeStar and Patreon to redistribute and archive popular Legacy Secret Stash content a bit at a time once or twice a month. I’ll also use Patreon’s option to offer for sale such items to non-supporters for individual fees.

In addition, I’m going to start producing actual bonus content again for Frienemy-tier supporters via Patreon, Discord, and The Inner Sanctum. Small stuff at first, and then it’ll grow. I have a few different ideas I want to test out. I’m trying to get the first thing out by December 26th and again, put out something every month thereafter at the very least. Maybe more often as I make content for my own games.

Casual Video Game Streaming

I have a YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@TheAngryGM.

I don’t know why; I don’t actually make video content. That’s why there’s very little there. There’s a few panels I did at Gamehole Con years ago, a mapping livestream, a casual livestream, and some video game streams. I actually enjoy doing the occasional bit of streaming, and, at a better time in my life, I had plans to branch out and mix some video and streamed content in with my written shit. I even thought about actually streaming an actual roleplaying game campaign or something, which, honestly, would be a great fit for me.

Talk me into it, please.

Anyway…

I like casual, fun streams, and I spend a lot of my free time playing video games. Hence, I used to do a lot of video game streaming. It was half casual, hilarious fun because I suck at gaming and talking at the same time, and I don’t mind making fun of myself, and it was half critical video game design analysis and discussion about how such design analysis might help roleplaying game Game Masters. I’ve commented several times that I miss doing casual video game streams purely for fun, and every time I have, someone else has said they miss my streams too.

So…

I’m doing it. I’ve been kind of obsessed with kind of liking, kind of hating, and kind of sucking at Hollow Knight: Silksong, a terrible sequel to the greatest video game ever made, and I do have a lot of thoughts about it’s design, the good, the bad, and the very ugly, and it’s really easy to slap on a headset, press the Share button on the PS5 controller, and be streaming, so, I figure, let’s do it.

On Monday, December 15, and subsequent Monday nights, at 7:30 PM EDST, I’m going to play video games and stream them to my YouTube channel and talk about them. I’ll probably start with Silksong because I have a hell of a lot to say, but I ain’t gonna promise a complete playthrough for the two or three months that will take, but maybe that’s what will happen.

All I’m promising right now is that if you’re watching my YouTube channel on Monday nights at 7:30 PM ESRB, I’ll be playing a video game and talking about it, and the streams will be available for later viewing on YouTube.

We’ll see how it goes and whether there might be more streaming content in the future once I’m more stable in the New Year.

Project Slapdash and Finally, A Slapchat

To be honest, I don’t know what to say here. Those of you in the know know that Project Slapdash is the title of my secret fantasy adventure roleplaying game engine. You know it was going to originally be a crappy, serial-numbers-filed-off alternative to one of the world’s roleplaying games back when that game’s publisher was being a massive douchecanoe about things, but you also know the project has become a thing of its own. It’s survived several alpha playtests, and it recently went through a massive redesign. You also know that work on it has gone through several stalls, freezes, and nukes over the last eighteen months because of reasons. As a result, the thing is a giant-ass mess. It needs to be inventoried, and it needs a plan. You also know I’ve said that ever since the giant redesign I talked about a couple of months ago, and that’s all I’ve said since.

As with my personal life and my professional life, Project Slapdash needs a giant, speedrunned unfuckening born of sheer disgusted frustration, and that’s exactly what it’s getting. I don’t know what that’ll result in, and I’m not sure when that unfuckening will be done. This month, sometime, because I can’t start the New Year not knowing what the hell with Project Slapdash.

I have put a Slapchat on the calendar for next week. Because, no matter what state the project is in, I still need to be communicating with you who are supporting it regularly. Whatever else is going on, I can’t stop communicating. I don’t know how much of a timeline I’ll have by next week, but at least I’ll open the communication lines. We’ll go from there.

So, Tuesday, December 16, at 7:30 PM UTC-5, I’ll be slapchatting. I would do it later in the month to ensure I have a plan to share, but holidays. Mark your calendars.