The True Campaign Managery Series
There’s more to running a campaign than just stringing adventures together week after week. And I ain’t talking about figuring out how to string adventures together. Just getting players to show up is a chore. Then there’s getting characters generated, agreeing to rules, and keeping all their little conflicts from ripping your game apart.
This series is about all the unpleasant bits of managing a campaign. The planning, the people managing, and the conflict resolving.
Part I: Introduction
True Campaign Managery Course Introduction and Outline
November 27, 2023
With this new, ongoing series of lessons, I — the Angry GM — intend to teach you everything you need to know to keep a Campaign alive until you grant it the sweet mercy of death.
A Campaign Manager’s Guide to Selfishness
February 14, 2024
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.
Part II: Planning Your Campaign
Game First or Group First
February 28, 2024
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.
Envisioning a Campaign
March 13, 2024
Now that you’ve decided to start a campaign and ignore your players’ input — you master of selfishness you — it’s time to start having visions.
To Session Zero or Not to Session Zero
April 24, 2024
In this True Campaign Managery lesson, I explore the idea of a Session Zero and whether it’s worth hosting one? Spoiler alert: usually no.
Supplemental Materials To To Session Zero or Not to Session Zero
Professor Angry’s Office Hours: I Actually Do Respect People’s Boundaries
May 1, 2024
We need to have a frank, open, and difficult discussions about why I keep calling Game Consent Surveys horseshit. Or rather, I need to explain and you need to shut up and listen.
Professor Angry’s Office Hours: On Being True
May 9, 2024
In the second of two office-hours discussions, I rant about what it means to actually exercise good judgment and how it’s got nothing to do with building checklists or worrying about hypotheticals.
True Meeting Hostery
May 15, 2024
True Campaign Managery lesson time! Again. In this lesson, I’m going to teach all y’all how to host a meeting. Any meeting at all. Including game sessions. Which are meetings.
Clubhouse Rules: Scheduling and Attendance (Part I)
July 10, 2024
In this True Campaign Managery lesson, I talk about the single most fun aspect of Game Mastering: yelling at your friends about showing up on time and punishing them for ghosting you. Whee!
Clubhouse Rules: Scheduling and Attendance (Part II)
July 22, 2024
The topic so nice, I wrote about it twice. This is the follow up to that first lesson about yelling at your friends for their crappy attendance to your pretend elf game.
Part III: True Mechanical Managery
True Mechanical Managery
September 4, 2024
It’s time to set up a new True Campaign Managery lesson module. Over the next several lessons, I plan to teach you how to properly manage your game’s mechanics. But first, I’ve got to teach you what that means.
True Mechanical Managery: Experience and Advancement Systems I
September 25, 2024
When True Campaign Managers decide how to practically implement their game system’s Experience and Advancement System, they’ve got to know what the system’s for and what’s at stake if they implement it wrong. That’s what this half-a-lesson is all about.
True Mechanical Managery: Experience and Advancement Systems II
October 4, 2024
In this follow-up on Experience and Advancement Systems, I teach you how True Campaign Managers actually evaluate such systems and set a policy that works for their campaign. It’s easier — and harder — than you might think.
True Mechanical Managery: When Death Comes Calling I
October 29, 2024
Today, I’m continuing the discussion about game mechanics that wreck campaigns unless you’ve got a plan for them before they come up. Today’s mechanic: Character Death.
True Mechanical Managery: When Death Comes Calling II
November 26, 2024
It’s time to finish the lesson on Character Death Policies by telling you how to write your own damned policy and not telling you to just steal mine.
Supplemental Materials to True Mechanical Managery
Professor Angry’s Office Hours: You Ain’t a Behavioral Engineer
October 18, 2024
It’s time I have a little bit of an intervention because, frankly, some of y’all are starting to scare me with your approach to this whole True Campaign Managery thing.
A Campaign Managery Digression: Changing Character Faces
November 21, 2024
We’re taking a short, one-lesson break from the syllabus to talk about your Character Switching Policy and also to talk about making your decisions based on actual frigging reality.