Blog: The Angry GM

The Angry GM ("RPG advice with attitude") is a blog on 5e D&D with good insights on running the game and how good mechanics look like, and why.

The articles are typically too wordy, droning on and on for pages, and preambled by expletive-laden self-aggrandizing drivel, but you can tell that the author has played A LOT of RPGs and has come to his conclusions from long experience. This stuff works. The substance under the attitude is good.

Some of my favourite articles (all the "Ask Angry" columns are interesting):

• His 5 Simple Rules for Dating my teenaged skill system is a classic, and makes the point that you should only ask for skill checks when there is a chance and a cost of failure. No point if characters can just retry until they get it. And no logic in banning retries. Also makes the point players only should announce intended actions - you then tell them if these are resoved by a skill check.
• On travel - Getting There is Half the Fun. Discussing the different approaches to handle overland travel: travel montage (skipping the actual travel, to get to the good part right away), the bad "Exactly one encounter" solution, or make travel interesting, by offering a decision to trade-off between different routes based on cost, time, danger, risk of getting lost, and potential for discovery or cool landmarks along the way. A lot of work, that one. The Alexandrian has it more to the point, adds ability to travel stealthily, and that you have to use two dimensions that are not comparable to make this a real decision instead of just an optimization task. (Although he delves into hexcrawling, which is a bit of the track, so to speak).
• In Into the Woods, discusses how to make travel challenging in a full daily refresh system with ridiculously easy foraging and low risk of getting lost. I do not think he achieves this, but having encounters with the regional powers could work. Compare this with OD&D wilderness, which was super deadly as you could run into dragons, hundreds of orcs or bandits and so on.
• Encumberance, Rations and other shit you hate tracking, made idea of levels of play and changing challenges explicit, where as a beginner, things like torches, weather and rations matter, while over time they get replaced more and more with powers and magic.
• On Called Shots in general and in 5e.