The Gaming Den

Diablo items are more an example of what Frank is talking about here, I think, than a counterexample. You tend to find "standard" magical items, i.e. blues, and occasionally you get a rare or artifact item which you rock the house with. And you have the best odds of finding these off a tou...

Huh, I'm surprised 3d6 isn't most common. Then again, I only really say that because some of the big hitters in the generic world (GURPS, HERO) use it.

Madara is an awful villain for two reasons, one that's not the fault of his characterization, one that is. The first problem is that his gimmick is overexposed to the point of causing the manga to derail. The Uchiha clan has already had a stranglehold on the plot; making Madara the villain complete...

Shadowrun is one of the more common systems mentioned because Frank has a bit of a chubby for the 4th Edition Shadowrun rules basic structure, and honestly the same structure has been used for many, many others systems (albeit with slightly different die shapes) like WoD and so on, that "roll p...

Birds that could be useful to stat include Doves/Pigeons, Crows, Ravens (if stat different from Crows), Peregrine Falcon, Turkey-necked Vultures, an Owl, and a Macaw parrot. Oh, and stats for a swarm of pigeons. Those are all the birds I can think of that someone would be likely to see that might be...

Excuse me!

Girl Genius is a gaslamp fantasy. Not steampunk.

Thank you, that is all.

( He'd still totally be all over that after Kaja corrected you on that point. )

A thought on weakening substances: should they have "defensive" applications? It seems, intuitively, that standing out in the sun should prevent a vampire from Dominating you or lightning you on fire, even if the vampire himself is in the shade. Likewise, Witches probably shouldn't be abl...

One of the modifiers I am considering for this setup, to encourage people who want to play (for instance) psychics who have preternatural danger senses with high WIS and not so much DEX is to go "if X is higher than Y, then add (value) to Y for this task." This will help them close the gap...

I think an important point on the decision tree here is that 4e powers... don't interact meaningfully with other powers in your decision tree. because there aren't enough powers or resources to interact with or outshine or anything. In this respect, 4e is immensely inferior to WoW. Yes, there are &q...

The sad thing is I actually looked it up, saw "Incredibles", noted to myself "It's Incredibles, Invincible is the comic." And then wrote Invincibles anyways. Sigh.

Yes, 4e design basically uses All Stat Replacement, All The Time. Which is kind of something I abhor. I don't really mind that you can kill a fool with any of the stats on your character sheet, including underwater basketweaving ranks, however, to me, having Mind Control be under Int, Wis, or Cha, a...

Claws of the Beast are good for agg only if you can't smuggle a shotgun with dragonsbreath rounds in somewhere. If you do need to smuggle agg damage everywhere you walk, then you will like Claws of the Beast. However, as Frank pointed out, tonguelashing someone to death is equally good and also requ...

It doesn't matter if it's a penalty since once your Dexterity is zero the duration of it is pretty much forever, as you are going to now be an inanimate object, which has no Dexterity.

I've been mulling over a game-rule-thing recently, yeah, I know, we all have our personal game design. Well, one of the questions that came up in my mind was "Should I allow some kind of stat replacement?" For reference, the intended system has strictly delineated stats that do not overlap...

Even in a very combat-centric game splitting up axes and swords is only a good idea if swords and axes are meaningfully different from each other. And the difference better be something among the lines of "is useless against one-third of the opposition". I can't think of a single game whi...

This somewhat generously assumes that the planet does not roll its save versus wankery. And that it does not have SR. I think in a fantasy universe that had spheres of annihilation, all worlds that did not have resistance to being annihilated would be destroyed already.

My point wasn't that those concerns weren't, well, concerning, but I am far more disturbed, frankly, that Japanese has a culture wherein the language uses what are often identical words for Master and husband, than by there being virtual prostitution, or a setting where cute girls are used to sell t...

I really, really can't give a damn about whether Michael Moore was called "Master." I will grant that the culture is misogynistic, however, Exceeding Ridiculous Politeness To The Point Of Subservience to customers is pretty much par for the course in Japan. "Honorable person" is ...

In all the D&D games I've played in and even run, the encounters are almost always of an EL higher than the party level, not equal, because equal CR fights are almost completely uninteresting, as they are merely resource attrition, and there is no appreciable chance of failure. The party specifi...

I think it's latent incredulity.

"They couldn't possibly have meant for that to be true, so it isn't true."

I came here more-or-less after hunting down the origin of the Tome of Necromancy. Liked the random game projects so I decided to hang around and now-and-then contribute since. I haven't had much to say recently though since a lot of the subjects cropping up have been rehashed or my creative focus is...

The Exalted+ tag is even used on threads which are critical of the game system because people don't want to hear anymore of the bitching when they're trying to constructively evaluate how to fix something.

I don't think so. My impression of what Frank has said repeatedly that he wishes to draw on the associations that the names have, not avoid them. In other words, according to what I have parsed from him, the argument that "Asura" should be avoided because it will evoke the images of broodi...

Well fuck, there goes my plan to play any vampires, werewolves, or mages.

( I also find that intensely amusing coming from the guy calling himself Lao-tzu. )

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Asura http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/souleater/images/3/36/Kishinanime.jpg http://hardcoregaming101.net/samuraishodown/ssova2-pic12.jpg These guys get onto the disambiguation page for Asura on Wikipedia. The Guild Wars guys don't even get a footnote on the Asura pa...