The Gaming Den

I've heard good things about Mage Knight, but I've never played it. I've only played it a few times, but it really didn't wow me. One of the major mechanics is WoF. I have no problem with that, but the randomness isn't "Which attack can I make this round?" It's "Do I get to attack or...

See, you missed Arkham's biggest problem. Yes, it's bloated and fiddly and takes forever, but the really annoying bit is that it's a co-op game without cooperation. Everyone has the same goal, but you fight alone, you encounter strange happenings alone, and you take portals to other worlds alone. Ev...

You got gay romance games like Blue Rose, but that's only even questionable content if you're homophobic or you think the idea of role playing "romance" with your gaming buddies is unappealing. It's kind of amazing what a fucking beacon for flames that game turned into, and for all the wr...

I guess because not very long ago the NRA was totally fine with background checks?

But more officially, as I understand it, the Rokugan's Roll & keep system, is apparently rather unsalvageable, though I never really found a detailed answer as to why however. Okay, so it's a stat + skill, keep stat system. So when you roll, say, a sword attack, you take your agility 3 and swor...

What is the whole deal with this mentality??? There has never been a point in time when America existed as a monolithic faith or some whole of morality - there have always been groups with differing beliefs. Do you know what united them? The belief that there was room for everyone in spite of their...

Part of me thinks that the ECB needs to backstop Cyprus' deposit insurance by just guaranteeing all accounts up to 100k eurozone-wide. The rest of me thinks that since the ECB is apparently run by idiots, their guarantee would be worth precisely dick. Maybe the US government should just unilaterally...

"Story Games" is a term from the Forge. As such, it doesn't actually mean anything. The Forge specialized in coining words that sounded like they meant something but then "defining" them with rambling twenty thousand word essays that were not internally consistent. That should b...

This seems remarkably relevant. And will probably remain that way for a long time to come. But that does raise the point: why can't the money that has "disappeared" (given it is not real) just be whipped back up into existence by typing it in? I'm not convinced that just crediting banks w...

Agreed, but I don't see an obvious stopping point. Of course, it'll peter out at some point, but since imposing idiotic economic policies and sustaining them in spite of all evidence that they're not working seems to be the hip thing in Europe these days, there's no rational reason for either Cyprio...

You make effectively a spot vs. stealth check, and the book's suggestion for failure is a twist that a snake has eaten the merchant and will shortly thereafter attack the patrol. That doesn't make any sense. I presume that the snake is very large, because it's big enough to eat the merchant, but ev...

But that's not the same as letting you fail, is it? There are already enough games where almost everyone wins. We call them "all the RPGs on the market." See, I'd read MG as saying that you are permitted to fail and that it doesn't need to end the story. Like most RPGs, there's the one-ro...

Well, they won't forget he existed, they'll forget he had a political career and hire him as a commentator.

There are tabletop fusion reactors, like the Farnsworth Fusor, that genuinely and reliably produce fusion reactions. They just don't come remotely close to generating net power, so they're primarily used as a neutron source or an expensive hobby rather than, like, changing the world. And there are r...

Major lightning storm in Oakland, CA (USA) right now. I'm posting from a covered enclosure outside while the elements pound around me. Pretty cool. Every half-minute or so the whole area gets lit up by lightning. You can hear the thunder 3-4 seconds after, usually. I went for a walk earlier and my ...

If you live with your parents, you don't get to boast about how you went out and bought a brand new luxury car in cash. It may be true, but you wouldn't have been able to do it if someone else weren't paying for rent. I guess that the difference: I'm okay with people bragging about not having a car...

Isn't that essentially what Burning Wheel does for advancement? Or at least very similar? BW is something like "make a number of skill checks of varying difficulties, when you've accumulated enough, skill goes up." Mouse Guard, a simplified variant, is just "accumulate successes and ...

As far as I can be bothered to understand, it involves calculating shit until all the bitcoins are "found", at progressively decreasing rates. There's a fixed amount of it. So it's a commodity currency, like gold. Only not, because instead of being "not worth as much as a commodity as...

4) The dice are a mixed bag. I think it's faster to pick up the dice than to calculate and re-calculate various bonuses, but actually figuring out the result takes more time. Figuring out the results take longer, and having so many dice often results in them flying all over the place. The weird dic...

Mouse Guard uses a (better) variant of skill successes. It ditches the rolls and just has the skill improve when the player accumulates successes equal to the new skill level and failures equal to the current level. I don't necessarily think it is the bee's knees as far as advancement goes, but mark...