The Gaming Den

I quit years ago so maybe they really are just super ban happy these days but back in my day Wizards definitely wasn't above changing the wording on cards citing balance reasons. A classic example would be Abeyance. As originally printed you could draw a card and tell your opponent to sit and spin f...

Oh, and for the record it's not even like I'm upset by the notion of Clouters with enormous strength scores given that with the right Authority set you can straight make a werewolf go fetch your slippers. Mostly the li'l argument we're having comes down to whether the mechanics really think he shoul...

Potency raises your attribute caps and there is never any mention of an explicit augmented attribute cap ala shadowrun and this isn't actually WoD anymore so I'm a li'l fuzzy on whether magical abilities let you beat your magically raised attribute cap. I see "Here's stuff that raises your attr...

Probably a dumb question, but the temporary strength gains from the Clout disciplines and devotions are still subject to the Potency boosted attribute cap, right? I've got a player whinging about Giant Size being partly "wasted"* if that is the case. I already pointed out that for 4 PP som...

Catharz's version of the section is 128 words long instead of 133 words long. In my opinion, there isn't substantive difference and I don't know why I'd care. -Username17 That is more or less the way I felt. The adverbs and character count critique is a minor nitpick and one that amounts to very li...

I'm not fond of any of the options so my vote boils down to taking a stand against Daggerstorm-- Daggerstorm hits me as a bad name even for a WoW guild and I've seen WoW guilds named things like "Lone Wolves."* I kinda like Bootstraps but to me that title sounds more like a war game--and n...

I agree with Grek. If one were concerned about page count than nixing many of the adverbs would be an easy way to address the issue but in that case I would recommend going a step further and applying the same standard to the rest of the rules so as to keep the style consistent. Beyond that, replaci...

I'm not a particularly big fan of Sirlin's rebalancing efforts but I wouldn't call them unfocused fiddling. I love the original SSF2T as much as the next guy but let's face it, a good third of the cast was basically stuck saying "Fucking fireballs, how do they work?" in some matchups.

I'm totally fine with people being killed by hand to hand attacks. What I'm less OK with is people being merely inconvenienced by gunfire. Basically, I think this boils down to a referendum on how much rocket launcher tag you want to allow, since melee simply doesn't do very well in settings where p...

Melee abilities are easily modified by cyber or magic. When you can punch through walls with ease it ceases to be a last ditch trick and becomes a primary means of offense. While IRL it's harder to learn a form of wushu than use a pistol effectively, in terms of game balance the two should cost the...

More than anything, I just don't want melee abilities to be so costly or specific that you could plausibly sum up people's roles with Kick Man or Sword Guy, since unless you're making guns uncharacteristically weak then melee is ultimately a last ditch trick roughly on level with having the Escape A...

no game rules will prevent a ball-hog from being a ball-hog. just dont play with the ball-hogs. Yes, yes, we get it: disruptive players are disruptive. But some events are mission-critical and some groups will naturally gravitate towards having whoever is best suited for the job do the job since th...

How about renaming "fragile test" to "threat test?" It passes the re-write test pretty well, I'd say: Threat Tests: Pushing Your Luck “ I don't think I want any more. ” Another type of test is the “threat test”. Threat tests are done when there is a specific disaster that charact...

Woah. I've just got my eyes on the MilSpecTech e-book today. And after the first three vehicles I've noticed one can start the game with a frakkin' TANK! For the price of a sports car. Is Pink Mohawk being promoted to the Deafult Shadowrun Theme? Ugh, don't they realize that their rules simply don'...

As someone who did most of their D&D gaming with pick up groups in college or running the occasional game for my brother's band I must say that I'm frankly not that interested in throwing up a "Must be this creative to ride" sign. If the adventures that happen to the character in play ...

Yeah, see, I'm familiar with all that stuff you said about why people play human characters, I just don't see it as a problem or think that it is really possible or even all that desirable to ditch all the cliches during a session of D&D. I am totally okay with some of the PCs being defined more...

Frankly, I'm not a big fan of having my characters be all that defined by where they started life. Your generic self-insert is my blank slate.

Never watched it, but my knee jerk reaction when I first heard about it was to disapprove. Is it an effective argument against Palin or even intended as such? My guess is probably not; I can easily buy the notion that some production company just wanted to cash in on the novelty. It just hits me as ...

First was on your point, and that you shouldn't read too much into porn. I mean, it's also slanderous to pizza delivery guys that they are portrayed as so ready to take advantage of women so destitute they can't even afford a tip. Furthermore, and I dont know if you've noticed this, but they often ...

But we're talking about the reasoning of his audience right now Well, given the way Fectin quoted me, I suspect it's just a case of parallel conversations since I had the "Goodkind's use of sex is manipulative" explanation rolling before the thread started to include talk about what's in ...

I think just calling it porn is underselling what kind of an ideologue the man is given that he's dedicated books to intelligence agencies, name drops Ayn Rand & Aristotle in interviews and has plotlines that frankly don't even qualify as thinly veiled when it comes to attacking communism or con...

Hyzmarca: Only if the Iron Dream had an extra helping of women-in-refrigerators. Goodkind's favorite ideological whipping boys aren't anywhere near intrinsically vile enough that you can kill all their adherents just on principle without the readers turning on the protagonists. Goodkind's "solu...

The Sword Of Truth series might be the most cynically wanky thing I've ever encountered. Honestly, it's not even the handling of sexuality that's the most damning thing about it for me--which, is saying something, because holy shit, does the use of sexuality read as exploitive-- but how self-indulg...

I'd stress that not only is most combat in anime one on one I'd go further and say that virtually all the consequential combat is one on one since as you pointed out anime often likes to dwell on the relationship between the characters even while Fist King and Kung Fu Jesus are beating the piss out ...

[ :flames: No fair. Everyone knows that Baslamic Vinegar has a ton of sugar in it. That's cheating. Use plain vinegar like the stuff you do to make easter eggs or clean your coffee pot. This post hits me as kind of silly and nitpicky. Most vinegars will have sugar in them because they're the result...