The Gaming Den

It doesn't seem necessary, but at the same time I keep thinking about how Tolkien's ME was founded upon Tolkien's insistence that the alphabet of a language denoted what its cultural values were, and shaped its storytelling. This is as important as having physical laws (like "how does magic re...

3. I feel like there's not a lot of point in setting DCs such that the worst character has <10% success rate or the best has a >85% rate. With this requirement you can use a d6 as your rng ; 1 is auto-fail, 6 is auto-success. Level-appropriate DC is 3. It's a success more often than not, but it see...

Nonsense. The bard absolutely should be rolling to see if beasts can be turned on their masters, or crowds can be calmed or whatever. If a skill is required by a class (Perform for Bards, SpellCraft for Wizards, etc), it should be a class ability instead. That's not even negotiable. "You have ...

If every X amount of time you risk having an enemy patrol show up, it behooves you to limit the amount of time you spend breaking into the chamber with the Dark Ruby in it to the smallest number of X amounts possible. Except when there is a reward for encountering the enemy patrol. Like, you know, ...

D&D 4 is remarkable in the fact it has less than two player per game - which means the average game of D&D 4 features the MC and less than one player. Uh, 7857 players/1294 games = 6.07 players/game. ??? I meant "D&D 5" (27k games for 40k players). I guess I already forgot the...

http://68.media.tumblr.com/58b9c2f6fd95a8f8c59b82b4856ae90d/tumblr_inline_okyqf1Liyd1tmt2jn_500.jpg D&D 4 is remarkable in the fact it has less than two player per game - which means the average game of D&D 4 features the MC and less than one player. Or each player plays 4 games of D&D ...

Knowledge : stuff is an aberration all by itself. Knowing about stuff should be included into the Doing stuff skill. But then you get into weird areas where knowing about Arcana seems implies you can cast spells and knowing about The Planes or Aberrations lets you do what exactly? And if you always...

4th edition D&D has a short skill list and asks people to get creative with it and that's just a full fucking fail because Athletics doesn't really overlap with Religion very much. 4th edition has 18 skills, a class gives 3 to 6 skill, and a skill simply gives a +5. At that point, a better syst...

Another curiosity: 400 Balors vs 399 Balors is an auto-win for the 400 Balors. Actually, 399 Balor + 1 random FP 13 monsters autowin against 399 Balor. Because that's how battles actually work: recruiting one less competent soldier makes you automatically win. I believe you meant "lose" i...

Another curiosity: 400 Balors vs 399 Balors is an auto-win for the 400 Balors. Actually, 399 Balor + 1 random FP 13 monsters autowin against 399 Balor. Because that's how battles actually work: recruiting one less competent soldier makes you automatically win. One of the design goal of D&D 5 was...

I'm pretty satisfied now. I mean, what Chamomile and Maglag described already sounded pretty dumb taken individually but the part where the results flip-flop and ogres go from always losing to always winning as the scale changes is impressively stupid. Actually, the ogres don't auto-lose at the low...

Why even have colours? The system is all about creating factions ; you could just as easily go with "North Star" & "Southron Cross" (i.e. the northern/southern hemispheres respective orientation constellations); or as complicated as a 16-point Rosicrusian star with (N; NNE, ...

When the corp rez an ICE (or anything else), how long does it stay rezzed ? one run ? one turn ? forever ? (and what is the difference between net damages and meat damages ?)

http://www.netrunneronline.com/images/cards/315/netrunner-i-got-a-rock.jpg You're never going to play this card, but there's no kill like overkill! I never played NetRunner, but I saw some game; and I remember this card being played in a runner-killer deck - the goal of the deck was to kill the run...

There's two ways to play VtES. The first is to play it "casual style" where everyone agrees to play a weird mishmash of political actions, equipment, medium to big vampires, and whatever discipline powers you happen to have. That seems to be the market they were trying to go for. In this ...

The value isn't just in being seen as unusual or underestimated by the other people at the table, it's about getting to be unusual in-setting and all the opportunities and disadvantages that engenders. Because 90% of the time people build their character without any shits to give about their jaded ...

Thanks.

What are you even talking about? Halfling culture isn't a big dark secret. I even mentioned it on my first post on this halflings vs catfolk discussion: bucolic, rural folk. And some of them rise to the challenge of adventure. OK. You don't really know about the third edition of D&D, right? You...

Hey stupid, are you able to write anything more interesting than "halflings have a big cultural baggage, which I won't describe because" ? Having common races that don't produce adventurers terribly often isn't stupid at all. It allows lower level PCs to be portrayed as unusual due to thei...

But it still isn't about the niche of having a dex bonus. It's about the feel and cultural baggage, which aren't even vaguely related. Nobody cares about the "cultural baggage" of halfling. That's why it changes every edition, sometimes it changes during the course of an edition, and it c...

Halflings: often not athletic, never graceful or pretty, rarely hunters or scavengers (and not tribal like catfolk), never scary, never independent, only rarely manipulative Catfolk: often not tough, usually comic relief, sometimes hyper-muscled fanservice, dimwits, bimbos or otherwise mentally cha...

Knowledge rules are fucking garbage If you beat the DC by 40 you get to know 8 things or 9. I know monsters with more than 9SLAs. You could learn the AC, Touch AC, Flat-Footed AC, Base Speed, HD, HP, and skill ranks for that. And you will never beat a DC by 40, since some CR 10 monsters have DCs of...

There are a certain number of players who would like to play "something bestial" and for them a single race like Gnoll or Dragonborn is probably sufficient. For the people who have specific animal concepts, there is no possible way to cater to everyone even if you fill your entire RPG boo...

Say what you will about WBL in the original 3e DMG, but it's really mathematically elegant. I don't see how it can be mathematically elegant with the "you sell at half-price" rule. Let's consider Sword Bob, who's specialized with swords. If Sword Bob finds a +2 sword, he's happy. But if h...

https://68.media.tumblr.com/edb97a2a7e7dcaf8e160cfe39cbb588e/tumblr_oh6zbx2f5h1vnjifwo1_1280.png And before you ask, no, this is not just revealing an enemy that was there anyway. Turns out, that's not even a thing in this game. I am the only one to have a problem with the question "where's my...