The Gaming Den

How you play as a designer is more inportant, than the game you play... if your actual play mode is 90% Magical Tea Party, 9% basic skill checks, 1% combat using a stripped down version of the combat system, you are not going to learn anything specific from whatever specific game you picked. This i...

Almaz nailed it about Shadowrun for me. :wink: I think there are multiple different "top 3s" though, based on the kinds of games you want to write -- HERO/Champions, for instance, is arguably a must-read for anyone who wants to do a superhero game, whereas D&D might actually be a bad c...

There is something to be said for the regenerative powers of beer-and-pretzels gaming. Play some Rifts, or some Mutants and Masterminds, or Paranoia. Just make your goal "have some goddamn fun" and be creative and things get a lot easier. This is also true. Though I would suggest games wi...

Best. Post. Ever.

After another session, I can safely say I'm liking this better than Apocalypse World. The way it reflects the Sagas tropes through its rules is nothing short of genius. Well, lets see how the game fares at long term playing.

Thanks.

I'm beginning to feel run down over constantly being the only person in my group to run games anymore. Only 1 other person has run more than one game, but he's steadfastly refusing to run anything in the immediate future. So I put the question to the Den in general- how do you deal with MC fatigue?...

The suggestions in the comments are horrifying. Unknown Armies? Amber Fucking Diceless? These are examples of how not to do things! Hmmm, I think Unknown Armies has interesting qualities (making whats important to your character relevant to play in the form of obsessions and passions, freeform skil...

Well, here are mine: 1. Dungeons and Dragons (any edition except AD&D1&2): its how everything started. It established the design paradigms the hobby follows until nowadays, and it was such an impact that it bled out to videogames, boardgames and other medias. Also, both in its dungeon-focuse...

Stumbled on this interesting post from Ryan Macklin's blog and decided replicate it here.

So, what do you guys think are the three most important games for designers to play and what lessons does them teach ?

My copy arrived and after a superficial read I am... disappointed. Really, this is just a gimmicky combat "boardy" game with vikings theme. The only thing different are the runes pulling idea where you pull runes from a bag instead of rolling dice (they called it "wyrd", as in &q...

The core mechanic of A*W seems to derive from the thought that critical hits and misses are fun, how about we make normal results 'fun' in the same way. Quite a different issue, even if the mockery is similar. Actually, its the other way around: the fun in PbtA games is found in the 7-9 range (succ...

I'm reading Njial Saga right now (Hrut is a badass isn't he ?). Is Egil Saga as good ? *Edit*: Here is the official site with the official sheets: http://redmoosegames.tumblr.com/soti *Edit2*: And an awesome source of Icelander customers, including duels (the 3 shields), dishonoured behaviors, etc: ...

Lol. The game doesn't even pass in Norway, but in Iceland. So I don't know what Judging Eagle meant with that. He must be drunk.

Eagle and Ary, the game is supposed to emulate the Sagas (Njal's, Egil's, Erik, etc) which I understand has its own specificities different from the Eddas or other historical accounts. Though the call of honor for trying to sneak on a neighbor settlement was on my part as the MC (can't remember now ...

Longes my russian friend, there is raiding and pilllaging. In fact, most of our first session centered on it, as our Huscarl picked the move "Viking", which gives him a shallow boat with a dozen men to go pillaging in the summer. But the exciting part came after he returned and decided to ...

Just to say Im playing on a game of Sagas of the Icelanders, the PbtA game of norse settlers on iceland, and after 2 sessions Im looooving it. Put simply, its King of Dragon Pass in tabletop form. The group plays a norse family recently-arrived in iceland and each one must pick a different role: The...

Frankly, this looks to me one more case of the "writer-wanabe" GM who equates arbitrating a game with "writing a plot from start to finish and leading the players by the nose through it". I actually had a friend like that. In the end he gave up on GMing and decided to write onlin...

Heh. And I really though this somehow related to a BearWorld game.

Rasumichin, I thought all archetypes are mundane ? Shield maidens, Skalds, Seidkonas, etc ? Where did you see that Frost giants or stalvnkdhhtjtever are playable at all ?

That's the idea, princess. Hogarth: I don't have a clear answer for that. Perhaps make it so individual scenes are only allowed if short ? I've played in games before that portrayed this kind of intra-party scheming that led to individual/couple players scenes (Vampire, Apoc World) and it wasn't a p...

Or both for that matter.

Lol AcidBlades you turdhead, this has nothing to do whatsoever with PbtA games. In fact, as Rasumichin says above, its has more similarities to fiddly tactical games like Warhammer 3 and D&D3/4 than anything else. After looking up some reviews, it does look neat, if a bit too much on the complex...