The Gaming Den

Got into an argument with a friend last night over whether to houserule the point buy chargen. He felt the cap of 15 imposed by the default 5e point buy rules was fine, I felt the system was created in bad faith to mock you by danging scores of 18 out of your reach. My question is, would it actually...

In every RPG I've played with the players working at cross-purposes, its been players passing notes to the GM like we were in grade school, and the GM MTPing up the results. You couldn't actually challenge someone to danmaku or whatever, since player on player combat in every game I've played devolv...

People get betrayed by their employers all the time in Shadowrun. It's a fairly core assumption that if you're being handed a railroad, you're going to be scourged later to remove all witnesses. If you love to jerk the engine off the rails 5 minutes into the game for the lulz I don't see why it's no...

a farmland is complete when its surrounded by roads and walls. At least in the base game, a farmland is never complete until the game ends. Even if it is completely enclosed, your resources stay locked up. People tend to avoid farming until the late game because it is really hard to estimate how ma...

I've never played Carcassone, can you elaborate? Also, when one speaks of meaningful decisions, you don't just mean a binary win vs. lose decision, but rather more of an open-ended chess-like choice where your choices can change your entire stance many turns down the line, right? I think competitiv...

I like worker token systems like Carcasonne. At a pool size of six, it's just chunky enough to feel like I'm making meaningful decisions. Resolving personal issues and story arcs for advancement, like in Tenra Bansho Zero or Chuubo's. Variable Power Pools in HERO. If I ever run a game, I'm going to ...

Can we stop encouraging the smarmgargler by treating it like a real person. silva is another shadzar just with even worse taste in games, it can't be educated and talking to it only means it spews more stupidity. Alright, I was hoping talking to him honestly might either result in him being honest ...

This thread is funny. First it opens with "D&D 5 has failed", and then it ends with "how da fuck do D&D 5 work ?". xD That's because the core mechanic of 5e (roll a d20+X against Paranoia-esque fudged DCs) is easily compared to 3e (roll a d20+X vs DC benchmarks that are ...

Who knows if the mind caulk will hold even after the MM is out?

People still claim that stabbing a dragon to death with a mundane sword is a matter of finding it, a super-humanly intelligent spellcaster, asleep in its lair.

Immersion comes of keeping character motivations and player motivations aligned So when you have to fishmalk for Drama Points, or treat any potential interaction that might come to the use of deadly force as a suddenly level-appropriate JRPG encounter, those are the sorts of mechanics that drag you ...

It means an object of great value, presented before a mass audience that cannot appreciate said value. IE, a pig wouldn't recognize the value of pearls, they would just be so much oyster smegma as far as they could tell. So, this theoretical game that is of immaculate design and great play value, th...

Questions can easily crop up at level 1. If adventures start at level 1, and city guards start at level 4, the fat guys who walk around with chests pumped out, taking bribes, and unable to actually catch a running thief, then adventures aren't actually qualified to go on adventures, as common NPCs m...

By what metric would you determine that a game actually is pearls before swine, however?

Planescape Torment was a critical success, in a time where game reviewers didn't have an intravenous feed of Mountain Dew going into them at all times, so this actually meant something. Tabletop games have never had such a golden era of criticism. Any RPG can get enough koolaid drinkers for a few ch...

Why can't indie RPGs be measured by profit? With digital distribution cutting a huge swath out of publishing costs, and the ability to perform much of the labor while simultaneously working a desk job, they could have significant percentile based ROI. And selling at least enough copies for that woul...

How about this: what sounds like a cooler description of your character's capabilities? "My dude does 20 DPR, and my buddy only does 19 DPR" "I cast Fabricate and used the profits to enlist a thousand-strong army." Please show me where I have said that Legend's lack of creativit...

You can make things which are demonstrably better or worse than others (especially if you consider specific levels, because things don't come in evenly). Okay. Then do that. How about this: what sounds like a cooler description of your character's capabilities? "My dude does 20 DPR, and my bud...

Well, there's three failure states that you can use to define it: 1. Bleeds money - The line gets discontinued because it costs too much to publish. The most objective failure state, as history tells the tale. 4e and White Wolf being notable examples. 2. Fails to meet design goals - 4e and its skill...

So unification should just be abandoned as a goal. Obviously WotC needs to have TWO D&D games: 5e, and 3e Special Edition. Well maybe not that name because that would be "Third Edition Special Edition" but whatever. Call it AD&D 3rd Edition like Frank Trollman says. people. Call i...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/as ... ?ref=users

A cynical grab for that Cards Against Humanity money doesn't exactly instill a lot of faith in their ability to create compelling universes to roleplay in.

Perhaps they're REALLY confident 5e is going to be the new hotness, and the Amazon price is their fuck you to the FLGSes for saying "4e sucks! Buy Pathfinder instead!"

Failing Forward is generally how we'd run the DH/Rogue Trader/Only War too. We never really thought of it as being all that mechanically great. it was just the official Warhams RPG so we made it work, with a hammer if we had to, and failing forward was the kludge that suited our sense of humor. The ...

A sword can be a spellbook if you have a system for etching runes onto it. This is the fluff for Warcraft Death Knights; they expend the runes on their blade to power various effects. They're actually a bit more Vancian than the floppy hat spell slingers of the setting in that regard.

The RPG site, and I couldn't come up with anything like 4rry to go with 5.

I actually enjoy some of the "fluff" you get with MMORPG healing. Throwing around big globs of glowing green nature juice or energized watery essence or being surrounded by soothing balmy plants. Kinda gives you a taste for how all this Wolverine regeneration is actually happening.