The Gaming Den

I think we're all pretty swamped due to work. I certainly am. I've got one project winding down, another one in extremely high gear and then next week I need to cover for a colleague. Prak, what's the Infinity-style gauntlet? Did I miss a reference? Let me walk you through enchanting an item. There ...

I mentioned this problem to the members of my gaming night last night and we were wondering about what the instigation of it was, actually. It's good to know. Those spikes one week apart in April are representative of my person experience. Everyone I know with a birthday in April is on the 1st, 8th,...

monothefiddler: the first post is yours. Could you make the edits or would you like me to put it in one of mine?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination

Women were generally excluded from taking the exams. Butchers and sorcerers were also excluded at times.

Full support to you, rad. I had the same sort of thing when I was younger and it's horrible, especially the feeling of helplessness of watching myself as I ended up not working. The two things that help the most are sleep and exercise. Unfortunately they're also the two hardest things to do. The web...

Is that the one which kickstarted as Incognito? That looked good at the time. I'm glad it turned into something playable.

The issue with % roll-under games, whether they are Call of Cthulhu or Unknown Armies or Eclipse Phase is that the real basic mechanic is not rolling percentile dice but determining when you have to roll . Which unfortunately, is 100% mother may I. It's not only mother may I, it's really blatant an...

...what the fuck? If Games Workshop's constant, relentless shark-jumping could somehow be used to generate electricity, climate change could be averted overnight.

And if they aren't in any particular order? Game On, fbmf If you don't care about the order, then multiply that probability by 74! / 50! That is, multiply it by 74 * 73 * 72 * 71 * 70 * ... * 52 * 51 * 50. Which is approximately 10^53. Edit: ninja'd. Frank, you don't need to worry about the 2^12 be...

1.15^26 = 37.86. The cider has made your maths strong.

John Magnum wrote:If I didn't fuck my math up, for every X the probability that a 2d6 will roll at least X is at least as high as the probability that a 1d8 will roll at least X, and they're only equal in edge cases where it's guaranteed or impossible.

Your maths is solid.

I've played through Dead Man Stomp. It's fun as a period piece and worked well enough because the GM was good at her job, but it's extremely railroady and treats the PCs as spectators much of the time.

2D6 is also normally distributed rather than linear; therefore each +1 on it is incrementally less important the further from 50% the probability of success is. A +1 when you're trying to roll a 7 is worth 1/6 of a hit; a +1 when you're trying to roll a 4 or a 10 is worth 1/12 of a hit.

IIRC that was also the way to win at cinematic unisystem.

This reminds me of my childhood in South Africa. (Warning: very large image)

No, fuck you. If you use DMCA takedowns for expedited censorship then you're no better than Brett Keane. People use false DMCA claims because it's more arbitrary and faster than a normal YouTube or even police investigation; they don't use it because the law has failed or to protect themselves. Um,...

Really, DSM? I like you and I think you're a smart guy, but if your takeaway from the "Zoe Quinn gets attacked by the Internet Hate Machine" incident is that the bit that needs to be in bold is her actions rather than theirs, I think your paragraph needs rewriting. Quinn did have an ex who...

Worse as in directly worse for the individuals affected. Interests rates are vastly higher, and the consequences of non-payment are vastly more unpleasant. I'm not an economist; I don't know the economic implications of bringing the savings and expenditures of a billion peasants into the global syst...

Lago: This is going to completely fuck the class of exploitative small businessmen who act as go-betweens between the finance industry and the people too poor to take part in it. This is, in my opinion, a good thing; I worked in finance long enough to realise that no matter how abusive the official ...

The problem with Exalted is that the stunting bonus (mote regeneration) is so incredibly important, that you either stunt, or lose combat. So everyone stunts every single dice roll. This. It's not disruptive in my experience, since the crowd I play with tend to narrate all actions anyway, but it's ...

I am told - although I don't know it as a fact - that GW is many years ahead of the competition in manufacturing and design technology terms. This means that the marginal cost to them of making an individual toy soldier is lower, but more importantly the overhead cost of designing a new toy soldier ...

Having extra rewards for good roleplaying is a stupid idea. In 30+ years of playing RPGs, I have never, ever seen anyone improve their roleplaying just because there was some kind of PC bonus at stake. Never. Not once. So what's the point? Bribing players into being good roleplayers just doesn't wo...

The common man has no access to magic, but the protagonists (Moses, Jesus, David) totally do have access to it. Yes, but only through fellating God. Doesn't that just make them pact warlocks? The bible is one of those campaigns where the characters are put in impossible situations and everything ge...

The common man has no access to magic, but the protagonists (Moses, Jesus, David) totally do have access to it.

For speed, let's do it via PM and then publish it when we're done. Everyone seems to have a lot of work stress right now so a one-on-one might be the fastest method.