The Gaming Den

I think the central conflict of D&D is that people are trying to emulate some gestalt fairy-tale / heroes journey, in which they play a hero whose use of force is always justified. However, unless the GM makes a very accommodating world, you're going to end up playing a mercenary who does viole...

As a long time shadowrun and vampire player it's really just the apologetics that puzzle me. When someone asks how your bad character sleeps at night you can always just say "on a pile of money and opiates." This. Murdering people without feeling guilty about it doesn't have anything with...

Recently WotC announced they were going to try to deal with some of the racial determinism by introducing an upcoming product that would let people swap out stat arrays. So...there's no point having different races and you may as well just be differently dressed humans? I mean, there are also racia...

SR6 scrapped all of this. Matrix has been overhauled again, and the first campaign book for SR6 is "30 Nights", where Toronto is hit by an EMP that takes down the Matrix, all electronics and most of the cyberware. What do you mean "MagicRun"? Oh yeah, I remember that too. It's b...

With the ongoing quarantine I sought out a new game to play, which happened to be Shadowrun 5e. This led to me reading "Kill Code", a 2018 Matrix supplement for SR5e. And the things I saw there filled me with a burning desire to share. So here I am. Back when SR5 released, the devs were r...

Maybe I'm missing the point, but can't you make any kind of monster a boss and justify the power boost in-game? Sure. But it has to be bullshit that isn't available to players. On topic, though - I find that mechanically, extra actions work well. Narratively justifying them, well...that's harder. I...

If I'm gonna have to play RAW without any houserules or rewrites or backports (but with 3PP content allowed), then it's probably gonna be PF1e, Shadowrun 4e, and Exalted 3e. If houserules are on the table and I can change the content of the system while still adhering to the base ideas (Shadowrun = ...

And so it goes with 4E D&D. If you, like the typical Paizo or WotC dev who lived through the d20 revolution AND watched the supernova of MMORPGs, have a stunted vision where D&D is ideally a pencil-and-paper version of Return of the King plus Final Fantasy, you're going to create something ...

Yeah a lot of jobs should just have their unique resources come online lvl 30, no later than 50. I really enjoy the high damage of Deep Dungeons, I actually have to pay attention. Was a BLM with two other BLM's and a SCH, lots of explosions I wonder if regular dungeon content could be pushed more t...

Just beat the HW and am starting on post HW content now (also sidetracked by the "HERE DO THESE 100000000 dungeons!" Here's my advice for those - just unlock them and queue for 50/60/70 roulette every day. You get Poetics for best gear you can get before current content, you don't burn ou...

I really love the underwater dragon fantasy and pirate federation and steppes of Stormblood. Cirina, Sadu, Magnai were really fun to run about with. Hien was very likeable Namai and outside of Doma... like the scenes with Yugiri and 'twas emotional when the villagers go to fight alongside you.. but...

Oh boy, FFXIV. Basically the game that has taken over my videogame time since 2017, and I can only wish that I had started earlier. You're pretty much on point as far as I'm concerned, though I loved ARR's ending (if we're talking 2.5 content, not the Ultima Weapon stuff), since it actually paid off...

I could see a revamp where a 2nd initiative pass can only be gained through "pushing body beyond breaking point" That would make combat characters feel way worse, because that's basically half of their mechanical identity in Shadowrun - you get a lot of actions and good defenses, which me...

Maybe deleting stuff like reagents (use the spell at Force 1, set the limit by reagents instead) would help. A better option is don't use the clusterfuck that is SR5 and limits in the first place, and just use SR4 instead. While I like 4e a lot more in most places, my group went with 5e for the imp...

The Drain spellcasting mechanic in Shadowrun. It's such a simple setup that completely changes the way mages play in Shadowrun versus every other game. I'm seriously surprised no other major game uses it or even tries to use it, even hardcore OSR-style games that pride themselves on being hardcore....

Things like Armor not giving soak dice, Worse. Only worn armor doesn't. The armor spell does give bonus dice. I've heard part of the "problem" they're solving is Street Samurai are better at fighting than everyone else because their whole thing is being better at fighting. So they want to...

3.X high-level play can be considered a failure because it produced a less interesting high-level play experience than 2e. People seem to forget that in 2e, a 15th level Fighter probably had seven or more magic swords, some of which did shit like cutting the heads off dragons if you critted on one ...

3e's got problems with extending it, but you can run great low-mid level dungeon bashes. It's fun. 4e was a horrible, horrible grind to play by the rules, right from the start, and that never changed, if anything it got worse as you levelled up. 5e, who the fuck knows, the fans tell me it's great b...

The rules seem a bit overcomplicated for a modern game, but they don't look TOO bad. I mean, I personally dislike armor degradation, but it looks ok so far. Bonus points for NOT doing what CGL did with Shadowrun 6e and saying "oh-ho, we nerfed combat characters because nobody was having fun in ...

I had another thought about making the power structure of vampires more accessible to player characters - in addition to making sure that the Prince isn't an unapproachable godlilke 6th generation Lasombra successfully pretending to be a Ventrue. Once you have ensured that the prince actually rules...

Not like you can't have both in the same settings for groups of different preferences. Black Court vamps in Dresden Files are superpowered walking corpses, and White Court are shiny literal sex fiends, and vampires aren't even the main focus of the books. I know, right? So we could've had the "...

Also, the three standard playstyles for VtM were defined by players no later than the times of Revised: - Shotguns and katanas. - Bloodsuckers in the boardroom/Sim City by Night. - Vampire romance. The problem was, however, than no latter than these times the design team pretty much started activel...

Having gotten my hands on the Beginner Box, I'd like to tell you a hilarious tale. The Armor spell for mages increases both defense rating and soak...by 1 per net hit. With a static drain value of 3. Unless augmentations allow street samurai to stack 10+ additional soak, this is where Magicrun becom...

Even the 1990s developers, as focused on their pseudo-narrative bullshit as they were, tried to put more thought into rules than the guys from the 2010s. 2010s are all GM wankery and "oh it's not badly designed or non-existent, you're SUPPOSED to ask your GM about that, not the book". 1990...

I actually have more nostalgia for the "focused" spellcasters (Healer, Warmage, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer). I feel like that's how spellcasting SHOULD have been done (for the most part, Healer and Warmage came up lacking mechanically but the concept pleases me). Also I liked Warlocks. A...