The Gaming Den

See, a Union causes the value of the skill set of the unionized workers to go up. And that encourages people to get training in that area of expertise, which then increases the number of people competing for those jobs, which weakens the Union. See? "Problem" solved, through the magic of ...

Just because a monopoly self-corrects EVENTUALLY doesn't mean that it won't cause immense damage on the way down. We don't want that to happen. Absolutely correct. That's why I added, Whether they would cause more deadweight loss if they went away naturally or if you introduced the whole system of ...

Another problem: Austrian economics has no answer to monopoly power, and therefore monopoly pricing (both product markets and labor markets). Even the Chicago schools would justify antitrust interventions, at least in theory. This is one of my major criticisms of the Austrians when I attended their...

Bear in mind, we're talking about role-playing games . If the flavor isn't important, why bother playing? Good flavor can't save a crappy system of mechanics; for example, if the Pathfinder folks could design a quarter as well as they can paint, there'd be a game worth looking at there. (But, of cou...

Barrier Ratings and structure ratings work fine. Basically walls have armor and body and their damage is calculated in holes. Okay, fair enough, but body and armor (and body armor) both do the same thing for buildings, which is soak. And since both ratings are even based on each other by means of a...

Ah, right, Book of Gears. Never mind that, then. I know. But let's say he finds a cool set of armor. Is he somehow unable to put it on? That's my problem with the slot system. I like the idea of Excalibur taking up multiple slots and therefore since the other guys only put down their swords (one slo...

Is there a reason you couldn't have one item take up two slots and count in all ways as two items? There really isn't a lot of difference between someone who has a Ring of Blink and a Ring of the Ram, and another who has a Ring of the Blink Ram. So what counts as one item and what counts as two? Is...

So, Shadowrun is a game which involves grenades, rocket launchers, and plastic explosives. Going in the front door of a building is really just as good as making a new one in the side. So, why do the rules for these things suck? Explosive ratings, barrier ratings, structure ratings, whatever ratings...

"Leader of Men" doesn't necessarily equate to "Lord-General of the Glorious Imperial Legions." I mean, obviousy the LGotIL should be a Leader of Men, but a Leader of Men doesn't have to be a LGotIL. Speaking in generalities, lets say the "leader" hands out tasty bonuse...

If anything, this reinforces A_Cynic's point: fighters should be diplomats and leaders of men (at least, this should be possible and viable). Really? Is that actually what we want? I mean, maybe it is, maybe you guys dig it, I don't know. But when I play D&D, I see parties of three to six adven...

FrankTrollman wrote:The Scientific Method is an alternate theory of epistemology from Logic that functions differently. It accepts lesser degrees of certainty in exchange for being able to make light bulbs, penicillin, and jet planes.

Cool.

This probably needs to be cross-posted to Wizards, ENWorld, Paizo, et al, because the rate at which those idiots shout "LOGICAL FALLLACYOMG!" to make themselves feel smart is excruciating, as though it's an automatic "I win" button. Also, it is extremely important for people, inc...

I know that. The announcement is just an easy way to get people's attention. What you should be looking at is, say, the Bush Legacy Project. This is just a small part of that bullshit. Yeah, I wonder how that's going. I suspect it involves a lot of preaching to the choir. Does anyone know if previo...

In other news, George Bush has won the first International Medal for Peace, for "an outstanding contribution towards alleviating the five global giants recognized by the international coalition, including pandemic diseases, poverty, illiteracy, spiritual emptiness, and self-centered leadership...

Costs aside, they're seriously working on that sort of shit. There has been a definite movement toward spending money rather than lives (dating from bodybags being on TV in Vietnam), The economic issues may reverse that in a 'get rid of the surplus population' sort of way, but robot soldiers in the...

Neat stuff there, folks. I'm interested to see what comes of that curse nonsense too.

In my experience, Street Magic is good, Augmentation is fine (although I feel that with cyber and bio and genetics and nano and the kitchen sink, it gets to be a bit much, but then again, most of my characters are mages), the matrix rules absolutely do need something done about them (either outsourc...

I think the direction the discussion is going now is a constructive one, so if I could just ask a question, is the reason orcs should not have the racial int penalty because it's simply too severe a handicap for the way spellcasting works in D&D? Are penalties to other stats okay because the com...

Ideally, a character could randomize EVERYTHING he chooses and still be viable. I draw the line in actions actually taken during the game. Sweet merciful gods, why? How are choices made during character creation at all different from choices made in game? "Because choices made at character cre...

In what way do subpar options - that are presented as being valid - improve the game? With "that are presented as valid" being the important words there, I'd personally say that they do not. Just to make sure we're on the same page here, could you give me your opinion on it's companion qu...

Quick idea: There are two tiers. First, we have the combat tier, which consists of six things, let's say melee attacks, ranged attacks, AC, fort, ref, will. Every character chooses one of their six ability scores (STR, DEX, and so on.) to be tied to one of those six combat elements, so you can choos...

For the love of hatred, we know the system will not be perfect when implemented. Nobody is claiming otherwise. We all know a certain race is going to be the best ranger when the system is written. What we are saying is that its not okay to design a race to be better on purpose. Since this is a theo...

If the Elf is allowed to be a Paladin and the Dwarf allowed to be a Ranger, your group shouldn't suck just because the classes were swapped by the players - in other words, an Elven Ranger and Dwarven Paladin combo shouldn't be objectively worse. Okay, I really need to call this point out specifica...

Let's see if we can get somewhere with this. Every race should function with every class that is nominally supported by the game. We have (at least) two options from this: 1) Make every race function with every class. This is difficult, and reduces the ability of players to differentiate their chara...

"Skill Monkey" is not a role. See PHB Ranger, PHB Wizards, HoH Archivists. They have the abilities or availibly skill points per level in order to perform skill checks that are useful. Neither is "Heal Bitch", see bards, paladins, rangers, rogues with UMD, wizards that learned a...