The Gaming Den

Well well, I should pay more attention to this thread. Not going to do all of them (at least not right now) but this is the kind of thing I like to see developed in campaigns. Let's see: Nasturtium: Barzini respects the captain for being the kind of pirate he wants to be and the kind of pirate he wa...

It's unrealistic. The reason why MMOs draw in more players than TTRPGs do is because there is that much more knowledge and energy required for creating a character sheet or whatever, having any clue what you're going for, and what you're going to be doing during a game. This is several times more tr...

Isn't the fact that we now have 17 pages debating and defining morality, plus an offshoot non-gaming thread about the death penalty proof that coding morality into the game is asking for trouble and probably shouldn't be done? Many people agree there should be a death penalty but these same people h...

Alignment is shallow, moody, subjective, and restricting. It's not even a reasonable thing, but a vague netting of "what makes us feel good/bad" with a steep slope leading from the upper-left to the lower-right direction. Every little slip from the Lawful Goods is something worth the threa...

You have to write and line-test abilities that are good for different people. Even with the best options, you have different playstyles and different methods of using the abilities. As long as there are no complete trap options, the game will stay fresh. Hence why it has to be more or less perfect....

This sounds a lot like Little Fears, a game that involves all of the above except with children as the protagonists and the magic linked to their innocence/faith.

Unless the mechanics are absolutely perfect, wouldn't players who could do that simply marry the "I win" abilities? And very likely then wouldn't a fair portion of these players find themselves sooner getting bored of the best abilities than fooling around with inferior ones? Generally spe...

Not bad, but there ought to be either more symmetry or more uniqueness. A fourth "Ragnarok Tier" for the final battle against a hordes of balors or eliminating the second/third tier if they can't all be same or different. IMHO the second tier is the one that looks like it doesn't belong-- ...

Meanwhile, the Knight character really can have lands and products and capital investments and shit to worry about, because he is a sword character that is being played by someone who is not twelve. -Username17 Okay, I've seen DMs deal with "Trevor" before in this fashion and it tends to ...

FrankTrollman wrote:Yes, conjurers and artificers and necromancers should be producing things that have lasting economic value. That isn't breaking anything.

I completely agree, Frank. Now that said, what should the Barbarian you just described be doing to interact with the economy?

Gandalf is a really powerful wizard, an anglic being and his magic is quite limited. Bard. Gandalf's a bard. :biggrin: I'd say he's a cleric. A low-mid level Aasimar cleric. The old joke brought up often in DM of the Rings discussion was that Gandalf wasn't actually a wizard but a bard due to it be...

I have an idea, MAYBE THE WIZARD SHOULDN'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO EVERYTHING There isn't too much disagreement there. Most of the Tome and Tome style spellcaster classes written up tend to be structured towards specialization. Gandalf is a really powerful wizard, an anglic being and his magic is qu...

Morihei Ueshiba, founder of aikido. Already a soldier and a martial artist, in 1924 he came back from Mongolia with the ability to dodge bullets. ...and he had found he could see flashes of light indicating the path of oncoming bullets. No fluke, because he went on to be do even more epic dodging an...

:educate: So to summarize, fighters are stuck in limbo because people cannot and perhaps may never agree on what their growth is supposed to be like. Would it be better if 'fighter' didn't exist and people played knights, barbarians, pallies, and such other classes with more room for growth as kinds...

So much exaggerating. No soup for you! Nowhere in that example was anything about DMs not needing a reason, but the analogy might not be as clear as I thought. The underlying idea was that the DM gets the final word on any decisions, but it's for the sake of the game and the good of the players. If ...

Q: What if the DM is a restaurant that can kick out customers for no reason, like some sort of RPG Soup Nazi? Soup Nazi implies that the soup is just that awesome and totally worth it. :cool: No but really? We should treat GMing like running a restaurant that reserves the right to kick out anyone f...

I was spot on. Any way you slice it there are going to be people out there that want the "excitement" of a player possibly failing at a challenge, and out of habit want to see the challenges involve risk and possibility. Formula or drill, that's what the roll is about. "Taking 20"...

A fair number of newer DMs (and a few older ones that never learn) dislike it when you take 20, most likely because they want you to have a chance of losing or failing. Typically the DMs that are like this are going to be inclined towards making any challenges of relevance to the quest unnecessarily...

Also, it's hard for a genius player to make a Str 10 character who can lift a boulder, no matter how smart they are. Because generally, the mechanics don't support it. Well, the way Batman would do it is by using a bat shaped Ring of Telekinesis... Also as far as this example is concerned, if we bu...

I've always compared the relationship of a DM and the players to that of a restaurant and its patrons. The DM has full control over where you sit, how many freebies you get, and the option of throwing your butt out if you stress him out. But, he has this power because his job is to give you a fun ev...

He's got an incredible player and far more money than anyone else has which he spends crafting items that keep him relevant as "just" a healthy genius. Batman has always been an awful example of anything D&D related whether the discussion is alignment or "badass normals" or w...

Ah this old topic. We have known for a long time what is going on, but it tends to take a long time pinpointing what exactly can be done about it due to the strong feelings on the subject. The fighter is often expected to be 'natural' in capabilities whereas the wizard is unquestioningly accepted to...

This is becoming every thread on permanently blind PCs ever.

House rules are often necessary in one form or another so that the players are all on the same page about what the game is supposed to look like. Sometimes a DM fears something being too strong (whether it is true or not; this is often natural for new DMs) or doesn't want to be bothered learning yet...

Generalist types in 3e got us: Bard Factotum Chameleon Mystic Theurge On one end of the spectrum we have people that hate these classes because they're useless, and on the other end of it we have people that will play them but only if they can pull off a monster build. I refer back to my statement t...