The Gaming Den

Did you notice how many D&D 5e games there were as compared to others at the con? It seems like another way of seeing just how popular it might be. I'm curious.

The obvious change that players would notice is that very fast response security can include goons rather than just spirits or deckers.

There's various beers with flowery aromas that mask any alcohol flavor. Lies. Just like lysol doesn't mask the scent of crap, it just adds a second aroma. Friends used to constantly insist that they could find some alcohol that didn't taste awful to me. None succeeded. I think people who don't have...

If you go with divine hunter travel is good for you but trickery isn't so much. You'll probably want to use full round actions to attack with rapid shot or at least use your move action to move. Which means the copycat power isn't one you'll use a lot. The water/flotsam subdomain is fun for getting ...

In fairness, this isn't exactly an uncommon problem in space opera generally. Any time anyone upgrades to the 'galactic' section of the scale they seem to forget just how big that is. I think it's visual, to be honest. If you see images of space it's possible to draw a big circle around a solar sys...

How fascinated are the people you game with, with details like that? Are there any who are really interested in languages?

The swarm monger bonds with one creature which they can turn for a minute/level into a swarm. That creature needs to be small enough to be a component of a swarm, hence the familiar instead of animal companion. Not that fascinating really?

Dunno. Supposedly Paizo uses a giant spreadsheet to calculate all their monster stats, but either their sheet sucks or it doesn't exist considering how often they publish stuff like this. There's their official monster stat chart, but it feels like a small minority of official monsters actually fol...

Twelve tribes, each fought individually, really is too many. Perhaps after they've beaten some of them the remainder will flee or unite to hunt down/fight the party.

If you want small colonies there is a RL model in the slave-using fishing industry around Southeast Asia. It might not be a civilisation to be proud of, but colonies oppressed by evil Earthers sounds like a good conflict to start a game with.

Right, no, I had originally planned to make a slightly higher level version of OID to replicate the musical demon's ability, but when it's already a 15th level effect... Hinton's Combusting Dance would have to come online at 17th level. Thinking about it, the Musical Demon's ability is more rebuff ...

I'm pretty sure GW does have a bunch of minis with implied severed human bits and human skin on them. Either PETA doesn't know, doesn't care or just sees them as some other crazy pressure groups problem.

On a totally different matter, Games Workshop recently got a letter from PETA asking them to stop depicting fur on their models, this apparently being unacceptable in 2017.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017/01/ ... mdark.html

How real does it have to be? Space: 1889 was terrible as a RPG but the writers had plenty of material to draw on for their versions of Mars and Venus.

Does it have to be a RPG at all? Hundreds if not thousands of writers have set novels on Mars.

@ Prak The fun bit would be putting in the charging infrastructure and the new power plants. I guess you could just build a lot of oil fired plants as the minimal infrastructure change but that seems unlikely to achieve the goals that would make you want to switch to electric vehicles. Wind power wo...

For 1st level flight, a shifter could take the elemental transformation talent under alteration, become an air elemental and fly that way. They get two such talents at first level so getting size alteration to make an effective (large) whirlwind sounds good. There are no obvious caster level limits ...

How specific do you want the spells to be? In CoC they range anywhere from 'completely useless' through 'fix a problem in this adventure only' to 'swiss army elder sign'. The last is the only type a player would buy up front, but if you could grab a spell with unassigned points you might get a very ...

What's an OK lvl6 or lower build for an Alchemist that uses a gun? The idea being infusing your bullets with alchemical stuff and shooting the badguys. The most straightforward thing I've seen is Gunslinger 1/Alchemist (Grenadier) 5. Is there anything useful to do with deeds gained from a 1 level d...

I know someone in NZ's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and she tells me the Chinese will be up in arms (metaphorical) about Trump's call.

@Voss - Both, Richard wanted a halfling for the mechanics and he wasn't fond of gnomes as a concept or name. I had them in because I wanted a small magical race in the setting (& a number of races I could count on one hand), and in a long-running game back in high school (not including Richard) ...

Halflings will definitely be in the top 10. In my last game I put in humans, elves, dwarves, half-elves and gnomes and I took some shit for including the last rather than halflings. There's also a call for something a bit bigger than standard human, whether that means orc/half-orc, troll or people w...

Not quite thad bad Nockermensch. If you're going to use this ability you'd have at least +2 cha, likely +3. That skews the probabilities in favor of the +1 forward.

It is kind of useless at actually getting people to do what you tell them though.

The Umli were Inuit-ish half-dwarves, not petty dwarves I think? They might have been original to Rolemaster, I don't remember them from as much of Tolkein's work as I read (The Hobbit, LotR & The Silmarillion.)

Half-orc barbarians can take feasting bite which triggers on a critical rather than a kill. On the plus side you can take the animal totem line and get pounce with it, unlike the daemon totem line. On the minus side Red Sonja likely shouldn't have fangs like that. If you can get specific magic items...

@SW: Pretty sure that'd turn you, the twin, and/or the offspring into a horrific monster in Birthright. The process usually requires that there be at least a bit of the corruption of the bad guy's bloodline, whose name I forget, but given that 1/ you can get such a taint in your bloodline by killing...