The Gaming Den

Well, this is interesting. And Mearls is being a dipshit as usual.

I introduced some of my friends to M.D. Geist at Sakura-con this year. If you don't know what it is, here's a good summary: Basic tenets of storytelling and film theory are thrown out in favor of decapitations, excessive blood spurting, dudes kicking ass in power suits, plenty of explosions and even...

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. This poster is stating that even trying to analyze whether a mechanic is actually making a positive contribution toward the game's goals is a bad thing. Since when was critical thinking wrong?

No disrespect meant, but if you are trying to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of certain mechanics, I think you are missing the point of the game. Which is to create interesting and flawed characters with depth and tell good (and often tragic) stories at the table. What were these guys smo...

Why would anyone read a thread about nothing?

I have that PS1 game that Char Aznable profile picture is from. It was an FMV game about hitting buttons for things to happen. I could only get as far as "climb into gundam" and then the zaku shoots me to death as I mash buttons. Here it is in movie form! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi...

http://web.archive.org/web/20110607011132/http:/www.chud.com/6592/INTERVIEW-COURTNEY-SOLOMON-AN-AMERICAN-HAUNTING/ A good quote: Q: The company at that time was – Solomon: TSR. And the woman that owned it was like a trust fund baby and she got this company for like, I believe you know, a couple hund...

There's an online CAH. This version could probably be ported to it pretty easily.

Wait, rune-trapped bridge? Did that module also have a pre-generated Ninja and Samurai character sheet? I think I played that one at PAX Prime 2011.

Fate/Zero's second season has started, it's excellent. It's a story about a bunch of 1990's contemporary wizards summoning heroes of legend to fight for the Holy Grail. I'm also watching Medaka Box, which is a self-aware shonen anime. It's pretty stupid, but I enjoy turning my brain off every once i...

I stuttered and paused a lot in the phone interview. I think I was a little uncomfortable because I was wearing the suit. But, they called me in for the office interview. Thanks for all of your advice, if you have any advice on job interviews in the real world, that'd be appreciated too -- I've neve...

It's an entry-level position, a Game Tester. Not glamorous, but better than my current state of unemployment.

Oh. If you'd like us to analyze your game's crunch, it'd be easier if you pulled it out from the fluff. If you could summarize your game's core mechanics in one post (probably an impossible task) it'd make it a lot easier to get at. Right now, you have a lot of core rules strewn about inside fluff p...

I'm applying for a job and I guess they liked my resume enough to offer me a phone interview. This is my first time doing this kind of thing. What am I supposed to do in the phone interview?

Oh, so in 4e, it was just another "power source" (did that ever mean anything mechanically or was it just flavor shit?) and it didn't run on its own weird subsystem or anything?

Sorry for the necro bump, but how did 4e attempt to handle Psionics? I remember they were going to make the Monk psionic, and then I rolled my eyes and quit playing it for good.

This report from the playtest is more thorough as the guy pretty much delivers everything that's not in the NDA: He cross-posted his playtest report at Enworld to which the following reply was promptly made: I feel like I missed DDXP. I was there, I did the play test. Your experience in all aspects...

From RPG.net : The weirdest thing was, I meant to really study the sheets, memorize things, try to see how things ticked just to satisfy my curiosity. But I ended up having so much fun I didn't care so much about all the individual rules. That surprised me, I expected a playtest to be a bit dull and...

Innistrad, from a design viewpoint, is kind of an anti-Time Spiral. Time Spiral was a block that played with nostalgia, it was full of all kinds of in-jokes that only Magic neckbeards would get (for the record, I loved Time Spiral). Innistrad, on the other hand, reaches out into horror fiction trope...

That's a good point, I never considered the possibility of WotC switching to a sane business model. Toward the end of 4e, didn't they try to integrate CCG elements into D&D? I think that's where I lost the last of my hope in their D&D game designers (not that I had much left). I really hope ...

Maybe this is part of Monte Cook's scheme: he could be aiming to create a game that is virtually impossible to optimize since there is no common ground. The very core of the game will be extremely bare-bones and every group will have their own set of preferred modules ("my group uses the Advanc...

I could see bloodsport working in a posthuman virtual world if the gladiators fought under team banners. The individual components of a team can die off, but the team itself is something that people can relate to. Take a look at organized sports today: none of those teams have the same players that ...

Judging Eagle has a point. If the goal of the game is actually to get high ratings (which is evidently the case), then that can't be satisfied purely by just winning at dungeon crawls, else you may as well make the goal of the game to just be some prize directly associated with winning at dungeon c...

Kot wrote:I don't even get 10% of the Den-speak references. 'Oberoni' included.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=oberoni&l=1

This isn't Den-speak, this has been part of the D&D neckbeard argument lexicon for half a decade now.

GNS theory is like a shitty version of Mark Rosewater's "Timmy, Johnny and Spike". Rosewater's article is good because it explains the different psychographics and has concrete examples of what they like. GNS is a bunch of abstract bullshite.