The Gaming Den

Frank,

Did you like OWOD at all or is White Wolf simply never written a coherent ruleset in your eyes?

I admit that nwod makes me so frustrated when I play it that I am to the point where I just don't, even when offered.

However, owod was quite simply just mechanically worse.

D&D is a game whose rules encourage something vastly different from what the actual mechanics encourage. It's a major schism that makes a lot of people unhappy. No RC. Still wrong. The rules do encourage the same thing as the mechanics. And you are the only one upset about it. Most people don't...

Is CivIV the one where you need horses to build helicopters? Sort of; As I remember/understood it you needed horses as long as horses were relevant to the things you wanted to build. You also could not develop things on the tech tree that required them without them. So, without horses, you could ne...

The real problem with the wish economy is that it turns every setting into Diskworld. At least the tomes try and present the idea that if you can think of it somebody else thought of it first. So while it sounds like you are being super smart to use divinations to create a command economy that is al...

How did somebody manage to muck up CIV? The factions are all of minor difference. Honestly, CIV is not really a game where balance counts anyway because your starting position has a greater impact on the game than almost anything else. If you had the option of starting human history as the people al...

That would work mechanically, and be viable, however, it still seems to me like it would violate the essence of the game and the background. Dragonbloods are in some ways the best group for players to play because their whole theme is that they work better as a group than as individuals. This is not...

Souran: Isn't "there is no way" a little strong? There actually are a number of ways, under tightly controlled conditions. In the game as written, It's definitely possible for a Dragon-Blood character to carry his weight in a Solar-level team, provided that the Dragon-Blood is given a sub...

I agree that dragon bloods need to be fun and playable within their own space but dragon bloods are only a baby step from mortal anyway. Seriously, according to the games story their whole point was that because they could pass on exaltation genetically there were more of them than anybody else. The...

-- Dragon-Blood PCs can fuck off. Or at least, the assumption that they should be balanced with Solars is not an assumption I care to support. I mean, it would be nice I guess if I could make all exalts of the same Essence equally strong, and just put an essence cap on Dragonbloods, and allow mixed...

Basically it's a clunky, rules-heavy system that should be a breezy, rules-light system like every other ST game. Less Hackmaster, more Wushu, right? Yes and no. The game should have good rules for the things it does. It just does not need rules for certain things. Exalts can call the chariot that ...

Here are the cool things about exalted 1) Dice pools -> there is a certain inherent satisfaction in rolling lots of dice. Its slow, but its also fun. Exalted should be the model dice pool rpg. 2) being heroes of legend -> in most games people play variations of aragorn, gimili and legolass. In exalt...

Could you elaborate on this? I've only played exalted once, and I could definitely see most of the problems mentioned, but this one puzzles me. If you have a team of young exalts ganging up on any Abyssal, isn't he going to have to perfect parry more times per round and thus run out faster? Sure, i...

Honestly, [Edit] For some reason sections two and 3 were not diplaying. Your analysis of exalted combat is quite on point. The whole game boils down to incredibly stupid position that a differnce of 1 essence point makes you invincible. A person with even 1 more essense will always have more motes l...

Frank-- I don't know how much time you have on your hands but please write one of these reviews for "Anima" if you get the chance. 5 minutes of looking at that game caused me to wonder if there is anybody who can write a game that actually plays. Oh, and if you want a game you can totally ...

In other words, because a Gladius was primarily for stabbing fools in situations where you couldn't get a good swing in, D&D shortswords can't cut people. However, we totally can't apply that logic to daggers, as that would be un-historical. Got it. Yes, its thrown in there for the simulationis...

Out of curiosity, what is the justification for the short sword dealing only piercing damage when the dagger does piercing/slashing? D&D shortswords have always done piercing damage. If you have the 2e arms and equipment guide they had an extensive discussion of why. It really has to do with th...

The thing about the mmo comparisons: mmo's assume that the party/group has every possible advantage that classes can stack together. The fight designers just assume that you will have those advantages and compensate accordingly. Additionally, mmo don't just assume that the party/group/raid/whatever ...

Some historical notes: Cortez and the other great spanish explorer/conqueror types were very good at self promotion. HOwever, their croniclers were not so bad as to completely forget all the native support that these individuals recieved. Cortez started from the coast and walked/rode to the aztec ca...

That depends on whether the object is a "Large-sized sword" or a "Large-sized short sword". If it's the former, why should it matter whether someone 4x as big as you would be using it as a stabbing implement rather than a hacking implement? "I don't care about what anything...

Ah, so of primary importance is the fact that you don't understand 3e weapon sizing. In 3e, you have the ability to wield weapons based on their size rather than the size of the creature they were made for. So the only creatures running around with stupid anime gargantuan swords (which are actually...

No. That's dumb. The pointy end goes in the other man. That's the purpose. There are several thrusts you can use depending on the size of the spear relative to your body and the confines of the area around you, but the vast majority of spear users got like half an hour of actual drill in their whol...

Frank - Have you done any fencing or martial arts? Cause your totally wrong. Sword handles contribute to the way and technique of a weapon. They are not "just a little different guy to guy" I am left handed. I cannot even use MOST right handed fencing equipment. Even stuff for people in my...

Yeah, I hate to tell you but D&D has been running around trying to figure this out for a long time. You can either have the game with halfing fighting with daggers becasue they are as big as shortswords to them or you can have every weapon get be resizable to each size category. The first way ha...

[quote="hogarth] On a side note, why do people like discussing the price of magic items (or lack thereof) so much? It's always the same thing -- moaning that magic item stores don't make sense. Well, duh.[/quote] I agree Hogarth. The issue here is not so much do magic shops make sense, but more...

HOnestly, The problem with the old mechwarrior game (the rpg that was associated with battletech) was that rpg characters were uber compared to what pilots for the wargame were. At character creation you could create pilots who outperformed the wargames elite veterans easily. Whats more, it was hard...