The Gaming Den

Restricting giant size to NPCs stops in media res golems and werewolves from entering the game as fenris/Optimus prime, which is a cool thing they could have done before. That the is the point after all. Yes. I mean you can still play games with more powers than what the book says, but the book sho...

If I had to pick a technical skill to go, Rigging or Sabotage would be my pick. I'm not worried about the idea of elder evils having Electronics ranks. [Insert whatever explanation you want of things changing over time here] Example: In ancient times those same mystical ties would have been linked t...

Right. I don't count Elder powers as player-accessible. Almost all of them as so good that they shatter the campaign setting. They absolutely need to go away into an NPCs only section. The "2" is Basic/Advanced. Where the Expert level powers would land as a 3rd tier above that specifically...

Might I request that there be more than just 2 player-accessible tiers of ability? I'm all for "Elder" being the max-level / NPC-only sort of thing that's just all plot device stuff. At the same time, even with better placement of powers and balancing and all that, if there's Basic and Adv...

But "cower behind Frankenstein's Monster" is a valid option most of the time. If this were a show or movie I'd agree, but since every Player Character is played by their own Player, that's terrible to offer up as a main solution. "I guess I cower because there's nothing I can do"...

If players decide they're going to sit down and completely clear out this region, that should be a defensible choice and it shouldn't be an interminably dull grind by the end. Should it really be? Like, not just because of the humanitarian concerns, but if the players decide "we're going to fi...

I hear what you're saying in terms of the Vow of Silence, but at the same time the game suggests three alternate worlds that are supposed to be suitable for adventures, and remote haunted houses, and long forgotten cave complexes, and graveyards in remote parts of Russia. So, the game should keep wo...

The thing about design on the fly is that it's shit . It's really shit. Celerity was just plain cut and people got to pick other powers. Devastation, which I don't even know how you're intended to resolve it honestly, just became "this power also lets you fight hordes effectively". All but...

I ran an absolutely fantastic "one shot" adventure last October. I've got the audio recordings of the sessions, and I've wanted to transcribe them for some time so that I could share them here, but haven't quite gotten around to it (VLC says it's about 19h21m of recording, usually takes 2x...

If there's a power that says, "You get a passive +2 Strength" then that's one thing. Because you keep track of it by writing it on your sheet and it's very clear and easy to understand. However, if you have a power that says "You can walk up walls and along the ceiling" and then ...

Very much yes! I just... I'm not sure how to do it with this project, to be honest. A github based situation seems simplest. There's an issues handler, project board thingy, you can make it a repo that's part of an organization and then add others to the organization so that others can quickly make...

erik wrote:Sometimes I think people forget there's a PM function on this board. Just sayin.

No, this is actually really relevant information to a lot of people besides just Orion.

That chart is still kinda complex, but it's better than nothing I suppose.

It doesn't help that none of this shit is spelled out up front. Players discover the required skills for their monster class emergently as they read through their disciplines, which happens well after they've read the monster's text write-up and bought in to a character concept. Nothing actually wa...

Here's my advice: Don't give out initiative passes. Don't do it. If you have to be fast, find some way to do it that doesn't give people different numbers of turns.

Every other AS fix is window dressing.

Hmm, don't really want to derail this topic, but what about later editions of Earthdawn? Jumped the shark and lost the thread. Earthdawn 4e, despite only being a Player's Book and GM's Book, is actually a big step up from previous editions I think. You can use expansion stuff from older materials, ...

In my group, there's one guy who only likes humans, who we all think is weird, and all the rest of us play anything but human.

I'm not entirely convinced that a "fast" character's (typically) mundane actions are really going to slow down gameplay. I am. I absolutely am. Not that it slows down gameplay overall necessarily. Things are happening at an average speed regardless of who's talking. The problem is that wh...

Well, this is pretty much it. There's more chapters to go, but not much more mechanically to talk about. The World at Night This chapter presents major 7 cities from around the world. Each city has some stats, some history trivia, a blurb on the local political power sources, some hotspots that you ...

Character Options & Motivations I usually get nervous when I have to check on rules from this chapter. It always feels a little more like a grab bag than is comfortable. Resources and Obligations Oh boy. So, Resources are things external to your character that they can call upon in one way or a...

If you have Indominability you don't get impeded at all by Pain Drops. Cool. I'll even adjust the gitbook version to add that clarification. Insofar as Attribute + Skill for spells needs any reform... A simple "base stat + base skill only, no magical modifiers on your magic dice pool" rul...

Pain Drops is awful against anyone with Indomitability since it's non-lethal virtual damage and such characters are not incapacitated by any injury short of death. Interesting idea, however when you review the text... Incapacitating Wounds: An incapacitating wound is called that because it incapaci...

I'm not super familiar with what an Agent does, but if it's a program sort of thing that can do things on its own then in this version of rules that'd be either IC (which is very limited, but suitable for people to have as basically a "pet" when they're in a fight), a Sprite (which is like...

Magic Oh boy! So, before, I mentioned in an offhand way as to what each monster type could do based on its default magics, but now we're going to actually delve deeply into all the abilities that the game presents. The Limits of Magic tells us that there are obviously things that magic can and can'...

My GM prep is part of how I relax most of the time, so I don't even bother to keep it short.