The Gaming Den

As an alternative you could go with a paradigm in which it's actually easiest to kill demons with tangible objects but that magic users like exorcists and demon hunting traditions can use warding maneuvers that give them a finer degree of control in the Really Abstract Locations mini-game than other...

Inevitable is a strong word, but I think it is reasonable to expect such things to follow from a fundamentally adversarial approach to dealing with the public and for the most part I believe that has been borne out.

I've never heard of SWAT being used outside of drug raids or hostage situations, PoliteNewb, and I'm puzzled why they felt the need to waste all that money when most of those could be accomplished just as safely and cheaper with a few cops and a ticket book. I was in a bit of a rush earlier but I h...

Expense isn't a big enough issue to enforce any restraint at a lot of departments due to the proliferation of soldier-to-cop programs and procurement deals that shifts military surplus to police departments at steep discounts. It leads to situations where you may very well have a department that is ...

It's a bit unique that it opted not to take any gold standard pot shots.

I'm willing to give the bias a pass given that the Compromise and Drone Strike skills are fairly biting.

Funniest part about the Catholic and Lutheran communities and the generally liberal economics is that it really confuses the crap out of young libertarians who don't understand why they can't get any traction in mid-western states like Minnesota. It's the worst possible scenario for them, really, si...

There is an argument that all the protective padding encourages more dangerous collisions in Football. Impacts resulting from two charging opponents is the greatest facor in concussion related injuries. Some commentators have even suggested going back to the days of the leather helmits in order to ...

My personal feeling is that players should be deeply afraid of people with belt-fed machineguns. And belt-fed machineguns should be extremely rare and very deadly. Yeah, it should be noted that combat citations went from "Was super brave and inspiring" to "Killed like 40 guys by hims...

This thread just gets lazier and lazier.

That does not hit me as a very good case against having another tier although perhaps not all vehicles should qualify. Instead of just calling it vehicles and non-vehicles you could give things a hardened or Immovable Object tag that lets them work as frank indicated while the really weenie shit lik...

The most frustrating bit about cheerleading is that much like with amateur wrestling everyone can do just about everything right and odds are still good that a few kids on the team will strain a shoulder or will suffer a few dislocated or broken fingers by the end of the year to go along with the us...

I'd recommend running core, tbh. Some archetypes will start out considerably closer to the top of their power curve that way and will thus probably want to pick up a decent secondary shtick but I actually consider that to be a feature rather than a bug.

The biggest issue with After Sundown and power armor type stuff is that even with a home brew power set it's a bit of a poor fit given that things like the Iron/Wood/Silver and Water/Sunlight/Alcohol weaknesses don't really mesh well with backgrounds that are intended to be have more of a hard scien...

Pretty much, yeah. Implying that hollow points aren't intended to cause great wounds but rather to hit high velocities and reduce penetration is rather akin to saying that brake pads are designed to create friction and that stopping cars is just a side effect. That it won't ding up your backstop too...

You misunderstand the purpose of hollowpoints. They are designed to reduce overpenetration. Gotta call bullshit on this one given that hollow points reduce overpenetration mostly by expanding and wounding the hell out of whoever you hit. At the very least it should be admitted that hollow points ha...

So... choosing the over-supported popular army knowing that it gives you a strategic advantage is not beardiness, but choosing the unpopular army and then exploiting some problem in the rules to actually make it a fair-ish fight or tip the sales in your favor absolutely is. Yes, that requires a min...

Seems nitpicky to give him guff about the peryton pic given that he expressly referenced it as a creature he had a hand in cutting from the first run 3E Monster Manual and that he had mixed feelings about it. Whether it was printed later in other products doesn't really have much bearing on the anec...

She is only second to the wicked bitch in people that D&D players should despise, because she too disliked gaming. she probably wants nothing to do with it, and if still alive feels like the biggest fool in the world. Don may have helped get D&D started, but his wife played a bigger role in...

What Kaelik said. I don't think the military is invincible or that the US is immune to armed revolution. I just don't think that the guns I own (and I actually own quite a few) actually matter compared to the other factors. The military is far better equipped and trained and thus I believe any chanc...

This conversation is moronic. You know what the best way to win a revolution is, historically speaking? Be the fucking military.

I feel like the whole "optimization is bad" thing should be included, because it's kinda weird. If anything, I think it's a topic that might be too broad to properly cover. The tug of war between spirit of the game and optimization/best practices within a game is actually a surprisingly c...

Yeah, Necromancy & Path of Blood came to mind immediately because being able to say things "I am like the ghost whisperer, except I spit poison" and "I can tell what is special about this transdimensional satan blood because of herp and/or derp" sound like the sort of things ...

I actually prefer running core, for the most part. It's not that the books Korwin mentioned are bad, per se, since I certainly like them much better than Unwired or Runner's Companion, but they generally don't solve very much either and adding in the new gear isn't necessarily so great depending on ...

I'm sympathetic to Fectin's stance but I think broad strokes like language and a bit of demographic information should be fine for the areas that are not extensively written up in the core book. Ideally, I'd err with keeping things vague in most areas and assign an asterisk to any regions/cities tha...