The Gaming Den

Here's the bottom line: you don't have the numbers to beat a dragon in any sort of basic combat maneuver contest that the rules organically generate unless you have a special ability or some very specific bonuses. You just fucking don't. Dragons have bigger numbers than you do at the levels they ap...

That was my thought, too. It's a shame that this started with Gygax making everything up in his basement for his personal group of friends and then telling everyone that that is the secret to good DMing. If this had been started as a proper game, such a notion would be seen for the absurdity it is.

"Cecillia Gimenez is a failed artist, like Hitler ." When you read that, do you think I am accusing Cecillia Gimenez of a restoration attempt so terrible it put eleven million people in concentration camps? Do you think I am saying that I feel the same way about Cecillia Gimenez's shitty ...

Look, people, yes, Kaelik very much compared the qualities of rape to the qualities of dragon-climbing, in the very structure of his argument. Deaddm was shocked that Kaelik would ban any mundane from clinging to a dragon, and said such a ban - based on nothing but arbitrary preference - is tyrannic...

2) I actually didn't compare dragon climbing to rape at all. I compared dragon climbing in a game to rape of a character in game. That is kind of a huge fuck off difference, because while rape is always terrible, rape of a character in a game can be okay I'm going to give you the huge benefit of th...

There does seem to be a fetishistic element to the people screaming for dragon-climbing, though, and I don't want people's fetishes in my games either. Have you read this thread? This whole thing started because Lago said "If a VAH ever attempted to jump and cling to a dragon in a freeform gam...

That is not what MGuy is doing. He's saying that "someone compared something to rape therefore they are saying it is rape" and that is what I am objecting to, because that actually is willfully misconstruing what is happening in the situation . No, what is happening in the situation is Ka...

It was stupid (but I guess topical, given a recent silva post) to use rape, but the focal point of the analogy has nothing to do with rape or any properties of rape or the severity of rape. It is entirely about how someone might not want X in their game despite someone else thinking X is totally aw...

I'm sorry, Kaelik, should we start prefacing our posts with trigger warnings for you?

Just don't engage him. He's just trolling at this point.

There is only one action movie trope, and it is repeated infinitely. That one trope is: "Are you the protagonist? If so, you succeed, if not you fail." Ugh, this is embarrassing to everyone here. This is a deliberate and inaccurate over-simplification on so many levels. You're not even sa...

Action movies aren't as nonsensical as a Warner Bros. cartoon, but they pull stupid illogical shit all of the time without being consistent with other action movies for no other reason than 'just because'. Back before TvTropes became a cesspit, they made grade sport in showing how internally contra...

The point of my question was to show you that the premise behind your rabbinical questioning was based on special pleading. If you're going to let a PC cling to and fight/ride a dragon because they have a lot of HP and levels and BAB, what's your excuse for not letting a PC hide in plain sight as a...

Oh, come on. No, the reason you allow action movie shenanigans and don't default to realism (which is a bad idea always, every single time) is because you're playing a game . Even in a freeform game with virtually no rules but MC judgment, when the MC decides to use realizarm as a standard to catego...

Martial Characters Don't Have Nice Things not because there's somehow a conspiracy to keep the hard-working nonmagical proletariat down, maaaaaan. They don't have nice things because they're supposed to be bound by realism and exist in a universe that's supposed to model ours unless otherwise noted...

They made Swashbuckler specialty for Rogues in the last UA. I don't know if it's any good, though. I mean, I know who made it and for what game, so I know it's not good , but I haven't really examined it to tell how relatively good it is, either. Mostly I know that GitP threw a fit because it now ha...

No, Kaelik. People have shown you two different ways to look at the rules and get not DC 93, and you have insisted that they are both wrong and that you should be several RNGs' worth higher, but have yet to go ahead and show that. Your system so far is "DMFs can't hold onto things, so DC 93. Yo...

There isn't a specific DC for "stay on a bucking bronco" but whatever you would make up for that should be higher than 20 There's this, from the PHB: Stay in Saddle : You can react instantly to try to avoid falling when your mount rears or bolts unexpectedly or when you take damage. That'...

Even the more Jurassic Park Raptor-size Utahraptor is pretty far from the murder lizard we know and love.

Does anyone else suspect that Kender are just the patronizing reflection of their creators' self-congratulatory perspective on people with developmental disabilities? With all that adulation about how they're such precious gifts from god, emissaries of beauty and simple happiness etc etc, and how o...

Meanwhile, the top results for "Monk" (apologies for size): http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/8600000/Monk-Wallpaper-monk-8607399-1280-1024.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Beijing_bouddhist_monk_2009_IMG_1486.JPG And just going for art, not images: http://s3.ama...

At this point there is no need for further conversation. No, we hit that point a long time ago. "Directive rules" are a (big) thing in some pretty popular games such as Sorcerer, Primetime Adventures, Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World, but it seems no one here even considers it a ...

Chamomile wrote a blog post on Critical Insignificance that detailed a way to dynamically progress region/world events. Take a look.

Yeah, silva, the point is the game can say whatever it wants, and people on forums can say that a real AW MC would run it respecting certain limitations, but the Den is all about looking past such bull and looking at how the actual rules interact with each other and with the players (including the M...

Steampunk hasn't done well because it's just a wrapping, it's just a look. You need some actually good content, some good substance, to go along with it, in order for it to catch. The steampunk faire we've had so far is just overwhelmingly mediocre. An Eberron movie could do fine if it was done well...