The Gaming Den

Excluding Ravenloft makes perfect sense - part of the premise is that you're "locked-in" by the Dark Powers (i.e. Mister Cavern) for their amusement or whatever. It'd be like starting a horror movie where a bunch of teenagers have their vehicle break down in the middle of a terrible storm ...

Ahoy! I know, it's been a while since I've posted. A combination of work & life has kept me away, but hopefully I'll be able to be a bit more frequent going forwards. Otherwise... https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/walking-the-plank-ron-embleton.jpg The fourth a...

Alrighty, on the the monster entries that in most other 2nd edition products would be at the end of the book! Arcane, The The merchants of Venice Venus SPESS. 12-foot tall skinny blue bastards that are happy to sell ships and spelljamming gear to almost anyone, save the Neogi. Where they get all the...

Avast ye, pedantic scalawags! http://content.maltatoday.com.mt/ui_frontend/thumbnail/684/0/17.1_tr_online_piracy.png Today we'll start looking at Chapter 3: Spacefarers. Humans Most numerous sapients in space. They tell us that 90% of humans are free agents, not bound to a lord, mirroring the Age of...

Good morning/afternoon/evening/whatever-it-is-wherever-the-hell-you-are! We'll be finishing the 2nd chapter of the Lorebook of the Void in this post, reviewing the other 10 ships in the chapter. This post is brought to you by the music of Black Sabbath, Mount Gay Black Barrel Rum and Cock & Bull...

@RelentlessImp As much as I like 40K, and think huge spaceships are cool, they'd be rather impractical, as Taluikhain points out. D&D in all of it's various incarnations works best as it's designed: as a game about a small (3-6) group of adventurers facing groups of enemies on a similar scale. A...

@Frank Why you’d want a base seems to be understandable enough - ships are cramped, lack the comforts of home, don’t have room for libraries or workshops or chapels or swimming pools full of electrum coins. Why they chose to talk about building castles in space is an incredible oversight. It’s almos...

Avast, me hearties! Let's take a gander at the ships and see what we find. We're looking at the ships here and looking for ways in which they do (or don't) make sense, with respect to the goals and rules of the setting. Along with my own color commentary, of course. A couple of quick terms I should ...

@RelentlessImp - I’m pretty sure the rudders & oars are to assist maneuvering at “tactical speeds” i.e. during ship-to-ship encounters. Flow or regular wildspace doesn’t matter. I think I understand the reasoning: if you’re having a naval battle, attacking the enemy’s ability to maneuver by wrec...

Chapter 2: Spelljammers Some more music If you ask a random group of gamers what comes to mind when you say the word “Spelljammer” you'll probably get a lot of blank looks. After all, we're talking about a product that debuted almost 30 years ago. Gamers who cut their teeth on 3e/3.5 were probably ...

Yes, it's definitely one of the more incoherent parts of the setting - on one hand, Spelljammer is very much supposed to feel like a new frontier, with lots of unexplored areas. This fact neatly explains why there's so many pristine ruins and untapped mercantile opportunities for you exploit, and wh...

First off, I would like to apologize for an error I made in my first section. 1989 saw the release of the 3-ring binder MOBSTEROUS CUMPENTIUM; the MAN-YULE would not be released until '93. This is especially embarrassing, considering the damn thing was sitting right next to me when I wrote that firs...

Hello! I'm Woot, some random person of no account, who has wasted many hours over the last few decades sitting around tables playing pretend, engaging in other school or work activities while imagining playing pretend, or reading about people playing pretend and/or mechanics for playing pretend. Wit...

Wow. That was a very special exchange, you two. And by special I mean "like two mentally retarded divas at a dance recital prancing angrily at each other to the melodic strains of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'"

So, anyone else, Starbound?

Development feels like it's stalled, but the mod makers have been keeping the ball moving. It's *still* grindy bullshit early on, but things like Pixel Store let you pretend you're playing a 2D version of The Sims, and stuff like Frackin Flora and EggstraClucks make it somewhat more worthwhile to ac...

From d6 Starwars: if the players score a hit on a stormtrooper/TIE fighter - don't bother rolling for damage. The foe just goes down. I've adopted that rule for low-powered mooks in GURPS and Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green as well. I'm a proponent of the idea that combat should be FAST, and anything I ...

I've been playing The Sewer Goblet, a Wu-Tang Clan themed roguelike. The "classes" are different members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Not amazing depth, for a roguelike, but fun for what it is. [/url]

A few come to mind: The Ur-Quan Masters , a port/remake of Star Control 2, a wonderful Sci-fi RPG/exploration/action game in the vein of the venerable Starflight. Tales of Game's offerings, particularly Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, a Final Fantasy-style JRPG about Charles Barkley. Surreal and v...

Blah blah blah. Time passes. Campaign got wrapped up. Lessons learned: - decent armor + Toughness/natural armor + good dodge/block/parry can make for long, drawn-out and rather dull fights. "Roll until someone crits!" - Had a psionic character join the mix, who knew a little bit of kung fu...

I also seem to recall that Illithids destroying the sun was part of their Great Diabolical Scheme in the Spelljammer Astromundi Cluster boxed set, back in '93 - a beauteous clusterfuck in it's own right. That might be where the ideal originated. To summarize: the Cluster was defined by the struggle ...

Next session! A leaves this city for a ranger conclave. All the rangers in the region are in attendance, and the basic challenge the rangers are facing is that orcs are coming, in small groups, from the western lands and arriving in the city, seeking passage over the sea to the orcish empire on the ...

So, next session rolls around. E's character hasn't done much yet, so she jets jumped in an alleyway by some Orc slavers, who recognized her tattoos. Big fight breaks out, and B's character overhears this, and comes running, spear drawn. E's main attack involves grappling her opponent's head one rou...

So, after doing the usual character creation stuff - "Here's roughly what the world is like, your character must start in city X, be willing to work with others and have one reason or another for wanting to adventure, here's the list of acceptable races, here's a few others that are possible bu...

There's not enough people talking about GURPS, damnit! So I'd like to rectify that by posting about a recently started campaign I've been running. We're fresh off of a Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green game run by yours truly, a GURPS Superheroes game run by the player I call SD, and a 2-year Forgotten Re...