The Gaming Den

Yeah, you might do better looking at, say, Early Medieval Italy by Chris Wickham or The Early Growth of the European Economy by Georges Duby. Your John Reader seems to be trying to capture several centuries of development in a couple paragraphs. If you are writing a book, I hope you use more accura...

0.o You might as well compare ancient Rome to the contraction of the middle class in contemporary America. I call bullshit. Citation needed. Working on a book on the subject, so I've got some sources at home. Here's one you can access on the internet. Its a good basic introduction to cities and the...

I still want to know how 'globalization' harmed the Roman economy, because right now all I know is how it harms modern-day Zambia, which is a suspiciously different country. Because its a similar situation, namely of what happens when globalization hits an undeveloped economy without a secondary ba...

You've also been wrong a lot of times. There wasn't much of a nascent middle class, there was a subsistence class where the land was owned by patrons and their clients tilled the soil and milked the goats - until the patron told them to plant cash crops like grape vines or olives. The patronage sys...

TNAMP is literally the first person I have ever heard of who thinks that the Roman middle class was squeezed out by too much commerce and not by slavery . Slavery was a crucial part of the commerce. Slavery allowed the formation of the latifundia plantations that squeezed out the yeoman farmers and...

There was still multi national trade, just not the sort of complete cross empire stuff the Roman's had, which actually harmed their economy. Would you kindly explain your comment here? On the face of it, it sounds like one of the top three most retarded claims I've seen on this site. I'd like to se...

As for access to food, this is an era of plentiful land and relatively prosperous independent farmers. Did you honestly just claim that an era where the grain yield ratio was often as low as two was an era of "prosperous independent farmers?" Seriously? That's what you're going with? Look...

What the fuck are you on about, TNAMP? The decline of the Roman Empire in the West and the early Middle Ages was marked by depopulation of cities, erosion of trade, continuous raids and invasions, and political rearrangement. People were not "better off" by any means, and technological di...

Frank, I respect immensely your knowledge of RPG's, game structure, how to sell them, ect. On the other hand, please don't speak about history because it 's almost painful to read. The later stages of the Roman Empire fucking sucked . Actually, the early stages of the empire sucked too. It was based...

Set up a google docs for people to add in ideas and brainstorm. Post your ideas with your username next to em, as well as posting suggestions and improvements below the ideas. It'll go a bit faster than using the forum. As for casualty rates, I definitely agree here. The problem is that 40k has ver...

I like the dense terrain angle. It might be worthwhile to have some rules about how much terrain to use and how to place it. IME, when left to their own devices, one or both players will gravitate to open boards or will place terrain pieces to give them clear fire lanes. "Hmm, we have to place...

Considering that most gaming groups tend to stray more on the magical tea party side of things, clunky games like Shadowrun and The World of series aren't as handicapped as a lot of people think. They have a fantastic atmosphere and set up a nice framework for people to do cool shit while ignoring s...

In the author's defense, crossbows were kind of the shit back then, sort of a prototype musket. They were powerful as fuck, deadly even to armored men and you could basically give them to some schmuck off the street, tell them to point the pointy end in the right direction and you'd have at least a ...

The Klan hoods are actually a British thing. It's not just Chaos Cultists and Imperial Redemptionists, the Death Eaters in Harry Potter wear the same fucking thing. British people are referencing some religious thing from their island. They have no idea how amazingly offensive that shit is in the U...

Which is a fucking bizarre premise premise for Vampire since it gets off on being elitist and not for normal people, and theoretically avoids bashing face for profound navel gazing about the irrelevance of the universe. It was the very pinnacle of niche and demanding, whining endlessly about anyone...

That doesn't really hold water though. Between the material that is actively hidden from outsiders and the contempt outsiders have traditionally shown Jewish populations and their knowledge (particularly in Europe) the amount of communication and influence has, historically, been pretty minimal. In...

Kind of off topic, so putting this in spoilers, just wanted to point something out about Judaism. Judaism is technically a tiny religion, but because of its interesting place as a channel through which communication between the Islamic and Christian world filtered through, I do think it earns a plac...

I don't know all that much about Burning Wheel. But number of copies sold means fuck all for what constitutes good. It is very easy to manipulate people into buying shit. Most of the global economy is predicated on that exact concept. Maybe, but in reality most people just want something that is si...

My thought would be to have it default to fighting over cities, since that is a place where small, medium, and large scale infantry engagements that are not settled by aerial or space based weapon systems will probably continue to happen well into the science fiction future. Definitely agreed here....

Sounds good, but I think we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Before we get too deep into factions, we need to answer several core setting questions, which then have major gameplay impacts. First and foremost: What kind of conflict are we modeling? Is this a matter of corporate conflict and espio...

Project and section leads sounds like a really good idea. However, I'd probably suggest having people lead different parts of the game rules and then doing the factions communally. The game rules are the more difficult part and if we all pool together for factions, its easier to ensure balance and a...

According to This Vietnam War Thingy , 51% of deaths were caused by small arms fire in the Vietnam War, as compared to roughly a third in Korea and WW2. As I understand it, ratios are even higher in more recent conflicts, which have tended to be even more retail oriented and less about battle lines...

I'm not sure I agree that heavy weapons are the cause of most casualties - at least not among infantry teams. Heavy weapons are often used for suppression while other infantry move into an advantageous position. Do you have any statistics to support your assertion after World War I? No one has real...

I'd like to disagree with that, on the ground that if that was true then armies would consist of every dude carrying an LMG. Modern British fireteams have one LMG per four guys; the army are professionals and I am not, so I assume that they've tested this and found that one in four is the optimal r...

It depends on the rhythm of the game. If two units meeting and exchanging fire is a thing that goes on until one of them is annihilated, then yes I agree with you. If units are bounding in and out of fights with relatively low losses and frequently change their targets, then the loss of any guy is ...