The Gaming Den

Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 does some fun hard sf stuff with colonizing the solar system. It's a long novel, not an RPG setting, but the plot and character stuff are pretty minimal. So you could find a random page and probably get a game idea without too much issue.

Secret rolls in a gaming context where you don't know the people you are playing with super well would be a red flag for me, particularly in a SoD-heavy system like 3.x. If you know and trust the people you are playing with, hidden rolls by the MC can often add to the suspense and tension of the gam...

I've seen statistics claiming that drone strikes tend to result in more collateral damage than traditional airstrikes do. I'm not sure of their veracity though. If they are accurate, that would be a reason to have a negative reaction to drone strikes in their current incarnation.

Back when Dungeon did its list of the greatest adventures ever released, Forge of Fury got ranked and Sunless Citadel did not. Maybe that sentiment is still felt in the halls of WotC. Meatspace people I know always preferred Sunless Citadel, though.

How long is the "Places" chapter? This seems like the sort of game where you would want to have tables that procedurally generate weird settlements, rather than including a list of static locations. I can't imagine that anyone cares about being able to visit Port Perdusz. But you do want t...

Could you go into a bit more detail on how the battle works? E.g., how much difference is there between the worst possible result and the best possible result? Would either have a noticeable effect on the rest of the campaign? Is gathering allies relatively easy, or is it something a group could pla...

I've been playing a lot of Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal. It's a tower defense game, except that it's actually pretty fun. You have to fight against this implacable purple blob called the Creeper. The Creeper's dynamics appear to run off some sort of cellular automata, which is neat. RPS did a recent...

So character creation is going to be a nontrivial time investment for the most part? Is the intended play style something like Warhammer Fantasy or LotFP, where your character dies if someone breathes too heavily on them, or is it more cartoonish where, even though you fuck up all the time, you neve...

I will be traveling on airplanes kind of a lot soon, because that is a thing I do around Christmas most years. As such I require things to be read. Generally speaking I like sci-fi/fantasy, but probably, if there's much of that I already have found it, I just bring it up as an aside. The main thing...

Quintin Smith really likes Duelyst:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGYWGcd_6uM

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/16/chuck-schumer-senate-democrats-elect-minority-leader For those of us who aren't up on our who's who, what kind of guy is Schumer and what does this portend for Democratic strategy going forward? To me it looks like they're moving left, appointing Sand...

There was a recently released total conversion for Skyrim called Enderal. It brings the game's leveling systems more in line with a Gothic game and adds a new continent and storyline. It also boosts the graphics an appreciable amount. So it's basically a new free game running in the Skyrim engine. M...

If you enjoy the music you can watch it in the background while doing something else like work, reading an RPG book, building an MtG deck, etc. The issue then is that you have to pay more attention to the dialog. The 'tone' of the series doesn't change as it goes on so if you don't really like it t...

Which is exactly why Mike Mearls will post blatant lies like "3e+3.5+4e<5e" and then turn around and clarify a week later that when he used plus signs, they were secret metaphorical plus signs that didn't actually mean plus at all. The clarification you posted was tweeted two hours after ...

i have heard good things about the other paradox games, europa universalis and crusader kings, but i took one look at them and pretty much balked because that was just too much for me . . Neither EU4 nor CK2 takes place over thousands of years. Both are very much in the vein of real-world history, ...

I mean, King John of Bohemia took the field at Crecy despite being fucking blind - he strapped himself between two other dudes and road out into battle like a boss, because he thought the majesty of royalty would protect him or some shit. That didn't work and he was captured by the Black Prince, wh...

I mean, King John of Bohemia took the field at Crecy despite being fucking blind - he strapped himself between two other dudes and road out into battle like a boss, because he thought the majesty of royalty would protect him or some shit. That didn't work and he was captured by the Black Prince, wh...

It's also funnier than the normal shooter. Our hero's name is Lo Wang, and he owns it. Shouting, "DON'T SCREW WITH ME IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE WANG!"and the like. Yeah, Lo Wang is portrayed as this dorky guy who gets superpowers thrust upon him but remains dorky and awkward throughout. It ...

Shadow Warrior is pretty fun. It's not quite Painkiller, and I think the enemies got a bit bullet sponge-y toward the end, but it's mostly an enjoyable bit of ultraviolence.

Neurosis wrote:where does pretentious, retro, stupid come from?

The venerable Jeff Rients.
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-g ... e.html?m=1

While the MM2 has a lot more of the crazy bullshit, I don't think that would even be true for the MM2. I suspect most people are confirmation biasing away the vast majority of the book (and/or a lot of those monsters people forget are also not that interesting, and the broken ones are at least inte...

The problem is that no one ever says "If I pull a book out at random, and point to a monster there is an X% chance that it will be too strong and a Y% chance that it will be too weak." They instead always say "But remember the Alamo Aboleth/Adamntium Horror" The statement "...

What are these 12 overpowered monsters? There are the dragons, mind-flayers, that damn crab, and ... ? As for the CR system, the only bizarre thing about it is the "non-associated levels" method for advancing monsters. An ogre is CR 3. But an ogre cleric 4 is "CR 5", which is ki...

My ACKS games generally involve player-made maps. It slows progress down because I have to make sure that the maps are sufficiently accurate, but it allows the players to develop a sense of ownership over the environment. And it helps the group keep track of what sections of dungeons have already be...

So the book really just randomly includes reaction roll rules in the middle of a chapter? Do they contradict or supersede any existing rules to any extent?