The Gaming Den

It's trivial to come up with a spell point system where that doesn't happen. For instance, you could come up with a system where level 1 spells cost 1 point, level 2 spells cost 2 points, level 3 spells cost 4 points and level 4 spells cost 8 points and a 7th level wizard has 15 spell points. Or yo...

So, people who are arguing that spell points don't cause people to just trade away their lower level spells for a few extra castings of their best spells know that they are not just theoretically wrong but emperically wrong as well right? This exact thing has been tried twice, first it was a bad ide...

So, E6 started being a thing in about 2008. That means it can be OSSRed right? Also, Wheel of time RPG. Mostly, its just star wars d20 reskinned back to a fantasy setting. However, it does have a new magic system that would be interesting to look at where it fails compared to the regular D&D sys...

Is it mainly art direction? The individual settings that generally contribute to meta-D&D - greyhawk, realms, dragonlance! (although I did like the books as a kid) - all lack panache, but then D&D has Beholders and Mind Flayers and other stars of their setting which are hella more interesti...

It sort of seems like the predecessor to the Eberon fiasco. Someone mandated that all the things had to be in the setting, so there wasn't room for a plot or a reasonable selection of motivations for player characters to have. -Username17 This is off topic but, could you do an OSSR or some other di...

Yeah, WOT is actually one of things that caused to realize that while there is a natural story progression from adventurer -> king that most people don't care about that in terms of their table top rpg. I was in college and talking about WOT and D&D with a friend when he indicated that the part ...

Problems of feats include (and are not limited to): Giving them out on level-up means that people have no means of getting things they'd want (the ability to perform stunts, proficiency with exotic weapons, etc.) during adventures when you'd actually want to gain those abilities and instead only be...

So these minigames that kick in at high levels - where Fighters get promoted to Lords and start to interact with a kingdom management minigame and Wizards get their towers and start to make bears schtupp owls - these are the ones that are essential to making advanced play meaningfully diferent from...

In a level based tabletop RPG, how much playspace should be left at the maximum level? D20 games and D&D historically don't really leave ANY room at the maximum level. It is extemely difficult to find challenges for D&D characters as they approach level 20. Characters of that level will alre...

So, generally do people think that the 3.x concept of feats was a good idea or a bad idea from a design perspective. my thoughts in general 1) Having the ability to select features that are nominally class neutral to tailor your character is good 2) the "optimization" minigame really only ...

Also I object to that boredom is the main problem with non casters at high level. It’s frustration at not being able to do a single damned thing well. Not being able to do anything well is the cause, bordem is the result. This is the same thing. And organic vs. starting a high level campaign distin...

...I never felt the need for game mechanics (at least beyond a very general level) to handle this. For me here the difference starts between "roll-playing" and "roleplaying"... and also somewhat the different playing styles of pre-3e and 3e/4e. We always (during our AD&D 1 &...

A lot of the things on Souran's list would make the most sense as a running side panel alongside the player's handbook. Yes, like a religious text - if this is the Torah then the player's handbook is the Mishnah and the MC's guide is the Gemarah. That format is bordering on insane for physical copi...

The lack of backup weapons is a modern thing, for a couple of reasons. 1) A carbine is pretty useful in all situations and is effective out to the range where combats usually begin. Unlike a halberd, a carbine doesn't have a narrow ring of effective range that an enemy can plausibly slip through, b...

Back up weapons are not actually not common. I am not trying to disparage the OP but "back-up" weapons tend to be a very marginal thing. Modern soldiers don't carry a bunch of weapons. In fact, you can go and see a bunch of Quora questions about why soldier's don't carry sidearms. The answ...

The dungeon master's guide is really an odd book. Frank points out that a section on being the game-master is all that most games need. How many pages does it take to tell people to keep things moving? On the other hand, there is a bunch of useful information that could be put in a book that would b...

Next up, making characters, without the online character creator! As Capn noted, playing without the character builder is much more difficult. I enjoyed the table play of 4th edition quite a bit. However, without the ability of the computerized character builder to spit out power cards and lists of...

P2E and 5E D&D are inbred cousins as games. They clearly have the same roots and both look to address core problems of 3.x D&D. Often in the same way (the similarity of how they decided to handle the "lower level spells get better as you level problem is basically plagiarism on P2Es par...

In theory, you can, considering how Numa-Numa was the 5E we could have had if Mearls hadn't alienated him. In the practice, your game will BSOD as soon as your wizard player asks how force fields (or even hirelings) work, because there are no rules for "NPC vs NPC" conflict. Nada. Zero. Z...

Yes, I read through that thread. It has major problems in that most of the people are talking out their ass without actually knowing anything about the system. For instance, Frank makes that quote based on the warhammer version of the system, and clearly at the time didn't even have a good grasp of ...

I have a friend who likes to DM, and especially likes running and modifying the pathfinder APs. However, she doesn't really have any desire to learn or deal with the intricacies 3.x monsters. Honestly, a simplified version of d20 combat would suit her very well. I know that this forum doesn't mutch ...

So I was looking at the Genesys system (the generic for the FFG star wars). I know that this is not a super popular system here, but what is? Regardless, I am just looking at this system and wanted to get some people's thoughts besides "I don't like this because bears." The core rulebook i...

Quite frankly, you have murder hobos because the player characters are fundamentally not rational actors. PCs fundamentally are controlled by players who want to keep playing the game. Therefore, players continue to be "adventurers" long after any rational actor would have settled into a l...

It has been a very long time since I read anything in the riftwar cycle. However, as I recall it it still fits to the sort of tropes and styling that go along with high fantasy especially the mid 80's style where there are style a lot arthurian and tolkienist elements to them. That said, the broad s...

Honestly, at this point, it really seems like FATE would be a better system for the people who enjoy the small scale of 5E/Pf2. Like... I get that there is a market who enjoys the narrative-focused, small numbers games. And watching Dice Friends from Loading Ready Run, I can see the desirability of...