The Gaming Den

Speaking as a wilfully ignorant fanboy, beyond the mechanics not actually giving much help for social combat, the fact that reading d100 as 2d10 is even more potentially confusing than it sounds, and the limits of d100 roll under, have I missed any gaping holes in Unknown Armies? Well, that and the...

3) Monster/Player equality. I know this one will draw fire but I don't give a fuck. It can be summed up with Players are not immune to diplomacy checks. 4) Social Encounters should be as interesting as Combat Encounters. Also, gaining power in one arena should not necessarily mean giving up power i...

Partially to deal with that issue, I always preferred the term "caustic" to "acid," because it covered both types of chemical burns. "Corrosion" is also a good word to cover acid/disintegration damage.

A.) Defensive powers are rarely as cool as offensive powers. People get bored with mirror image and statue much faster than they do with silent image and flesh to stone. The arms race for player engagement is lost before it even really begins. I can think of a bunch of neat defensive abilities; I a...

4e is a wonderful example of exactly how to not do defensive moves and counters. The more stuff that might be activated by people who don't currently have their turn going the more insane gameplay gets. Which is not to say that counters can never be done, but you have to be really careful about it ...

Would not the more difficult, but more interesting response to attacks getting nicer things be to give defenses nicer things? As in, rather than simply giving bigger numbers to defense, put increasingly more awesome riders on blocks and dodges, counterattacks, special defensive stances, or whatever....

An essentially decent idea poorly implemented. It creates another thing to keep track of without significantly adding any description to combat: what does -1 on the condition track mean that is different from -2? At the same time, the -1/-2/-5/-10 progression ensures that random steps you inflict fr...

virgil wrote:So gain FATE points equal to voluntarily earned stress, which can be mitigated with consequences?

Right, that would be more system-specific wording.

I like the idea of non-replenished FATE points. How many should they start with, and should it vary depending on whether it's a one-shot or a multi-adventure? How about varying how many the players receive based on how "bleak and incomprehensible" versus "horrifying but not inevitabl...

You probably already saw this, but there is Fate of Cthulhu.

This is why your examples are retarded. You can only think about the narrow confines of your unspoken and presumptious scenarios rather than general-case situations. This is why you have to contrive your examples so hard. You keep saying that, but saying something repeatedly does not make it any mo...

You're really reaching there. Aside from the fact that I think your explanation is still stupid and contrived -- the typical badass warrior or stone golem certainly will not be feeling pain and dizziness from blood loss -- even if I accept your weakass explanation it still fails.. If what you say i...

Regardless, I think you're understating the underlying problem. People are flat-out offended by how Bloody Path or even Blinding Strike works even though there is plenty of (poorly interpreted) narrative precedent for both. I am not aware of any story where the Big Bad Evil Guy became more flammabl...

So is the idea of befriending someone through hurting them the only end result that bothers people? I've said on this very page that I'm also bothered by some of the other implications of the single condition track. For example, being stuck waist-deep in mud makes you more easily dominated or being...

So is the idea of befriending someone through hurting them the only end result that bothers people? Because we can seriously just take that out as an option. You can give people good impressions of you, do things for you, and inflict emotions, but not force long-term beliefs onto them unless you go ...

Although the idea of using dots and making things as conceptually clear as possible is a good one, the execution is a little byzantine. On the other hand, it makes sense to me upon closer inspection, and is rather clever; my main worry would be characters converging in the dots they buy to be able t...

The underlying logic of the system is, when you want to do something, you have a put a certain amount of your power into performing that task (represented physically by dice); like choosing the Force of a spell in SR. You then attempt to do it by rolling the dice, seeing if anything went wrong along...

So, I have been tinkering with a certain die mechanic for a game for a while, a dicepool system where added dice add risk. To make sure that I do not put it into a game for disastrous results, I am putting it here first for a sanity check. The salient parts are this: when you want to do something, y...

Moreover, there's still the problem that even if you give humans a specific role the metafiction strongly encourages players to shoehorn them into a vanilla everyman role. You're going to get a shit-ton of 'I know most humans are barbarians/druid that live in tribes but blah blah blah then I stumbl...

Skill consolidation, taken to its extreme limit, has every PC and NPC possess only a single skill, "ACTION", which dictates the success of any action undertaken, regardless of what that action is described as being, which can lead to players and MCs "feeling" their N/PCs complet...

hogarth wrote:I never heard of it, either. Is this different from the DC Heroes RPG that they put out?

DC Heroes is exactly the same ruleset, just with different branding.

hogarth wrote:

TheWorid wrote:There actually is a Microlite 4E: http://dominowriting.com/Microlite4e.pdf.

What a cheat. "Consult the 4E books for the list of powers." Feh.

Well I didn't say it was good, just that it existed.

There actually is a Microlite 4E: http://dominowriting.com/Microlite4e.pdf.

Also The beloved of Valarian (also called Valarian’s beloved) are women who have foresworn the love of mortals to dedicate themselves entirely to the unicorn deity Valarian, thus fostering a close bond with unicorns. [...] Her relationship with the unicorn is nothing less than a partnership forged ...

Is anyone familiar with Don't Rest Your Head? Another player mentioned that, with the stats slightly changed, as a decent way to run darker games, so that's been added into the potential systems pool. I've read the book. The setting is sort of interesting, although not as fleshed out as I would lik...