The Gaming Den

Shadowrun 4A is not really an improvement on Shadowrun 4. It's... wordier. . . . the only actual advantage of the book is that it puts some expansion material into the core book. But they don't even bother fixing real problems like the unplayable cyberlimbs. And if you have access to Street Magic a...

Thanks for everyone's replies so far. For the record, I own 4A and that edition's core supplements, and will happily base my game on that edition when we actually start playing. I've always found 4A very wordy and wondered if a Wiki (or readers guide) exists that shortcuts the learning curve. Also, ...

The Tome of Battle is a shovelware project nominally written for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and released in August of 2006. It contains 3 character classes and a single newish resource mechanic, all compiled into a sprawling piece of text bloat used to fill up a 158 page hardback. But despite the f...

Hi everyone, First of all - a belated Happy holidays! Hope you're all having a great time. Earlier today, I lucked out and bought cheap copies of two SR supplements: Seattle (1st edition) and Grimoire (2nd edition). Which basic ruleset would you recommend me to pick up, to go alongside these supplem...

Leave it to Trump to walk on the stage, accepting the presidency, to a cheesy 1990s movie sound track - AIR FORCE ONE.

"I hereby accept the nomination to be your HARRISON FORD."

As another foreign national, albeit one who now resides and works (legitimately, I probably should add in the 'new climate' we're facing) in the US, my impressions largely mirror PhoneLobster's above. I remained pretty neutral (as a non-voter, hey) throughout the election, though my wife (who's a US...

One thing that strikes me about the comparative sales of PHB is that the context of the product line has changed - completely. Back in 2007, I was one of two players, in a group of seven, who had a PHB. The others had nothing, or at most one other book - and that book was not the PHB. The edition wa...

I've mostly given up on polls sites* except for one. That site is run by Nate Silver, who's a sort of "pollsters' pollster" and correctly called 2012. http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-users-guide-to-fivethirtyeights-2016-gene...

A member of the Dungeons & Dragons brand team, Chris Lindsay is focused primarily on product development, which is a lot like herding cats in a darkened room with no doors and no windows. I know that's supposed to sound whimsical and light-hearted, but it reads as sad and frustrated to me. I ca...

The Fur of the Cat King of Vilnam A robe lined with black cat fur and adorned with four cat paws. Yes, really. ... Shemari's Cats Paws The text quickly informs us that these aren't severed body parts of a dead cat king. That brings to mind Black Adder, Season 3 (from minute 24:00): https://www.yout...

And it reflects in the posts of people getting into the game [SR5] just now. The number one concern among them isn't how to get a grip on the mess that is SR5 mechanics (although bringing back priority chargen to appease the retro crowd sure as hell doesn't help), it's that people who get into this...

Yes indeed. Thanks to shlominus for clearing this up.

On prince points for entry products: Agreed with 5e being the deep end of that regression. However, in the German market, you can currently buy a softcover version of the Player's Handbook for - Shadowrun 5 - Earthdawn 4 - Call of Cthulu 4 with some of them in full colour and clocking in at 400 page...

Remember monster stat blocks in 4e? How they had no lootable equipment, no utility magic, and how even 'languages spoken' got dropped (and skills be damned)? This was not purely a simplification - it was a reduction of the width of mechanical interaction between a monster and the world of D&D (c...

Secondly, I think it's a no-brainer that a level based system that has a kingdom management minigame should give people abilities that are relevant to the kingdom management minigame at certain levels. [...] abilities that make you better at conquering, patrolling, defending, developing, and extrac...

As for your old RPGsite post, I would point out that you were only scratching the surface when you noted that 4e sold like herpes hotpockets in Germany. We no know that it sold poorly everywhere . We don't have to look at peculiarities of German culture as to why they rejected 4e, because everyone ...

Also, it definitely looks like 5e hexes are even dumber than Old school hexes, which are sort of dumb on first principles, in the fact that they are old school. Sure. You can define 'hex fetishism' as the deliberate choice to reduce hexes to an ornamental device stripped of all their core functions...

I have no idea what people were supposed to use for overland maps in earlier editions, I know in 3e there is no standard, and there was no standard in 2e games I played. You just drew a map and went places on the map using the map, and you didn't worry about whether the overland map was in hexes or...

Chapter One: A Word of Your Own[/b][/size] Chapter One of the book claims to be about "building your world and then creating a campaign to take place in it" and largely lives up to the first half of that claim. The very first section is entitled "Core Assumptions" and gives a bu...

@Vaegrim: well done. I honestly don't care about the details of whether 'lurking' is well defined or used colloquially et al, sc. the details that now inform a rather secondary (and predictable) argument on some pedantic side show to demonstrate the important issue of who's got the longer legalese. ...

Paizo's adventure paths regularly feature information about NPCs' sexual orientation because every AP is supposed to come with a sufficient stock of romantic interests for PCs of all walks of life, and that information is crucial for that side of campaigning. Liza Stevens and James Jacobs are on rec...

Back to 5e and its staff.* As of May 21, Rodney Thompson has left WotC - of his own volition, apparently. He announced it online, rationalizing it as a choice in favour of greener (if unspecified) pastures and prospects elsewhere. There was a short tweet in response by Mearls saying, 'I wish Rodney ...

Wow. Two adventure style books released when Paizo does APs monthly and has a years long backlog of them. They aren't even writing the freaking adventures themselves! How in the world do they think that is competitive? "D&D Sales" are driven not by game books, but by board games that ...

So let's break that down: you're an Avenger of Erathis. Divine Power is a book that is nominally about your character, and your character is pretty much not playable without it. You probably use about 3 of the powers in this book, two of the feats, and a total of 3 paragraphs of world building text...

Thoughts? 5e tabletop D&D had eight full-time employees when they fired two editors in January. Now as we mentioned earlier, the 4th edition PHB had over sixty names on it and the title page reads like fucking movie credits. Eight people is a skeleton crew barely capable of keeping the lights o...