The Gaming Den

People aren't seriously saying Vampires are all the same thing, are they? Because a long ass time ago, GURPS put out a book called Vampires. It details Vampire myths that are mostly from European legend but also all around the world, and there's about fifty of them and they're all extremely differen...

Let's see if there's anything in the concept. [hr] 70's is inventing RPGs. You go from the Fantasy suppliment for Chainmail in 1969 to AD&D plus Holmes Basic in 1979. A lot of it is just figuring out how anything can even work at all, and AD&D is basically a couple thousand post-it note conc...

I'm thinking kill on sight is more about the rest of the monster manual. Like, yes, most religious hatred now is bullshit on top of racial hatred (but also, Jews), but that in turn means the religious hatred is more racism to not put in the game. Especially if the targets are mostly Orcs and you're ...

[*]This is long. Sorry, but read the first two lists. So I was reading a thing, longer than this even, but good stuff. Got a few things to click for me about what's been in my D&D forever and ever, particularly when re-reading some of the old D&D books after. https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blo...

https://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?6447-WotC-Looking-For-A-New-D-D-Producer Mike Mearls' is not losing his job (he's Creative Director), but they are hiring someone to be his boss (Executive Producer), while the franchise bosses ... I have no idea what any of those people do. VP of signing th...

But then, isn't this DIY / "Rulings, not rules!" / "Each table it's own game" ethos the point of the OSR movement? Sort of. OSR is a lot of things. Most of it is re-creating a particular feel, but they also focused pretty heavily on cleaning up old rule sets and mostly shifting ...

Reason(s) to be Imperialistic ... How do you give imperialist nations a reason to exist while still keeping the worldmap focused on various Europe knockoffs? Roman Empire, Marovingian Empire, Angevian Empire, the Hun Empire, the Mongolian Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Christendom, the Caliphate, the r...

Disney bought all of Fox except Fox News off Murdock, and nothing changed. It's the same fucking thing as No, it is not. Lt. Uhura was not pandering to Blacks. When they made a Lt. Uhura action figure at some point, it was not pandering to Blacks. The black girl Barbies is not pandering to Blacks. T...

My actual position is that players won't interact with your setting at all when making characters, so your focus when worldbuilding should be exclusively on the campaign's actual story. My experience is if you just do a game arc without a proper setting for it, players totally keep fucking asking w...

Mord: representation is important. Stop before you say something bad, m'kay. Like, it's 2019, man, gay people existing has long been the default in popular media, Will and Grace was twenty one fucking years ago, excluding gay people from your work now is just fascism. 3e D&D was a bit shit for r...

Mord's post was a pretty weird grognardy thing, but I'm going to respond to bits of it anyway, just because. From a broader standpoint of "modern RPGs" rather than design specifically, what distinguishes modern products to me is the level of pandering to the consumer involved. I guess you ...

OgreBattle, things feel European because the art has white people in chain and plate in it, riding horses and wielding strait swords with a plain cross guard that look a bit like the holy cross (that is why medieval European swords looked like that, and no one else's ever did). Like, real medieval E...

I find I struggle to keep weight on when I do a few months proper fitness training. I usually put out like 2000 calories an hour on the bike, so 10000+ a week in training. Just no chance to get in that much extra food to maintain weight, 4-5 days worth extra for me, doesn't fit. Best wishes with the...

Guts, that's sort of how detailed characters aren't what they were, in the D&D line now. There is however much more detail in the Pathfinder line, which is more popular. Anyway, modern gaming is essentially selling rose coloured glasses. Getting people to think they are buying a Mentzer D&D ...

Warhammer 40k does medieval Europe (in space) pretty well. The relics and lost arts and purges and the space-pope from whom comes all truth and the heresies against him. The "diseases" that empty whole worlds. The ludicrously over-specialised super-expensive armies that work anyway. The sp...

There's a 3e theory problem called the 15-minute adventuring day. Where everything resets once per day, so you buff up, do one fight, then go rest for a day and do the same to the next room tomorrow. Spell durations and many other things cease to matter, like fights are not difficult. Unless things ...

Whales are <2% of players spending >50% of the money spent on the game, where most people spend basically nothing after net connection fees. Because the world you live in is <2% of people having >50% of the money that is spent, with most people having basically nothing to spend after food and shelte...

Hey souron. There's people have studied what players like, and modern PC games are heavily based on the psychology of it all to maximise profits. Most people will spend real money, like actual "this is four hours of my life I took to earn this" kind of money, and buy things like a purple p...

AD&D and 2e has Poly Self, Poly Other, and what the monsters do. Poly Self gives you the movement speeds of anything out of the MM (land, swimming, flying, jumping), and that is all. Self only, 20 min/level, you can keep changing as a full round action. Same thing Druids get, though they have ex...

In Brazilian news today, or a couple days ago at least, the current Minister of Justice, who was previously the Judge overseeing the case against the previous President, actually conspired with prosecution to bring the case that he then sat on, imprisoning Lula, and resulting in the change of govt. ...

So what would be an example of an action that should be done with 3e-style skill points? 3e skill points work really well if the skill DCs top out at very low numbers. So, like, if you get +14 to climb (L7+3 skill, +4 Dex), the hardest climbing DCs for a long time are 15, you can take a new skill n...

3.0 has some rubbish things that 3.5 fixes quite well too. Or, rather, slightly post-3.5 splats fix. Like, the official 3.0 action set is pretty weird, with something that looks much more like late 2nd edition terms everywhere. Having the standard actions all include a move is just silliness, not to...

I finally saw Episode 3 of Star Wars. I think, when they revealed that Chancellor Palpatine was the Sith Lord, and all the main characters did a "oh, woah, a Sith Lord, here" thing after, it's just .... The basic promise of the prequels was we would see the Emperor gain power and turn Vade...

Yes. It is a bit. The official excuses have progressed through 1: they didn't fail to prevent this, because you can't fail at things you don't even try. 2: it would've been quite hard work anyway, because hateful racist white people with automatic weapons making Nazi solutes and talking about race w...

Yeah, the public mood is just massively in favour of banning the fucking things, because most people thought they already were after the previous one. Another died this morning, 50 now, lots still on the edge in intensive care, all the pictures coming out of the people he killed, their stories, litt...