The Gaming Den

And, of course, all this shit doesn't matter to what people want out of an East Asian themed game, because what they care about are the stories, not historical accuracy. As hilarious as watching FatR get repeatedly schooled is, history is just one story, and while it's an alright story, what people ...

A lot of people seem to assume "mass combat rules" means that the mass combat events are huge and consequential, that they are things that really matter for everyone! But uhm, there's no reason to assume that. I mean, Asian stuff did have people heroically dying to thousands of arrows... a...

@OgreBattle: Many historians who study the dark ages generally like to insist on the fact that they were not "dark" ages and were generally speaking pretty okay. Not sure why nor if they're right, but I've heard this many times from people who are supposed to know the topic, so it might n...

I'm struggling to imagine what kind of excuses Andrei would offer for the Holy Roman Empire, given that Andrei seems to consider politics and religion immiscible. How would they respond to a king who was awarded a crown by the Pope? Mostly, for, y'know, killing a lot of people and taking their stuff...

Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America were all released before Miles Morales' debut issue. Oh... fucking fuck. Am I that daft on time? I am. Fuck! I'm sorry, I must confess, I am a time traveler and sometimes forget which year came first . I stand by the rest of my st...

I've heard a loooot of developers making it on "free core, pay supplements, and an OK marketing campaign." You need more -- better marketing, good art, etc. -- to have a really big thing, but that seems to be the 21st century pattern of success.

sidenote: I think that minority representation should be better done without relying on the identity of white super heroes. But the comic book fans are not known for being an adventurous lot. IIRC the main thing that is going on here is that they had tried to grow up minority heroes "naturally...

Inflation has gone up sure, but the cost of producing books I suspect hasn't stayed the same. At the very least it's become easier to actually layout the content (not necessarily *well* mind you) due to advancing computer software options. That, plus the explosion of *dirt cheap* printing in China ...

It should be noted the post-inflation value of $25 (the mentioned above price for a 3e D&D corebook) is like, $35 now, because inflation is a bitch. The list price on the current edition of D&D is totally $50 a corebook, though, right now. And while I think there's a few more pages per coreb...

I dunno, I think there's actually been an increasing demand for higher mechanical rigor, ever since 3e D&D. It hasn't been helping WoD products any, since they don't really "do" that. What kind of "higher mechanical rigor" matters is indeed subjective, as some people lean har...

There's probably lots more RPG sales in _aggregate_, that is, the RPG industry probably makes more money in total, but there's a thousand tiny RPGs now. I think a lot of that has to do with the surge in indie games and also the falling down of D&D, and then, yes, mismanagement of White Wolf, dis...

The nostalgia thing is probably the biggest point in favor. If you're making a (genre) thing and you want it to be a guaranteed hit for some degrees of "hit," you can buy... well... White Wolf's WoD is an excellent example. Something that has already sold well in that genre, but is also ba...

Eh? If Fred Hicks was using it as part of his rubric for why he should do a thing, I think it's worth talking about, mostly because utilitarian calculus is pretty much all we've got. Was his assessment based on false information? Load the likelihood of it being false into the calculation, because pe...

Dogbert is making the bold 1st Amendment stand for the #Gamergate card game, released by James Desborough. True to a game about ethics in videogame journalism, it was about making fun of brown people, women, and queers, and also not very good as a game. Fred Hicks objected to this thing's existence ...

As I understand it, Indiegogo lets you keep what you gathered at the end, even if you didn't reach your goal. Could be wrong. Only if you chose Flexible Funding (they didn't). There are various small rules that differentiate Kickstarter and Indiegogo, however... any of them could have been the deci...

Ultimately you'll get the candidates the Powers That Be want you to be offered, and you'll vote for one of them, and things will continue as before. This is baffling. I mean, yes, Obama has demonstrated nothing but a tired old centrist position, gradually grinding leftwards, but he was our tired ol...

I'm not sure what more you want than "mutual enemies creates combined military action from both parties" in order for proof that it totally is a strategic decision and motivation that people act on -- no matter how stupid that decision might be in the long term. Fuck, just a few short mont...

It's simply that if the consequence of your decision is in fact your goal, then you are making a correct decision. And honestly you've done nothing other than back up Prak's decision by citing years of policy history and entire genres where the idea appears and is used heavily. I mean, fuck, have yo...

The entire question of social mechanics goals is What do you want to motivate ? Followed up with Wait, why the hell would you want to motivate that ? The purple example is supposed to demonstrate to you the existence of other modifiers is not an argument in defense of the stupid outcomes caused by ...

Purple, red, yellow, and teal, respectively, as primary armor/banner colors.

PhoneLobster wrote:Have you considered that is entirely irrelevant?

Everyone loves purple I reckon, if I give everyone a +2 for wearing purple that's totes cool if there are other modifiers right?

... if you want people to wear purple, sure?

Have you considered the prospect that a +2 swing in your favor does not offset an existing penalty you might be laboring under?

That is, if you ask a random democrat who won, 62% say Hillary; while if you put up a sign asking democrats to come to you to tell you who they think won then three quarters of the people who put in the effort say Bernie. I think this is an excellent example of why Sanders is a stronger candidate t...

To be fair, "5 months overdue" is "only slightly over the expected actual due date of Kickstarters." It's just an Accepted Thing in the RPG community in general that Kickstarters never finish on time, even with all the work done beforehand, and if they do it's a marvel. So most b...

I don't know, FrankTrollman. That model can work, as we can see from Yu-Gi-Oh! -- a game that's significantly more unbalanced than MtG and moreso every year. It all depends on what your target audience's tolerance for bullshit is. I think the difference is "can work in producing sales" an...