The Gaming Den

I pretty much refuse to watch anything where the hero knocks out mooks and somehow never accidentally kills those same mooks or causes brain damage. I also avoid anything where torture doesn't produce consistent misinformation, where cops are allowed to make deals with criminals, or where the crimin...

One of my RPG friends had a baby two years ago, so the rest of us have been doing Gloomhaven until she can rejoin the group.

We started RPGing again last week, and its been a welcome relief. Gloomhaven can tide you over for a while, but any boardgame is going to get tiring after a while.

Its funny to me that people blame DnD magic for breaking the DnD economy and not the DnD economy for being so breakable. I mean, there was a Paizo adventure path adventure with a pretty uninteresting trap room that shot iron balls at PCs as they crossed a bridge over a pit of the ammo for said trap....

I don't mean Eberron splatbooks, I'm looking for information on how that setting came to be, what the Setting Search was like (rules-wise and such), and if there were any other strong contenders or a top 5 list of participating entries. @Blicero: Thanks, I'll look for that Pyramid issue! There was ...

That's very amusing. I sometimes watch DnD with newbies and am surprised by how many assumptions they have that are wrong, but perfectly reasonable and probably should be part of the rules.

Honestly, this is just a fighter problem. Spellcasters have been Voltron-ing just fine for decades. For example, some spellcasters cast Enervation or something like it to drop saves with no save, maybe some Polymorph into an ability drain monster, and then the last one or two casters drop the boss w...

The problem with the history and world-building is the same problem with the character and dialogue writing: fan service. They couldn't just make new things that are Star Wars and let people enjoy those, but instead had to rehash the old movies and plots and setting elements. I mean, you easily coul...

And yet I haven't seen many products from the OSR movement that actually want to re-create the high level experience. In fact, I haven't seen any products that really have a 'high level' in mind. It's all level 6 forever, as far as the eye can see. The first problem is that high-level play was some...

And yet I haven't seen many products from the OSR movement that actually want to re-create the high level experience. In fact, I haven't seen any products that really have a 'high level' in mind. It's all level 6 forever, as far as the eye can see. The first problem is that high-level play was some...

I've always been impressed by the way that Final Fantasy games make the Blue Mage hunt for his spells. When I was playing FFXI, I could tell you the story how I got each of the over 100 spells. Sure, some of those stories are "I went to the Windhurst noobie zone and let bees hit me until they u...

3e's got problems with extending it, but you can run great low-mid level dungeon bashes. It's fun. 4e was a horrible, horrible grind to play by the rules, right from the start, and that never changed, if anything it got worse as you levelled up. 5e, who the fuck knows, the fans tell me it's great b...

Fluff first, then rules, or else you get Earthdawn (a weird cludge of not very evocative fluff to explain rules).

I'd say that of the Storyteller games Except Werewolf don't deliver on their core premise. Vampire is a dark superheroes game and not a game about politics or personal horror. Exalted is about low-level adventures and not about epic storytelling and kingdom building. Mage is about not casting spells...

Options are probably the single most misunderstood problem in game design. Too few and the game is constrictive and boring. Too many and people bounce off the material. It's not even a consistent problem because different players have different tolerances for options. Some people really do need to p...

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Double fuck chocobo training in FFX.

Double fuck all chocobo training in ANY FF game.

Personally, I'm giving superhero movies a break for the next ten years.

This movie was peak fan-service of superheroes. The genre is dead.

Thanks for the answers! I don't know where the errata is, so my plan is to run it as written in 3.5. Double-checking my copy, I can see both arguments on polymorph with templates. The argument for polymorph snagging templates is that it clearly overrides alter self's limits on what forms you can ta...

I always DMed on the side of “well if your character doesn’t have an accurate timepiece, I don’t have to accurately track anything other than combat turns”.

I've been diving into polymorph cheese in 3.5 this weekend and found an oblique reference to "paragon wolves." I've found the template and the arguments for being able to polymorph into templated creatures (circa 2004 - later errata and/or "polymorph subschool" stuff may have ch...

I just want to see them take a second crack at making FF7's plot comprehensible. The original is marred by a mediocre and often confusing translation... on top of being a gloriously batshit and convoluted game. I do not expect them to accomplish this. I do expect them to fail in new and exciting wa...

Writing up the plot of the adventure runs counter to the idea that PCs are making meaningful choices. You are not writing a story or a video game. I've found that writing up really interesting places and characters and a general timeline of events is all you need to let the players generate their ow...

It might just be easier to list a lot of things that work in the various settings and go from there. For example, L5R’s animal-named clans with specialties works. Exalted’s Yozi design as a pantheon of evil works. WoT’s heron marked swords works. I will grant like one of those. The L5R thing of hav...

It might just be easier to list a lot of things that work in the various settings and go from there.

For example, L5R’s animal-named clans with specialties works. Exalted’s Yozi design as a pantheon of evil works. WoT’s heron marked swords works.

I know a lot of folklore from a number of different cultures. Off-hand, I don't recognize Tlahuelpuchi or Kamaitachi. The first I would assume is Aztec and the second probably Japanese. I have no other assumptions. Obviously, I wouldn't be offended based on any description you decided to provide fo...

I think ten years ago I cared about great mechanics and a big, dynamic system to cover all the bases. Now I care about the table time taken and how easy it is to get a new player/gamer into a particular game. As you get older, your play time shortens and the pool of people you are willing to play wi...