The Gaming Den

I don't really want to engage AC0 because I am not in high school anymore and not doing Lincoln Douglas debate so I don't have to deal with the same tired ass 50+ year old libertarian arguments. However, I find it laughable that anybody would argue that libertarianism is not just early stage fascism...

Ok, so let me be clear. I subscribe to the Indiana Jones philosophy on Nazis. Additionally, if I was DMing adventurer's league and a guy sat down with a "Pinochet did nothing wrong" T-shirt I would tell the organizer that either he leaves my table or I leave the event. I personally hate th...

In a world where orcposting exists, the idea that elfgames can be without politics is the real fantasy. So, when I went to origins many years ago talked with a guy who was running one of the events where participants took various roles pretending to be the upper levels of government for the U.S. an...

While we are at it, what's it with all the "I can't support Nazism, I'm an X" when X is someone legitimately at threat from Neo-Nazis? There seems to be a lot of people who'd be genuinely and personally at immediate threat should the neo-Nazis get more active, who are trying their best to...

So Sac Lamb says he is gone but a skidmark like that will probably linger for a while. Let me point out some things that should be obvious but if your brain has been melted by 8chan antisemitism might not be obvious. 1) The american left, and even the far left that might be called Antifa are demandi...

Honestly, the use of mini's leads to fairly static battlefields once people get into the fighting position they want. I have a hard time justifying the expense and time for how little difference it makes. I get more dynamic and dramatic "movement" when I provide a picture of a room and run...

While a game where everybody runs the kingdom or part of the kingdom sounds fun, is this still supposed to be appended to a traditional quest based rpg like in OSR type game or a personal heart breaker? If so, I guess I am still just not sold on this conceptually. Most people play their TTRPGs in ab...

LOL, we have had a lot of random assholes come through this board, but Sac takes the cake. Its the internet so I have called people nazi's and been called a nazi in turn but I honestly never met an actual nazi before. Deciding that you want to endorse and join the scum of humanity is a bold decision...

Putting aside that "The Riddle of Steel" (or "The R DD E of S EEL") is something of a cringable name, "Roleplaying with an edge"? Yeah, that seems like it'd encourage not giving the book a second look. The Riddle of Steel is not a concept that the author's of this game...

Riddle of Steel is almost more interesting as a synthesis of old school fencing manuals than it is a game. When I was in college I did intramural fencing through my University. Our "Coach" was a student getting their masters in business administration that had been fencing since they were ...

The problem I have with 'heroes need flaws' is that flaws only mean anything in context. Conan being a brooding, anti-social mass murderer who doesn't keep deals with anyone on his shitlist is not a flaw if you're playing Mad Max. Or Conan for that matter. It's a crippling disadvantage if you're pl...

My point was that, as you say, comics are weird. Your point that players want to be be disruptive is also true of serialized comics. Sometimes the writer just wants to go "what if superman used his x-ray vision to be an asshole?" That said, the Adam West batman is iconic and is a defintiti...

Brooding Batman and Pouting superman are part of their 70+ year history. I get that DC has rebooted twice in the last decade and that when they do they shake up all the personalities. That doesn't change the archtypes. I would say that the DC characters are actually more like how Achilles and Hercul...

Batman broods, Superman pouts, Aquaman has anger issues, the flash is a jerk to people he thinks are less smart than himself (everyone), and wonder woman has a bunch of totally sexists character flaws. DC heroes are flawed and their flaws are especially important when they are put in ensemble storie...

Honestly when I want to tell stories about weeaboo ubermenchen I don't really want to talk about the long-term psychological damage of having had a drunken and unsupportive mother. To the extent that Exalted should have been playing with dolls, it should have been about bashing them together and go...

So, exalted sucks. We all know that. However, a high adventure game that is built around story telling conventions (like white wolf games) rather than D&Ds module universe style game is not a bad idea. If you were going to make such a game it would probably look a lot like the Stormlight Archive...

I am so tired of alternate histories where the confederacy wins or extends the war. Basically everything that could go right for the confederacy did go right for them for the first several years of the war. Want a much more insteresting alternate history for your alternate 1880s setting? Try this. G...

That said pathfinder 2E published AP appears to be an even worse disaster than the 2E game itself. Everybody says that the story is horrible, the encounters Unmemorable, and the story logic inane. Care to link any discussions? Paizo's own forum is carefully purged of negativity, as usual. Meanwhile...

It feels like we have been trying to solve this for 20 fucking years. d20+mod is really good because its linear and simple. It works well at low levels and mid levels with limited modifiers. It falls to shit at higher levels. It's also swingy and requires a secondary roll to really provide a good id...

I actually think making a better 40k is almost trivially easy. Assuming we want to keep the "fantasy races in space" core concept here are the factions I would have: 1) Genetically Enhanced humans. The human empire is made of 2 classes of citizens that live in a dystopian pseudo Rome/Cold ...

Anyway, the larger issue there is that in World War 2 the pastoralists were the bad guys and the industrialists were the good guys. Wait, whot? Both Germany and Japan were as heavy in the industry as the other sides back then. The japanese ran out of skilled pilots and just started putting rookie p...

Disagree. There's a certain group of people who want to play Flames of War armies. The Guard has a fanbase that transcends the fanbase of "tanks" and "shootiness." There are certain players who just genuinely want to play with space Barbies that are GI Joes. What they should hav...

40K has way to many imperial factions. GW is also not good at realizing the appropriate level of detail that should be fed into certain factions. Lets say you were GW and you cared about your wargame and not just about selling space barbies to 40 year old men. You have already stumbled into a really...

But Tolkien isn't having the Orcs use 15th century Central Asian cannons or 13th century Chinese rockets. He is having them enact the enclosures of public land and wilderness in order to centralize and industrialize. Isengard is enacting the British industrial revolution and pursuing the British im...

I am a 35 year old man who has not actually been able to play a game of 40k in almost a decade. I know that the lore associated with the game is basically the result of sticking Dune and Judge Dread in a blender set to "add Nazi imagery and sell for cash." The game took 20 years and 5 edit...