The Gaming Den

I think there is a good-intentioned reason for wanting to be in control over the distribution of magic items as a GM. You want it to feel like The Legend of Zelda when you get a new item, where there's a dramatic pause and a cool jingle when you get a new toy. Not like Diablo or Skyrim, where you ge...

MMOs have the advantage that the designer can datamine information on stuff like the team composition on parties who kill a given boss. If it's nothing but Pun Pun killing Arthas, then that class gets a ne... throttled down until team compositions become more diverse, representing a broad spectrum o...

For out of combat, there's always potential with a system that uses currency-driven MTP rather than dice, such as Munchhausen or Nobilis.

"Immersion"

Sometimes I agree with the person saying "this hurts immersion". But it's one of those terms that, once it enters the discussion, everyone thinks they're entitled to use it in their own subjective way.

If you have random advancement perks like in After Sundown or Mordheim, you could have one where a magic item in your possession becomes more potent, otherwise a mundane item of your choice becomes magical. This makes looting magical weapons when yours breaks isn't unreasonable, but items of great n...

Blowjobs are not a very good currency for a cosmic-level super. But let's say Lex Luthor wants to set up a terminal disease-curing initiative in your name, with millions of dollars in annual funding. Just your name on the dotted line, and countless lives saved. Now, Lex Luthor has a lot of political...

PhoneLobster's points make sense to me. Sure, I get players who try to talk a king into giving them their kingdom, on the off chance they roll REALLY well. But just the same, I also get the players who think themselves to be Han Solo, and to them, every problem looks like Greedo. BOTH have to be kep...

I played and ran several games of 13th Age, and didn't find it faster than 4e, because it has the same crappy core mechanic: you roll a d20, but you can never get to the point where all results on a d20 are a success. So you stand around and whiff at some monsters who are nothing but a pile of numbe...

An advantage I see in Victory Point MTP over the bog standard MTP is that it lets you value different actions differently. You can give fewer VPs to "I give a rousing speech" than, say, "I train a murder of dire ravens to drop boulders on their superior numbers, and feast on them if t...

The first step might be figuring out just how PCs interact with the mass combat system. Are they Mary Tzu? Guts? Lu Bu? Or do they apply their effects-based powers in creative ways, like the druid burying the enemy army in a landslide? If Guts simply walks into Mordor, what kind of decision tree is ...

Between RAW and mother-may-I lies the negotiation. Your rules, your splats, and arguments on how something could work within the established verisimilitude are leverage you bring to the GM. The negotiation is GOOD, the GM signing off on something makes it more real. A flying castle built via splats ...

My 4e Sorcerer once asked permission to blast a door open.

I have a question for ya'll. This forum rails mother-may-I and MTP and DM fiat stuff all the time. But the Logistics and Dragons is plagued by these problems!! There aren't enough rules to know what implications of your logistics, its entirely DM fiat. What's the difference? Is it because its okay ...

A person who blasts thing effectively, but is also a skilled thief and lorekeeper? How about The Kirisame?

Our rules for stealth, which may sound like a funny example. But having worked on 3rd and 4th edition, creating a set of rules for hiding from other people and monsters that run without a DM, is crazy. You always end up with a situation where you’re standing right in front of the monster but he can...

If you don't like systems, don't use them. I do plenty of slice-of-life roleplaying in Second Life that would be terrible if you rolled dice. I enjoy it, doesn't make it the One True Way. Rock-paper-scissors is fine for a PvP LARP. For a game of killing asymmetric monsters and taking their stuff, le...

Inadequate system mechanics that call for constant arbitrary GM rulings don't just become a problem in the hands of a tinpot dictator out for player blood. I'm often called out for not being harsh enough , because I'm being constantly told to pull DCs and encounters from my posterior by crappy games...

The important difference I see between superheroes and magical girls is that in the genre, you have much more slice of life action. Peter Parker has a job and, Champions terms, Dependent NPCs, but they're window dressing. Sailor Scouts spend most of the episode dealing with friends, school and life ...

Computers are still scary, but scary in a different way than the fictional computer of 30 years ago like AM and Skynet. Nowadays, computers gauge employee efficiency in a ruthless manner, approve people for adjustable rate mortgages without the collateral to back them, and handle logistics for inter...

My system for arbitrarily pricing magic items would probably be a 2d6 table similar to an old school reaction table. In the middle, the purveyor is equally willing to hold onto the item for its given price, and haggle. On high rolls, he's held on to the item for too long and is ready to liquidate it...

John Wick once wrote an "interesting" article on how to GM Champions Immunity gives a character supernatural immunity to diseases and poisons. It’s a very popular advantage. Of course, Mr. Carter had to do something about that. I had his scientists come up with a disease that would kill o...

Riddick killing a guy with a teacup in an eponymous film with no other stars is okay. A PC killing a horde of goblins with a teacup in a campaign with 3+ other players is Captain Hobo bullcrap.

One of the things 4e failed to rip off from its source material was martial classes using different resources from magical classes. The sword guy doesn't just have different buttons than the spell guy, it's a different paradigm. You get angrier as the fight goes on, and can pull off amazing feats of...

Seems like the reasoning is that, while a CoDzilla can be socially cajoled into being a team player, someone who's simply a Fighter+ is stepping on the Fighter's dick AND can't be pressured into playing a support role instead.

Ultima IX was one of the most railroaded (and generally bad) of the series, so it made me laugh that it allowed this Ocean Travel Without A Boat In Ultima IX, bread has an amazing property: it can float while supporting the weight of the Avatar! With this method, you can easily go anywhere in Britan...