The Gaming Den

Apparently it's increasingly a thing in Left Discourse -- I'm not sure whether it's because of the rise of liberalism intersectionality or the revival of Marxism, including New Left Marxism -- to challenge some precepts we used to have on this very board about Dark Ages Europe. Basically: A) The pre...

I've definitely used 'retarded' as a synonym for 'stupid,' and I started trying to drop that sometime in the past few years without even really making the conscious decision, I think. It just made me increasingly comfortable and tapered off. Why is 'retarded' bad but not 'stupid'? I have heard cert...

Just reminding people that the world is melting down and the old days of politically neutral* snark ain't never coming back. Maybe they'll return in a different form if something rises from the ashes of the liberal-conservative consensus. But I hope you enjoyed the old days of riffing on WH40K and S...

You could work around the issue by putting Planar Binding in a Glyph of Warding that triggers when a summon enters and then immediately cast the summon into a prepared trap, like a Magic Circle. Planar Binding will trigger as soon as it appears and finish casting before the summon's final turn of ex...

You people have the memories of fucking goldfish. Did y'all forget that blow-up in IMHO about coming up with acceptable reasons to kill orcs? How is THAT not political? Let's be real here: the TGDMB was never about not being political. IMHO always had a strongly left-liberal/social democratic bent c...

You are deeply delusional to suggest the world has changed. Just so you know, this is the kind of denialism that has made people extra-suspicious and hostile towards your brand of 'let's just go and game'. Trump is now President. All previous relations and commitments are being re-examined. And a l...

All political opinions are stupid in the context of designing make believe. Idiots. Make believe opinions and mechanics are what this forum is about, not the other way around. Get lost! How can I put this... The old world -- a world that separated politics from the quest of enjoyment and fantasy --...

The point was that someone's politics will seep through the mask, especially if the rest of their existence is politicized. [*] Should vampires be allowed to exist, so long as they feast on animal blood? [*] Should vampires be allowed to feed on humans so long as they don't kill them? [*] Should vam...

If your politics are going to lead to harm for people I care about, then your advice on how to run a game is meaningless to me. The world is melting down, we can't go back to the old days where we think we could have solidarity separate from politics. It's gotten to the point where just even attemp...

That's the problem in a nutshell right there - you THINK you know someone's politics because of a single comment of something unrelated and suddenly they're part of the 'enemy'. Everybody has political views that are nuanced and complex - they aren't really represented well by a 2-party system. Iro...

It's pointless trying to make the Den a safe haven, because what's been going on in the past few months has been happening to every forum. Even supposedly nonpolitical spaces I frequent like LinkedIn sales circle jerks and electronics hobbyist forums has been experiencing the same dynamic as the Den...

The new project manager (Ray Winniger) who replaced Mike Mearls has to be aware that 5E D&D is very poorly designed as a shovelware engine. [*] Magic items are impossible to obtain on a player's volition. [*] Feats compete with ability score increases, making it so that many players never get on...

As to claim whether the illogical can exist is itself an axiomatic ideal that may or may not be true. Heck in 5e everyone lives in a hyperbolic geometry where the circle has been squared, that certainly doesn't make any logical sense, but that's the rules. There's a practical difference between a l...

I'm not counting out the fascists yet. I'll never make that mistake again after the Democrats under Obama went from a legislative supermajority to its lowest state in 80+ years. And Biden is no Obama. What I am saying is that at least for the next election, the fascists are fucked. What's more, it d...

Things are looking real bad for the fascists in the states right now in the short-term. Not only are things looking atrocious for Trump's approval ratings with the 'second' wave of COVID-19, we haven't even seen the worst of it. It's quite possible that this will reach a threshold* where the deaths ...

Our culture has this strange fascination for "good" people solving problems with force: how many movies are about a "good guy" solving problems with a gun? Aside from the extradiegetic reason of 'a transformative social engineering project would take too long to depict in most m...

But as a pirate-themed D&D setting it doesn't exactly hold up well; Skulls & Shackles, One Piece, etc understood that the mobile appeal of going around the seas and venturing upon an "island a week" format. Freeport by contrast was very much in love with its central city hub, and ...

I think it's pretty clear at this point that Trump is going to go down in history as one of the greatest butchers we've seen -- and if you don't count the lives of non-Americans, comfortably in 1st-place. If you do, he'll probably be a bit behind Truman, Nixon, and/or Reagan. The thing is, our insti...

Our dumbass governor and mayor opened up the parks in my county and immediately had to shut them down due to overcrowding. Pictures in the paper showed that no one had masks on.

Kaelik wrote:The people protesting are small business owners and landlords who want people to go back to work FOR them

This is what I get for feeling for my fellow man.

There's been some protests in Austin this weekend demanding that people be able to return to work. Nothing too huge for the time being (about a few hundred people) but the pictures showed very of them wearing face masks. We have about 80,000 acute care beds in the entire state of Texas for 30 millio...

Here's the reason why Sorceradin is good, typically the 6/14 or 7/13 split. [*] You have Quicken Spell. If the spell you use is Booming Blade or Greenflame Blade, it's like having an extra smite attack as a bonus action. [*] Hell, Metamagic in general just rules. How would you like to Twin Spell a G...

From what I can tell, you still can win 5e forever with Animate Dead and Glyph of Warding. Necromancer Wizards are king, followed by Clerics & Bards, and non-magical martials suck ass. The meta has been shifting away from those, as much as you take Adventurer's League as part of a meta. Animate...

I always thought it was a bit weird how D&D decided to lead with Frostburn and how it was also their best book. Desert settings and Sea settings are way more common in fantasy fiction and in D&D settings as well.

I think it might just be because lol Lord of the Rings.

Revenge of the Sith is a victim of the failings of the previous two movies. While there were obviously a bunch of areas they could improve on, I can't think of a single problem in the movie (besides General Grievous's underwhelming death) that wasn't due to a problem in the last two movies.