The Gaming Den

And all of that notwithstanding, even if such a thing can work, I outright reject the very concept of "to-hit" rolls. All the end-user "grunt work" will need to be done pre-battle. Units will have to be treated as single creatures. The only decisions to make once battle starts i...

The 4e Warlord was awesome. I loved the concept.

I really like Bo9S. I feel like it's an excellent jumping-off point for all kinds of shenanigans for martial characters, like the spellcasting alternate Swordsage (replace maneuvers with spells, same recovery mechanic, same method of calculating spell level access as maneuver level access) and the g...

That's incorrect. Wick describes a number of different campaigns in a number of different settings and systems, and offers similar advice in all cases. Playing Dirty is an ugly and insulting document, but my quote is only referencing the Hero system quotes from that book. But yes, fuck John Wick fo...

Either providing a zoomed-in "characters fight officers/engage in a series of challenges, each risking their Victory Points against the opposition's" where scaling up the challenge increases the risk:reward ratio, or "you actually have to fight hordes of tiny men" are fine ways o...

Agree. My personal preference is DnD3.5 + House Rules + custom PrCs + custom setting, but if you're coming from scratch those House Rules are a bunch of guesses, the PrCs are even worse, and the setting is probably largely divorced from mechanics that are supposed to define it.

I'm pimping this draft. It's my attempt at a game incorporating this discussion, which has been had several times, and its predecessors. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_nu50YR0PFzOTRVN2NOVVBvb1k/view?usp=sharing I think one thing that this discussion is missing is the value of abstraction in exte...

Pathfinder is the better starter, for the sake of their full SRD. DnDTome would be my second. ...but that's for a starter, out-of-the-box experience. I do think that asking "what do I want out of this game" is a really important question to ask. My personal preference for high fantasy is c...

...That's not to say "Well you're playing MTP anyway so nothing matters," but rather that "This edition is not L&D and I want to play L&D because L&D is what I think makes D&D D&D" is not a strong argument against 5e (or any edition). The argument against the...

As a mister cavern: - What player actions do you enjoy handling the most? - Can you share a few moments when your players did something that made you really glad to be MCing for that particular group? - Invert the above questions along the entertaining/annoying axis (i.e. players who are asshats or...

Codename: Morningstar has moved to target Pathfinder as its undergirding system. LOL 5e.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tr ... r?ref=card

This is an early draft and I work really fucking slow, but...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_nu50 ... sp=sharing

I like to think I'm not someone who drank the Ars kool-aid, unless you think playing the game at all does that. While trying to get answers from the Ars forum regarding the lack of world-building, I came up with a few ideas. The goal is for the Order to not be deemed heretics and the Church to trea...

Now in the actual period there was debate within the Church about whether accusations of witchcraft should be investigated or whether the accuser should simply be burned as a heretic. The bible is not ambiguous on the point that sorcerers should be put to death and are going straight to Hell after ...

There's a piece of canonical law (possibly?) originating in the 10th century but is starkly skeptical, stating that witchcraft is bullshit, and that the real crime is believing in witchcraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Episcopi

This has gone to a dark place.

Turns out this guy is an idiot: In the world of late antiquity or the early Middle Ages, it is impossible to define someone as a witch (as opposed, for example, to an amateur herbalist, a heretic or a scold), and none of the legislation of the time attempted to do so. Offenders were designated offen...

Okie dokie. I guess that's my mind caulk then. Makes for a pretty good game. :) EDIT - Wait a second. Are you on that deserted island? They have Wi-Fi? Do you realize that The Church discusses canonical crimes? Should I actually attempt to find this passage that brings the entire edifice crumbling d...

Here's the way it actually works: If you want to find out how the people from The Church in town are supposed to interact with your Covenant, you're supposed to read the Core Book (227 pages), Art and Academe (140 pages), City and Guild (144 pages), Covenants (128 pages), one of the Houses of Herme...

I thought I'd read that DnD5e was supposed to have a Living Rules set, or something? Was I mistaken/that idea dropped?

Those books provide a total canonical exposure, which is kind of tautological. Imagine a DnD game where True Namers and weird supplements actually provide useful, non-game-fucking info and you get the point: I suppose it's like every supplement in ArM5 is The Book of Nine Swords. It addresses holes ...

I think as a critique of the core book, that's accurate. As you pointed out, they don't spend anywhere near enough time talking about the differences between ArM and the real histories, and certainly the idea that the Church is a largely secular organization as far as ArM is concerned needs some ser...

I never asserted that True Faith was common, only that it would prevent Warping. The main thrust of that post was that you didn't grow an extra tit from living near the Divine, with or without True Faith. Living in Divine Auras does weird things to you, but those things are context-dependent. Like, ...

I don't have a lot of experience with either. I do know that seeing Penny Arcade playing 4e with sticker tags on the minis to track their conditions was surprising, and assumed that 5e had less. How common are the status conditions in play? Like, how many classes/monsters are handing them out? My im...

I really, really like ArM, and 5th edition especially. That said, I think Frank did a very fair job here with his assessment of the game and the core book. The game needs more on Troupe play. It needs more on mundane/hermetic interactions, but they purposefully shy away from that because, I believe,...