The Gaming Den

There are some groups who will spend a whole session making plans because that's what they enjoy, but there are also groups that will spend a whole session making plans despite enjoying it very little. In my experience, groups that spend a lot of time on planning and hate it are more common than gro...

Blades in the Dark was inspired by Apocalypse World but is not part of the Apocalypse game line. It is substantially different and, in my opinion, substantially better. I joined a weekly game of Blades in the Dark a few months ago, then started my own weekly game, and have over a dozen sessions now ...

Detective Pikachu is worth watching for many reasons. For example, watching Detective Pikachu enabled me to achieve a kind of enlightenment or altered state of consciousness which I had not previously accessed. Regardless of its merits as a Pokémon movie, it has substantial value as scripture or lon...

If you're going to reply to a picture of David Mitchell by talking about things Robert Webb has done, you should probably explicitly point out who is who.

It sounds like invoking horror (with this character) is the opposite of what you actually wanted to do. It does not invoke horror and you should consider that a success. Not everything that happens in a horror story has to be, itself, horrifying.

Dean's mystery write-up looks pretty good to me.

In an RPG where some PCs have "magic" and some don't (Or where some they all have "magic" but only some have "spellcasting"), there are basically 3 kinds of magic (or spells) PCs can get. Magic that cancels out or negates enemy magic, but doesn't generate its own effect...

But broadly I do agree that if your "Tolkien Fantasy in Space" game doesn't have a viable Dwarf faction, you done shat the bed. Warhammer 40K already has like 5 dwarf factions in it, though. The Empire are already xenophobic traditionalists with German and Russian themes. The Adeptus Mech...

I am not a lawyer, but I believe that it is trademarks that you risk losing by failing to defend them, while copyright does not have any such requirement.

As a layperson, this book offers the most convincing-sounding-to-me big-picture take on what the deal is with weight gain and weight loss. The linked review by itself is pretty informative as such things go.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/b ... gry-brain/

Are there any tips for finding a bankruptcy lawyer? Are you sure you need one? If you have any valuable possessions you'd like to hang onto, if you recently added or removed your name from any property or entered into any contracts, or if you're not 100% what you currently own, it's incredibly help...

Without the basic move list, it's impossible to evaluate characters in a meaningful way. Writing your basic moves is the most important part and the hardest part and you should do that first.

Page 63 is a full-page advertisement for Fantast Games Unlimited, Inc., which published games like Chivalry & Sorcery . All-knowing wikipedia describes it as an "early competitor to Dungeons & Dragons" and I have never heard of it before now. I have read that edition of Chivalry &...

3rd edition D&D is too old to actually be modern, but it's the last paradigm-shifting advancement, so it's pretty much the most modern thing out there. In most contexts, "modernizing" a game means "making it more like 3rd edition D&D." That could include such features as ...

I'm so sorry.

Imagine that you added a resource called Fate Points to Apocalypse World. Fate Points can be used in the following ways: When you miss a roll and the MC is making their move, you can can spend a Fate Point to interrupt them. Choose any MC move that doesn't leave your character better off than they a...

That might just be something our MC introduced then, where stopping a plan (by rescuing a hostage or breaking the doomsday button or whatever) would mark a condition. So the whole thing was a fan patch I guess. I sort of just assumed he knew what he was talking about since it was fun and made sense...

Rather than forcing every move to be negotiated to consensus, I recommend introducing a narrative currency to resolve impasses. Whichever side you put in charge of making the first proposal, allow the other side to veto it by spending a resource.

I have literally no idea what shinimasu is talking about. "Thwarting" isn't a game term at all . "Provoke someone" is a basic move and while I wish its effect were better defined, there is no evidence that it can inflict a condition on a villain and substantial evidence that it c...

Hadanelith wrote:I am. Why do you ask?

I live near Charlottesville.

@Guts, Masks actually runs on a Tank/Healer/DPS combat system. In combat, you use "Danger" to inflict damage on the opposition, "Saviour" to prevent damage to your allies, and "Mundane" to heal allies. The other 2 stats are "Freak," which is used to debuff ene...

Some of the basic moves have "trap options" you can pick that might not actually do anything or might not be applicable in a lot of situations. But all of them have enough options with guaranteed effects that you can skip the trap options if you're not getting extra picks from a playbook m...

@Frank, Masks basically tells you to use extended tests to work around the fact that all tests are equally difficult. You compare a PC's abilities to the difficulty of the task and then tell the player it will take 0 rolls, 1 roll, >1 roll to get it done. They tried really hard to avoid using actual...

reserve for oberoni (4 of 4)

Both Apocalypse World and Masks have a default move for "doing stuff" that kicks in when no other move is more applicable. Let's see how they stack up. When you do something under fire, or dig in to endure fire, roll+cool. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7–9, you flinch, hesitate, or stall: the ...