The Gaming Den

I'm just gonna keep nodding along with all of that and saying "yup, still sounds better than ours". And the reason it's better is important. You had a dysfunctional federal response (or lack of it). We had basically the exact same dysfunctional federal response (or lack of it). At least a...

The idea that the world would have been safer with America in the hands of an authoritarian despot because he's inept and maybe less interested in directing international coups right now is super fucked. It's accelerationist bullshit that isn't even true on its own terms. Or. The idea that you were...

If you think Australia is the place for political refugees to flee to you haven't been keeping track of who was pioneering the whole kids in cages thing. But I want to briefly focus on this "non-American" thing. One thing I see from the Den, and from online US citizens in general, is a com...

Well...yes...but is there anyone here that disagrees? With things other than that excessively shortened portion, possibly. With say, the last sentence of that very same paragraph, I somewhat suspect at least some. With the second paragraph, oh boy I suspect rather a lot. I'm not sure who, but give ...

But isn't it absolutely I don't know really kinda important to point out that that this is a bad outcome. A very bad outcome. Not a "yay, small heavily compromised success" but an "oops far bigger disaster than even the dark and questionable compromise we were lazily aiming at". ...

Odd that they "suck less than they could have. Conversation over." It feels like a certain specific outcome that would have been way better is being explicitly and petulantly cut out of any and all consideration by an arbitrary declaration that it's not even allowed to be in the conversati...

I find it hard to believe anyone would even entertain the idea that Trump would be prosecuted for all the usual presidential crimes that are never prosecuted. I find it hard to believe anyone would entertain the idea that the USA would prosecute any ex-president for ANYTHING for fear of setting a pr...

Biden could have repeated "15 dollar minimum wage" every time he opened his mouth if he wanted to. That sort of tactic is bog standard politics it works. He could have ran hard on that one policy. He didn't. It wasn't because it was too hard (I mean yes, he and his campaign are so damn LAZ...

You can call this election what you like, but the promised big wave win for the democrats it definitely isn't. It's almost like the incompetent democrat leadership that are the same people from 2016 using the same tactics as 2016 completely failed again in almost the exact same way but more so and t...

I have never seen good campaign rules for those things. Mostly because the table top wargame designers from the limited systems I've seen trying to do this just fail on first principles when they come into contact with their first most basic obstacle. Which is usually snowballing. These things usual...

I'm not a loser still trying to sell TTRPGs... No, you are a loser "trying to sell" board games to a non board game community, despite the fact you seem to not know the first thing about board games yourself, and apparently refuse to allow useful or interesting discussion of board games &...

That's not how you defined Bob originally. You defined him as this. I didn't define Bob at all. I defined the trap options. I defined some pretty appallingly obvious hyperbolic strawman level trap options at that. If you think the problem is the undefined Bob, and not the gigantic burning strawman ...

No, it's not a "Leeroy Jenkins" Bob, it's average gamer or at worst only slightly less Bob. Accusing Bob of being a problem is just another new intractable excuse that isn't inherent to the issue and doesn't need to be dealt with directly. Because the point is this isn't "Ultimately a...

Being open, simpler, and less opaque though doesn't solve the Alpha Player problem. It's ultimately a social issue. The point is it mostly works, like I said, pulling a number out of my ass thin air, 90% solvable. The player that will ALWAYS want to decide Bob's action no matter what cannot be fixe...

I think there are a few designable defenses against this, although they're not exactly pretty. You can make each player's resource system complicated and different enough that the quarterbacking player can't really know what the other party members can do. You could make it so the players weren't a...

Im trying to figure out what my plan for 'bullshit time' is, but most boss battles I've played through or read about in adventure paths have a fresh boss in their home and the PC's are on the offensive through multiple encounters to reach them. I'm not sure there is a solid solution to bullshit tim...

Y'all ever played a game where the opposition party's use of dailies and encounters was taken into account when they fight the PC's? No. Not saying it's impossible, not saying I haven't like wow, barely ever, done something loosely like that as a GM. But thinking about it. No. No GM has ever in any...

What you are talking about there is a pretty standard "Reputation" mechanic. it will work absolutely fine if you simply never ever examine it closely or try to do anything remotely difficult with it. If you ever put it under slight scrutiny or strain the problems are very straightforward. ...

I think fundamentally the problem with these specific schedules and mixed schedules is a need fairly to acknowledge the real practical applications. What these rules really mean and what real groups really do with them. The idea that most resource renewal schedules that exceed the main formally mana...

While I entirely agree that describing a success on a success, and describing a failure on a failure is a thing, and a thing you should do. When did it deserved this much description and discussion? This is bog standard RPG 101 and has been for decades. OK, so maybe some people need a reminder on it...

Hmm... it sounds like it's probably best to start with NPC design before you can really define social mechanics. I would call an obvious no on that one. The idea that just having some personality notes on a bunch of characters. Hell a "monstrous manual" worth magically solves anything to ...

Is this useful? Shall I continue? I don't know, how does it tie in with the not effecting PCs thing again? What about player intent, though? Well, I can't read the minds of players. Can you? If in the end if you are just kicking it all to player GM negotiations it ends up being real world manipulat...

I can't begin to figure out what the precise scenario merxa is proposing, It's a question on whether character intent and knowledge meaningfully effects the action. There are questionable interactions if it does. So, for instance, your best liar suddenly becomes your most charismatic idiot while yo...

I think, even before I came to the conclusions I did. (In large part by actually trying to write an objective valuation based mechanic and realizing just how much of a clusterfuck that would be). Even before that when I saw someone proposing a social mechanic with a strong proviso of "It must n...

The alternative is to never mention specific time units at all. Keep it purely abstract. So maybe you have a very "quick" time unit, you have a very "long" time unit, never give any seconds/minutes/hours number for either. If/Once you mention time real time units, you should prob...