The Gaming Den

Continuing On... Thinking about war as a person who has never had to worry about wizards and magic and things. In the world you are talking about there would be anti-wizard tactics just like in our world there are anti-cavalry tactics. There are ways you would play the game that would minimize their...

I've been trying to stick with SRD spells because using non-core stuff just makes the situation even more unbalanced. What I'm saying is that with optimal play, as far as I can figure, Orcs win. Which is completely different from what's plausible or what's most likely to happen, which is where I'm c...

Greater teleport is out of your wizards range and you have now just changed your scenario. I haven't changed anything. You said "No one in the bronze age fought a war against someone 500 miles away from them," and I am saying how little that actually means when we're talking about D&D...

I will subscribe to the after action reports.

your distance is completely absurd. No one in the bronze age fought a war against someone 500 miles away from them, that's insane. That would be like picking a fight with someone the entire way across the UK, the long way. No one would do that. So I will assume a distance of 100 miles at most. This...

This is not a traditional medieval method of warfare. Exactly. Trying to mesh together military concepts and principles of Our World with D&D World is not going to work. We do not have Magic in our world (OH SHIT) and how we fight wars has evolved to reflect that. D&D is a highly magical se...

So something the orc horde can do is split up and march through your villages at night killing, burning, and raping, probably in that order on account of the stupid. They don't have to attack the high level PCs or enter any "you must be level 7" areas to cause very real problems. No, it s...

I tried to ignore that you made a serious argument that Replacing Balrog with Balor is somehow comparable to replacing either of those words with Rubber Ducky and it is impossible. Every time I make a serious attempt at responding to you, I end up coming back to that and it blows my mind all over ag...

We're talking about Mass Combat in D&D. Balrogs don't exist in D&D but Balors, which are based on Balrogs, do. Are you caught up yet? And seriously, any kingdom that has the power to not only stop Balors from teleporting into the castle, but kill them "immediately upon arrival" is ...

Whatever you want, probably.

GM: "Your armies are going to battle, what do you do?" So this is how that would actually go down: DL: I summon my Balor and tell him to Greater Teleport into the enemy General's Tent and kill everyone and then I tell him to Greater Teleport into the enemy Ruler's castle and kill him too....

"does mass combat really fit in D&D?" For a very limited time. You need to be able to make up for Power Disparity with Numbers and after level 9, that becomes impossible (probably even lower than that if you really looked into it) because you have Wizards who bypass the entire mass co...

Yeah, a lot of the cooperation I've seen in Arkham comes out from discussion about strategy as opposed to being emergent from the gameplay. Asides from some obvious stuff like, "Let's meet up here so I can give the old guy this spell I picked up and I'll take that Axe off his hands."

The first game company to release a solid 1st party Virtual Tabletop/Character Builder/Character Visualizer(with cash shop full of extra cosmetic options) app for smartphones and tablets (and have the sense to advertise it worth a shit) will more or less win TTRPGs for the foreseeable future. This ...

Stuff... Adjudication may have been is definitely the wrong word. I just like to use it. So, if the real issue here is about Player Agency, then the Dungeon Master Role is definitely the problem. You should acknowledge that using MTP detracts from player empowerment. You should remember that the mo...

That's what I was figuring. So, with "True MTP," no one is inherently empowered. If Player A says BANG and Player B says NUH UH, there isn't a way to resolve that conflict (other than with a Slap Fight) because nothing (or no one) has the authority to do so. So, what I'm really trying to g...

Is the Role of the DM necessary for MTP or is that something we add on because of established paradigms for tabletop gaming?

ISP wrote:Maybe Shadzar could condense his massive unwieldy posts to short, clearly written arguments with nicely written sentences and punctuation.

Then it wouldn't be a Shadzar post.

Shadzar's a boss and I'll fight anyone who thinks ill of him.

Try thinking more like Jason Bourne, Major from Ghost in the Shell, and Corvo from Dishonored. So, Modern Day Super Spy, Future Cyborg Spy, and Steampunk Shadow Assassin... okay... If it's a setting with Significant Technological/Magical advances, then you can throw in Portable Devices powered by A...

Woah, man, hold on. Will Farrel made tons of great movies like

Good job reminding me why you're one of my favorite posters, dawg. (and that I'm positive that you're stealing my thoughts, dreams; do not take cat beach from me.)

No reason that you couldn't have both. Similar to 4E where powers had a key word for their Power Source and any individual elements associated with the power. Protections haven't been limited to just the colors for a while now anyways so whether you have Pro: Red or Pro: Fire, you're protected from ...

How the hell is it anticlimactic if you use your mega-attack and it actually works? It's not more climactic to spend more rounds doing DBZ powerups until anything does anything. It'd be like reading the last Harry Potter book and you get a chapter which is like, "Harry cast avada kedavra and t...

This is usually in response to hatred of metagamers, avoiding giving game relevant information because no book is going to say "Gricks have DR 10/magic." This seems so backwards to me. Like if you handed out specific, relevant, mechanical information at various Knowledge Check DC's, you s...