The Gaming Den

Hmmmm.....certain plants have trace amounts of magic in them, herbivores accumulate tiny amounts of magic, but to get amounts of magic worth carting around, you need to kill big predators. How convenient

I'm brewing on my new D&D setting (core concept: not-South America has just been opened up to exploitation development by not-Europe), and as always, questions of economy underlie everything. From a rules perspective, everyone knows what magic items are made of: They are made of gold pieces. You...

Iduno wrote: Boy, a lot of people are suddenly going to become educated about the anti-protest bills that got passed during the Dakota Access Pipeline fiasco.

What, you thought those apply to white people? That's the funniest shit I heard all morning.

In the Kids section of Netflix, Hilda is far better than it has any right to be. It is modern fantasy with a strong scandinavian feel. We are half way through season 1, and not only is it well paced, there is also a deep sense of world building. There is a lot going on that isn't about the main cast...

You can add a touch of betrayal to any RPG pretty easily by giving every player their own secret objective, some of which contradict each other. To make something like Shadowrun or D&D better for heists, what you actually want to do is take out risk, not add more. Lots of heist stories have onl...

I'm looking for a good heisting RPG. What I really want is something that has the cinematic heist hard coded into the gameplay. Not merely Shadowrun, which has a lot of heist-relevant content, but in the structure is basically D&D. Or Leverage. Something with mechanics for risk, suspicion, betra...

Well thank you for THAT fresh nightmare.

Libertad wrote:More news continues.

And the aforementioned Neo-Nazi Bob Bledsaw II makes an official statement on the Judges' Guild Facebook profile to "clear the matter" on his views:

Holy shit did he ever "clear the matter".

Back in the misty days of yore, Recharge Magic was published as an optional rule in Unearthed Arcana, and was received with a resounding "meh". Personally, I love the huge gonzo pile of spells that is D&D, but not so much the daily resource scheme, and I'm none too happy with huge buff...

Ugh, the climactic confrontation between Rey and Palpatine was so fucking lame. No payoffs for anything. Two Chekov's Guns checked off the list lazily. Seriously, two lightsabers reflect Force Lightning better than one? wooooov.... And Kylo Ren gets all this development just to tossed like a chump, ...

30 years ago, when I was a shit-for-brains 13 year old, and I would sniff a hobo's underwear if it had dragons on it, I still threw this game in the trash after two plays.

Swamp Thing over on HBO has me hooked in episode one. The scene in the lab where they think they are doing science and then there's a monster was genuinely scary to me, and that does not happen often. I have been ruminating over what made the scene so compelling. *Good build-up and cinematography. ...

Swamp Thing over on HBO has me hooked in episode one. The scene in the lab where they think they are doing science and then there's a monster was genuinely scary to me, and that does not happen often.

You know what this discussion of term limits sounds like by now?

Benghazi.

Yeah. Fucking hell. It hits all the marks: Ignorance to the point of dishonesty. Complete disproportionality. And complete and utter irrelevance.

Wouldn't this be where suspension of disbelief would come in? I think most people recognize that the behaviors shown in fiction don't really relect how the real world work. The human brain is really, really bad at distinguishing between fiction and reality. In the moment, you know that it's fiction...

So, I just ran my first session of PF 2. Ugh. It really does spend hundreds of fucking pages to arrive at "GM ass-pulls a DC".

The Pathfinder 'Worg' has good stats (+6 Strength, +4 Wisdom, +4 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -4 Intelligence), some natty armor, a decent movement, a tremendously mediocre weapon (basically a short sword with a trip attached), and no hands . Wargs are pretty bad in combat, severely less effective t...

Frank, Libertarians don't think think things are inherently inferior or superior, but logically one or the other. Classic fucking "16 year old slightly autistic wiseass". Dude, "logical" is not a magic word that magically negates all criticism. Reading your posts is like arguing...

It's terribly ironic, in the sense of dramatic irony, that you and your ilk believe that the only way for there to be peace and prosperity is at the end of swords, clubs, and guns, with shackles and chains. It's almost like you think those tools are not widely used by private enterprise. But no, yo...

Watchmen (the series) had me sitting at the edge of my seat from 10 minutes in until the end of the first episode. The action scenes are a lot more grounded than the Snyder movie.

So far, it is a once-every-few-years level show.

Aquaman - the Italian seaside village. Yeah, so I just saw Aquaman. Like everything else from DC without Superman in it, it was enjoyable. Not good, but enjoyable. But that scene where Manta (Marvel: Ironman has the worst villains. DC: Hold my beer) and his Atlantean soldiers crash through the build...

"adequate foundation" for what though. Let's take an old D&D standby, a room in a tomb with a locked chest and things in it: someone can roll search to look for traps and hidden panels; someone can try to pick or disintegrate the lock on the chest; someone can roll knowledge on the ta...

So, Bladerunner 2049. I was pleasantly surprised by Ryan Gosling, who I otherwise can't stand. Then again, the main character could probably be played by an inanimate carbon rod. But it's fine, I like the movie. OK, time to drag Old Harrison Ford around for a while. I didn't enjoy it in The Force Aw...

Nightflyers, half of episode one.

I like spaceships. I like telepaths. I liked the specific telepath. But what the show promised me was horror on a haunted ship... that is, people walking around in darkly lit corridors making scared-faces at the noises they hear.

souran wrote:Racial ability modifiers are just not the greatest.

Yeah, racial ability modifiers shrink the viable play space by (soft-) banning certain race/class combinations. That's why I don't use them in my D&D.