The Gaming Den

This completely depends on the mood you want for your game. The only thing I think most rule systems need is a way to avoid losing a PC because of a RNG whim (lucky attack, unlucky soak). Many games handle this with one-time use luck/fate/etc. points that can be used to reroll or otherwise affect th...

"Fate" vs "Free Will" as a philosophical question is indeed pretty limited since there's no way to test and since neither would have any impact. But it can be used in a fiction piece in two ways. The first is in a time-travel/multiple universe setting, where it IS possible to tes...

I always took Glorantha's physics (or more appropriately lack of physics) as the explicit use of Hollywood Physics (or "Rule of Cool"). It's no different from most space opera games, where space physics are nowhere near realistic but allow for cool space battles. I don't see anything wrong...

Red Dirk is Hungry!

Then let's go right, we have a long history of going right and nothing wrong has ever happened to us when we did so.

So we were using a long pole to paddle, but we couldn't use it to fight...
I hope these lizard aren't as good as a half-naked old guy with a knife, but let's eat a meal, kill them, and eat them.

Dirk can't resist semi-naked old men waving frantically. If all comes to worst, we can still kill him with fire and eat him.

Dirk kills with fire, but plays with it as well. Into the gorge!

Not only do we have to kill them with fire, but we also don't risk insta-death by trying to save an innocent from the Head Hunters.
Few games like this would offer the opportunity to save an innocent without letting the player a chance to succeed.

I must wonder what a story with no characters is like. To be totally fair, the Nouveau Roman doesn't exclude characters, it just takes the focus off them (and off the plot, narrative and so on) and puts it on the objects. Still, Les Fruits d'Or by Nathalie Sarraute has no distinctive characters. It...

No, we wanted to go west, the description was saying that the smoke was south-west and the game assumed that Dirk didn't want to go where the smoke came from. So the game gave us the choice of going northwest to be sure to avoid the smoke or west to keep on our way even if it meant going closer to t...

I'm sad we don't get the possibility to sit down and rest in places where it's not dangerous to do so.

And I'll say head west, because there can't be smoke without fire, and there can't be fire without Dirk killing people with it.

I think there are some weirder forms of fiction that can't be translated into RPG because there are no role to play.

I'm thinking about things like nouveau roman, where there can be no characters, so no role to play, hence no RPG.

@Frank: First of all, I consider that the Vanilla Action Hero doesn't beat the odds every time and just because he's the hero. Usually, if the hero beat the odds it's because: 1 Of his one superior ability (which can be something mundane he does terribly well), because the story leads to this abilit...

I can see why you wouldn't want that, but I don't see why you can't do it.

I disagree with Frank.

But to answer the question, I'm not sure that there are characters and stories you can't produce in RPG, but I think there are plenty that won't be interesting to play.

The mirror of course, so that she can kill herself with her fire shooting eyes.

If you have longer rounds and the same actions, some actions will take an absurdly long time to do (6s to pick up an object or push a button) and movement will be a bit slow.

I don't recall reading about the use of mages in the industry. Let me look in my Street Magic... "The Awakened World"->"Magic and the Corps" Magic has many uses in a corporate environment; the most pervasive is in the area of security. [...] Security is by no means the only way c...

The energy of lightning isn't very convenient to harvest. Having an "always on" lightning source might help, but there are still many challenges to overcome to be able to get significant energy out of the storm. Regarding the whole 'how to use magic to generate electricity' question, a big...

I've played a game with card based combat. Depending on your combat skills you got more or less cards. Each card was a maneuver you could pull during combat. The biggest issue I had was that even if you got a lot of cards, you could end up with only useless cards, and your combat expert was unable t...

Dying Earth RPG has a fully functional social mechanism. It relies on a core concept that the players have to accept: - A character who loses the social contest is persuaded, even if he's a PC. But Dying Earth RPG is nearly just about persuasion. Characters are expected to try to get the shopkeeper ...

UPDATE

- Added a rule chapter with advanced reputation and social rules (untested)
- Added a gear + spell chapter
- A few fixes here and there
- (Badly) uses JesterZero's layout for easier reading

Next steps: a complete editing before proofreading and layout. It's getting close to the end!

Shadowrun illusions get a bit complicated when you start taking into account touch illusions, for example, if I make a realistic illusory wall and you don't resist it what happens if you try to run through it?

Douchebag in Raoûl

You can compare mages with doctors. Some will be extremely rich, other will be poor. Some will use strange medicines people do or don't trust. Some will make a lot of money by selling snake oil to guillible rich guys, some will work in unexpected fields, etc. In some places there will be only one ov...