The Gaming Den

Shadowrun/Earthdawn mana cycles are what you get when multiple writers contribute to a setting over several years and the only available references are in-context description that no one even takes the time to look up (let alone consider their implication) and instead rely on what they remember from...

2nd Edition should have had a massive overhaul of cyberware costs. 4th edition actually did, but for some reason they kept the old shitty Muscle Replacement and Dermal Armor as-is. The 4th edition overhaul drove the price of some gear down from that of a Ferrari to a mere SUV, and as result put an ...

Muscle Augmentation makes you stronger and faster by jacking up your muscles To me, the description of Muscle Augmentation has always been... problematic. If you compare who they describe Muscle Augmentation's braided polymers to Muscle Replacement's "vat-grown muscles" and "calcium ...

Most RPG are written with a specific type of characters to play. D&D wanted you to play adventurers, Ars Magica members of a magica chantry. It follows that most adventures are written for such standard characters. Even Call of Cthulhu, whose type of characters was as non-descript as "ordin...

But Matrix perception is about more than just having good rendering software and checking out all the icons that come into view. It’s knowing how to sort through information coming your way and find what’s truly important. There was a brief time when hackers thought they could confuse security by f...

It's one of those messes it is impossible to make sense of. For the reference, here are the actual quotes from each editions: Shadowrun, 1st edition, page 25-29 DWARF: Their life span if unverified, but predictions based on metabolic rates run to over a hundred years. ELF: The Elven life expectancy ...

Shadowrun first, second and third editions gave a typical life span between 35 and 40 years for ork, and about 50 years for trolls. Shadowrun fourth edition moved the post to 35-45 years for orks and 55 years for trolls. Goblinization started in April 2021, so the eldest born-orks and born-trolls wo...

I've been wondering: How much should Initiating cost? Because I've seen many times in 5e discussions that the gap between mundanes and awakened is so big because Awakened can initiate early and often, quickly outpacing mundanes with their metamagics and increased limits while mundanes can barely sc...

What are good run rewards? There are no definitive answer for this. SR 4th edition rulebook, page 263 (page 269 in SR20A) set karma awards between 1 and 10 karma for an adventure. Among other things, fulfilling 2/3 of the adventure objectives should only net characters 1 karma. But all subsequent o...

It's difficult to give an answer without first settling if teleportation would be a spell, a metamagic technique, a free spirit powers, what is the range, how many people and/or volume it can affect, does it require line of sight and/or a mental image of the origin or destination... It's like asking...

it turns out that Saulot and Cappodacius were only dead for certain values of "death" White Wolf refusal to have the eldest vampires out of the picture is in the same vein to Marvel and DC Comics refusal to keep people dead. This reminds me of a discussion I had a while ago, about how gam...

The World of Darkness was built on a strong foundation: an Earth contemporary setting, with "classic" supernatural creatures and a secret History. It is easier to get the players on board when you tell them that a vampire is trying to take over Miami from a rival who defeated him during th...

I'd start with psychology and some fundamental emotions breakup, and elaborate from there. Taking for instance the Ekman divide between anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise (I don't care how disputed that divide may be, it's good enough for a fantasy setting I think). Since we want ...

Some of the most iconic corporations of Shadowrun, Lone Star and Knight Errant privatized police departments, require a somewhat adequately-funded government to pay the bills. I mean adequately only on a financial level, as those publicly-funded police services are said to provide a rather poor leve...

If I understand the context, then it's ever. Specifically, it depends on which maximum you're talking about. There's 'natural' maximum and 'augmented' maximum, the latter being half again as large. A human has a 'natural' maximum of 6, which can be raised by 1 with a positive quality or with geneti...

Am I reading it correctly, that unless you reduce the dice pool to 0 through mana barriers and the conceal power a spirit will find you eventually? Even if the dice pool is only 1 that means that they may get hits, ergo find you eventually (even if it takes a LONG time), right? With the 4th edition...

And in another part of that mess, you are to poison wells of gypsies if i remember correctly. Unless I missed something, the book never specifically mentioned poisoning anyone's well. The book does feature a "post" by a mercenary explaining how his unit fueled racial resentment between Ro...

Space Marines! [/size] https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ee/e4/d9/eee4d9e182a3fe6cf95a225ae0f9d67b.jpg Featured on the cover of every edition of WH40K that has happened and will continue to be on the cover of every edition of WH40K in the future even after Games Workshop goes bankrupt and t...

There were four different levels to consider in the Shadowrun-Earthdawn crossover. The first is the very existence of a crossover. As any crossover, it could be unnerving not to be given enough information to understand what is going in the line you were playing. What is an issue with any metaplot g...

It depends on where you set the bar to call it a war. There have been as much as twenty wars in Shadowrun since the end of the European war between Russia and European countries in 2033, but most of them were insurrection. 2029-2054: Multiple conflicts in Southeast Asia. 2030-2033: Eurowar I - Russi...

Basically, the cheapest way to field a half-decent mid '90s WHFB army was to embrace the much-maligned tactic of Hero Hammer, a practice in which you built your army around champions, special characters and santa sacks filled with magical swag instead of buying another block of tiny men. From what ...

The next bit includes the first quote from La Femme Nikita (the TV series with Peta Wilson, not the movie or the reboot with Maggie Q) to appear in the book. It will not be the last. Guide to the Technocracy has a massive hard-on for this show, which was popular at the time (it was the number one d...

SPD/Pentex is just weird. Because it's the evil organization of evil, its board of directors consists of Baali, Black Spiral Dancers, Demons and Nephandi. Who apparently all bonded over evils of capitalism and keep sending the appropriate share of profits back to the Syndicate. "- Listen. I kn...

Out of curiousity, do you have any suggestions for fixing shotguns? As written, the shotgun rules are pretty much nonsense and offend me. And there's no obvious fix. On the other hand, no one uses shotguns so it doesn't matter. From my understanding of things, Shadowrun rules for shotgun spread ove...

And then the Syrian government lost control of most of it's country all at once, in what included a pretty well coordinated media campaign by classic al-Qaeda. Simultaneous bombings and assassinations across the country, very much their calling card, followed by pulling the same "oh noes, our ...