The Gaming Den

Has anyone here played the new edition of Fury of Dracula? I'm curious about any tweaks or (cynical laughter) improvements. Do they finally, clearly explain what happens when you run from a minion?

I catch your drift, Kaelik, although that does nullify the concept of a British exception on the term.

The term "oriental" is the preferred term of a British doctor of Singaporean Chinese descent. He's the most British person I know, and also East Asian, so I infer that you get a free pass calling things and people "oriental" iff you are British. The fact that Brits are using &qu...

The example games feature zero samurai and a non zero number of english knights. So I'm not sure that applies. Sorry, Kaelik, I was a bit vague in my attempt at metaphor. I was merely trying to say that there is always a hipster impulse to trash whatever the dominant/mainstream culture is, while pr...

How can these eastern European games evoke such distinct flavors and themes in a way that makes western games seem naive in comparison ? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. What makes those games so unique in your eyes? English knights sucked. Japanese samurai were WTF awesome. Lathe...

So, how does an airplane get "fueled"? Do a couple of guys spend some time winding it? Is there a dismal galley full of winders below an airy and spacious passenger compartment? Does a new, pre-wound spring get installed from the winding factory? Edited for wrong variant of "there.&qu...

Savage Worlds?

PC's have awesome protagonist powers, there is a concrete method for rewarding good behavior, and the "exploding dice" mechanic seems targeted to a child audience.

The Law vs. Chaos thing has never been a problem for me. I have dealt with, in real life, people who feel that nobody should ever have authority over them. I have also dealt with people who think we should all be obedient cogs in the machine, up to, and including the point where the machine decides ...

Speaking of your "wife" you never told us how that game concluded. So can ye finish that up, I was kinda wondering where that went! My wife decided that running a module is hard, so she stopped. Then I ran a Star Wars Traveller game that went fairly well largely because my friend was the ...

D&D 3.0 wrote:Thus, you can attack once as a partial action, or move your speed, but you can't both move and attack unless you are performing a partial charge action.

Previn, you dumbass, that is literally the next sentence.

-While facing large amounts of [mooks] with the rest of the party; running to their left flank, throwing fire bombs at their opposite flank; and then diving into them while changing into a [Setting T-Rex] to create maximum confusion; as a single rounds actions; for +1 stunt dice [~yay!~] I had a gu...

While I'm sympathetic as all get out to this situation, I'm half intrigued by thinking of non-complex cooperative games over which your wife's friend won't pitch a fit. At this point I'd suggest Sentinels of the Multiverse and Forbidden Island, if angrily kicking this person out of your house isn't...

Grek wrote:So get a cooperative board game like Pandemic?

That is a good suggestion.

We've burned out Arkham Horror and Fury of Dracula, but I've had an eye on Pandemic. My local game store gives 20% off coupons if you participate in their board game nights.

At that point I'd have a more charitable response of "give up and whip out Settlers of Catan". Your average Euro game innately has less buy-in required than D&D what with the not having to come up with backstories or synergistic characters or such crap, so if it's worth keeping on lif...

I love your backstory. Darts and 18/00 STR is sickening. I have always loved that the "all hail TSR and the Holy Gygax" editions made darts radically more powerful than two-handed swords. I thought that Thick Skin was something you could only take at character creation, but I could be wron...

Once upon a time, it seemed I could find players that sucked shit from a tube, and yet they had enough manic life energy to make for some decent stories. Now, I never seem to find players who can provide that minimal degree of entertainment. I have one good player. He's a solid guy, and he occasiona...

OgreBattle wrote:Do they have stats for savage brown jungle people in the bestiary portion of the book?

They're just Fighters with no gear and crummy Fort saves.

Spoony's namesake character, and focus of every D&D story that Spoony tells, is a character that had awesome enough stats to become a 1E Bard. Perhaps I would take his 3d6 bullshit more seriously if he was constantly talking about the awesomeness of Tar Markvaar, the pathetic Halfling Fighter. A...

I think part of the problem with ending the 5 minute workday is that lots of little fights are boring. The "typical encounter" that expends 10-20% of the party's resources can easily end up feeling like a chore with a foregone conclusion (see random encounters in Final Fantasy games). I ha...

hogarth wrote:
Deciding whether the world gets eaten based on some PC actions and dice rolls sounds like a terrible game to me.

You... possibly shouldn't be running RPGs.

Players need to know their actions have consequences, and that they can have impact. That's interesting to me, because the two examples I gave of having good tone (Call of Cthulhu and Toon) are pretty much the epitome of having zero impact on the setting. Then you are doing it wrong, or have a diff...

Why does GURPS seem to have such a bad reputation online? Any time I've played it, either with people over the internet or in person, it's run smoothly and been a good time. From a game design perspective, a lot of people dismiss "toolbox" systems like GURPS and HERO because they require ...

That's because Leia is a hardened badass with political experience and Luke is a sheltered farmboy. :tongue: A hardened badass? She grew up a princess in a space castle on a fairytale planet! Luke had to work in what would surely be impossible heat in fear of a paedo wizard! Apparently marksmanship...

I've heard 4e D&D's combat system described as "swashbuckly", which suggests it would do well for lightsaber duels. Now we just need: Something for space combat a bunch of quick and simple mechanics to cover all that other minor stuff you might want to do like sneaking around and gath...