The Gaming Den

Well, strictly speaking Crimean tatars have the biggest claim on the land. But they are an ethnic minority, so no one cares. Crimea itself is full of soviet pensioners and russian sailors, and, judging by latest polls (and please don't start the "people are afraid to talk" craziness here)...

I think it is established now that Frank is a Russian agent - his viewpoint and methods are just too close to Kremlin's *sarcasm* Probably it all started at a tender age when he played too much Tetris, which, as everybody knows, was covert Soviet propaganda. No sane person in Georgia wanted full sca...

The Estonian government says crazy things all the time and is one of the most dangerous things to world peace in modern times. I can't read Estonian (what with it being a Finno-Ugric language), but I assume that Estonian media is basically just as bad. Really? Like what are those ‘crazy things’, li...

DSMatticus, you are spewing Russian propaganda. Two random examples: You are a fucking dumbass and lrn2timeline. 1922-1990: South Ossetia is an autonomous oblast within Georgia's borders. Why start the timeline from 1922, and not from 1921 or earlier? Is it because it would then be more inconvenient...

You are being a dumbass. Whether or not Russia is a corrupt bunch of assholes has exactly zero things to do with whether or not the Georgian claims on South Ossetia are justified or reasonable. Telling you to stop spewing Georgian nationalist bullshit is not Russian apologetics. You are saying bull...

Honestly, not anticipating Russian intervention at all is stupider than expecting military support from the West. Russia made it pretty clear whose side they were on. And if the Russian military is even vaguely competent, they'd already have a plan on file for the war whether or not they wanted it ...

Basically you're committing and recommitting a category error over and over again. You think that just because you want Georgia to control South Osetia that it is somehow morally important that this happen. But it's not. No one outside that area actually gives two shits about whether South Osetia i...

It is very weird to me that people consider it a political issue whether or not the South Osetia war of 1991-1992 occurred. I am totally down with people having political opions on who was most wrong or what should have happened. But the fact that it did happen is not, or at least should not be a p...

Dude, South Osetia declared and got defacto independence in 1992. In 2008, Georgia attempted to reverse that by force. They failed. The west didn't fail to do anything in 2008 that they hadn't already refused to do in 1991. The people of South Osetia already chose to be "not in Georgia" n...

Indeed, it is weird conspiracy time. Hagen is a covert Georgian agent because he has openly worked as Georgian PR agent and openly supports Georgian view of history in his writings. How covert is that? As why he is doing it: many people who write propaganda actually believe in it, at least the core ...

From what I know though, plate armor was mostly worn in the more dense terrain of western Europe where battles revolved around seizing castles. The closer you get to the steppes though the less common plate armor becomes. You mean Ukraine, Hungary, modern Southern Russia etc? The term "Eastern...

The quality of a person could be evaluated in a number of different ways. I mean, in one sense we're all 'equal' and deserve equal rights. But on a forum like this, relative worth could be measured by intelligent discussion and insightful analysis. Frank Trollman has a proven track record of both. ...

@Frank

Concern troll? Close but not quite. I am concerned about trolls. You specifically – in case you did not notice your last posts consist little else than insults. You seem to enjoy insulting people but think that you are a better person regardless. This is sad.

I'm so sorry. Your friend Tomawis is a fucktard. It is my considered medical opinion that he needs to have his head surgically removed from his ass. /...etc.../ Wow, Frank, get treatment. People are smart enough to form their own opinions about Tomawise. Your tirade only helps them to form opinions...

I don't really see how encounter building in sandbox D&D (or any other game) is different from AW. If you've got NPCs moving around obviously a DM will need to dynamically build encounters based on where those NPCs happen to be at the time. I'm really not seeing the "AW sucks" in all ...

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the major thesis of A Song of Ice and Fire is that the Middle Ages were horrible and the nobility are all horrible people. I do not think so. I would rather say that Martin delights in ridiculing romantic views about middle ages. The man clearly has problems with his ...

One-axis resolution systems are things like the 3e skill system, where more powerful effects and less likely events are the same thing for everyone. And it's so bad at doing everything that whole chunks of it get thrown out and you just can't use it for anything that matters to the game. The 3ed sk...

It is not 'some designer' and not 'arcana whatever' So... if that wasn't written by some designer who the hell DID write it? And wasn't it said "somewhere" like I described? And if it wasn't an optional bullshit side bar never really considered or consistent with the rest of the rule set ...

Every time you see a value of 10+ other factors, the designers have explained that the base value could be replaced by a die roll. Your save DCs, for instance, could be variable - sometimes 1+mods, sometimes 20+mods, but in order to ensure the game goes faster, they've taken the approximate average...

I was mostly referencing that the underlying tone in some of your posts seem to be based on an outdated and overreaching sense of GM-entitlement. You ought to be careful when drawing conclusions from underlying tone. You are dealing with a non-native speaker: everything I say comes through rather c...

To be fair, that's not the players disputing the narrated fiction (i.e., the weather); they're explicitly altering their course of action because of it. No. A dispute occurred and they used available mechanisms to get their way. In the given example things changed, due largely to the powerful influ...

@Artless. I still cannot believe that you are saying that there is nothing unique about GM's role. The GM is no better than any other participant of the game and players' ideas have as much value, however, to my mind the GM’s role obviously is unique (i.e. incomparable/unusual) and he obviously has ...

Does the Random Weather Table get to count or are you one of the 90% of DMs who never read the actual DMG? Are you one of the 0,1% of GMs who actually ever uses the table? Or one of the 0,0001% who think that the GM must use the table? I would also love to know how do players "otherwise contes...

You do not seem to have any experience in GMing. From the player perspective off-screen content normally …/ OK, appearances can be deceiving: you do now a lot about GMing. I agree at pretty much everything that you wrote about the signficance of "off-screen" content. Going back to your &q...

I'm going to assume that somehow I failed to communicate what I meant instead of assuming that you literally have no fucking clue what you're talking about Yes, you have failed to communicate. Either that or you literally have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Well, possibly both. basicall...