The Gaming Den

Kaelik wrote:The Biden admin is preparing to discontinue all physical mail to prisoners

I want to know more, is there a source on this?

The Nazi Question[/size]While Paradox did all it could to put that fire down, the damage is already done. The well is poisoned to the point Paradox had to bring Justin Achilli back from the grave to helm the game line in-house once more since no 3PP dares touch it with a 10 foot pole. This makes me...

What actually happens is that there's a list of generic effects for GM to pick from. Which are things like "Lose a point of Humanity", "Go into Frenzy", "Trigger a clan compulsion", "Increase your level of Hunger", etc.

In Fall of London the Second Inquisition is run by a detective inspector of Scotland Yard with True Faith 3. But he has a crack team of navy seals trained in gorilla warfare at his beck and call (they have combat dicepools of 10 and thus mop up the floor with any vampire), as well as the british wi...

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Second Inquisition is idiotic. Vampires have mind control powers that mortals have no reliable way to resist. A single Ventrue could completely take over the organization in a week. He wouldn't even need to do it in person, he could appear on Maury pretending...

The big difference in the hunger mechanics from previous edition is how powers are rationed. In previous editions, you were better off using spamming low-cost powers in non-combat scenes and feeding to keep yourself topped off, but budgeting yourself in combat because you lose when you run out of b...

Messy Crits and Bestial Failures If a normal die comes up a 1, that's just "not a hit." If you have no hits, you just fail. If a Hunger Die comes up a 1, that's "not a hit," but if you otherwise fail the roll due to no hits coming up, it's a bestial failure. If a normal die come...

SR6 scrapped all of this. Matrix has been overhauled again, and the first campaign book for SR6 is "30 Nights", where Toronto is hit by an EMP that takes down the Matrix, all electronics and most of the cyberware.

What do you mean "MagicRun"?

Dwarves: Deep Roots Dwarven society runs on a caste and clan system with Royals, Merchants, Soldiers, Workers, and Agricultural workers as the 5 broad castes. Dwarven leadership hordes wealth but their people always seem very well fed and well supplied which leads me to believe Dwarves have good un...

Well, at least there are neon-lit gasmasked drive-through strippers in Oregon.

I thought he quit RPGs altogether like twenty years ago. He did . According to his LinkedIn he started working for Microsoft in 2001 and stayed there for 10 years before doing product development work for a string of tech companies (including and most recently Amazon) until August 2018 when he came...

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:Pathologic is also a story-driven singleplayer video game.

So are Death Stranding and Outer Worlds.

OgreBattle wrote:So is dissonance like the toxic-shaman version of resonance?

Basically, yes. The fluff is that Resonance represents ordered information, and Dissonance represents chaos. Or something. It's crazy evil NPC-only Technomancers and that's as deep as it goes.

Outer worlds has a plague going on in the first planet that you visit and technically has a longer term issue with drug/medicine addicts who take to much of a medicinal substance, get addicted to it, and go violent over time. Outer Worlds' "plague" is actually just scurvy, caused by them ...

Is it wrong of me to think that if Cyberpunk Red plays its cards right it'll eat Shadowrun's spot now that 6e has failed completely? IMHO, this is ultimately a meaningless question. According to Roll20's Orr Group Industry report for 2019, Shadowrun games represent 0.5% of all games on Roll20. D&am...

With the ongoing quarantine I sought out a new game to play, which happened to be Shadowrun 5e. This led to me reading "Kill Code", a 2018 Matrix supplement for SR5e. And the things I saw there filled me with a burning desire to share. So here I am. Back when SR5 released, the devs were re...

And if we get down to it, both Legolas and Aragorn have the power of ancient oaths and diplomacy skills. When used by Legolas it gets the Fellowship an entry to Lothlorien and major artefact upgrades. When used by Aragorn it gets the forces of Gondor a backing of a ghost army.

There's plenty of non-ritual magic in historical folklore. Sir Kay from the Arthurian myth threw fireballs at people. Simon the Sorcerer would fly around Rome until Apostle Peter counterspelled him. Christian saints in general would do all sorts of non-ritual magic, like teleporting, commanding anim...

Grek wrote:

Thaluikhain wrote:While that's not a bad idea, those sorts of cults and secret societies don't seem to fit the Greek setting very well.

Huh? What do you think a Maenad is, if not a member of a secret cult?

A member of a well known socially accepted cult.

While that's not a bad idea, those sorts of cults and secret societies don't seem to fit the Greek setting very well. Cults and secret societies get in vogue in late greco mid roman period, from 5th BC onward. That's when mystery cults blossom and it is normal for a cobbler to be a secret christian...

IMHO, the best way to go is to have schools as very flexible build-your-own-bruce-lee affairs. It's good if schools have a theme and a signature maneuver, but it's even better if a player can build a wide variety of characters within this theme. I'd say each school should have a apprentice/journeyma...

Most of what you said about greek fantasy as being distinct from medieval european fantasy is also untrue. Sir Kay of the Round Table grows as tall as a tree, throws fireballs and needs to eat only once a week. Sir Gawayn has the strength of three men during the midday. Bogatyr Volga Svyatovich shap...

It's time that we address the elephant in the room. Actually, not specifically an elephant, but any real world animal. Assuming a fantasy world with Kirins and Dragons and stuff, does crab and scorpion make sense? At some point you'd think that real world animals would stop mattering when you've go...

But across Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion people have: * Commanded an army of the dead (Aragorn, Witch-King) Magic sword power. Literal witchcraft on the side of witch-king (it's in the name for Eru's sake!). And Aragorn's army of the dead was a result of Isildur cursing kings who didn't honor ...

I'd actually argue that KOTOR as a period was successful because it took everything people liked about Star Wars and doubled down on that. People like jedi, so there's a ton of jedi running around. People like sith, so there's a whole sith empire and sith academy. Because if you are playing in the R...