The Gaming Den

One would assume that a system capable of letting players control NPCs would make a distinction between mundane mercenaries you buy at an inn versus summoning demons from the hell versus conjuring 50 sentient flying daggers. As far as I can tell, 5E doesn't have detailed rules for hirelings and I s...

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 08, 2022 2:45 pm

What's the difference between summoning a human with a sword and shield via magick versus giving him like... 100 gold?

What?

I've been so very sick (not rona) since Saturday and I thought I posted this already. It seems like summons can be categorized into various types of 'barriers' * Can cause damage if passing through it. (clutching skeletal hands that rise up from the ground, blade-barrier) * Can cause damage to adjac...

I am a player in a 5E game. I found your actual problem. Thank you, doctor. I'll stop doing that. :wink: More seriously, what are the odds that you're going to be able to get your table to adopt whatever you come up with? Probably zero chance. But the DM is an author and I was thinking about collab...

Is my DM not enforcing action economy or do summons and independent items still sucking the life out of my soul? I am a player in a 5E game. There's a player in the group who is always using a summon, minion, or device to get an extra token on the board and their actions take forever to resolve. I t...

I really like this type of character progression. As every choice made in character concept builds up over time and there is no such thing a class dipping. 1 Choose a novice path from the ones presented in Chapter 3 and gain the benefits from that path for this level. 2 You gain the benefits from yo...

I've been meaning to make a Review of the RPG for years now. I might be one of the most well informed on this game in regards to its mechanics. I've been playing it since it came out on Kickstarter, followed its release schedule since, and have personally ran Three and a half Campaigns using pre-ma...

TLDR: The rules, times, and tokens of your mystery minigame are a truly minor concern if the way you are going to make your mystery is "DM free form writes a good mystery". Requiring a DM to write something that often takes actual authors months or years to make is an unusable foundation ...

Interestingly, there is a Pathfinder/Gumshoe book out there by alégrame Press:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/109418

So I just wanted to add one more thing here. I've been more and more intrigued by an idea that goes WAY back to the origins of RPGs: The scenario determines the game. I've read in some places that D&D used an Avalon Hill hex crawling game in the earliest days for outdoor travel and adventure, be...

This is a long post and I'm just throwing ideas out. Full disclosure, these ideas are bad or problematic. I'm sharing my failure now because there might be a gem there that I'm not seeing. Can't remember where, but someone here posted a link to an article which had a lot to say on this topic. Notabl...

Gumshoe

https://gumshoe-srd.com/3-TheGUMSHOE%20Rules%20System/

@merxa - I didn’t have a specific criticism and you should interpret my previous post as trying to throw the widest net around the idea of damage tags for/or against. I’m a big fan of Divinity 2. I even brought up the topic when the board game kickstarter was live. But here’s the rub: fire damage pe...

I don't want damage tags to just be a checklist players fill out, and when it comes to deciding between tag 1 and tag 2 for adding a resistance, I'd like the PCs to be able to make some informed choice independent of what they may or may not know is coming their way, ie they might take [acid] resis...

I’d just use damage types to tag attack effects. Nothing’s more boring than learning you took 7 points of damage. And, if you tag damage. You can grant characters resistance to certain types. And maybe the degree of resistance let’s you pick necrotic/radiant. And, the next level divine or the one yo...

Goofing some more, I find I'm at a loss to describe a possible type of radiant/necrotic cold damage. Base Element Necrotic Radiant Fire Lightning Plasma Cold Poison Bases Acids Bludgeon Vacuum Thunder Psychic Madness Aether Might be fun to start a new topic, so I'm not thread jacking. But, conceptua...

My math might have been off or I was kind of riffing it and not really thinking through the idea. My proposal was that damage types on the prime-material plane were: fire, bludgeon, cold, poison and psychic. These could be infused with positive or negative energy, so you could have radiant-fire or n...

Oh, and psychic. For a total of 40+ damage types.

I’ve always found Acid damage anachronistic when viewing the classic elements from the view point of Greek philosophy and have always preferred fire (flame+lightning), bludgeon (air, sonic, thunder), cold (water+darkness), and poison (earth) Radiant/Necrotic being polarities of positive and negative...

You had some question marks in your damage type and so, I’ll focus on that for the moment. I’ve read some arguments that thunder, force and bludgeon should all be treated as the same damage type. I’m a fan of psychic damage and I’ve seen them used to simulate psionics in warlock builds, which is nea...

Even if you had a system of strict symmetry in actions and counters, wouldn’t it also be true that if you decided to use that system in a setting that did not feature one type counter you would also remove the corresponding action? Conforming a system to a setting was already a thing in the early 90...

Phonelobster is the drunk uncle at RPG gatherings who mutters, "Thanks, Purple." Regardless the topic of discussion.

If I just described a potential system that was Purple > Fire > Squid > Purple what the fuck makes you imagine that the hypothetical system doesn't have rules for Squid? Just... why? Because you literally offered a player choice in a RPS discussion and said this in the same goddamn sentence: means ...

If Cavalry is always better, full stop, then your design is going to be 'play cavalry, full stop'. I pretty much wanted to say this, this morning, but hadn't had coffee. Because this statement from the OP ... Fire wizards being weak to the color purple means nothing in a campaign where no purple wi...

Units could be tired, and some formations were better or worse in some situations. Right here, it felt like you were about to explain the circumstances where the game doesn't devolve into basic rock paper scissors... And then you immediately moved on to something else instead. Does an extremely poo...