The Gaming Den

These games have failure states that are not sitting out any possible play for a period of weeks. I think that this is a very legitimate issue, and that it needs to be addressed. How can we reduce the amount of time a player has to sit out when their character dies or is otherwise removed from play...

There are no rails. There's a hook (treasure, bounty, player request), with abundant clues to chase (and random scenery the players turn into clues of their own making), often a BBEG the players will wish to cut up; but I make plans for the monsters , not for the players. It's not a set of rooms fo...

Wow, so random encounters in your games are pointless wastes of time that only occur when the players have no hope of losing them? And the strong suggestion that you fudge dice rolls if things start to go south? Let's just say I don't think i would enjoy your game overmuch. Random encounters are al...

The point of playing an RPG is for you and your friends to partake in a cool story. If you are killing them off with cubes, you are not preparing a cool story. I don't "prepare stories". I set up areas full of shit the players might like finding, and the monsters who are guarding it, and ...

I'm not sure what exactly "credible" threat means in this case, because it seems that they want a 0% of character death. While I totally agree that gelatinous cubes are pretty easy to handle if you know what you're doing, that's not going to stop inexperienced players from trying stupid s...

My question is why would ever have a cube in a situation where it could actually kill your party? I mean that is never cool. Who the fuck wants to tell a story about some guys killed by a toxic jello cube? It a puzzle monster. You make part of a puzzle that they have to solve to get some extra loot...

Of course, in anything less than a TPK situation you don't even need that. The enemies will just turn and focus on the standing enemies after a PC drops. Well yes, assuming you allow in your combat system for a high probability of a PC being dropped but alive, like in 4E, then TPKs are about the on...

If a GM wants to screw a character he can always do so. Yes that seems to be the whole point that the "anti-death" crowd has been making since the getgo, though I'd change it to "the DM always chooses whether the party/character will win or lose" so you can't exactly choose to p...

No apple is going to recall all products and provide them with black cases instead of white

If you really want a dragon uprising, you can have the dragons sleep beneath the earth for a thousand years or something and then pop out to go on a hungry rampage. Draconic hibernation is almost as good as demonic "being on another plane" for excusing why they are invading with a full sc...

I hope everybody took part in 9/12 commemorations

Ooo fuck. I just clicked on one of Shat's posts I normally have on ignore and it hurt my brain. Can we get a super ignore but that prevents us from ever looking at the posters post no matter how our curiousness is itching? I think it could read as such: You have added this person to your SUPER Ignor...

I had 2 thoughts about doing pseudo mass combat One is to treat units like vermin swarms. After all 100 L1 orcs definitely qualify. The other is to make units like a special kind of equipable item that acts augments the unit leader. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to implement either, at this point i...

As rubber actually means eraser to most of the English world it is a perfectly acceptable use. For most of the world going out wearing pants, suspenders and a vest means underwear, a wife-beater and a that thing you use for keeping up stockings. Remember American English is the minority. On topic: T...

Count: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/8/25/ If I ever get enough money, I'm moving to Nevada and renting three hookers to play video games with me. That'd be pretty cool, at least when I get enough money to make it happen... That would be a very reasonably obtainable ambition over here in t...

Thanks Angel, though I had found that one already. @Count: The problem is I've got one class who score range is 87-98 when last term it was 45-98. Currently we've got a set numeric range to letter score conversion (which is a tad generous imho but that is another kettle of fish). But with the bell c...

Hey All, The moronic overlords at the private business school I work for are trying to force us to institute a bell curve distribution of letter grades meaning for example that 10% of the class gets an A, 20% get a B, etc. The result this is creating is that we've got classes taking a nearly identic...

The idea of the metahuman SURGE is probably legitimately SR IP anyway. I definitely would not use the terms "SURGE", "UGE", or "Goblinization". But having some segment of the population spontaneously start turning into fishmen because the Stars Are Right is not SR IP. ...

I've been looking around at using games in education and came across using MMOs like WOW for education. I don't have the links but it seemed rather interesting

Go figure I thought that was the best part of the movie. That and the army guy becoming a pimp.

Well I can't comment on Japan. But as someone working for a Singaporean company and been there a few times, it is a shallow and petty police state where all most people think about is how much money are they making and what latest crap they own (which pretty much goes for Dubai and London, come to t...

Well, yes, except for the evidence, there is no evidence, I grant you that. I just don't think you realize how powerful your conditioning is to simply not see what you don't wish to see. I'm sure none of these countries even exist on your world. You'll note many of these countries have non-fail eco...

Remember: the game's first subsystem was actually the mass-combat minigame. The next additions were the tactical combat minigame, the logistics, and then the exploration. First you had armies of fighting men in big blobby units. Then you added hero units and monsters. Then you added buying and equi...

Just read Empire by Orson Scott Card. He is definitely not trying to hide his political stripes anymore. The left is evil, the right is saintly while at the same time chastising both sides for being radical. All we need is a benevolent dictator. Unfortunately some of the things he suggests are somew...