The Gaming Den

VTM wanted to be about politics and scheming but it never had the mechanics to support that. 13th gen vampires were too weak to meaningfully influence anything. There's always a bigger dick NPC waiting in the wings to slap you for getting too uppity.

Vampire's biggest failing was not letting the players start as princes. Giving ownership of the city from the start solves all engagement problems. Why should you investigate the weird rumors about the old mill? Because it's your city and if something is about to blow your sweet gig you want to stop...

Ryuutama is a game in which you can tell a story. In Chuubo the story is the game. As in, it has gamified the process of creating a narrative itself. Advancement is tied to setting up and completing character arcs, and the structure of game play reads a lot like the kind of outline you would use whe...

Mutants and Masterminds
I don't know that it necessarily fails to deliver on its premise, but the amount of times a GM needs to say "no not like that, the game breaks when you do that" during character creation is staggeringly high.

"Making sure it fits the theme" though is still frustratingly vague. Does laser vision fit the theme for a Soldier? For a delinquent? Lasers are pretty disruptive, you could definitely be a prick with lasers. But the MC could also very easily rule that the iconic superman heat vision doesn...

The best PbP systems are ones where the players are given some leeway to dictate the outcome of an action. The thing that slows down PbP games usuaully waiting on the GM to make a ruling. 5 players go, then the GM has to respond to each of them. A more streamlined PbP system has the GM pop in organi...

I mean they probably could it just involves more overland travel to reach specific places on the map and less founding their own town of NPCs who all somehow agree to go along with this.

And how the god acts varying depending on where they interact with that god could be a baked in mechanic. In the city of min-maxers, they believe that all gods want to give them lots of gifts for no reason, and protect them from bad things happening. Well then it's a good thing players won't genera...

The difference is a religion can have a bunch of internally contradictory nonsense but an RPG can't. When the characters interact with Demeter she either will be an Olympian or she won't, Artemis will either be in a loving relationship with Orion or a dedicated celibate. The challenge then is to de...

I contend that labels and influence barely work for teenagers, they would definitely feel out of place on full grown adults. Grown up supers have their petty drama but they are at least expected to know who they are and what they're about.

What a Weird West Setting needs in order to be fun and compelling: - A large map left largely un-filled that players are enticed to explore with the promise of as yet undiscovered riches. - A robust resource management minigame to make the exploration itself part of the challenge. - Small bastions o...

Well if we're looking from a scholarly standpoint the gods are one part morality tale and one part 'why does life suck and how can we make it suck less.' The gods reward ideal greek behavior (which is different from modern standards, see all the rape), and they punish hubris, vanity, greed, and inho...

Is beating up a god really that on brand for greek mythology though? I know it is for your God of War style modern interpretations but I remember a lot of the OG myths as being summed up by "And hubris was the real enemy all along." Like sure Hercules managed to win against Ares once but h...

Not that these videos are a comprehensive list of stories about deities but Overly Sarcastic Productions has a pretty good compilation of greek/roman gods their origins and their most popular myths. Hermes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg_Wi4RpKVY&t=713s Aphrodite: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Would Legend of Korra's model of a post-clan integrated world be more useful when looking for a setting that does Asian fantasy without the rigid oil and water dynamics of Fire Benders vs Everyone Else? It seems like all you need is just a premise where maybe the time when things were that strict is...

The one thing I love about Narcissists is the lack of self awareness needed to shut the hell up. It's like watching someone actively bail water into a sinking boat.

I don't think it responded so much as it just spat out another long string of gibberish on the same thread. "Responding" would imply it referenced the reply in some way. But I'm pretty sure it's the same spam bot from last time. Same krishna stuff, same weird onion fixation. I am mildly am...

Coding is honestly just getting into some of the nuance of symbolic language, it's experiencing the growing pains of any newly minted academic term in that people don't really know what it means in a non-academic context yet. Anyone with a basic level understanding of how symbols function can avoid ...

I wonder if it really matters at this point. The design has already made the very concept of the movie a joke at this point. The fact that rando fans on the interwebs figured out what would look better than the highly paid professionals aside this whole thing has to be deeply embarrassing for the s...

Not that the promise of a live action sonic movie ever really "had" me but can we talk about how absolutely god awful that CGI hedgehog is? Why is he proportioned like a small adult human? Why is his head so tiny? Why teeth? Why are the large stylized quills covered in small realistic quil...

Everyone hates Memoires of a Geisha because the book was published against the wishes of the woman in questions, and heavily embellishes and in some places outright lies about her life and the customs of geisha in general. The depiction is also skewed negative because the move/book wanted to be sord...

I think it's important to ask the question "Who is this for?" Is your game for a predominantly western market and predominantly western players? File the serial numbers off, go full avatar. Tone and Theme are more important than accuracy in this space. Is your game a good faith effort to t...

It's more complicated because it ties into the already entrenched biases Americans have when it comes to brown people. Your dojo is kind of a poor sample size for this too because you're all there to learn from the guy. That doesn't mean he never faced discrimination for his habits or that his life ...

Doesn't the saying goes that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Besides it's one of the oldest habits of humankind. Cultures copy cool stuff from each other when they meet and we all profit from it. Like Anime started by imitating western cartoons and ended up becoming its own great thing...

Ok let's see if I can explain this more concisely. You have timeline A. This is the Prime Timeline. Events in this timeline cannot be changed because they have already happened. When you travel back through timeline A, when you make changes they don't alter timeline A, instead they create timeline B...