The Gaming Den

If you're asking why he traveled to the prime timeline to get the stones instead of just collecting them the hard way in his own timeline well.. he couldn't. His timeline was now missing stones. He didn't know the avengers intended to return them after the fact. So go to the "future" take ...

I Assumed they were using homestuck time travel logic. I.E. There's one "true" timeline and attempts to meddle in the time stream don't alter the true timeline they create doomed branching timelines, but you can still bring objects from a branch timeline into the true timeline without knoc...

The idea I think is supposed to be that clearing the condition through drama is the carrot. You're clearing a penalty and restoring your health track. The condition itself is usually the result of failing an unrelated roll which itself rewards an experience point, and can in some cases be avoided by...

It's a matter of taste. The chief complaint people have with Fate over PbtA is how generic everything feels. Fate is like the D&D 4e of story games, it's over all mechanically sound but not particularly exciting to play. Remember where I said PbtA is about funneling players through a series of s...

So far the things people have said about this just haven't inspired confidence. How does Masks make these scenes happen in the proper order better than everyone being genre savvy and just telling stories that fit these formulas by taking turns narrating scenes? As it has been described so far, it s...

I'm so sorry for your loss. I don't remember a lot of the grieving process when I lost both of my grandparents unexpectedly one right after the other, but I do remember two things. One was that I was engaged at the time, and I had bouts of panic that something was going to happen to me and my fiance...

That might just be something our MC introduced then, where stopping a plan (by rescuing a hostage or breaking the doomsday button or whatever) would mark a condition. So the whole thing was a fan patch I guess. I sort of just assumed he knew what he was talking about since it was fun and made sense ...

In an effort to get things away from discussing pointless things with someone who is obviously silva, what is the purpose of this game under all the obscurantism? That is, why would you "play" this thing instead of some variant of "I tell a story until someone wants to jump in and en...

Have you tried asking at the official forums or something (assuming there is one) ? PbtA games are notoriously bad at communicating their rules, and sometimes actual play or advice from experienced players may help. I'm sure it would be helpful but that doesn't really erase the initial problem that...

I'm confused about why you're replying to some of my points in terms of how AW does it. I'm not super fond of AW either but I also didn't mention it at all in relation to Masks. Orion was the one making the point that Masks it Better than AW specifically, my point is merely that masks is bad at play...

I don't disagree, I just remember that "villain gets a free move after marking a condition" was, if not explicitly spelled out, at least very strongly implied. So how many conditions you had to mark was, in theory, also supposed to indicate how many free shots you had to ward against. If t...

Also different villains will have different condition levels before they go down. So the Joker probably has a full five point condition track same as the heroes because he's a Big Bad, but Penguine might only have a 2 or 3 condition track because he's a Side Bad. Condition track isn't just a convolu...

Alright mea culpa I missed that bit. I was going from memory and my copy of the basic moves playsheet which weirdly omits that detail. However while doing damage on a 7+ is good, that doesn't entirely address my complaint that things like "create an advantage" and "Impress surprise or...

This doesn't make me feel like I'm playing someone with an impressionable and developing sense of identity. It makes me feel like I'm playing someone with borderline personality disorder. Did my favorite person say I'm good at fighting again? Well then I must be good at fighting again! What is my s...

My problem with masks boils down to two things: The game is both weirdly permissive and weirdly restrictive about what players can and can't do. The most immediately obvious is the way powers are handled. In PbtA games How you do something and What you are doing are governed by two different things....

I am legitimately curious to know why you think Masks is one of the better designed ones because that game is my fucking white whale and I have played it and been frustrated with the mechanics at every turn. Masks was my quintessential "Good GMs make bad games tolerable" experience because...

Well most PbtA games balance the failure aspect with some kind of carrot. In most games this is exp but since that on its own is iffy design depending on the power curve of the game, some have been moving towards something more akin to a fate point where you get to cancel one of the DM's declaration...

I do like the idea of a miss just giving the MC a point of Menace or whatever you want to call it, which can be banked or spent immediately. Maybe caps out at 3 to keep them from hoarding a whole bunch of it and dumping bearthulu on the players when it hits 10. Or design the system specifically arou...

Gm declares when a move happens, and only when they're sure there will be consequences for attempting something. So the MC has just laid out a scenario. They ask the players what they're going to do. Player 1 wants to ask their NPC contact Daniel McNobody to babysit their kid sister while they're ou...

The general consensus on Monster Hearts is that it's a small doses game unless you're playing it like Days of Our Lives.

That is how default PbtA operates, Grek - a bunch of well defined moves for things the author finds thematic appropriate, and a general one for when things don't fit. The problem 00dani points is the general move ("Act under Fire" / "Overcome" ). So the solution is dismissing th...

I don't want more Bloodlines because I'm desperate to see what's happening in oWoD LA, I want more Bloodlines because it was really well made. While I enjoyed the classic bloodlines as much as the next goth-curious teen when it came out, did we play the same game? Fun and engaging maybe but well ma...

I'd put it much closer to a Third Thor in terms of quality. Aside from near the end I'm not sure it had quite the same level of goofy bombast as Ragnarok. And in terms of how the plot is structured it actually resembles 1st thor quite a bit, but with more polish from nearly a decade of making these...

Just saw the latest Marvel movie. I'd put it at a solid "1st Thor" in terms of "this thing is a pretty serviceable origin story with some fun action moments, but not much more impressive than that." However some spoilery things I did kind of like a lot: - The skrull not being inv...

Salt Fat Acid Heat is a very good show, would recommend. She also pops up in a couple of youtube cooking vids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GxzGND1NnA

Would recommend the tuna.