The Gaming Den

I sometimes teach RPG design classes, including intro to RPG's, and there's a lot of legacy mechanics in D&D5e that make it harder to get into. A big one is the 6 attributes and modifiers. "Ok I have strength 15, I then look up a chart or do a formula to figure out my ACTUAL important numb...

This is the most incoherent piece of game design theory I've read on this entire board. I think the reason you haven't liked any TTRPG you've played is that you don't seem to like them for the TT or RP or wargaming aspects of TTRPGs, leaving literally nothing left except "games". No wonder...

Awesome, maybe he'll do a good job of the all three books the company publishes in the next six years.

Why would you ever use any of these rules? TTRPG design hasn't progressed that quickly, but it sure as hell is better than 40 years ago.

There's some weirdness with skills, but unless you pick useless subclasses there's always a lot of options. A lot of the issue people have with skills is willful ignorance and just generally a desire to complain about everything. "Passive investigation" is nonsense, but for the most part y...

What does "heartbreaker" even mean? It sounds terrible, yet every other person seems to be working on one (or more).

So this is a forum about tabletop games. I assumed it is intended for people who like tabletop games. However, browsing the topics suggests that in fact everyone here hates almost every single tabletop game mentioned in any topic. Some games are mentioned to have some merit though the deep and all-e...

I think the regular hit points system works best for heroic fantasy, without wounds that fuck you up the more of them you accrue. The way hit points feel different from degrading wounds is a big deal and is easy to overlook when thinking just about realism versus easy bookkeeping. Hit points droppin...

deaddmwalking wrote:Does this assume that you can always find a group willing to play no matter how niche the game might otherwise be?

That's a good question. Let's say that you can always find a group to play with.

If you could only play three currently existing TTRPGs for the rest of your life, which games and which editions of these games would you choose?

Dominion (the card game) has a mechanic where you start off with some shitty cards, then temporarily use your money cards to permanently get other cards, including better money cards. There's also a lot you can do to turn your worse cards into better cards, and even more enjoyably things you can do ...

Ahh, I see. So it sounds like it is sort of equal to mundane power, it's just hard to balance and especially hard to balance without making it cumbersome or dangerous to use. Thanks, guys. I'll have to check out how things work in Rifts in particular, sounds intriguing.

Suzerain, I'm mostly familiar with D&D, World of Darkness, and Shadowrun. In all three, at least the editions I know, magic users are so much more powerful than the rest that they make fighter/gunner types look weak at best and decorative at worst. And by "magic", I think the distincti...