The Gaming Den

At the risk of defending Shadzar, If someone in the party is being edgy for the sake of being edgy and its making people uncomfortable, they should definitely tell that person to knock it the hell off. This includes the GM, on both sides of the question. If this is something that needs to happen on ...

I'm not looking for a "Gotcha" because, even though I don't push the "GM is God" bullshit, I don't see at all how a GM's role is so little different than the player's that it may as well not be a separate role. There's some pretty important things that have to be done. For exampl...

I'm curious Artless, who writes the adventure in your group? Who decides that the BBEG is a Mind Flayer as opposed to a Doppelganger as opposed to a Dragon as opposed to an Elf? Who decides what the BBEG and its minions do, both in combat and out of sight of the PCs? When there's deception and intri...

Players who try to spin the rules to their benefit on a moment-to-moment basis are bad players and are bad regardless of whether the game being played is Settlers of Cataan or Dungeons and Dragons. I have never played with a group that would tolerate it if a player glommed onto a rule-interpretation...

d20 style cyclic initiative.

It works, it's easy and intuitive, and it's easy to port over to other systems.

odd question in terms of whether you even NEED a DM guide... if the players are so anti-DM, then why even have one? let them run the game and remove the DM completely and see how well that works as... a game. Nobody here is anti-GM. I'm fairly certain that most or all of the people here spend a sig...

GMs can be wrong. GMs can be catistrophically wrong. Therefore, it's not reasonable to take a position of "The GM's word is final". Rules decisions fucking come up in game and the players who are effected by it deserve to be just as involved. Yeah, the GM is afforded some authority because...

In oWoD it was totally possible to play what nWoD calls Prometheans. You can be forgiven for thinking you couldn't because the rules were pretty sparse and often had to be read between lines, and you can be forgiven for thinking the rules were crap because they were. The most playable way to play a ...

shadzar wrote: the context YOU are missing is that some seem to think the DM has only one job and that job is to entertain the players like a birthday party clown.

I didn't miss it, because it's not present here. Nobody here is saying that the GM needs to sacrifice their own enjoyment for the good of the game.

Shadzar, there's a context that you seem incapable of picking up here. To make it easy, I am going to bold it, in a bright color, in large print for you EVERYONE'S JOB AT GAME IS TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE ELSE HAS FUN. This includes players. And yes, this includes GMs. This is quite possibly the most ba...

As K said, you don't cast and recast little spells like Burning Hands. You cast Wall of Fire and then Permanency that shit.

Really, if you have a DM who is intent on fucking over your wishes no matter what, to the point where a wish of "I wish for a delicious sandwich" is answered with "You eat the most delicious sandwich you have ever tasted, your life is greater for it. Too bad you didn't taste the deadl...

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story Wasn't this sort of what they tried to do with One World By Night? Of course, that was basically t...

Shadzar: In the early Aughts I was part of a VLarp game that met weekly and was based out of a game shop in a strip mall with a second-run theater, a Chinese restaurant, and a couple other places that were never open when we were playing. One of the first rules, spelled out to everyone who played an...

I'd say either try to get the charges reversed, or talk to someone who successfully downloaded the games and get them from that person.

Yeah, it's funny. I learned how to play RPGs in Southeast Texas. I played D&D and Vampire, neither of which fundies have any great love for. I had a good friend who lived in Huntsville Alabama who played damned near every game under the sun, and another who lived in Florida who was much the same...

Handouts are easy. All VOIP programs have built in text chat. You scan the handouts, put them on a Dropbox account in the public folder, and then link them to the group as needed. Scanners are cheap as shit, they're on most printers these days. Dropbox is really easy, it takes about 30 minutes to fi...

You can save the credibility by adding a simple mechanic to recolor/restyle stuff. Maybe a cheap ritual anyone of sufficient "power" (aka, any PC-Level character) can do. That would avoid the player characters having to wear clown suits. It would also mean no one would care much about how...

Basically, I'm taking Frank's response as either "Yes, I'm incredibly petty, thanks for asking", or that Frank is turning into Walter Sobchack and yelling "This isn't 'Nam! There are Rules!".

Everyone, every single person on this board thinks there are problems with D&D that need to be addressed. This board is convened around the subject and then impugning the honor, hygiene and ancestry of people who disagree with you on it. Shad takes some things too far and tries too hard and need...

Shadzar, don't give me that crap. I don't believe for a second you've ever read a third edition book, much less ever touched a 4th edition book. You're practically proud of the fact that you're speaking from ignorance. It's very simple, if you want to have a stated opinion about the relative qualiti...

But the market doesn't explain that. If there's only one version for sale, you can't expect to be choosy about parameters. Questing doesn't explain that. If there's only one artifact in the kingdom, it doesn't make much sense to ask if it comes in red. And finding things in "random" DM pi...

you like what you call this "evolution" and streamlining, so you must LOVE 4th edition right? what i believe is shit some people want need not be forced on all. No, I didn't much like 4th edition. In my experience, 4e was too rigid and codified. You had some options, but not nearly as man...

I can't say that I've had that experience. Personally, all of the 3e campaigns I have been involved in have been identical to the 2e campaigns I was involved in, system aside.

Shad also seems to have a particular belief that I've seen mostly in 2e Grognards and Old People, which is that streamlining a system to make it easier to understand and operate it worsens the system because it is 'dumbed down", rather than improving the system because the mechanics less are ob...