The Gaming Den

[*]Fear of Illusionism: Because the content can be tailored to the party, I often found myself dwelling on counterfactuals and wondering how helpful our class abilities “really” were. Like, would we have met so many shadows in that cave if we'd had a druid instead of a cleric? If we didn't have a t...

Ok, this is a weird question, but where does the stereotype that women doing something with their mouths is inherently attractive come from? I get facial expressions which involve the mouth, but lots of movie have people giving advice like "Randomly stick a fingertip in your mouth, it makes yo...

No amount of rules text will ever be able to reach out of the book and slap someone who's determined to be a bad GM, but good rules can still benefit someone who's trying to be a good GM but has no idea what they're doing. Good rules can also make it clearer to everyone else at the table when the G...

I don't know that Lago is wrong, at least about the assessment that politics is everywhere right now. My girlfriend finally dropped LinkedIn last night because all the political commentary there was stressing her out. To the larger point about politics getting revealed and having that overshadow all...

Are we... not about gaming? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not anymore. At least, not really. I haven't played a TTRPG in any meaningful capacity in about 6 or 7 years, and it's been 3 or 4 years since I was part of a regular board game meetup. The only gaming I've been doing lately is of ...

I don't see how a swamp is particularly different from wandering around in other terrain that slows you down? You might be more likely to get infected by some weird disease, but that's more a product of the wildlife than the actual environment itself. I do have some darkness rules written up that I...

Also, every one of your examples has them opening the door on a failed roll--what is the point of even making the skill check? Just build a simple success right into the lock-picking table. Violence, that's the point of fail-forward. Yes, no matter whether you fail or not you open the door. But suc...

The thing is, players don't feel like they lost agency when they get hit by a monster who beat the character's AC. Bad things can happen to PCs that they don't control and its OK. I'm fine if my character gets hit by a monster who beat his AC, but I'm not fine if it becomes: "You take a step b...

I'm a little closer to Episode 4 Kenobi beard myself.

don't put down walls because they get in the way... https://i.imgur.com/kPqvjqP.png ...of people being able to see things on the table. Have I just watched too many of these goddamn videos to get what these people are talking about without spelling it out? HeroQuest doesn't use walls at all, and ye...

Well, don't just tell us you like it. Explain what it is and why it's such a good idea. It's not. The idea is you keep your map to whatever you can fit on a lazy susan and just add a few evocative terrain pieces, ignoring walls entirely . So long as you're truly just fighting a monster in the middl...

I wish you could see just how hard I facepalmed. Fuck. I hate being right. I hate it . If you need any rage material, just check out some of his videos. He relishes in it. I hate-watch that guy sometimes. He's got 10 terrible grognard bullshit ideas about running the game for every 1 good idea abou...

So, my girlfriend is quarantined in New Zealand and is waiting for the test results to come back, but it appears likely that she has the virus.

The archetype introductions don’t address one of the main challenges of CP2020, which is that some archetypes have no business working with each other in a cooperative RPG. What are you supposed to do if your players roll in with Gordon Gecko (who is given explicit rules power to charter teams of k...

Dogfish Head has a line of Ancient Ales that they produce intermittently. The one you can always get is Midas Touch. I've tried Chateau Jihau, Theobroma, Sah'tea, Birra Etrusca Bronze, and Kvasir. I've never been able to find a bottle of Ta Henket though. This series of brews was done from 2006 to 2...

I hope you have a speedy recovery and that it was nothing serious.

Happy New Year everybody!

So, basically you're saying it's the same sort of vaporware we've come to expect from the D&D brand?

I come here mostly for the catharsis of seeing people speak and argue openly, even if I don't contribute much to the discussions. Plus, this place doesn't really tolerate any alt-right bullshit in the way a lot of other forums do.

Out of curiosity, when MAS took power in Bolivia, how many members of opposition parties did they murder? Is that number more or less than the current fascist coup?

Happy birthday!

Im certainly not a biologist, but the more I research the more I see that many, many birds live in mountainous habitats, we're talking 1000+ meters. And a variety of species have been spotted much higher during migrations. It does make sense for something with mammal lungs, like our magical Pegasus...

Arbitrary flight ceilings for everything doesn't feel great. It should feel great. It's something that has been missing from the rules, and that's given rise to the unfortunate implication that something with flight can just go anywhere in the atmosphere as it pleases. The flight ceilings shouldn't...

I would add a vote to Lindybeige being less of a fascist than most people, and therefore not a good target for any sort of warning list. I think Lindybeige is a good example of the sort of thing that has to be fine if you want to watch anything but Chomsky speeches. I don't need to live in a bubble...

Out of curiosity, does anyone have any specific insight into Shadiversity or Lindybeige? Their channels are mostly about swords and castles and historical stuff, but they've each said occasional things that make me give them the side-eye and caused me to back off from watching their stuff. I don't r...