The Gaming Den

Could you give an example of what you're talking about? It seems as though you're retreating further and further in this argument. You're now making your case for some rare circumstance where no one is familiar with the particular rule, the rule takes longer to find than coming up with a non harmfu...

Omegonthesane wrote:How often does it have to come up, roughly speaking, as far as you are concerned? Once a session? Once a combat? Once every quarter-hour?

Once every couple sessions I'd say, at the minimum to not forget it. That would make it about once a month.

If all they have to justify their existence is 'speed of play', it must be accepted that if you can 'increase speed of play EVEN MORE' by using the rules, that using the rules, in all situations, would actually be better. But I cannot know all the rules. Others may be able to, I might have been abl...

Learning rules is easy. You use them a few times and then you've learned them. Looking up rules is easy and fast. There are indexes and tables and shit. Why are people pretending that this is some massive chore? Why are they claiming that it takes ten minutes to figure out how a rule works? Do they...

I maintain that any rule no one at the table knows and no one cares enough to know is not important enough for the game to spend time learning, and therefore is better replaced with a ruling. Call it lazyness, or whatever - but there's no need to make people learn rules that rarely to never come up ...

Easiest rule to point out as bad is the Barbarian Class . Slaughtermaster (+1 damage) is objectively worse than +1 to-hit. Hearty motherfucker (+2 vs toxins, poisons) is objectively worse than +1 all saves. Combined with the obvious flaws in random stats and hit points, you can end up with two play...

That's a problem with the amount of accounting, not the requirement to commit accounting at all. A rule which required less accounting would be better in that respect (and worse in others, but game speed trumps granularity for a fair number of people), and potentially faster and less argument-induc...

I will agree that they 'may not matter', but I will not agree that they 'don't matter'. It may matter a great deal to some people, and these theoretical people are not necessarily unreasonable. If you decide to set someone on fire and the GM tells you you need to make an attack roll, then an Agilit...

I will agree that they 'may not matter', but I will not agree that they 'don't matter'. It may matter a great deal to some people, and these theoretical people are not necessarily unreasonable. If you decide to set someone on fire and the GM tells you you need to make an attack roll, then an Agilit...

For your benefit, in case you want to reconsider your posts for the last 15 pages, the contention is 'a game that fails to include rules that will be required to play is worse for that fact. While those failings can be covered by DM makes something up , that will, naturally, result in inconsistenci...

Yeah. Half the usual gang is so stuck in "You can't have fun unless you're doing it my way" they are unable to accept anything, the rest only goes as far as "you may have fun, you liar, but it's less fun than my way!". I agree with PL that rules lite games need good rules. That w...

But rules, heavy or rules light, all game rules have the same end goal. Ruling over Rules, is ultimately a net negative to those goals, it makes resolution slower and reduces depth. This isn't an issue of rules heavy games vs rules light games this is a universal issue for all games. Nope. Rulings ...

The same is true of rules lite versus rules heavy gaming. It's not a matter of rules lite gamers not knowing any better or not having tried the other way. They tried it. They didn't like it. There's no objective right or wrong, fun is entirely subjective. If everyone had the same conception of fun,...

And this is why so many people advocate a norm against asking questions like that. This is why some people here find it genuinely offensive that you would ask questions like that, especially in the middle of the game. There are also people who find the general rule "and the GM will make a ruli...

If the rulebook says I can't swing from the chandelier, I get annoyed at the rulebook and stay friends with the DM. But, importantly, that really only works well if the group has a policy of following the stated rules--otherwise I read the rule, ask the DM to change it, and if he doesn't he's still...

However. Most people aren't malicious assholes with a raging hateboner for their players. But that doesn't stop them from sometimes, you know, being dicks. Generally without really thinking about it. A detailed ruleset won't stop anyone from being a dick deliberately. But it can stop you from being...

If you've run a weekly campaign for ten years, odds are you haven't been a player in a campaign in a long time. So your perception on what players like, what they tolerate and what they dislike might very well be off. Incorrect. My group runs two weekly games - Shadowrun and D&D - and I have be...

It makes me wonder how many of the people here have actually played under bad DMs. It seems like some imagined fear, because the kind of tyrannical power tripping DMs everyone is complaining about are not held in check by rules. They never have been. Weird huh? It is almost like Fuchs is completely...

I have never run a 10-year long game. The longest I've ever run a single campaign was for a year and a half, before ending it - with an actual ending, as the story had run its course. I know a DM who's run a single campaign for over 10 years though. He was a creepy misogynist, routinely had female ...

So why is rulings-not-rulesso hard to argue with? You don't know how it works and filled in the gaps with shit you invented. Well, rulings not rules isn't actually that different from house rules. House rules: I don't like that rule, I'll replace it with this rule. Rulings: I don't care about the o...

See, I'm wondering why you keep floating this particular straw man. I know the answer to how long is "forever" because it's a straw man that defenders of shitty rules have been using since Crog first defended the "No Woman Hunt" rule. How long do your campaigns usually run? Do y...

But as was stated before, even with "rulings" you still have Player agency. You tell the player what the DC is before he rolls, and he can change the action if the odds not to his liking. Player usually asks what the DC is, you either look the rule up or make a ruling, and tell him, then h...

I really wonder how many here actually have a stable group to play with.

I don't know Fuchs, if I built a straw man that large and offensive I'd be afraid it might fall on me and crush me to death. Straw Man? The irrational fear of getting screwed by the evil GM comes out in half the posts about how supposedly bad "Mother, may I" rules are since you're "a...

I thought D&D night was a friendly casual gathering of friends playing a cooperative storytelling game for fun. In the words of the Joker: Why so serious? Because a number of prominent posters here cannot imagine playing games with friends you trust. They cannot imagine that a GM wouldn't abuse...