The Gaming Den

Here's my nice, simplistic take on the subject. We have the following definition of "hardness." Each object has hardness—a number that represents how well it resists damage. Whenever an object takes damage, subtract its hardness from the damage. Only damage in excess of its hardness is ded...

Except that the "Bag o' Rats" clause doesn't do that. All it does is close two loopholes in somewhat awkward ways.

The problem is that Obama came up with this brilliant plan to raise money from small donors over the Internet, but the Congressional Dems were still doing business as usual for their campaigns. They spent a great deal of time at the convention getting cozy with lobbyists from the same old large corp...

So which is it? Is the hellishness of Dark Sun caused by intelligent creatures or is it by nature? I've been hearing two contradictory things. But if the hellishness is being caused by the environment, how is Dark Sun different from any other points-of-light campaign setting with the trees swapped ...

Fox was doing that with the original April 15 Tea Parties as well. Apparently, even though they've actively been promoting conservative rallies, rather than just covering them as news events, they're still "fair and balanced" because they say so. Edit: And tzor, you missed these two paragr...

You make an interesting point, Lago. It's possible for the Republicans to gain seats in Congress next year and win the presidency back in 2012. However, this might be the worst thing that could happen to them in the long run. If that scenario happens, the rabidly insane conservative base will take i...

Since we're back on Dark Sun: It seems to me the tl;dr on DS4e is that 4e is the opposite of everything DS was. Apparently, in the original setting, you could die of thirst easily, but if you survived, you got to do insanely cool stuff. Whereas in 4e, it's pretty hard to die of thirst but you never ...

I think the site looks for quotes about you rather than quotes by you, since it's supposed to be about how the web perceives your name. Anyway, here are my results: Absentminded Wizard : Since it's a common fantasy trope, I don't get any quotes that are actually about me. No. 1 category is Social. A...

One great feature of English is that most of our job titles can be gender neutral. This isn't necessarily a given. For example, in German, every job title must add a suffix if the person is female. Thus, you can't talk about somebody's occupation without mentioning their gender.

I love how, when caught red-handed talking out of your ass, your response is, "I never said that and let's change the subject." Poor subject change, too. The Dave Arneson entry you isn't actually clear on the timing of Blackmoor vs. D&D rules (as opposed to the published version of the...

But regardless your idea to save skill challenges by split them up in ever more complex and exciting new ways is stupid by it's basic premise. Not at all. That's how D&D got its combat system, after all; originally it was just RPS before they brought in chainmail. :rofl: Chainmail preceded D&am...

Death Spiral + Padded Sumo is a complete non-starter for me. Nothing makes a combat more boring than knowing you're going to win but spending an eternity just mopping up. If you avoid this drawback by using something like NPC morale checks, I can live with that. So now the question is whether that k...

TD: What are you smoking? Everybody knows that a million is an awesomely big number. McDonald's constantly brags about how many million people they've served. If you're a millionaire, you're really rich. If there was any way WotC could have said they had sold anywhere around a million books, they wo...

There is a lot of stuff I don't feel like quoting in there but I will pick out a few that popped out at me. 1. Fragile system: play like the devs or break the game. Now I'm not PRand he can correct me if I'm wrong but I think this point is a valid one. I don't think its so much that it means you ha...

Malians protest equal-rights bill for women Here's the part that made me laugh and cry simultaneously: "It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it," she added. If only al...

City-states of various races dot the darkness, bastions in the wilderness built amid the ruins of the past. Some of these settlements are “points of light” where adventurers can expect peaceful interaction with the inhabitants, but many more are dangerous. No one race lords over the world, and vast...

Prak: So, how many basket cases are walking around in your RuneQuest game? It seems so much easier to lose all your limbs than die. And is sorcery even worth anything when you first invest in it? IIRC, the basic spell effects are so bad, and you get so few manipulation points (and you have to make s...

I was duty-bound to vote "I'll try anything once" since I did try this one once. Not only is it not "really D&D," but it does nothing to keep your interest. I mean, every Facebook game gives you only so much energy so that you don't run through the game at once. However, this...

1) Power companies are generally monopolies, because having more than one grid would be...an unholy mess. Here in Germany there are a couple dozen power companies. Anyone who owns a grid is basically forced to carry other providers power at prices fixed by the state. The same goes for phone and int...

Apparently because they have Pat and Joe who have single issues they disagree with the last administration makes up for Tucker et al... Whatever. -Crissa I never said they were exemplary people, or that their presence made MSNBC a great utopian paradise. I was pointing out that MSNBC's decision to ...

Here's the previous Den discussion of the preview:

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49853

I am flabbergasted that they went with all this effort to make DnD powers simple enough to put on collectible cards and didn't start selling booster packs of said cards. I've seen em at local gaming stores. Looks like Amazon has em too. Lol. Well, now I'm less flabbergasted. Now I just want to know...

At what point does the system implode and some just writes up a universal list of powers that just has the player choose to do 'level appropriate' damage and a 'level appropriate' effect? My guess is that point is about 30 seconds after they announce any sort of license which a sane 3rd party compa...

Really? Joe Scarborough's been consistently criticizing Bush. In fact, his new book is supposed to be a plan for how to rebuild the Republican Party after Bush screwed it up. And Pat Buchanan was hugely critical of Bush, notably over his advocacy of immigration reform. That was the biggest thing I n...

Calling out retardation is totally cool. And I can believe some of those numbers, once I factor in that I'm living in a more populated area and grew up with the Internet. And most of the people I'm around are the same way. I can honestly only think of one contemporary who is a lunatic Republican wh...