The Gaming Den

I can think of several: * The D&D Basic Set introduced me to the idea of a roleplaying game, versus a board or card game. * Champions introduced me to the idea that game mechanics and special effects could (and sometimes should) be separated. * Vampire introduced me to the idea of a game as a ve...

I think we're agreeing with one another. Arthurian games should be based on the stories that knights told about themselves. Even better than that, they should be based on the stories about knights that were told by the members of the knightly caste in the twilight years of their caste's existence, ...

For a world to be meaningful and interesting to play in time after time, it needs to be centred around how people in that world see it and see themselves. If all it's based on is how we see them, then as the players get used to seeing through the characters' eyes the world will gradually become mor...

Well anytime you're getting a rules loophole that bypasses designer intent, people aren't going to like it. I mean sure it's 100% rules legal, but it's sleazy rules lawyering when you're trying to get "spells per day" an infinite number of times per day. As if you really need to break div...

That thread is funny to me -- it's always seemed to me to be "working as intended" for spellcasters to be able to cast a full spell rack multiple times per 24 hour period if they took care to schedule properly. People were using that trick to get a double-shot of spells back in the '80s, u...

Perhaps character creation is so confusing they expect people to take a month to figure it out. (Joking. Mostly.)

Or maybe this is just one more ill-advised homage to AD&D, which released the three core books at intervals?

Yep. Except Mages get broad powerful abilities, and demons get very specialized bullshit. I would be more hostile to the idea if you could actually use the magic system in Mage without a dozen pages of houserules and errata. The last time I tried to play Mage the house rules in use totaled almost f...

Another observation: demons are significantly worse in combat than other supernaturals - no soaking lethal, no healing without buying special abilities. They also have very harsh consequences for using their powers. Summon Bigger Fish basicaly. The demons do however have very good at-will no save s...

Gygax's AD&D DMG had a fabulously terrible rant about players wanting to play monster characters. It suggests that a good monster for a character to play is a gold fucking dragon , and that players should get all the powers of a monster as a starting character. Then it tells you that the only r...

There was a post before about two weapon fighting in AD&D compared to D&D3e, but I've forgotten where it was. Basically, how has the idea of using a weapon in each hand changed over D&D editions? Compared to using greatweapons AD&D 1E allowed you to use an offhand weapon that had to...

Let's not overlook the power of South Park.

I can't play a session of savage worlds without being furious. So I have to throw it in conversation, even if it isn't universally agreed as top 3. I'd like to hear more about your issues with Savage Worlds. I keep hearing it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it always leaves me a little...

Amusingly, the same guy who has "Killing Things Up Close" -- it's Lancelot in, I think, the Postmodern Magick book -- also has "Killing Things Far Away", which could conceivably cover not only every variety of firearm in existence but also bows, crossbows, thrown knives, tank gu...

]So can you grab a guns skill or do you need a separate skill for different guns? You are completely at your GM's mercy on that score. One character has a "cheap shot fighting" skill. Another character has "firearms." Another character has "Gunplay." Another character ...

I've found that the system does a good job of fleshing out characters and the concept of having a skill penumbra is great. For instance, if you have a Guns skill, it might include things like general knowledge about guns, gun laws, how to get a gun and so on. Kind of like how Backgrounds work in 13...

Wasn't Geist magic "dot - effect"? Like Vampire's disciplines, and not like Mage's shperes? What's unclear about it? Geist has "Nouns" (actual name: "Keys") and "Verbs" (actual name: "Manifestations"), and you can do things based on the combinations...

Mrs. talozin is sort of fascinated with the real world notion of the "sin-eater", which is a kind of religious absolution ritual that shows up in various guises around the world. So she was intensely curious about this game and probably would have been an easy mark for it, if only it had b...

I'm not sure exactly how accurately you mean by "accurately" but it might be worth having a read through The Ultimate Martial Artist book (for Champions). Yes, it's Champions, but as long as GURPS is on the table, why not? There are significant chunks of the book dedicated to how to do &qu...

ishy wrote: But that would only make the DC 5, which would not require a check. So uhhh, something does not add up.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time that Pathfinder had an option that actually did nothing because it was created by someone with an inadequate understanding of the rules.

In the movies, Star Wars ships do crash into each other (and space stations, and asteroids) rather often. when moving at what appears to be just a few hundred km/h difference. The ranges being small and orbits being stupidly crowded makes a lot of sense for that. It also usefully explains why capit...

They just used the wrong word because it sounded fancier and the editor didn't notice. Is "reactionary" a fancy word in English? So I guess I saw the mistake because the French translation, "réactionnaire", doesn't sound fancy at all: it's a very common word in the field of poli...

Saga Edition's vehicle section gives Turbolasers as having a maximum range of six thousand squares, which is I think a total of 30,000 feet, but it might be 30,000 meters. In any case I don't see anything about maximum sensor range. It's not like a Star Wars game will sell itself on its realistic r...

For all that nWoD is even more miserly on character creation (5/4/3 and 11/7/4 -- plus the 5th dot in anything costs 2 points, so if you buy a 5 in any attribute you unavoidably get 1 in the other two), it has had much better discipline about skill bloat. So, uh ... that's something, I guess. Lots o...

Hobbesian is an excellent counterpoint. The oft-quoted part about the "state of nature" from Hobbes is that life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" which is pretty far from the heroic ideal.

Also, should be Samuel Colt, but that's just nit-picking.

If you've ever been to theRPGsite (aka grognard central) you'll notice that they complain about how 3e/4e "required grids and minis. Now it would be no supprise if those complaints are revisionist history and they are full of shit, but regardless that is a thing that they complain about. 3.0 r...