The Gaming Den

Was there Arnesonian DM'ing in early D&D as something different?

"Heal on long rest / night's good sleep" seems good, so in your heartbreakers and games do you have a complete restoration to full HP or wound boxes or so on? How 'realizm' this is depends really varies from player to player and game to game, but going on a tangent maybe having a really go...

Thanks for the various examples, haven't looked at Tunnels & Trolls in a long time "Short rest for class resources, long rest for core mechanics healing exhaustion and so on" sounds good. Could still have a 'daily' power that inflicts exhaustion. How about 'Reserve' spell stuff, like y...

General dungeon crawl tabletop RPG rest schedules are... 1) A night's sleep, long rest, 6 8 hours (Wizard, Cleric, etc.) 2) A short rest, an hour (Warlocks) 3) A breather mid battle, takes a round or based on doing a smaller action (Book of 9 Swords) How much does this really 'matter' though? There'...

Arrange 121, as fighting failed before

The tradition in Star Wars fanfic campaigns is for the ship to be a Millennium Falcon. I really wanted to break from that, and figured a slow luxury yacht would be a nice contrast to that. The real shame is my inability to think of a satisfactory mechanical bennie to give them as a consequence of t...

The Draconian books are fun

The "Why" is often the payoff for capturing or defeating the culprit and they give their tragic or sadistic motive. Most Detective Conan mysteries end that way Things that work and I enjoy are... - Dungeon crawls - Set piece battles So I'm thinking of tabletop mysteries sorta in those term...

Discord has the issue that you can't really organize information really well, and discussions can easily be lost to time The discord is good, I've gotten more useful discussions out of it than my 2021 posts on here that are mostly derailed to "I don't care, this forum is my personal chatroom s...

When running mystery investigation stuff with my students I've found having multiple "Crisis" situations to deal with adds to the fun. Standard Hollywood writing guides say "Have an A plot, then a B plot, and they meet at some point" so... A mystery game with A) Arson targeting s...

Just as there's rounds in combat with the enemy(s) moving as players move, some sort of structure like that can create time pressure. Like thoroughly collect clues and learn advantages vs the killer strikes again. Here's an old post I've been revisiting, Hunter's Moon has players vs a supernatural m...

Sounds like you're rather comfy in your comfort zone. If you really want something else, you should give it a try at putting in the work with the respective systems. Even if the game doesn't turn out the way you imagined it would, you'll still be rewarded with knowing how far away from your comfort...

What's the ideal investigation play experience structure for you? How does it deal with failure

An SCP/Warehouse 13/Federal Bureau of Control-inspired D&D adventure/campaign might actually work out ok, but even then, things would be kind of weird (...including the fact that most of the W13 artifacts and a lot of Control OOPs are just... not that impressive as D&D magic items). ... I'm...

what's PBEM? This is play by post?

I had a dream last night in which I was reading an old IG codex, and it had an option for adding terrain in your army lists, specifically modular river sections you could upgrade to have dangerous wildlife in to keep the enemy away from your static gunline. Which, actually, didn't seem that bad an ...

Thinking... Fire- Burns, Melts, Heats up Boils Electricity- Conducts through metal n' water and so on, then burns like fire Cold- Freezes freezables Acid- Dissolves certain stuff. Maybe have Base too since you're being so thorough. Piercing, Slashing, Bludgeoning: I think having some kinda hardness ...

Light / Holy damage tends to be tied to purification rites in stories and religious practice. So salt, oils, maybe a bleaching effect. Michael Moorcock has it as totally bleaching all life until you have dead white rock, which Final Fantasy has been going with in XiV. I think it's neat that D&D'...

Are D&D Devils and Demons and plantatreetoids and... werewolves and maybe other stuff consistent in what they're immune or vulnerable to? Or does it tend to be one off. I don't remember if all devils and all demons have the same resistances or if individual ones are different and don't want to s...

Here's an article on Tactical Wheels ("RPS") in fencing http://thefencingcoach.org.uk/tfc/coaching/tactical-wheels/ It explains the use and limitations of such a concept, with a big emphasis that distance and timing will change "parry beats your attack" in motion. But in a turn b...

Jotting down ideas for how I'd modify 40k 9e, or how I'd do the big change from 8e Overarching Stats Guidelines * More 2+ sv's and less INV sv's. Battle tanks and wraithlords get 'em, this makes AP-4 more valuable too * Basic troop guns don't get AP-1, maybe an exception with Tau because great troop...

Dungeons & Dragons & Pathfinder & So On tend to have a grid based combat system with push pull and opportunity attacks, then say "Forced movement doesn't provoke OA's"

So does D&D5e actually 'break' if forced movement does provoke OA's, or does it become more fun

1) Rock Paper Scissors is a game where you choose between Rock, Paper or Scissors every round, and your opponent does too. Neither are locked into one element, the choices changing every round are what make it a game. 2) Pokemon video games have you choose a team of 3-6, and switching between Pokemo...

The "Rules" "Time of play" has the biggest effect. Everyone here knows "The fighter can go all day" but most games of D&D I've played have just one encounter between sleep / long rest. Mutant League Football is different from eurobabby football on real life stamina ...

a game should feature exactly as many classes as it has resource management systems. If you have several resource management systems, which often comes up for spellcasters, then you need one class per system... What do you think of games where attributes affect resource systems? Like "More of ...